It’s Sauerkraut Season

 

Here in Northeast Florida, it is cabbage season. All around me are fields full of bright green, dark green, and purple cabbages. They are in such an abundance that I do not bother to grow any myself. I do, however, buy them from the local produce stand (The County Line) and make delicious, lacto-fermented Sauerkraut.

Making lacto-fermented Sauerkraut is super easy. Basically, you just let the cabbage and brine sit for a week. Here’s the details:

1. You will need a large container to pound the cabbage in, a container for fermenting (I’ll discuss this later), a potato masher, sea salt, spices (optional, but I like celery and caraway seed and black sesame seed).
2. Shred or thinly slice a couple of heads of cabbage. It can be any cabbage you like. I prefer to use the beautifully colored red cabbage and the crunchy savoy cabbage for my sauerkrauts.
3. As you add the sliced/shredded cabbage to the large container, lightly salt each layer and give it a good pounding with the potato masher.
4. Continue layering, salting (and spicing if using) and pounding until you run out of cabbage.                           
5. Let the cabbage sit in the container for several hours. Give it a good pounding every 15-30 minutes. You are looking for the cabbage to start expressing its water. You want to get as much water out of the cabbage as possible.
6. At the end of the day or when you feel you have a good brine started, begin to pack the wet cabbage into your pickling container. I use The Picklemeister glass fermentation jar. This is a great contraption. It has a gallon capacity  and a fitted airlock so you don’t have to worry about contamination. You can use a regular jar and cover it with cheese cloth, but you will need to remove the scum from the top of the surface every couple of days. With the Picklemeister, this is not necessary.
7. As you add the cabbage to your fermenter, make sure you mash it down very tightly. Hopefully, there will be enough natural brine to cover the top of the cabbage in the fermenter. If not, add a cup or two of saltwater solution (1tablespoon per 2 cups of water should be sufficient) to the cabbage.
8. Weigh the cabbage down so that it is fully covered by the brine. If you are using an air-locked fermenter, cover it and add the airlock now.
9. Next, you just wait. Give the cabbage a taste every day or so to track how the fermentation is going. Here in Florida, where it is fairly warm, it usually only takes 5-7 days to reach a fully mature sauerkraut.
10. Once you reach a taste that works for you, move the sauerkraut to the refrigerator. This will keep the bacteria from continuing to work and making the kraut too sour. As long as the cabbage remains under the brine the kraut will remain delicious and full of beneficial lactobacillus. You may also can the sauerkraut at this point to keep it shelf stable, but this will kill off the beneficial bacteria.

I hope you give this easy fermentation craft a try. It will turn even a hot dog into a mouthwatering meal!

Meads and Melomels

For the past year or so, I have been experimenting with fermentation. I've made my own beer, cider, fermented pickles, sauerkraut, and kimchi. So far everything has been a success, so why not try something new?

I recently discovered an apiary near my home (Biggers Apiaries). I purchased a gallon of Orannge Blossom honey with the vague notion of making mead with it. I attended a class on making medicinal meads at the Organic Growers School Annual Conference this year, so I pulled out my notes for review and watched a couple of mead-making videos on YouTube. (Allow me to recommend the videos of "Craigtube" and "EpicFantasy".) It looked almost too easy. I couldn't wait to get started.

Since I've made my own beer and ciders, I had all of the equipment that I needed. I was going to make gallon batches, so I needed gallon carboys, stoppers, airlocks, a large stock pot, 4 cup measuring container, cooking thermometer, and a funnel. I filled the kitchen sink with hot water and Star-San sanitizing solution. I sanitised all of the equipment while 6 quarts of water heated in the stock pot on the stove. (Bleach can be used to sanitize the equipment, but be sure to rinse everything VERY well.)

