I make switchel by the jug in summer: cider vinegar, ginger, maple syrup, water. This year I have been drinking it instead of water most of the day, which is probably the question answering itself. My teeth feel more…
Made fire cider for the first time three weeks ago. Horseradish, ginger, garlic, onion, chillies and orange in raw cider vinegar, shaken most days. It has gone properly murky with a thick layer of sediment, and there is…
Beets, salt, water, a jar on the counter for five days. The colour is a beautiful deep ruby and the smell is earthy and sour and fine, but when I pour it, it comes out thick and stringy. It trails off the spoon. I…
Made tepache three times now and every batch tastes good and is completely still. Pineapple peels, sugar, water, muslin over the jar, three days on the counter, strain and drink. Everybody else's photos have a head on…
Fourth batch of tepache, same method as always: pineapple peels, piloncillo, cinnamon, water, cloth over the top. Two days in I lifted the cloth and the whole thing has gone thick and stringy. When I stir it, it trails…
Bug has been going three weeks and bubbles when I stir it. Made a batch with hibiscus and sugar, bottled it in some nice clip top bottles I had, left it three days on the worktop. Opened one tonight and it is sweet…
Had a bug going since July, fed it most days, made soda with it every week or so. Then I went away for a fortnight and left it on the worktop. Came back to something that smells sharply of vinegar rather than ginger,…
Kraut, hot sauce, a starter and occasionally kombucha, all on the same counter. The results are wildly inconsistent between batches of the same thing. A kraut that took three weeks in spring took nine days in July. My…
First attempt at mead. A kilogram of single flower honey, two and a half litres of bottled water, warmed to about 50 degrees to dissolve the honey, cooled, yeast pitched. Two weeks on there is a substantial layer of…
Same routine for a year. Moved house and the brewing spot is now about 18C instead of 24C. The tea still goes sour roughly on schedule but no new pellicle has formed across the surface in three consecutive batches, and…
Two kilos, standard paste, sitting at the back of a 4C fridge with everything under the brine and the lid burped every couple of weeks. It is far sourer and fizzier than it was and the cabbage has gone soft, so I have…
I have been making a lemon peel infusion for a few years. The flavour is good but it comes out clear, where the commercial products have a distinctive opaque, creamy appearance. I had assumed the cloudiness came from…
Six months in: sauerkraut, a couple of hot sauces, one kimchi. I weigh everything, use 2 percent salt by weight, use glass weights to keep it under brine, and ferment on the counter at around 20C. I do not own a pH…
2% salt by weight, cabbage fully submerged under a glass weight, 20C in a cupboard. Day five there's a thin white film across the whole surface, wrinkled like the skin on cooling custard, no fuzz and no colour. Smells…
Five gallons of supermarket apple juice, no added sugar, one packet of ale yeast, sitting in an unheated garage that has been running about 16C. I took an original gravity reading and then, stupidly, nothing since. The…
Starter doubles in about four hours at 24C, smells sharp and yeasty, passes the float test. But loaves take seven hours to rise 50% and bake dense with a tight crumb. 500g strong white, 350g water, 100g starter, 10g…
I get about forty minutes of kitchen time a week and 3kg of chillies from the allotment sitting in the fridge. I can do a two week brine ferment and then blend, or blend now with vinegar and refrigerate. I don't own a…
Day nine, wholemeal and water, feeding once a day. It bubbles enthusiastically about eight hours after feeding, smelled strongly of acetone for the first few days and now smells more like yoghurt. Everyone says two…