Home Fermentation - Kombucha, Kefir, Kimchi, Sourdough, Yoghurt, etc

[Brahma]

I've been making lightly fermented red onions and chillis for ages. Think it was Brad leone that got me into it. Fermented hot sauce is nice too.

I like the slightly pickled flavor that comes through but the taste is so much better than when you just dump everything into vinegar.

heard somebody say you can make homemade yoghurt using storebought stuff as a starter in the malck you're gonna use; has anybody tried that specifically?

Yeah it's easy as fuck. Definitely recommend trying it. I make mine in a slow cooker but you can make it in a pot, dutch oven, whatever.

You can freeze some leftover and reliably use that as a starter the next time if you're not going to be making a fresh batch every day or so.


It doesn't seem to work great in small amounts, I pretty much minimum do 2L+ each time but I don't eat that much yoghurt so I do it when I'm going to make yoghurt cake or frozen yoghurt etc

I started with priyas recipe from BA

https://www.tastecooking.com/recipes/dads-yogurt/

You can literally make half-decent hard apple wine with

Been meaning to try cider. I've done beer from a kit so have a big tub and airlock somewhere. I drink lager/pilsner but there's a bunch of shit I'm not willing to get into to make good homebrew lager apparently.

I'm likely going to start baking my own bread fairly soon and honestly I'm going to bake sourdough because it's impossible to find a decent loaf of it anywhere here. Gonna go look for a good starter kit and these motherfuckers with their bland-ass soft-crust "sourdough" can fuck right off, shit's insulting

Pretty easy to start your own sourdough. There's a bit of woo involved that if you use local yeast from your own self-made starter it's good for allergies etc rather than some thing oit of a packet.

You just mix equal parts flour and water and leave it in a jar with a cloth over it. Add a bit more over the course of a week and you'll be baking by the end of it. The natural yeasts in the air inoculate the mixture.

 

[XYZpdq]

I'd like to try making my own kraut but I've heard in Florida you just grow mold instead.

 

[Orion Balls Deux]

I'd like to try making my own kraut but I've heard in Florida you just grow mold instead.

Is there no cool and dry place to store your kraut? You can do it in the fridge, too. It takes a bit longer. E- keep it in the warmest part of your fridge. The top shelf should do nicely. Never store in the door.
E- Also, some of that mold is natural a natural part to kraut. If it's white, it's just scum, and it both helps to protect the kraut, and can be removed. Unless that stuff turns black, you should be good.

 

[ExsanguinateHorizon]

Still going strong, and harvesting a pint of it erryday along with kimchi, occasional sauerkraut, and sourdough. Usually I just eat the excess grains or dump them in smoothies.

I'm having trouble getting rid of the yeastiness and am letting them hibernate to stop wasting so much milk. Tried a lot of things short of rinsing the grains, but the fermenting always comes out thin and boozy too. Not sure what I'm doing wrong

 

[Leonard Helplessness]

I've made both beer and cider and compared to beer, I find cider to be appallingly easy when it comes to making a batch of amazing fucking shit.

If you really want to go all out, you want to get stuff that's as fresh and unprocessed as possible. All storebought apple juices and apple ciders are pasteurized, and a frustratingly high proportion have preservatives which won't allow yeast to take hold at all. Ideally you want your apple juice to come straight from the orchard, unpasteurized. It'll be opaque, but the magic happens when you take home your massive 5-gallon fermenting jug (make sure you get stuff that won't let any oxygen through) and add pectic enzyme, which will turn the cider clear as glass over the course of a couple days. You'll want to add some other stuff too to kill all the natural organisms: Campden tablets will do that for you, and then they evaporate out. After that's done and you add yeast and yeast nutrient, you get to fuckin' wait, checking on the jug every day or so until you're sure fermentation has taken off and the airlock is bubbling away.

Once it's done fermenting after some weeks, you can either still that shit (using preservatives to kill all the yeast and then degassing it to remove all the CO2) or you can turn it into sparkling cider, for which you're going to want to put it in thick bottles that hold pressure and cap them yourself. You'll want to give the yeast some sugar to wake it back up, too, so it'll ferment a bit more in the bottles -- enough to pressurize them and carbonate the cider, but not enough to blow the damn bottles up.

Result, though, is just fucking godly.

 

[Afinepickle]

Yeah, gotta echo what other folks here have said on the booze front. Cider and Applewine are the easiest to do and do well. Also the easiest to get creative with when it comes to blending in other fruit juices or spice combinations because damn near everything works with apples. Every year my buddies all come by to devour the yearly spiced Applewine I make.

I also do mead which is only slightly more difficult but the real issue with making good mead is that good honey is fucking expensive so that's something I only do occasionally.

Beer is definitely the most cost effective but it's also the most work so I only like to do it when I can get a brew-day together with friends to divvy up the labor. It is nice to brew some of the more traditional styles of ale that you don't see very often though.