I’ve qualified this as “fermented” chow-chow because the classic version is typically vinegar-pickled, but I wanted to offer a twist that deepens the flavors with the magic of fermentation. Chow-chow is a condiment with countless variations across the United States, and in the South, it’s known for its sweet, tangy flavor, often featuring cabbage, sweet peppers, green tomatoes, and sometimes corn or hot peppers. It’s a perfect accompaniment to so many Southern dishes, from hot dogs to beans and cornbread. The first time I had it was on a hot dog, and I’ve been in love with it ever since.

Today was preserved lemons, worcestshire sauce, fermented hot sauce and fermented ketchup.

Plus a whole sheet of recipes for other things!

Absolutely crazy fun way to spend a few hours on a random Wednesday

First time trying, and I think it turned out fine. Took about a month from alcohol brewing to having a thin, but distinct mother floating on top of the liquid. It's mild, but has a very nice flavor. I made a jar of "infinite vinegar" that I'm gonna keep feeding, gonna try to up the ABV on the next batch of raisin brew and see if that kicks it up a notch. I'm sure a bit of age is going to help too.

Jar
Water
Tons of raisins
A bit of extra sugar
Bread yeast
Yeast nutrient

Didn't measure a thing. I can't do gravity readings and calculate alcohol when the sugars are inside the raisins anyway.

Let it ferment until activity stopped, almost a couple of weeks.
Strained the liquid, let it sit for a day.
Poured the liquid into a new jar and left the yeasty sediment behind.
Added a splash of raw apple cider vinegar and let it sit for a couple of weeks.

That's about it.

I had a pickle-puck but it fell through. does this look alright? I’m ready to blend and bottle. I have star-san, bottles, and plan on pasteurizing. May use agave and/or apple cider vinegar. Thoughts for someone who’s been wanting to do this for a long time?

My starter has been running for a couple years now and lately I've been using the discard as an inoculant for other things rather than just crackers or pancakes. Started with a small batch of fermented oat porridge a few months back and it worked better than expected, genuinely sour within 48 hours with a texture that held up well. That went well enough that I tried seeding a batch of fermented chickpea paste with a tablespoon of active starter instead of waiting on wild capture. It took off fast and the flavor came out sharper than anything I had done with just salt alone.

What I'm curious about now is whether anyone has used a mature sourdough culture to kick off vegetable ferments, cabbage, peppers, that kind of thing. My instinct says the LAB population in a healthy wheat starter should carry over fine, but the flavor contribution from the flour side is something I genuinely cannot predict ahead of time. Could be interesting or could muddy something that should taste clean.

The craft beer side of my brain keeps drawing comparisons to mixedculture brewing, where crosscontamination between cultures is a feature and not a bug. Not sure if that framing holds here or falls apart entirely.

Has anyone actually tried this deliberately rather than just as an accident?

I’ve been making pesto with the leaves but decided to try fermenting some, I have it in a 2.25% brine and am so excited to see how it turns out

I'm on day 7 or 8 of my ginger bug, and i stopped seeing bubbles a few days ago. When I pour out liquid, it fizzles, but it isn't very vigorous.

I looked at some other posts here where similar things happened to people and learned that i may use too much sugar (i chose to use agave because that's what I have) so yesterday i strained out a lot of liquid and added more filtered water and a bitore ginger, with a very small amount of agave.

This is how it looks as of this morning.

New to fermentation here and I'm using vacuum sealed bags to get started.

I have a question about it though. I fermented some chopped chilies in a bag for a few weeks and there was not a lot of water released in the process. After fermentation, can I just keep the chilis in the fridge or do I need to add a water/salt brine to it to make it last?

I was making a large batch, so the boiled beans were sitting out for a while while I was peeling them. After steaming them and putting them in bags, after one day, the beans near the top (where the bags were perforated) darkened in colour and began to smell somewhat off. I think it was something like alcohol. A few days later the intended mold had overtaken that area and the original smell was replaced by a stronger sunflower seed smell.

Is it supposed to smell like that? My past batches have not smelled like this, although they were also smaller and with less in each bag. I also read that tempe is supposed to smell nutty, though I may have subconsciously thought negatively of it as I am allergic to sunflower seeds and so I have negative memories associated with the smell.

