fiona_murphy•9d agoProlific Poster

My sauerkraut was always too soft until I switched from a glass weight to a proper fermentation weight

The glass jar I was using just didn't press down enough, so the cabbage floated. A real ceramic weight from the brew shop keeps everything submerged and gave me a perfect, crunchy batch this time. Anyone have a good source for those small round weights?

4 comments

4 Comments

jamesm388d ago

Yeah the glass weight thing is real. I mean, I tried a clean river rock once because I was too cheap to buy a real weight. Bad idea. It left this weird gritty residue in the brine, totally ruined the batch. Sometimes the cheap fix costs you more.

veraj538d ago

Ugh, that's the worst. Learned the hard way that anything porous is a no-go. I just use a small ziploc bag filled with extra brine now, works perfectly and costs nothing.

veraj538d ago

Remember my friend who tried to use a fancy ceramic dish as a weight? She thought it was glazed and safe. A week into her ferment, the brine turned this cloudy, milky color. She lost a whole gallon of pickles because the glaze had a tiny, invisible crack that soaked up the brine and bred mold inside the clay. Total disaster.

elliot_johnson318d ago

Man that's brutal. I've been there with a "food safe" ceramic mug I used to hold down cabbage. Same milky brine, same heartbreak. It's crazy how something that looks totally solid can just suck up all that liquid and spoil everything from the inside out. Makes you paranoid about every piece of pottery you own.