Active kefir is my choice, but you can use dehydrated or frozen grains for a starter if you don't mind waiting a few days to get going. It doesn't take much and it doesn't take long to get a fermentation going if using active. Very recently I used a single tablespoon kefir whey in the bottom of a gal jar shredded red cabbage kraut mix and it was bubbling nicely before 18 hours had passed. Here is a link that might be useful: Probably more abt kefir than you possibly ever wanted to know

Was hoping someone who made this type of sweet pickle would reply. I haven't made any sweet ferments (brined) in many years and only make fermented dills. But from what I have read in the past discussions I don't think you need to take the instructions that literally. At least not any safety reasons you'd have to. Might make some flavor differences letting them go until you got home from work but I sure can't see how it would hurt anything. Hope this helps. Dave

As Dave said, if you like them, they're fine. Sometimes fermentation is very slow or at such a low level it's hard to discern. I'm guessing it's cool temperatures affecting the fermentation. Cool enough and foods won't ferment at all, but that's hard to imagine outside a fridge in the summer. Carol

Last time I asked about it, Dave told me that there would not be enough vinegar or salt left in the jar to cure them. That assumes that the company making them only uses just enough vinegar and salt, and no extra for safety's sake. No, what I said was that the brine had been diluted by the water in the cucumbers originally in the jar. So it no longer had sufficient pH to safely process the new cucumbers. Cucumbers are 80% water after all. It doesn't matter whether the manufacturer used sufficient salt or not although I'm sure they did as they have to pass FDA inspection. But their pickles are made in huge vats and then packed in jars. While on the shelf all the water in those cucumbers leaches out into the brine diluting it. That is what happens with all brines - basic osmotic chemistry - the sodium is exchanged with water. Once opened the jars have a limited shelf life - an expiration date - for that very reason, reduced pH. So year old pickle brine is low enough in pH as to allow all sorts of bacteria, including listeria, to grow in it. Eating those pickles is your choice, your risk to take but the lab tests would would show that it has neither sufficient salinity nor acidic pH in it to make it safe. More importantly it is in no way comparable to fresh made brine as we are discussing here. Dave