I gave my fermenting weights to my great-niece last summer, and now I'm on a fermentation kick. I got this set. Actually, I got 2 sets: one for wide-mouth jars and one for regular-mouth jars, but one set hasn't come. What I like about this is that it has vented lids as well as weights. We'll see how it goes! The acacia pounder is quite gratifying to use. 🙂
It's easy to underestimate the value of that pounder, though. The jar on the left contains half a head of red cabbage after shredding, salting, kneading, packing and pounding. The jar on the right would have been the better choice.
[Note: For reasons understandable only to the software gods, the remainder of this post is actually @FauxPas, quoting me. We don't know how or why it happened, but the quotes don't make sense otherwise. -- Smithy]
The planets finally aligned for me this year, and I was able to snag two sets of the fermentation lids while they were on end-of-season clearance. Still pricey (to my admittedly minimalist eye) but I expect to use them for many years.
On 1/24/2024 at 10:07 PM, Smithy said:Actually, I got 2 sets: one for wide-mouth jars and one for regular-mouth jars, but one set hasn't come. What I like about this is that it has vented lids as well as weights. We'll see how it goes! The acacia pounder is quite gratifying to use. 🙂
I just recently bought the same stuff!
On 1/24/2024 at 10:07 PM, Smithy said:It's easy to underestimate the value of that pounder, though. The jar on the left contains half a head of red cabbage after shredding, salting, kneading, packing and pounding. The jar on the right would have been the better choice.
I did a fermentation class not long ago. The guideline we were given is to use approx 1 kg of cabbage (or whatever combination of stuff) per 1 L canning jar. That's what we used in that class and almost all of it fit into the jar using a tamper with moderate force.
We tasted ferments that ranged from 1% to 5% concentrations of salt and almost all of us preferred the taste in the range of 1.5 to 2.5%. Class instructor said that was almost always the preferred range in her classes.
She also suggested using coarse cheese mesh instead of weights and if you have canning jars with a bit of a shoulder, they work really well to keep the cabbage submerged in the brine. Like this:
https://glengarrycheesemaking.on.ca/collections/cheese-making-accessories
She cut the mesh into 9cm circles which click into place in the neck of the standard 1L canning jar.
