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  • From: Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] sauerkraut
  • Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 08:43:40 -0800

Rob Walton wrote:

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.



Bill,

Thanks. I am now thinking about freezing it. I am still living with relatives that hate it when I get out the canner. I figure if I put it in bags and freeze any yeast growth will stop and when I cook it, I'm good. I already ate some and it is not "bad" in any way including looks.



This growth is almost certainly a result of the low liquid level. The brine
needs to cover the cabbage to keep other unwanted creatures from growing.


Marie,

All was well until I went down to my place to get involved in moving the work along on the mobile. When I came back it was a bit dry. Not much, but brine level just at the top of the kraut.


It sounds like you know quite a bit about it.

There's always some yeasts and other aerobes that grow in the initial stages, when there's still some free oxygen around, but most are supposed to die off when the good bacteria take over. One such bug, Klebsiella pneumoniae, is sometimes a cause of bacterial pneumonia in humans. Actually, even yeast can cause stomach upset. It should be stressed that there's normally no cause for alarm over them. But if you screw up to the point that I have in the past, by moving the sauerkraut to a new container and exposing it to air or such, it's quite possible to keep on growing aerobes, and yeast is not necessarily the worst of them.

The hop sponge test I described is hard to calibrate well enough to generate numbers, but if you make two identical cultures whose _only_ difference is that the sauerkraut used to inoculate them came from the top layer and the bottom layer, and the top layer's culture develops much more quickly, then it's surely yeasty. I'd discard the very top layer anyway.

And you know, it doesn't compost very well, because of its being so anaerobically sour. I've heard of silage piles that didn't decompose for years.

Bill
S. Oregon coast




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