Crops & Breeds

🫧 Fermentation

14 goods · what's in each, ready windows and shelf life, from the app's own pantry clock

Goods

• Sauerkraut · ready to taste in 21–42 days · keeps ~6 months — Everything under the brine, or it moulds — the weight is the whole trick. Cool and slow makes a better kraut than warm and fast; three weeks in a cold room can be six.
  What's in it: Shredded cabbage and 2% salt by weight — pound it until it weeps, pack it under its own brine, weight it, lid loose. Nothing else goes in.
• Kimchi · ready to taste in 3–14 days · keeps ~6 months — A few days on the counter to get going, then the fridge — where it keeps fermenting slowly and gets better for weeks. Burp the jar; it builds real pressure.
  What's in it: Napa cabbage salted two hours and rinsed, then a paste of gochugaru, garlic, ginger, fish sauce and a little rice flour; daikon and scallions folded through. Pack tight, burp daily.
• Pickles · ready to taste in 7–21 days · keeps ~6 months — Cucumbers ferment fast and go soft if you let them run — taste from the first week. A grape, oak or horseradish leaf in the jar keeps them crisp.
  What's in it: Small cucumbers in a 3.5% brine (2 tbsp salt per quart of water) with dill, garlic and a grape, oak or horseradish leaf. Keep them under the brine; taste from day 7.
• Hot sauce · ready to taste in 7–28 days · keeps ~1 year — A week is bright and a month is deep. Blend after the ferment, not before, and hold back some of the brine to thin it.
  What's in it: Chillies, garlic and a 3% brine, fermented a week to a month; blend with a splash of the brine and vinegar to taste, strain or don't.
• Kombucha · ready to bottle in 7–10 days · keeps ~3 months — That's FIRST ferment — sweet at seven days, vinegary by fourteen. A flavoured second ferment for fizz is two to four days more, and glass under pressure wants burping.
  What's in it: 1 gal water, 1 cup sugar, 8 bags black tea, 1–2 cups starter tea and a SCOBY. Cloth cover, 7–10 days, then bottle with fruit or juice for the fizz.
• Water kefir · ready to bottle in 1–2 days · keeps 30 days — A day or two, no more — the grains eat the sugar fast and a forgotten jar starves them.
  What's in it: 1/4 cup grains in a quart of water with 1/4 cup sugar (a dried fig or a pinch of molasses feeds the minerals). 24–48 hours, strain, bottle, restart.
• Milk kefir · ready in 1 day · keeps 21 days — Twelve to twenty-four hours at room temperature. Strain the grains out and they start the next jar immediately — kefir is a daily habit, not a batch.
  What's in it: 1 tbsp grains in a pint of whole milk, lid loose, on the counter 12–24 hours until it thickens. Strain the grains straight into the next jar.
• Yogurt · ready in 1 day · keeps 21 days — Four to twelve hours warm, then chill it without stirring. Save a spoonful — that's the next batch's culture.
  What's in it: Milk heated to 180°F, cooled to 110°F, a spoonful of live yogurt stirred in, held warm 4–12 hours (oven light, cooler or a wrapped towel). Chill it without stirring.
• Sourdough starter · ready in 5–10 days — Five to ten days from flour and water to reliably lively — and the false rise on day two fools everyone once. It has no eat-by: a fed starter outlives its keeper.
  What's in it: Equal weights flour and water in a jar — 50 g each. Discard half and feed the same every day; by day 5–10 it doubles in hours. Whole wheat or rye gets it going faster.
• Tempeh · ready in 1–2 days · keeps 7 days — Twenty-four to forty-eight hours at about 88°F, and it heats itself once it gets going — watch it doesn't cook its own culture.
  What's in it: Soybeans soaked, dehulled and cooked, cooled, tossed with a splash of vinegar and tempeh starter (Rhizopus), pressed thin in perforated bags at about 88°F for 24–48 hours.
• Miso · ready in 180–365 days · keeps ~2 years — The long one: six months to a year in the crock, and a dark two-year miso is a different food entirely. Keep it weighted and salted; it looks after itself.
  What's in it: Cooked soybeans mashed with koji rice and salt (about 12% salt by weight), packed airtight in a crock, weighted, and left 6–12 months somewhere cool.
• Vinegar · ready in 60–180 days · keeps ~5 years — Two months to six from cider to sharp, in a cloth-covered jar that can breathe. The mother that forms on top starts the next batch.
  What's in it: Hard cider or leftover wine open to the air under a cloth, with a splash of raw vinegar or a mother to start it. 2–6 months at room temperature until sharp.
• Hard cider · ready to bottle in 14–28 days · keeps ~2 years — That's PRIMARY — dry in two to four weeks. Bottle-conditioning adds a fortnight, and a cider keeps improving for a year after that.
  What's in it: Fresh-pressed apple juice with no preservatives, a packet of cider or ale yeast (or the wild one), an airlock. Dry in 2–4 weeks; rack it off the lees and bottle.
• Mead · ready in 30–180 days · keeps ~5 years — Primary is a month, but the honest answer is that mead is good at a year and remarkable at three. The apiary's long game.
  What's in it: 3 lbs honey to a gallon of water, wine yeast and a pinch of nutrient, airlock. A month in primary, then rack and wait — a year makes it.

Shelf life runs from the READY date, not the day it was made — a kraut started in August and ready in September keeps its months from September.