Questions about fermentation.
I have seen suggested the following as far as a water brine with the tennant that water brine is used to help prevent oxygen exposure to discourage bad bacteria.
1) Glass Jar - No Water Brine: Suggested for thick-walled variety, assumption seems to be that enough liquid will be released from the peppers to cover everything.
2) Glass Jar - Water Brine: Suggested for thin-walled variety, assumption seems to be that enough liquid will NOT be released from the peppers to cover everything.
3) Vacuum Jar - No Water Brine: Suggested that since in vacuum no need for brine to insure no oxygen exposure.
4) Vacuum Jar - Water Brine: Suggested that since in jar needs brine to cover regardless of vacuum.
5) Vacuum Bag - No Water Brine: Suggested no brine needed since all air removed.
Notice inherient contridiction between #4 and #5. Also if #1 is true that would mean no water brine needed regardless of other methods if using thick walled variety, or any variety + vacuum.
Can anyone give any insight on the above?
What I am wondering is if a water brine is a remenant/leftover from the long history of preservation from when creating a vacumm environmnet was not an option, at least in home settings.
Are there other positive attributes that a water brine brings to the process?
Water is the ultimate solvent, but the osmatic process of the salt on the peppers will make all the water in the cells available for this process, or is that part of the issue? That there wont be enough water for the process, ignoring it's role in preventing oxygen exposure in a vacumm environment. That the water is doing some in addition to that.
With that I have question about salt concentrations. I keep seeing incosistancy in determining salt concentrations. Salt, as well as facilitating the osmatic process is there to create an environment negative to the bad creepy crawleys so we want to be at least fairly accurate as to the concentration.
My question is if the salt ammount is determined by the weight of the peppers, then the actual concentration ammount when added to a water brine wont make sense in realtion to the ammount of water. For instance, if 10grams of salt was determined for the weight of the peppers, if thats added to 2 cups of water thats around 2.25% concentration, but if it's added to a quart of water that only just over 1% concentration.
Conversely if you make a quart of 3% water brine (around 28.28 grams of salt), it's relation of salt to solids (pepper mash) will completely depend on the ammount of mash used.
The more mash being brined = more liquid drawn from the mash iself = more dilution of the brine. If 2 cups of liquid were pulled from the mash the actual brine concentration would become closer to 2.4% or so.
I know the process doesn't need to be measured with calipers, but these issues magnify with scale, and I like to understand things.
Thoughts?
I have seen suggested the following as far as a water brine with the tennant that water brine is used to help prevent oxygen exposure to discourage bad bacteria.
1) Glass Jar - No Water Brine: Suggested for thick-walled variety, assumption seems to be that enough liquid will be released from the peppers to cover everything.
2) Glass Jar - Water Brine: Suggested for thin-walled variety, assumption seems to be that enough liquid will NOT be released from the peppers to cover everything.
3) Vacuum Jar - No Water Brine: Suggested that since in vacuum no need for brine to insure no oxygen exposure.
4) Vacuum Jar - Water Brine: Suggested that since in jar needs brine to cover regardless of vacuum.
5) Vacuum Bag - No Water Brine: Suggested no brine needed since all air removed.
Notice inherient contridiction between #4 and #5. Also if #1 is true that would mean no water brine needed regardless of other methods if using thick walled variety, or any variety + vacuum.
Can anyone give any insight on the above?
What I am wondering is if a water brine is a remenant/leftover from the long history of preservation from when creating a vacumm environmnet was not an option, at least in home settings.
Are there other positive attributes that a water brine brings to the process?
Water is the ultimate solvent, but the osmatic process of the salt on the peppers will make all the water in the cells available for this process, or is that part of the issue? That there wont be enough water for the process, ignoring it's role in preventing oxygen exposure in a vacumm environment. That the water is doing some in addition to that.
With that I have question about salt concentrations. I keep seeing incosistancy in determining salt concentrations. Salt, as well as facilitating the osmatic process is there to create an environment negative to the bad creepy crawleys so we want to be at least fairly accurate as to the concentration.
My question is if the salt ammount is determined by the weight of the peppers, then the actual concentration ammount when added to a water brine wont make sense in realtion to the ammount of water. For instance, if 10grams of salt was determined for the weight of the peppers, if thats added to 2 cups of water thats around 2.25% concentration, but if it's added to a quart of water that only just over 1% concentration.
Conversely if you make a quart of 3% water brine (around 28.28 grams of salt), it's relation of salt to solids (pepper mash) will completely depend on the ammount of mash used.
The more mash being brined = more liquid drawn from the mash iself = more dilution of the brine. If 2 cups of liquid were pulled from the mash the actual brine concentration would become closer to 2.4% or so.
I know the process doesn't need to be measured with calipers, but these issues magnify with scale, and I like to understand things.
Thoughts?
