Kimchi seems to have gone through two stages of fermentation
I've been making saurkraut for a while now, but recently tried kimchi and something odd happened. I started it a bit less than a month ago in a few mason jars with pickle pipes airlocks. The airlocks puffed up initially, and then sucked back down, which was nifty. The first jar was opened after about 10 days and it was delicious.
I left the second jar in the basement (around 18-20 C) and at some point it started to puff back up again, as if fermentation had stopped for a bit and then re-started. Is there a possibility that a second stage of fermentation occurred with a different strain of bacteria? I opened this jar last night and the smell is much more pungent than the first, almost overwhelming. As far as I can tell it's not "bad" though, just intense.
Posted Aug 9, 2017, 4:48 PM UTC
First was lacto, second was alco.
Alco....hol?
Alcohol fermentation requires yeast and oxygen. Wild yeast could have gotten in, but it remained airlocked, so without consistent exposure to oxygen, how would this happen? My guess is it just continued to ferment with the lactic acid producing bacteria making the whole thing extra "ripe."
Alcohol fermentation is most often done in the absence of oxygen. Oxygen causes alcohol to be turned into vinegar.
Unless you irradiated your vegetables, there is wild yeast in there. Not sure how they survived the acidity and salt and lacto bacteria though.
So... I'm guessing that isn't normally supposed to happen?
It could easily have cross-contaminated with my kombucha to get some yeast, or just had yeast on the veggies. I'm not opposed to alcohol, but in this case it's not exactly what I'm going for.
Any recommendations on avoiding this in the future? I suppose "put it in the fridge after 10 days" is probably the answer...