But this is the result of our efforts. You've all seen the homemade sausage we made previously. I served it one evening with our fresh sauerkraut and some homebrewed beer. Not a bad outing.
The beer is a kit from Northern Brewer called Dundalk Irish Heavy. They describe it as an overgrown Irish session beer. It's probably most similar to a very big Irish Red. The color appears dark in the picture but it's really just a cloudy dark red. It also is brewed with a bit of corn sugar to boost the gravity and dry out the finish. It's only my second beer but clearly my best. Loved this one but it is little higher gravity. I'm sure you'd feel it if you drank too many...
The sauerkraut came about as a fluke. Since I've gotten into home fermentation I've started listening to a number of podcasts. Podcasts at the gym, podcasts while I run, podcasts while I cook, podcasts all the darn time. One of my favorites is Basic Brewing Video/Radio. They are a series of podcasts run by two guys who break it down fairly well. Recently they've been off track talking about other things rather than beer alone. They peeked my interest for home-fermented cider but I already tried the kraut.
With additional help from the Mad Fermentationist I made the kraut. It honestly was the easiest thing in the world. It's just cabbage and salt. Add the cabbage to a clean (in my case sanitized jar) and add 2.5% of the cabbage's weight in salt mixed throughout. Add weight to push down the kraut and allow natural wild yeast to sour this on the counter until it's as funky as you'd like it. Then place it in the fridge and enjoy. Seems easy huh! I'll add more specific details on this later but that's the basic idea.
Now the favor... oh the flavor. I've always enjoyed a bit of sour cabbage from time to time but like most things it's so much better to have the real stuff. When it's home fermented it's not mushy but persistently crunchy. I've had kraut for weeks (we made it probably over two months ago) and it's still as crunchy as a head of fresh cabbage. In fact it squeaks on your teeth a bit as you eat it, weird!
We let it ferment for approximately three weeks on the counter before slowing down the process in the fridge and it did get decidedly funky, but in the best way possible. We left it so that it still has a bit of cabbage taste left to it. It tastes like a delicious head of cabbage with a soured edge to it.
I'll also tease this. I got so excited about this that I made a sauerkraut crock. But it's not finished so you'll have to keep reading... until then.
