miso jelly! that will go great with the umeboshi plum butter.
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your ferments look fabulous!
i donāt think i could have limited myself to 2 cloves of garlic though, i love garlic and always sneak in extra. 
same with the spicy, i love spicy.
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I know!! :D. But my roomā¦ 70 sq feet? Yeah, a little over three feet longer than I am on one direction, and I can touch both walls laying down on the other.
Iām gonna have to get inventive. Ever tell you about the time I dug a root cellar?
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FUCKING HELL! I FORGOT TO BRING MY MISO PASTE!!!
Three pounds of dried kombu (yeah dawg, three pounds) and no miso!
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Hm, your new landlords probably wouldnāt be too keen on you digging up the place, would they.
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Thanks! I wanted to keep this batch more basic, then see if I can get a little more inventive on the next one. Carrots, a head of garlic, onions and ā¦ ?
Meanwhile, Iām eyeballing the ginger root I just bought and wondering what to do with it.
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Donāt let it to waste.
But if that seems to be happening, make honey ginger āaleā.
For 1.5 liter (soda bottles over here, change measurements for size over there).
- 1 bottle
- 1 lemon (juice of, I like also some zest added)
- 2 thumb size pieces finely gridded (?? grinded?) ginger root
- 200 grams honey (or if to expensive 100 gr sugar, 100 gr honey)
- 0.2 gram dried yeast (bread type, or if you can lay your hands on it champagne or cider yeast)
- 1.5 liter luke warm water
Put it all together and leave at room temp for at least 12 hours, at most 48 before cooling. And drinking. Itās not a beverage you can keep.
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Yum, Iāll take a big glass of that ale!!! 
You could alternatively make a ginger Tepache! Tepache is one of the easier and quicker fermented drinks to make and is very yummy! If you like kombucha and you like pineapple juice then Tepache is right up your alley.
It is also a beverage that doesnāt keep, so drink up.
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That does sound great indeed. Thanks!
Would it work with Gula djawa?
Probably it will. Why not? 
Oh my, the resolution to hold on the booze and beverages is going down.
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yes, i usually use brown sugar (muscovado) or honey (manuka). Iāve done it with extra pineapple juice and no added sugar as well. You just need to make sure it is sweet enough to give the natural yeasts and bacteria something to chow down on. (iāve seen it made in Mexico with white sugar and vanilla)
It is a very easy very forgiving thing to make, iāve never had it not turn out. I have let one batch get too strong though and had to mix it 1:4 with guava juice and second ferment for a day before i could drink it.
Tepache is to fruits what Kvass is to root veggiesā¦both are excellent fermented probiotic drinks and worthy projects to expand ones fermenting repertoire!
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Iām looking forward to it. Will report 
Maybe a bit longer fermentation needed now, only 18 degrees celcius (in house) over here. And I imagine the yeasts on pineapple like warmer temps.
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Looks like the carrots have grown a nice crop of kahm yeast on the bottom.
From everything Iāve read, this is OK. I tried 'em a couple of days ago, and they tasted good, though a teensy little bit too clovey. Iām going to try them again this afternoon and see if theyāre good to go.
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I find it hard to get some flavors right, and in some case less is definitely more. Clove is tricky. Juniper berry is tricky. OTOH ātoo much garlicā or onion never seems to be so problematic.
I am considering making various Indian pickles and relishes, fermented. Itās time for me to pull all the Meyer lemons from one productive tree indoors, and I was thinking of making lemon pickle, akin to the Patakās green mango pickle and the lime pickles I buy (yes, buy: argh).
The funny thing is, when I dig around in my cookbooks, I see a lot of salt, oils, vinegar (aha! fermented fluid!) etc. but no mention of the fermentation process itself.* So maybe green mango pickle and lime pickle are more preserve than pickle?
Coming late to this thread. Thanks, @monkeyoh for pointing it out to me. I am agog at all yāallās projects!
*Some dietary rules in the Indian caste and religious systems rule out fermented foods as too rajasic to be good to eat. (A quick read of all the ābadā foodsārajasic and tamasicāpretty much sums up all the things I most like to eat. Oh dear. If I werenāt married to someone for whom all this matters a great deal, I wouldnāt be having to do this kind of figuring and tap-dancing. But.)
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I cheaped out and got a bag of plain glass pebbles (the kind meant to be at the bottom of flower vases) for $1. I washed them well, rinsed them very well, and put them on top of shredded salted stuff to weigh everything down below the brine line. Works ok-ish as long as you donāt shake the jar too hard. I suppose putting them in the plastic mesh bag they came in would be an option, but I donāt want my pickles tasting of plastic.
Iāve put rocks in a glass jar with a narrow enough diameter to slide inside the larger fermenting jarās mouth. That weight works ok too, and itās a bit easier to work with if you need to get to the contents repeatedly.
I havenāt gotten any fancy fermentation air lock gizmos. I will consider the possibilityā¦
I wanted one, then decided I am too cheap to spring for something that expensive. My father bought a nice big crock, and apparently it didnāt go well. Iām not actually sure what happened, but it was smelly and messy and my mother āsuggestedā that he give it to me. So, I am now the proud owner of a fancy smancy crock sort of like this:
I am a lucky ducky (errrr, pair of turkeys).
The only down side is when the kitty drinks the water that makes the seal.
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I donāt know what kind of airlock gizmos youāve been looking at. The kind used in homebrewing generally cost less than $2, plus maybe $1 for the grommet. Plus, I guess youāll need to buy or borrow a 1/2 inch drill bit, which will be the biggest cost if you donāt already have one.
Hereās images/links for the type of stuff I use for beer brewing - I imagine it should be applicable to other types of fermentation
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those three part ones are great. easy to clean, cheap, ubiquitous. the single part, serpentine ones are a tad cheaper, but impossible to clean. the gold standard is a blowoff tube, but thatās overkill for kraut 
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Sounds like a great idea, the glass pebbles. Most of the time I use just a leave or chunk of what should ferment. But sometimes some more weight can be useful?
About airlocksā¦ Iām a āritmicā person. Putting the jars of fermenting stuff in the āpathā when coming in, makes me, when walking in, open the jars, let some in and out. And when smelling āokā, put them in a colder place.
Same with āfeedingā of other stuff. In a ritme, when needed, or when used.
Typing along I think it is not easy to explain. Sorry for that.
But, for me, the bottom line is, Iām not using airlocks for fermentation of greens or other really sour/salted things. Itās not necessary, unless you keep the lids thigt. Only for stuff that will be harmed by germs in the air, like fresh cider like things, or some yeasts. Or for things wich really do not like oxygen.
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But why using a airlock with kraut?
Please enlighten me, it is a honest question.
eh, if you forget about your kraut with a tight lid it can get a little fizzy
also, last year my neighbors let a lot of fruit fall in their yard, so there were fruit flies everywhere. so i had to tightly seal my fermentables, so i didnāt get dead flies in the cabbage.
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