3/17

I wanted to note an observation that I noticed during my second round of pickling the green beans. I noticed that the green beans/dill seeds/garlic in the ones that have been sitting for awhile are all sunken to the bottom of the mason jar, while in the fresh batch everything is floating. Also the liquid is crystal clear in the fresh batch while mucky and thick in the older batch. I assume that the floating vs sinking of the additives has something to do with this also apparent liquid change.

3/13

The first batch of dilly beans is now in the fridge. I am planning on doing another batch today. I am going to do the same recipe I used for the first and also do one jar boiled and one jar not boiled. This way when I bring all of the jars into the tasting, we can taste newly fermented beans and fermented beans that have been sitting for awhile as well as beans that were vacuum sealed (with the boiling) as opposed to ones that were normally shut (caps were just screwed on). Hopefully this will give us some idea on how those factors affect the flavor of fermented food.

As for the existing batch that is now in the fridge, they do not look any different since they have been in there, but when I picked them up to put them in, I noticed there was a pretty thick cloudy film on the bottom of the jar, more so on the non-boiled jar than the boiled one. I do not know what this is, just an observation.

2/22 Fermentation of Dilly Beans

The beans are looking good. I'm finally starting to see a difference between the boiled jar and non-boiled jar. The liquid in the boiled jar is looking much less cloudy then the liquid in the non-boiled jar. I am eager to find out if there is any difference in taste. The recipe says to wait two weeks then open to taste and if they taste sour enough to refrigerate them, so for now they are still on the counter.

2/13 Day 2 Fermentation

The green beans look pretty much the same as when I originally jarred them. The only difference is that the liquid has become more of a yellow color, which is darker at the bottom (where all the dill seeds have come to settle). So far there is no visible difference between the boiled jar and the hand closed jar. 

Introduction

I have decided to make fermented dilly beans. These are pretty much pickled green beans. The reason I am doing this is because I have actually tried to make these before, in the food microbiology class I took at UVM a few years ago, but ended up missing the day where we got to taste them and find out how they turned out so I have no idea if I was successful of not. I have been meaning to make them again ever since, and this seemed like the best opportunity. 

This is the recipe I will be using:

Ingredients

• 4 cups of fresh, organic green beans
• 3 cloves of garlic (peeled and halved)
• 1 TBS dill seed or 2-3 fresh dill heads if you can find them
• 2-3 cups sea salt and water brine - (6 TBS fine sea salt or 9 TBS course sea salt to 8 cups of water)

Instructions

1. Snap the ends off of the green beans.
2. Place garlic and dill in jar.
3. Fill with green beans, upright in jar and leave at least 1 inch of headspace. Be sure to pack in tightly but not so tight that they break.
4. Cover with brine to 1 inch from the top of jar.
5. Lid and let sit on a countertop for at least 3 days. Check to see if they have reached their desired level of sourness for you. If yes, refrigerate. If no, leave on counter until they have - usually best after 1-2 weeks

I got this recipe from http://realfoodoutlaws.com/lacto-fermented-dilly-green-beans/ 

I noticed that there was no jarring instructions in this recipe, it only calls for you to turn the lid of the container, not boil the jar and put the lid on creating an air-tight environment. This seemed odd to me, maybe because when I did this in class before we did boil the jars. What I have decided to do is do 2 jars at a time, one that has been boiled and one that is just room temperature and clean and simply has the top screwed on. I wanted to see if the jarring method would make two similar or very different products.