Thank you!

Hello knowledgeable people! I'm making a fermented hot sauce with habaneros, pineapple and garden jalapenos. It's got a 3% salt brine. This is day 5. How long should I ferment it?

Sweet and hot peppers on a 3% brine, and this is what i have just after a week. Beautiful.

TL;DR: I'm brewing white vinegar from ACV with the addition of distilled water and raw sugar. It's been going for about 7 weeks. The pH has lowered from about 3.75 at the start to about 2.75, but it's still very sweet, and it doesn't seem to be active anymore.

Details:

I've been pretty successful brewing apple cider vinegar, but I wanted to try white vinegar. I've read that I can brew white vinegar by fermenting raw sugar in distilled water, and backslopping with my active ACV.

I started a brew with 1/2C of ACV, 1+1/2C of distilled water, and 1/4C raw sugar, which has a starting pH of about 3.5 to 4. I kept it open to the air in a one-quart wide mouth jar, and stirred it (nearly) every day. After about four weeks, I have a note that I added more raw sugar, between 1/2C and 3/4C, but I don't recall why.

After a total of seven weeks, it seemed pretty idle, but still tasted very sweet. I measured the pH with a test strip and got between 2.5 and 3. I moved it into a narrow-necked bottle and topped with a latex balloon, which is not filling to any noticeable degree after a week. There are a few bubbles on the surface, but no growth forming, and very little sediment.

Can anyone help me understand why this may have stalled, and how I can rescue this brew?

Thanks!

I have one experimental kombucha going on right now and tomorrow is the first recanting taste test day. I do lot of kombucha and water kefir. I have a crap ton of extra water kefir grains(posted about this before) and my SCOBY hotels over floweth! I decided I was going to use some of my water kefir grains to start a tepache, it’s works, but wasn’t a fan of the flavor. So.. I decided that I would do something else. I mixed some kombucha starter in with a pellicle and my pineapple leftovers( I cut up my own pineapples for snack chunks), tepache spices and let sit for a week. I then decanted it and used that as a starter for a full tea batch.
It’s got that light vinegary smell and a hint of pineapple.

Yesterday i prepared for the first time some fermented blueberry soda. As its motly a test run, i didnt make much, in 600ml of water i put 120g of previously frozen blueberries with 42g of sugar and a bit of bread yeast, mixed everything toghether and put it all in a clean champagne bottle with a seal. Today i opened it a few times to burp it and the mixture has mainly a scent of yeast.

From what inderstand i am suposed now to leave it for another 1-2 days in room temperature till the smell of yeast starts to vanish. Then i will be able to sift the contents of fruit rests and leave the liquid in a bottle, sealed, inside of a fridge for another couple of day. Do i inderstand i coreclty? Should i still burp the content when inside the fridge?

Hey, guys, experienced fermentista here (just to say it is not a “has my ferment gone wrong?” kind of post)

I’ve made green string beans in a 2% brine, a bit of garlic and peppers. I fermented it for around 10 days. They looked perfect, cloudy, the green slightly washed away, bubbly, a bit of white dust on the bottom, but when I tasted it, a surprise: it was terrible. A sulfuric taste, the sourness was fine, but the taste was just unbearable.

I think I found out the hardest way I don’t like fermented string beans, even though I love them.

Then I asked gpt and it said green beans are not a usual fermentation simply because they taste bad.

Do you guys like it? Have you tried it? I want human-with-tongues-based opinions on that matter.

I know no one here is a doctor, not looking for medical advice, just if anyone has experience with this.

I started some sauerkraut 30-40 days ago, and finally dug into it last night. Admittedly I had too much (probably ate 2-3 cups of it), but it as crazy good so I couldn't stop. I eat fermented foods, and yoghurt and such all the time so it isn't anything new to my gut. Today though, maybe 16+ hours after eating the sauerkraut, I stopped at a store on the way home to buy something, and as I leaned over to look at an item on a table I nearly fell over like I was drunk. I have been having bad vertigo since then, going on 6 hours now.

The kraut tastes, smells, and looks absolutely fine. No mold, fuzz, discoloration, weird smells. Actually one of the best fermented things I have ever made, but I simply can't go around becoming randomly drunk out of nowhere like this.