Homestead mailing list

[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

Rob Walton wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> I made a 5 gallon bucket of sauerkraut this fall. It came out fine. You know 
> the method, slice the cabbage, salt and pack hard into a 5 gallon bucket. I 
> covered with a couple of cabbage leaves, a plate and weighed that down. The 
> ferment was slow, cause the basement a bit cool. A couple of weeks ago, I 
> noticed that it needed some water. I boiled some water, added salt and after 
> cooling added the brine to the kraut to bring the level up to where it needed 
> to be.
If there was a fairly tight seal between the plate and the sides, then 
it may have stayed anaerobic.  But it's troubling since it sounds as if 
air did get in.

> I also removed a few handfuls and ate it. Good.
>  
Yeast aren't harmful and they sure beat lots of other aerobes that can 
get into your mix.

> Now there is a funky growth on top of the water that smells yeasty. I sat the kraut in a real cold area (not freezing, but close) so that would not be able to grow. 
>  
But it doesn't seem to have stayed anaerobic, since you had enough 
oxygen to produce a good growth of yeast.  It must have already been 
growing when you added the new brine, since the boiled brine contained 
little new free oxygen to stimulate yeast growth.  It sounds silly, but 
when you add liquids to a pickle or sauerkraut, it's best not to splash 
a lot, since every bit of dissolved oxygen creates that much more 
yeast.  Some people even top them off with a dash of oil to exclude air.

> Whaddya think that growth is? 
>
>  
I would say....Yeast!  The secret to understanding yeast is that they 
can do their usual sugar-to-alcohol thing with no oxygen, but to divide 
and grow requires oxygen.  The bacteria you want to grow require no 
oxygen for anything, but neither are they harmed by it. 

They do say to start it at room temperature for a few days to make sure 
that the ferment begins properly.  I don't give that a whole lot of 
creedence, though.  I've buried apples in unsalted water and left them 
in a barrel outside, only to return to the most perfectly pickled apples 
you've ever seen.  The reasons why lactic acid bacteria always to win 
out --in a perfectly anaerobic environment-- are complex.

As far as the urgency of canning, if it's good and sour, and not bubbly 
or off-colored, then it probably won't turn too much more yeasty any 
time soon, in the refrigerator.  If it's not very sour yet, then it's 
hard to tell from reading a post whether it's a dire situation in which 
yeast are scoring their inevitable victory over bacteria (when too much 
air gets in), or just a little yeasty scum that always forms where the 
liquid surface meets the air.  The traditional way of minimizing the 
surface area of the liquid is to have not just a plate, but a solid 
wooden plug that's almost as big around as the crock.

I'm partial to the idea of canning it, with maybe some vinegar even, if 
it doesn't meet the acidity level for water-bath canning.  It can only 
change into something else (that you maybe don't enjoy the flavor of) 
the longer it sits, especially if it really did sit for a prolonged 
period in the high and dry air.  It's best to be skeptical of any 
anaerobic pickle that oxygen has gotten into.

You can test the kraut for yeast development by putting a crushed sample 
into a mixture of flour and strong hop tea.  If it blooms into a 
beautiful beery sponge, then you've got yeast, and there's probably even 
a way to estimate just how many, from how long it takes the hop sponge 
to rise at room temperature.

Bill
S. Oregon coast