Hey everybody. Hope you’re doing well today.
We are finally receiving winter here in the
deep South. It’s gonna be our first hard
freeze tonight and so now there are some things
I just can no longer ignore and it’s time
to bring them inside. I wanna show you a few
of these cucumbers. This of course is the
grape trellis on the west side of the house,
and this is a straight eight cucumber. More
like maybe a straight ten and here’s its
sister. These are the two that I’ve been
saving up to put aside for seed, so I’m
pretty excited, but I’ve got more that are
not quite the size that you would normally
pluck for slicing.
I’ve got several little ones like this,
and I also have a brand new fermenting kit
from Fermetools that I want to try out. I’ve
never fermented before, but I’ve made refrigerator
pickles, so why not take the last cucumbers
of the season and try fermenting for the first
time. Let’s Go.
So one thing I didn’t mention is that I
really love the idea of doing a fermentation
on these cucumbers because it’s going to
let me extend my harvest on them. Yes I know
I have harvested them but if I had just brought
in some slicing cucumbers and put them in
the refrigerator, I might be able to store
them for a week or two, but by fermenting
them into these pickles, I’ll be able to
get from harvest to harvest by next spring
when I can grow cucumbers again I should just
about be wrapping up what I’m able to put
away. So I’ve sliced them into wedges and
now we’re gonna turn them into cucumbers.
You know this is the first time that I’ve
ever done a fermentation and one thing that
I’ve learned in researching it is that you
need to have a certain level of concern about
the brine concentration. That is just how
much salt is actually in the water that you
put into the ferment. Now one nice thing about
this kit that I got from Fermentools is that
they take the guess work out of that. All
you have to do is look for the size of container
that you’re using on one chart and it will
tell you the weight of the salt that you need
to use, and then on the other chart, it tells
you just how to convert that weight into a
volume calculation, so how many tablespoons,
teaspoons and so for that you need to add.
For the 2% brine solution I’m using in this
quart size jar, using this specific salt I
need to have 1 tablespoon, 1 teaspoon and
a half a teaspoon, so I’m just making that
measurement here and adding it to a container.
You need to make this brine solution before
you add anything to the water, otherwise your
brine will be a lot more concentrated than
you’re expecting. Now speaking about water,
it’s important that you either use chlorine
free water, like a filtered water or a distilled
water, or that you try to take as much chlorine
out of your tap water as possible. Think about
it, it’s fermenting, so we’re trying to
culture bacteria and if you use chlorine which
is there to kill bacteria then you’re just
counteracting your efforts. There are a lot
of quick and easy ways to dechlorinate your
tap water, but whatever method you choose,
just do your best to make sure you’re not
putting chlorinated water into your brine.
Now with my brine established, I’m going
to take my jar that I’m actually going to
do the fermenting in and the first step is
to stuff it with the cucumbers. I’m gonna
try to make sure that I make this nice and
even, I’ve tried to do a good job of making
sure that each of the cucumber wedges is about
the same height, that just makes it easier
to keep all of the product under the waterline.
Now I’m gonna add a few ingredients here,
and I’m not gonna tell you what I’m putting
in. If everything goes the way I hope it will,
then I will share the recipe with you. Suffice
to say, I’m attempting to make a bread and
butter type of pickle, but I guess I can’t
really hide what ingredient that is.
So now all we have to do is add in the brine
solution. Again, you want to make sure that
you see the cucumbers sort of rise up here.
Now you know that you’ve got enough water
in there that you’ll be able to submerge
them. One other nice thing that comes in this
kit are these glass weights so I can use this
glass weight and put it right on top of the
food and it will push the cucumbers down and
keep all of that below the water line so that
I know that it will all ferment properly.
Now we do need to seal this a little bit,
so I’m gonna wipe off the lid here and make
sure that I’m not creating any air gaps
and use the rubber ring and the specially
created lid from Fermentools and add them
onto the top and then just the same band that
I would normally use that just came with the
jars. Tighten that down pretty good and put
in this little rubber stopper. This rubber
stopper holds the next little instrument which
is the air lock. I think it’s probably a
smart tip for you to consider taking the lid
off of the airlock before you put it into
the stopper, so take off the lid to the airlock,
put the airlock into the stopper and then
fill the airlock about halfway with water.
Again, make sure you’re using non chlorinated
water for this step as well. It’s just for
safety sake. So now with the airlock half
full of water, you can replace your cap and
you’re done. You have completed setting
up this jar for fermentation. So now we just
have to set it aside in a cool dark place
and we’ll come back and check it in a week.
Thank you all for watching. If you’re interested
in this stuff, I’ll put a link to it down
in the video description. Again, it’s called
Fermentools and it’s a neat little kit that
just helps someone new like myself realize
just how easy fermentation can be and lets
you play with it on a small scale. You can
see I just made this one jar. I didn’t have
to get into a huge episode of trying to ferment
things, but I could if I want to. Thank you
all for watching. We’ll see you next time.
