fermentation 101

David Klingenberger getting ready to teach us all how to ferment everything ever.

This post is a week overdue, so excuse my tardiness (as always), but the experience was so cool I can't help but backtrack a little.

David showing off the fermentation room.

A few months ago I discovered this really fantastic local foods vendor at The Eastern Market in Detroit.  Initially I was drawn in because they sold kimchi (which was my obsession at the time - seriously, but have you ever had a burger with peanut butter and kimchi, because if not, get your butt to Green Dot Stables and eat like twelve), but I ended up walking away with a jar of their Sea Stag sauerkraut - sauerkraut made with cabbage, carrots, burdock root & most excitingly, a bunch of sea vegetables (which I love love love).  From that point on every time I went to Eastern Market I'd treat myself to some new sort of fermented yum from The Brinery (and of course some new wonderful flavor of peanut butter from The Granola Tree - excuse me for a moment while I pimp their Almond Joy peanut butter as one of the most fantastic things that's ever been in my mouth - but that's besides the point).

Flash forward to last month when I heard about a workshop the owner of The Brinery was doing on lacto-fermentation - it involved a small "seminar" of sorts about the process of fermenting, a taste-testing of many Brinery products, a tour of their new facility at The Washtenaw County Food Hub (which is also a seriously cool place currently in development to support local farm & food businesses through a myriad of really awesome future plans), a hands-on workshop where you got to make your own sauerkraut, and a lunch prepared with loads of fermented delicacies.  It might not be the same sort of fermentation I'm used to (aka beer), but I couldn't help but want to go.

A little background about The Brinery:  It was founded by David in 2010 basically because the farm he worked at, Tantre Farm, had an excess of cabbage one year, and the fermentation was needed to preserve it.  From there, he developed the business into what it is now - serving tons of local farmers markets, even shipping out of state, and growing into a 10-ish employee operation that just recently moved into a new home at the Food Hub.  The coolest thing about The Brinery to me is their product innovation - recipes are my favorite thing about brewing beer, especially coming up with new and unique spins on old standards.  While you can get regular plain old sauerkraut at The Brinery, you can also get sauerkraut with watermelon radishes, sea vegetables, juniper berries, kimchi with local garlic scapes and ramps, pickled beets and carrots, multiple kinds of kvass, and most recently they've forayed into making their own tempeh (which I promise is incredible) and hot sauces (including a fermented play on sriracha!).

I also appreciate David's philosophy on doing things with "assisted manpower" - for example, they still ferment in relatively small batches in barrels, rather than using giant vats or any sort of automated system - but they have special-made machinery to lift & dump the barrels.  Different canvas, but when we were chopping cabbage and leeks and carrots to make into our own batch of sauerkraut, it felt just like being in my garage mashing peaches and portioning out hops for my next batch of beer.  Pretty cool.  Not to mention David was a remarkably personable & friendly guy - he stopped to chat with everyone in attendance, shared his exuberance for the craft and, when he found out I brew beer, even offered a trade - I left him with a bottle of chocolate porter & a bottle of coffee milk stout in exchange for some really great hot sauce.  Fermentation friends!

The Brinery fermentation calendar - kraut might be a little different than beer, but it was really cool (and maybe useful someday!) to see how a smaller scale business operates, especially with regard to things you aren't normally privileged to see, like scheduling!

Chopping up some cabbage (no worries - there was a mandoline & we didn't have to do it all by hand!), leeks, carrots & garlic for our own special batch of sauerkraut.

One of the other attendees offered to take some shots for me while we were mixing up our future kraut - I guess we both figured my briney hands shouldn't be anywhere near my phone.

The lunch provided at the end of the day was the icing on a really awesome cabbage cake - highlights were the black pepper tempeh salad (I went back for seconds...and thirds...), a bevy of fresh local veggies & cheeses, and of course the mounds of not pictured here sauerkraut & kimchi that littered the table.

I've done a decent amount of making jams & pickling, but this is my first foray into sauerkraut.  My batch from this workshop is still chilling on my countertop getting funky, but if all goes well I'm hoping to make my way into kimchi next!!