r/fermentation

This is silly and just for fun. It bothers me that there are very few naturally truly blue foods. Tbh, when I see blue foods, I feel a little uncomfortable and get that danger feeling, but also my world feels incomplete when I look at vegetables and see that the closest thing to blue usually looks purple leaning. So, I am now on a quest to intentionally ferment vegetables to be safely blue (not moldy). Lacto ferments become acidic so I did some research on vegetable that turn blue when exposed to acids and discovered that garlic, shallots, and red onions can turn blue in acidic environments, requiring a pH of about 3.6. Lacto ferments often land somewhere between 3.0 and 4.0 so my dream of a blue ferment is realistic. I’ve seen a few people post varying depths of blue ferments, some patchy blue and some very blue. I want to achieve very blue on purpose. Any advice?

So I did my first honey, garlic ferment. Well my first ferment of any kind ever lol It’s been about a month. There’s no more air bubbles so I don’t need a burp, but I’m still flipping them. My question is. Simply because I’m really concerned about botulism as I don’t know much about it.. what is the honey garlic supposed to smell like? Mine almost smells like alcohol when I first opened the jar. It has a very sharp smell. Then after that goes away a couple seconds later, it smells like a delicious sauce that I would put over some chicken thighs 😂 but that initial smell when I open it worries me, but I know things will smell differently when they’re fermented. I’m just not sure how they’re supposed to smell? Help 😂

hello! for our school project, we decided to create fermented sodas. we settled on two flavors: apple-ginger fusion and a pear-tamarind one.

the first method we tried was boiling the ingredients with some cinnamon sticks, star anise, and cloves. we mashed it and strained after letting it cool completely before transferring to a swing top bottle with activated ginger bug. we did that last may 16 and just today it bursted. we're burping it everyday, so we're unsure why it happened.

the second method that we tried was the juicer method. we put the ingredients into a power juicer and adjusted the taste to our liking with honey. we put everything on a swing top bottle (again) with activated ginger bug. we did that just yesterday and the apple-ginger exploded earlier today while the pear-tamarind exploded just moments ago. i burped the pear-tamarind one, so i don't know why it bursted as well.

we lost three of our bottles and we don't know what to do 🥹 the only one we have left was the pear-tamarind one we did last may 16, which up until today doesn't have any carbonation or fizz. we have to bring it to school next week for tasting and we're afraid if we do it again, we'll not have enough time. also, we don't have that much money anymore since the materials and ingredients were expensive

can anyone help us in this case? is there something wrong with the ingredients we used or the method? is there something we could do to avoid this in the future? what method will you recommend? can we use other containers aside from swing top bottles to ferment our sodas (we're kinda scared of swing top bottles now)?

thank you to everyone who will have insight 🙏🏼

Hi all. I started my gingerbug journey in February. I made a few bottles of decent in my opinion ginger drinks. My gingerbug has been in the fridge since. Is it dead or can it be revived? Should I start over?

I live in Montreal, Canada

I'm relatively new to fermentation, but I have done a bit of yoghurt, hot sauce, garlic honey, kombucha, sauerkraut, sourdough etc

I'm looking to get back into making yogurt, I've got an instant pot and I am just using a plain unsweetened probiotic organic yogurt that I got from the store that I am using as a starter + whole milk

The last time I made it, I think I did a 24 hour batch, but I was curious to do a longer ferment for maximum probiotics + lower carb, not to mention I enjoy sour yoghurt

Apparently you can get yogurt strains that are intended for long ferments? Does anyone have any recommendations on where to look, or what to ask/search for?

This is where I feel a bit clueless, I haven't experimented with different strains of things, I have no idea where to even start.

Has anyone else done long ferments with similar setups?

Is there any benefit to having multiple strains on hand, or keep getting different starters to add to each new batch to create some Frankenstrain?

Thank you for your advice!