The basic formula for mead is 3 parts water and one part honey + (wine) yeast. I decided to make 2 gallons of regular mead, and 2 gallons of berry melomel (fruit meads are called melomels). So I heated 6 quarts of water and 2 quarts of local orange blossom honey in the stock pot. Heat the water and honey to 150 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, stirring periodically. This will pasteurize the honey. After 30 minutes I poured the must (the water and honey before fermentation) into two carboys. The must is too hot to pitch the yeast at this point, so I kept the bottles in a cold water bath in the sink to bring down the temperature. I also took a potential alcohol measurement with a hydrometer. The reading came to 13%. So if all goes well during fermentation, the mead should have an abv of 13%.

While I waited for the must to cool, it was time to make the second batch. Again, I heated 6 quarts of water and 2 quarts of honey to 150 degrees Fahrenheit. After the must had been at 150 degrees for 15 minutes, I added one cup of dried, organic elderberries and two cups of previously frozen blueberries. As the must cooked for another 15 minutes, the whole kitchen started to smell like blueberry cobbler.

As with the mead, I funnelled the melomel must into two 1 gallon carboys and set the carboys in a cold water bath to cool. The cooling process took a long time, and next time I believe I will only cook half the water with the honey and add the other half as cold, bottled, spring water to cool the must immediately. I took a hydrometer reading of the melomel must, and got a potential alcohol reading of 12%.

Once the musts were cooled to less than body temperature (I waited until mine was at 80 degrees Fahrenheit) they were ready for the yeast. I used Red Star Pasteur Champagne yeast. One package of this yeast is good for 5 gallons, so I mixed the yeast with one cup of warm water, and poured 1/4 a cup of the yeast mixture to each carboy. I also added a handful of raisins to each carboy to act as a yeast nutrient. I capped the carboys and gave them all a good shake to make sure everything was well mixed. Then I replaced the caps with drilled (#6) rubber and (homemade) cork stoppers and airlocks.

Twelve hours later, the carboys are bubbling and the airlocks are gurgling.

 I plan to allow the musts to sit in these carboys for a month.  Then I will siphon them off of their lees (dead yeast and fruit) and into new, sterilized carboys to sit for another month or two. At this point, I may decide to add a little additional honey, spices, or fruit to the musts. After the secondary fermentation is done, the meads will be ready to bottle, where they should sit for another four months (minimum). Meads age very well, and the rule of thumb is that a mead made in Spring will be ready for Christmas.

This is a super easy and quick way to enjoy mead all year long. As long as you have honey, water, and yeast, you can make a delicious honey wine. Skal!

Cider Started

I decided that it was better late than never to start my first batch of hard cider. Living in the deep south, we do not have the luxury of vast apple orchards from which to press delicious and unique ciders. So I made do with Motts Natural Apple Cider, which has no preservatives or added vitamin C. It wasn’t easy to find a bottled juice that was simply “apple juice.” (Martinelli’s is another brand that makes a “nothing added” apple cider.)

I made my recipe up after reading a couple of books on the subject:

• 2 64oz bottles of apple juice
• 1 cup of granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup of sorghum molasses
• 1 tsp of acid complex powder (you can get this from most brew shops)
• 1/4 tsp of dried tannin powder (also available at brew shops)
• 1/2 a packet of Red Star Champagne yeast
• 1/4 cup of dried elderberries.

I poured the juice, sugar, molasses, acid powder, tannin powder, and elderberries into a one gallon glass carboy. Then I mixed the dried yeast in 1/2 cup of warmed apple juice to wake the buggers up. Once the yeast was bubbly, I poured half of it into the carboy.

Then I gave it all a good shake, installed the stopper and the blow-off tube, and set it in a cool, dry, dark place.

I’ll keep the blow-off tube in place for a couple of days to make sure I don’t have an over-flow. After that, I’ll install a simple airlock. The cider will ferment in the carboy for a month or so. After that I will siphon it off into primed bottles and it will complete a second fermentation in the bottle for another month or so.

Fingers crossed that it’s not too warm in the season to get a good hard cider out of this.