When it goes wrong · Ferment
Nothing happened at all.
Can you save it?
Reviewed for this symptom
Move the jar somewhere warmer — around 20°C — and give it a few more days. If the salt was heavy, drain and replace half the brine with fresh 2% brine; if the water was chlorinated, replace the brine with filtered water.
How to confirm the diagnosis
Observable cues, not inferred user state
- No bubbles and clear brine after several days
- A cold room
- Tap water, or a heavy hand with salt
Not this?
What actually happened
Only this symptom
Too cold, too much salt, or chlorinated water. Chlorine kills the bacteria you are relying on; let tap water stand or use filtered.
The full mechanism
Shared by every ferment failure
Fermentation is controlled spoilage, and the control comes from making conditions that one organism tolerates and others do not. In vegetables, salt at roughly 2% by weight is enough to inhibit most spoilage bacteria while lactic acid bacteria — already present on the vegetable — carry on. They convert sugars to lactic acid, the pH falls, and below about 4.6 almost nothing dangerous can grow, so the ferment protects itself as it proceeds. Submersion matters for the same reason: the useful bacteria work without oxygen, and the moulds and yeasts that spoil a crock work only with it, so anything above the brine line is at risk while everything below is safe. In dairy, the same acidification makes casein clump, which is the thickening in yogurt and crema. In bread, wild yeast and lactobacilli produce gas and acid together.
The full Ferment lesson — how to tell, where to practise it, what it carries to.
Next time
Prevent this specific failure
Filtered or stood water, 2% salt by weight, and a room around 18–22°C.
What right looks like
Shared by every ferment failure
- Bubbles appear within a day or two and the brine turns cloudy — both are signs it is working, not spoiling.
- The smell is sharply sour and clean. Anything yeasty, cheesy or putrid is a different organism.
- Vegetables lose their bright colour and go translucent as the acid works into them.
- Taste is the real gauge, and it should be sour enough to make you flinch slightly before it is done.