screw and brew wrote:Ozwald - if your kraut is turning out too salty try weighing your ingredients and only add 2-3% of that weight in salt. You don't really need a whole lot to create conditions for the native lacto bug to get happy.
Fermenting in a brew bucket is a good idea - I think I'm going to do that with my next big batch. The only thing I worry about is all the oxygen in the head space of the bucket (unless you're doing a really big batch) which can invite some nasty molds. If you can I'd purge the kraut with some CO2.
Also for kraut you don't even have to worry about sanitizing. Also long as the bucket is clean nothing undesirable is going to be able to survive in the environment created by the lacto. I read about a study where scientists intentionally introduced a small amount of the botulism bacteria into naturally fermented kraut or pickles - the botulism didn't go away but it couldn't grow either. I would only worry about sanitizing if you are going from kraut to beer.
I never thought about pears in kraut. Don't they get kind of mushy?
The 2nd batch was fan-freaking-tastic. 1, I'm hyper sensitive to sodium. I'm sure the average person would've been fine with it, or at the very worst found it slightly salty. 2, I wasn't beating my... cabbage... nearly enough & was compensating with the salt to draw out more liquid. I nailed it on the 2nd attempt.
The whole reason I'm stepping up to a bucket is to do a really big batch. Lacto fermentations don't need the headspace that sacchro do. I think my 2nd batch had about 1/4" & was completely fine. I plan on doing roughly the same with a bucket. I thought about getting one of those 2ish gallon buckets at the paint store, but since I've got it dialed in now I'm going straight to a full size one.
The sanitizing isn't for the kraut at all. The old timer's would let a 'carpet' grow on the top of their kraut & it'd be fine. It's for the brew system. I don't want anything growing on the top of the liquid that's anywhere near my brew gear. Cross contamination isn't likely, but it's still there & I'm not willing to play those odds. Same reason my counters & cabinets get wiped down with Clorox wipes at least once a day, sometimes 2 or 3 times depending on what's going on.
Botulism spores are everywhere & severely 'over-marketed' by the media & whichever scientists they're paying for their story (or whichever legit scientist's words they're over dramatizing). If you ate food today, you ate botulism spores. 100% guaranteed. The reason they didn't produce the harmful toxin in the kraut has nothing to do with the lacto-rich environment, the fermentation or anything else related to the kraut making process. They need a completely anaerobic environment, almost always caused by a vacuum. That's why the food service codes in all 50 states (& likely in many other countries, but I've never read those) are very specific about times, temperatures & cold storage. You can't put plastic wrap over a hot dish you just pulled off the heat & toss it in the cooler, like making a big batch of soup to be served over the next day or 3. You leave a corner of it uncovered until it gets cold enough to not create a vacuum. The spores live, but they can't create the harmful toxin. Normal cooking temperatures can destroy the toxin, but won't do a thing to the spores. Same with StarSan. That's why pressure canning is required for long-term storage; the higher pressure allows higher temperatures to destroy the spores so they can't produce more toxin later. The old method of canning, submerging sealed jars in boiling water, like StarSan or normal cooking will destroy the toxin but do nothing to the spores.
As for the pears, they didn't get perceptibly mushy. I have a shredder for my KitchenAid mixer & used the hash brown insert to shred everything. I chopped everything down into smaller wedges & systematically added the different ingredients to keep them fairly well dispersed. On top of that I shreded them into a large mixing bowl & periodically scooped a bit out into the Cambro, punched it down, salted & kept shredding. It made for a really thoroughly mixed substrate. The end result was very crunchy, but even if the pears had softened a bit they were in shreds mixed with all the cabbage, carrots & apples. I suppose it might be a bigger issue if there was a lot of pear or it was wedged/sliced, but since everything went through the shredder it didn't affect the final texture. I definitely plan on trying them again. The only reason they didn't end up in the 2nd batch was I needed to get out of the grocery store & head home - if they were right in front of me I would've grabbed a couple, but I wasn't about to spend any time looking for them.
BN Army // 13th Mountain Division 