Testing Sauerkraut is it Bad or Safe to Eat?

I found black mold on top and underneath the wax paper i put on top to keep the sauerkraut under water. I scraped it off. Is that fine?

I love the idea of using red cabbage

Does the top layer of cabbage sometimes appear darker?

Anyone know what the meal was at the end?

maybe its the sunlight/light? Its supposed to be placed in a dark location, is what ive heard.

ever have to worry when trying it? like would botulism be a concern?

I had the opposite results. My crock ferments were bad (too much mold & muddy brine) while my glass jar ferments were great. I used ordinary glass jars....no vents.

Should have shown a top-down look at the white mold straight on to look at

If you are fermenting it on the window ledge I would suspect that will be your problem . Ferments should always be kept in a shaded or dark area with a stable temp
any sunlight including indirect light can cause problems , this is the main reason for using a crock to keep light from the ferment

I have maybe 15 vegetable ferments in the cabinet going back to maybe seven years ago.

its normal for that smell of egg its the bad bacteria being produced but as the bad bacteria diminishes and good take over the smell goes , the cabbage releases that smell , but as the other bacteria comes in to play the good macrobiotics come in,
by the sound of that crunch you have not left it to a certain longer fermentation, smell alone is not enough to tell whether its bad,
its smell and mold and what type of mold,

What about Nitrite content?

😂do you worty about botulism from the one bite lol? I should not say lol because I had botulism at 3 from mayonnaise at a hamburger stand. I remember how very sick my father and i were. Now, I am scared about most canned and jarred foods. Smell and look first.

There's so much conflict between whether cabbage and saurekraut are good for you or bad for you if you have IBS or anything similar.

One extremely important fact is. Do not ever use a metal utensil in it until you are going to eat it completely. By using one you are causing a chemical reaction in the mix between the metal and acid which is what vinegar is. Use a plastic wooden or a metal pair of tongs that have a silicone finish on the tips, but never put it deep enough to touch the metal potion in the mix. Love your site! You are the bomb at gardening. My daughter always says are you watching your boyfriend again?

Since I am highly allergic to molds, I would never have tasted your one kraut.

I prefer kraut made in only brine.

Thank you for this! Quick question- does the saurkraut need to be entirely covered with brine in the crock? Should the weights be fully submerged with it?

Summer of '22 I opened a jar of chopped fermented cabbage leaves that had been in my fridge for more than 7 years. The Bulgarian who made the sour cabbage, using her parents' recipe, was on hand to taste it. She said "Flavor wise, it's still nice. The texture? It's gotten softer than I like." I happily ate it all.

Interesting. Thanks.

I had a thin, white, spidery layer on top of my ferment, but found out it was a type of yeast, and not toxic. After a week or more, it disappeared, although I did skim it off a couple of times, and the ferment was fine to eat. I kept the jars in a dark place, and used a warm area for the first 3-4 days, then transferred them to a cooler place to ferment more slowly for a total of about 2 months total time.

You made my mouth salivate!! Yummy!

Sounds like you had a yeast / alcohol fermentation competing with the lactobacillus / lactic acid fermentation - opening the jar to remove the cabbage leaf added a bit of surface oxygen and brewed yourself some red cabbage "vodka" as you described the taste! Assuming it's just got that musty and alcoholic smell then it's perfectly fine to eat after scraping off the yeast head, just more alcoholic and fizzy with a different taste.

