4/5/2020 – Today we bottled the first kraut we made in the briner bucket and, with a refrigerator full of cabbage, we decided to make a German-style ferment the same way. The ingredients are based on ferments we did while in Houston with a few tweaks and refinements.
We targeted having about 5,000 gm of cabbage to yield three 1/2-gallon jars of fermented kraut. Developed a worksheet in a spreadsheet file using the ratios cited below. Weighted out and mixed in the following.
| GERMAN STYLE – OUR RECIPE | gms |
| Cabbage | 5,422 |
| Caraway Seed – 2 gm per 1,000 gm cabbage | 10.8 |
| Juniper berries 2 gm per 1,000 gm cabbage | 10.8 |
| Mustard Seed – 6 gm per 1,000 gm cabbage | 32.5 |
| Canning Salt – 1.6% of the cabbage | 86.8 |
The briner bucket was about 75% full when first assembled but wilted down a lot. The mix had a salty taste but not as much as seawater.
Filled the 1-gallon zip-locks with water, weighted them, and added salt to make a 1.6% brine in case they leaked.
4/23/2020 – Tried it out of the bucket and it is great. Bottled it into three 1/2-gallon jars and a quart jar. When that was done we made another batch with the same cabbage that has been in the outside refrigerator. We cleaned, weighted, and cut up 12 heads.
| Second batch in a bucket, 4/23/2020 | gms |
| Cabbage | 5,732 |
| Caraway Seed – 2 gm per 1000 gm cabbage | 12 |
| Juniper berries 2 gm per 1000 gm cabbage | 12 |
| Mustard Seed – 6 gm per 1000 gm cabbage | 34 |
| Canning Salt – 1.6% of the cabbage | 92 |
