Guides
What pH should fermented hot sauce be before bottling?
Fermented hot sauce pH safety turns on one number: 4.6. Here is who regulates it, what a compliant label carries, and what happens when you skip the test.
Desk
Troubleshooting Desk
Mould, softness and off smells, and telling a problem from a normal ferment.
Maintenance
Slimy fermented vegetables: causes and fixes
Slimy fermented vegetables trace to heat, low salt, or vegetable enzymes. Here is how to tell a texture defect from a spoiled batch, and what to do.
Reviews
Why tasting is never a botulism safety test for home canned low-acid food
Explains why tasting is never a safety test for home canned food, what public health guidance says about botulism, boiling, and pressure canning low-acid foods.
Reviews
Serving home ferment dishes to guests without passing on the risk
Serving home-preserved food to other people: a guest cannot check your process, so the burden sits with you. What to serve, what to keep for yourself.
Reviews
4 fermentation tools compared on daily use, not shelf appeal
Four fermentation tools judged on daily use and upkeep: the scale, the airlock lid, the pH meter, and the crock. What each one changes in a batch.
Features
Why Halifax fermented seafood follows different rules than inland ferments
Fermented seafood in Halifax answers to CFIA's Safe Food for Canadians Regulations, a Nova Scotia processor licence, a provincial food permit and botulism controls that inland vegetable ferments rarely face.
Guides
Which Canadian wild berries are safe to ferment?
Saskatoons, lingonberries and lowbush blueberries ferment well; baneberry and nightshade do not. Match leaf, fruit scar and habitat before you pick.
Industry
What university extension guidance says about home sourdough starters
A sourdough starter is a live culture that must be fed. Colorado State University Extension and South Dakota State University Extension give the basics on wild yeast, readiness, temperature and safety.