I always can my sour kraut and that way it will stay good for over a year and my Mom and grandma always canned theirs to

Hi Mike I would think it could have been the plastic bag I've always used stone or glass on top of the krout

I always finely slice the cabbage and massage 2% of weight in salt into the cabbage so it is all covered in salty brine, for 10 minutes or so (1 kilo of cabbage needs 20g of salt or 1 slightly heaped tablespoon....it never seems enough salt but the longer you massage the cabbage the more brine you produce).....no need to add water as cabbage is high in water content anyway (80 to 90%?)....pack it tightly into jars and ram it down with a wooden meat-tenderiser to remove air pockets (1 kilo of cabbage should fit into a litre jar) and I use a heavy shot-glass, slightly smaller than the mouth of the jar to keep floating pieces beneath the surface, add a touch of water inside the shot glass if necessary to stop the glass floating. I leave the lid off the jar for the first few days until I see bubbles being produced, drape a tea-towel over everything to deter fruit-flies.
Watching your vid, my guess is the plastic bag has contaminated the batch, or the mouldy top piece that was above the liquid layer or the salt-brine mixture has not penetrated evenly the shredded cabbage ......good vid.

I'm wondering if that plastic bag, even though food safe, had leached into the saurkraut. The color differences are probably due to sun exposure.

Make sure when it is fermenting keep it in a cool dark place it does not work well if it is left to ferment in the sun

I don't know if you mentioned it at the beginning of the video...how long did you let it ferment...I do two weeks then taste it and it's usually great....maybe the red didn't go long enough.

Hi Mark...I ferment all the time here in the states but everytine I ferment red cabbage... it has no taste at all...I find the green cabbage works and tastes better and is just as beneficial as the red.

I have the same problem with mine right now. My reaction using smell and taste is the same. My guess...and it's only a guess...is that I weighted the cabbage with a rock in a plastic bag, and even though the plastic is supposed to be "food safe" I suspect the smell and flavor, which I describe as "chemically", is coming from the plastic. I ate some and didn't get sick from it, but I couldn't get rid of that taste in my mouth for hours. Would like to hear what you and others think about this.

I eat the kahm yeast 😋

The mold is harmless and forms all the time when fermenting.

Try not using the plastic bag on top. Use something more natural for a weight.😝

I suspect the color difference is attributed to the glass jar allowing light to react with the color, vitamins, and even micro-biom within the jar. Light destroys vitamins.

Yes i agree with you, the red saurkraut does give out a medicine / artficial smell almost.

If Rusell Crow did fermentation.

I think fermentation likes the dark

I had a sauerkraut go bad and it smelled like diarrhea.

Could that be a bio-degradable plastic bag, that started to degrade, causing the problem?

I bought some glass weights for the jars. They were pretty cheap but I think keeping everything submerged is key. I'd bet anything that the leaf on top caused the problem. You can always find a nice rock and boil it a long time and use that too.

My first kraut making. Glass jars with lids and rings which I burp daily. Day 4, I began depressing the cabbage to allow bubbles and liquid to rise. I HATE THE SMELL. I can't tell if it's just a 'ferment smell' or what. I like sauerkraut but I don't care for the smell that much. No molds though. So, I figure I need to complete the process and then see what's what. I've searched for anything coherent about what it should smell like halfway into the process and all those idiots say is: it should smell good. Nothing like a complete lack of meaningful dialog to address my question. Yours is the first one to acknowledge THAT SMELL IS CRITICAL TO KNOWING IF YOUR PRODUCT IS SUCCESSFUL. I'd agree.

Was your juice thick? In the batch I'm not shure about (my 3rd batch only) it is, in my successful batch it wasn't.

Love your videos. I have fond memories of sneaking into my German grandmother's root cellar to sneak handfuls of her sauerkraut. I also love pickling the patty-pan squash (that I saw on your counter) when they are tiny and pickling those. Super yummy!!!

It's probably that plastic bag your tasting as an aftertaste.

well i have made sauerkraut from green it turned out brown and when i oppened jar it exploded with liquid and turned colour to pale brown , taste like wine , should i throw it away ?

I didn't know Russel Crowe was into making sauerkraut

You made the second one with an airlock so the fermentation process is creating alcohol rather than vinegar... cabbage alcohol probably isn’t a very nice drink.

If you leave it open to the air the alcohol should convert to vinegar and it will come back to what you expect

Your enzymes died as you said, the Koreans add chill is and more vinegar and bury the entire crockery in the garden for six months, it'll mellow with age.

Hi..... 🎥👍👍👍

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