On Thursday, October 8, 2015 at 10:57:15 AM UTC-4, Ecnerwal wrote:
In article ,
George Shirley wrote:
I made kraut last fall, first time in many years that the fermenting
didn't go bad and grow hair. Came out pretty good. Used a sterilized
plastic bucket, bottled water, canning salt.
...
I think that sterilizing everything first and using non-iodized salt,
keeping a close eye on the bucket (which had a cloth over it) and
dipping out anything that looked odd did the job.

Keeping it clean and effectively air-locked seems to be the best route
and traditional in many places where it's a staple, with fancy airlock
crocks as opposed to the open-top cloth over arrangement that somehow
became USA standard. I had just come off of processing 50 pounds of
plums (after 20 years of "perhaps a plum, perhaps 2", the trees went big
this year) so I was refreshed on the "a properly tightened (not
over-tightened) canning jar lid vents gas pressure but does not let air
back in" from all the canning, and carefully ignored all the bad advice
to "burp" canning jar kraut (or the other "advice," mostly obviously
paid, for buying airlock tops for canning jars). It's bubbled away
without blowing up just as the plums in the canner did. Since it's a
huge apple year as well, I also tried the "add 25% apples" step that is
evidently traditional in some areas on several of the jars.

The only one with grot on it is a literal science experiment where the
experimental variation was salt level, and the one at a dubiously high
salt level has some white mold on top. That was also done with red
cabbage, and you can see it getting pinker as the lactic acid forms,
more swiftly in the one at 2% salt, slowly at 4% salt, and hardly at all
at 8% salt where the mold is showing up. Those also involved student
help in the experimental setup and sanitation might not be so good as a
result.

If your cabbage is not dried out, you should not need any water at all -
shredded cabbage mixed with 2% salt (by weight of cabbage or cabbage and
other stuff - apples, carrots, etc.) should develop enough brine to
cover (when it's packed down and weighted) in about 30 minutes. Some
claimed that was more reliable with "farmers market" than "store-bought"
due to store-bought being held for longer, but the red used for the
science experiment was store-bought and made plenty of brine despite
that.

If going with a larger batch in a plastic bucket I would use a lid and
an airlock; from the home-brew store, not from overpriced pickle
suppliers... ;-) But I need to wait a couple more weeks to see how I
actually like the first small batch before I contemplate going there.

I did use non-iodized salt.

The advice for "airlock-type" kraut I'm more-or-less following went
something like: Sterilize the crock (jar, whatever) and don't touch it
for 2 months (at 60-70F). The lack of air (displaced by CO2 early in the
process) is supposed to keep the problem of things growing on the
surface from occurring. With the jars, of course, I can look - and other
than the one, which probably did not produce so much CO2, or not at a
fast rate, since it is at a salt level the lactobacillus don't consider
friendly, there isn't any yuck going on there.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

For an airlock, I use a plastic bag filled with water and tied. It goes inside another plastic bag just in case of leaks. The bag is big enough to cover the surface of the fermenting kraut and press around the edge of the crock to keep water out. It's flexible enough to let the fermentation gas escape and the weight of the water keeps the kraut pressed below the surface of the fluid in the crock so it doesn't go bad.

Paul