Whew!

I knew this was going to be a lot of work, but seriously? Twelve hours to fill jars with cabbage and sample the brine? I was on my feet from 8am until midnight and it wore me out - but it was fun

Today [I started writing this post on Thursday] I continued to take samples, 24 hours after the first ones. Right now I have a little breather between testing since some jars I don’t test today. I thought I’d get this post started and tell you how yesterday [Wednesday] went…

Packing the Jars

Before I start, I want to share with you what great timing I had when going to Hannaford’s to get the cabbage. Initially, my heart sank when I spotted the cabbage - only two heads. Then I noticed there was a man there just about to break open a fresh box and re-stock. I waltzed right up and asked for a cartload and he was happy to oblige. He took all the outside leaves off for me and weighed them one by one. I was happy to see the cabbage was all the same kind from the same location. Hooray for consistency! It made my job easier.

Okay, now here’s how yesterday [Wednesday] morning went…

The first thing I did when I grabbed a cabbage was to bring it to the sink and remove all outer leaves. If a leaf had black or brown on it, it was gone. I didn’t want to start a jar with moldy cabbage! I scrubbed away at the stem, rinsed it off, then chopped it off (my goats and chickens are having a party with all my rejects!).

When it was free from yuckies and washed clean, I chopped off several small portions and ran them through my food processor (it got quite the workout yesterday). When it was full of shredded cabbage, I dumped it into a large bowl. I repeated again and the cabbage was done being shredded.

I set up a medium-sized bowl on my mechanical scale and poured shredded cabbage in until the scale read two pounds. I left it there a moment while I set a small condiment stainless steel bowl on my mini digital kitchen scale and filled it with REAL salt until it read 15 grams.

Then, I alternately dumped cabbage and salt in another medium bowl. Then I grabbed a wooden spoon and mixed and mixed for a good 2-3 minutes until I was convinced the salt was equally distributed.

Next, I packed it into the jar using a wide-mouth funnel. I pressed it in with a silicone spatula which bent nice and flat across the surface. I pressed and pressed until I could not see any air pockets.

The jar was packed roughly at the 3-cup mark, and the brine was clear to the 4-cup mark. Some jars released so much brine that I had to actually remove some. As the cabbage ferments, it releases even more, and I didn’t want them all overflowing.

All jars but five were packed with two pounds of cabbage. Exceptions were the salsa jar, which held 1.5 pounds, the Fido and Pickl-It which held 2.25 pounds, the Harsch which held 8 pounds, and the bucket which held 6 pounds.

Photographs of the Jars and Baseline Samples

Here are the jars, photographed directly after packing and sampling. I won’t bore you or take up bandwidth uploading all the photos of the pH strips and glucose strips for every jar, because at this point they are all the same - pH 6, glucose through the roof I will include them with the photograph of Jar 1 just so you know what they look like.

I felt the more accurate colors were achieved without a camera flash, but that made for some of these coming out a little blurry. Sorry!

For a full description of the jars read: Introducing the Jars.

Jar 1 (Cheesecloth), Day 1

The pH is right around 6 - as expected. All the jars tested the same. I expect this number to drop over the next couple of days.

The glucose quickly showed the darkest brown - highest on the scale I’m testing for. What this is telling us is that there are 2000 (or more) mgs of glucose per deciliter (dL). In English, there are 4 teaspoons of glucose per liter (a mason jar is just shy of a liter). We’ll see this number go down as the sugars are being consumed by the LABs.

Jar 2 (Olive Oil), Day 1

Jar 3 (Water Baggy), Day 1

Jar 4 (Cabbage Leaf held down by small jar), Day 1

Jar 5 (Cabbage Leaf, Shot Glass, White Lid), Day 1

Jar 6 (White Lid), Day 1

Jar 7 (White Lid with Baggy), Day 1

Jar 8 (White Lid with Airlock), Day 1

Jar 9 (Metal Lid), Day 1

Jar 10 (Metal Lid with Airlock), Day 1

Jar 11 (Cork with Airlock), Day 1

Jar 12 (Lacto-fermentation Air-Lock System by Cooking God’s Way), Day 1

Jar 13 (Pickle Pro by Homesteader’s Supply), Day 1

Jar 14 (Pickl-It), Day 1

Jar 15 (Harsch), Day 1

Jar 16 (Bucket), Day 1

Jar 17 (Fido), Day 1

Jar 18 (Salsa Jar), Day 1

Brine Samples Under the ‘Scope

Here are a few photos of the samples I took from the brine, as viewed under the microscope. All the jars looked essentially the same.

What you see below isn’t much, but what’s there are salt or sugar crystals (they are hard to tell apart) and the green appears to be from the cabbage particles. Since I’m new to this, any expertise in identification is welcome v

[Video was removed due to plug-in issues. I am going to upload some to YouTube and will post them when they are available.]

The next post will show you how the jars look on Day 2 and any notes that I made on those jars. Stay tuned!

THANK YOU!

Many of the supplies (including the cabbage) purchased for testing were mostly covered by the donations from Loving Our Guts, Pickle Me Too, Easy Natural Food, Common Sense Homesteading, Lisa M., Traditional Foods, Grocery Geek, Rachel C., The Urban Hearth, Hybrid Rasta Mama, Sarah M, Miriam R., and Leslie C. THANK YOU!

The Lacto-fermentation Air-Lock System was generously donated by the manufacturer, Cooking God’s Way.

The Pickle Pro was generously donated by the manufacturer, Homesteader’s Supply.

The Pickl-It was purchased through the generosity of GNOWFGLINS.

The Harsch crock was purchased by the generous donations largely from Homesteader’s Supply along with with GAPS Diet Journey, Hybrid Rasta Mama, and Dishrag Diaries.

If you would like to contribute funds to this experiment, I would be ever grateful. Please send PayPal funds to: [email protected]. If you have a blog I would be happy to list it as a contributor. Thank you!

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Lea Harris founded Nourishing Treasures in 2006. A mom passionate about her family's health and well-being, Lea believes education is power. Encouraging others to take baby steps in the right direction of health for their families, Lea's goal is to raise awareness of what goes into our mouths and on our bodies, providing natural alternative information that promotes health and prevents disease by using traditional foods and nature's medicine. Lea is a Certified Health Coach graduate from Beyond Organic University, and a Certified Aromatherapist graduate from Aromahead Institute. "Like" Nourishing Treasures on Facebook, join the Nourishing Treasures Group on Facebook, follow @NourishTreasure on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter. You can also find me on Learning About Essential Oils forum, and Fido Fermentation Facebook group. Disclaimer: I use affiliate links wherever possible. So if you click on a link, and make a purchase, I might make a small commission, but it doesn't cost you any more.