• If you have a question about commercial production or the hot sauce business, please post in The Food Biz.

fermenting My ferments stop giving off gases?

Friday

Friday

Hello, it's my first time posting here but I've been reading on the site for months.
 
I've been trying to make my own fermented pepper mashes and I'm wondering if there's a problem. I currently have 4 jars of a mix of peppers/garlic/shallots/parsnips fermenting, and each of them only produced gases for about a week and a half before stopping permanently. My oldest one at the moment is 4 months and it hasn't continued producing gas at all after it initially stopped. I'm using the burping method instead of an airlock or cloth, and some of these needed to be burped 2 or 3 times a day in the beginning, so I know things were off to a good start. But I haven't had to let air out all after about the 10th day.
 
there's no mold growing in any of them, but I'm wondering if I've accidentally contaminated them somehow. I've never fully removed the lids, only cracked them open just enough to relieve the pressure. Let me know if this is normal. I'm planning on letting these go for 6 months and I'm bottling new ones each month until then so I don't want 12 jars of garbage lol
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
If there's nothing "growing" on the top, I'd say you're still safe. I'd try to gently ratchet the jar back and forth a little every couple of days, like one of those Chinese drum toys, to free up any air bubbles that might be at the bottom of the jar though. That should force any more oxygen out that might've found its way into the jar
IMG_4895.JPG
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
MikeUSMC said:
If there's nothing "growing" on the top, I'd say you're still safe. I'd try to gently ratchet the jar back and forth a little every couple of days, like one of those Chinese drum toys, to free up any air bubbles that might be at the bottom of the jar though. That should force any more oxygen out that might've found its way into the jar
attachicon.gif
IMG_4895.JPG
Click to expand...
Thanks, is it normal for a ferment to stop giving off gas at some point? Would it be bad to move or "shake" the jars too much? In the beginning some of these pushed the mash material up to the lid during times that they were pressurized and I had to sort of roll it around and turn it upside down to get the air up above all the liquid and mash again. 
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
MikeUSMC said:
Do you have any sort of weights in the jar to keep the mash down under the brine? Like glass discs, cabbage leaves, etc.?
Click to expand...
No, instead I placed the jars upside down every other day to keep everything in contact with the brine. Once they stop giving off gas the mash material tends to stay below the brine on it's own though.
 
I haven't really purchased anything for this other than the mason jars. It started as an experiment with a month long ferment but I liked it enough to keep doing it. The next one will probably contain cabbage or something as a weight, I forgot people used that lol
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I would say that you're all good. Eventually the bacteria just don't really produce much CO2. I'm not sure if they stop completely, but they definitely slow down after a while. I guess it has to do with the amount of available sugars remaining after the lactobacillus has been consuming them for a while.

Also, I have read somewhere about how many different strains of lactobacillus bacteria are present, and they all have different relationships with your ferment. Which is part of the reason why short ferments will taste very different from longer ones, as certain bacteria don't even come into play until later in the game.
It might have been something from Sandor Katz that I was reading...I'll have to try to find that again.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Jubnat said:
I would say that you're all good. Eventually the bacteria just don't really produce much CO2. I'm not sure if they stop completely, but they definitely slow down after a while. I guess it has to do with the amount of available sugars remaining after the lactobacillus has been consuming them for a while
Click to expand...
^ This. I barely see any activity after 30 days (sometimes less)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top