3 ms·

I have found that fermentation with garlic leads to lots of kahm yeast, do you have issues with it? It may just be an issue with my salinity. I only have succes

• jerrysievert 3y ago
  it hasn't been too much of a problem, doing a very good wash of the garlic itself helps with this, and salinity helps as well. I had the worst issue with kahm in a fairly low garlic fermentation, but am happy to try different amounts and report back. editing to add: I had 2 batches side by side, jalapeño, Fresno, garlic, and one had Thai bird, the other habanero. the habanero had a yeast growth, the Thai bird did not. all other variables were as close as possible to each other.
• slothtrop 3y ago
  Same and similarly I find onion impedes fermentation. I'm considering adding all of this after. With garlic there's the botulism concern, I'm not sure if this matters if you add acid to the mix after the fact.
  • giraffe_lady 3y ago
    "The botulism concern" isn't limited to garlic, botulism spores will be present on nearly anything you can ferment. Since lacto is also anaerobic, you're depending on the halotolerance of the lactobacteria to outcompete botulism early, and then they produce their own lactic acid to make it completely inhospitable. Botulism gives up a lot of vigor for its sporing ability and doesn't do well with salt at all. The situations where it's a problem are when you don't have a source of acidity, like when you use heat which wipes the LABs but not botulism. Which is the domain of canning and things, not fermentation. Combining them is advanced level for this reason exactly though.
    • slothtrop 3y ago
      Right, so with a 2% salt brine the chances are basically nil.