Last year's kraut turned out okay. The temps ended up being near-perfect for the whole fermenting time. There was one three-day period when the temps were 73-75, but otherwise everything stayed 68-72. After 28 days, I opened the crock and all was well.
This year I'm getting off to a later start. I didn't have enough storage space in the refrigerator to do a crock last fall, and this year I procrastinated. So in early May, way too late for Georgia, I'm making kraut.
The basic process is unchanged. I spent about an hour chopping cabbage, mixing it with salt, and loading it in the crock.
This year I decided to try Himalayan pink salt, following Holly's recommendation at makesauerkraut.com.
Often people recommend against table/iodized salt; the anti-caking agents make the brine murky. As you can see, the pink salt is also pretty cloudy (you can also see that the camera adjusted the white balance quite differently in the two pictures). We'll see what the final product looks like. I have always had to add at least some brine; I might generate enough from the cabbage and salt alone but I don't let them sit long enough for that to happen. Or maybe I just don't stomp and massage it enough.
The loaded crock is now closed up and I'll base the fermentation time on the temps. So far, on day 5, the temperature has held in the 69-72 range, although the first day was a bit warmer. It reached as high as 74.
As I mentioned last year, I can only get 7-8 pounds into my 5-liter crock. There might be room for a little more, but not if I want to put the weights in (the crock and weights came from Stone Creek Trading--they sell the glass weights separately, as well).
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