Next step was chopping up all the cabbage and mixing in some salt:
Next I came to a slight predicament. When I was purchasing the jar to put the kraut in, I thought I had a plate that would easily fit inside since you need to keep some weight on the cabbage to try and keep it under the top of the salt water brine. I used a tuperware plastic that I managed to fit until I could borrow a smaller plate from the parents that managed to fit. Kept it weighted down with a jar of chili and draped it with a cheese cloth.
So... 4 weeks later, I walk into my laundry / beer room and can actually smell the jar just from walking in, and decide to take it upstairs to have a look at it. The smell is a very potent smell coming from it, and I think it goes against normal thoughts to try and take a bite from something that's basically been sitting at room temperature in the basement for close to a month, especially since I really have no idea what a normal smell should be from homemade sauerkraut, and what a recipe "gone bad" may smell like.
So I decided to scoop off a bit of the top that may have been exposed to the air a bit more than I wanted, and have a taste with the rest. It tasted like.............................................................................. sauerkraut! It was much more crisp and crunchy than most things that you would buy in the store though, although I think it was slightly on the salty side. All in all, so far I think it was a fun experience... now we just need some warmer weather fire fire up some sausages!
Side note to my brewing endeavors. I just wanted to point out that I recently got a major upgrade to my brewing systems:
So far it has been very nice, and it really beats the heck out of bottling. Tap handle to come soon maybe? When I get some more $$ more likely.
