A few days ago I picked figs from my mother's tree that were dripping with tree-fermented figs. They are magnificent. Now that I can identify the taste, I am even more anxious to learning how to make fig wine. I picked more today. I hope you have already started making figs into wine. I came across your notes and felt the need to reply. Maybe I am looking for a cheering section. I, also, have wanted to do this for a long time. Figs are almost out of season here. I am only getting a small amount out of my hard work in tree climbing. My mom has one tree that the whole community feeds on. No one regularly picked her figs until I moved back home two years ago. Now they all want a piece of the fruit. It is hard to share, but you know, neighborly expectations. After all, they really are good people.

I'm so much more comfortable chronicling what i do than giving instruction on how to do something for someone else. For example this batch of pickles got off to a very fast start because of high summer temps. 85° instead of the 75°-80° that I would have preferred. Should be no matter as will just put in cooler basement temps a day or two sooner. (yesterday) Will watch at 65° for a day or two and then put into a 45-50° fridge for finishing. Maybe a month. I want the fast start for sure. If temps are cool then I'll just put in more starter to speed things up at the start. This fast start takes the place of weighting down the cukes beneath the brine with weight to prevent contaminated air from causing scum and mold. It works. I wedge the cukes into the jar so tightly that they stay below the brine. If you prefer to weight the cukes below the brine in the conventional way, you can buy glass beads at a craft store and put in nylon tule bags to weight down. Inexpensive and efficient. And the conventional salt brine in a plastic bag is hard to beat. I don't use but most people do I think. So buy hard cukes (gherkins, kirbys etc) Wash them and punch holes at 3/4" intervals maybe 1/2" deep and nip 1/4" off each end of cuke. Eliminates the blossom end enzymes and allows the salty LAB to penetrate and feed. Make sure a nice bubbly start is going on before moving to temps in the 60s for a few days & then more even cooler after a few days if is possible. I have a 45-50°f fermenting fridge, but a colder one in the upper 30s will work albeit slower.

melikeeatplants, you're correct, the live beasties are pro-biotics, good for you, and a live culture will live happily in your fridge until you consume it. I always keep a couple of 'live' quarts in the fridge then boil and can the rest. I should have clarified that boiling is kind of an essential step prior to canning or you end up with a real mess on your hands with jar contents going everywhere. Ask me how I know ….:) scott123456, Thats an interesting question. Botulism poisoning is extremely rare, I think there were 4 cases in North America last year. ,Almost all the cases here stem from non-acid canning with too low temperatures/times - its usually something pretty head-slapping like trying to can salmon using a camping stove, or water-bath canning your Great Aunts' asparagus, mushroom, and potato casserole dish from the 'Olde Country'. From Google, the last case was from prisoners trying to make home brew. You wonder what they were doing, can't find out the details. I've never heard of a case arising from home fermented food such as traditional brine home pickling, sauerkraut, kim chee, baking bread, making beer, wine, etc. The closest we can get to fermented pepper is following the standard process for making sauerkraut - which is officially approved by the very strict gurus at the USDA (or where ever they reside). Not that it couldn't happen, I suppose. However, according to the World Health Organization, heating any food at 180ºF for 5 minutes will destroy the toxin, the USDA suggests 20 minutes at normal boiling temps, but then they follow a different and far stricter statistical standard than elsewhere in the world. Which, IMHO, is a bit of overkill. I think they cater to the lowest denominator. Point being if you're worried about it, your 10 minute boil would destroy any toxin. Or 20 minutes if you're more comfortable with that. I've linked to somebodies blog who discusses the issue - hey, its the internet and somebody's blog. Try a google of 'botulism and sauerkraut', 'botulism and fermented foods'. Probably scare you off - I hope not. My personal opinion is that an exaggerated fear of the minuscule threat of botulism poisoning is keeping people from enjoying a lot of great food. My sister won't can peaches, for example, which is about as low risk as it gets. Statistically, you're far and away more likely to get food poisoning or botulism from a package of hamburger at the grocery store or eating in a restaurant. Edited to add that this is one reason to add kefir - you inoculate your mash with the good guys, who proceed to multiply so fast that the bad guys never have a chance. Here is a link that might be useful: link This post was edited by david52 on Tue, Aug 5, 14 at 17:04

the 2 recipes are almost identical. 2 qts chopped peeled cored tomatoes 1 1/2 cups chopped seeded hot red peppers 1 qt vinegar divided is the same as 8 cups (64 ounces) canned, diced tomatoes, undrained 1½ cups seeded, chopped Serrano peppers 4 cups distilled white vinegar (5 percent) the rest is minor. But I like the recipe or both recipes. but I still have a question for Zakker. How do you grind up the peppers. blender or food processor or something else. *****using 1:2 vinegar. That a lot vinegar purchase!! I take it you mean 1 part mash to 2 parts vinegar. I suspect this is a common ratio that commercial people use. I suspect some of the cayenne people use more vinegar to dilute the salt. but lousiana hot sauce is cayenne mash with vinegar and it is kind of salty. Might be able to figure the dilution from the final salt and a good guess on the starting salt. Of course all mfg will rave about their process of making hot sauce. Tabasco sure does. But it seems to me that if you add 2 units of vinegar to the 1 unit of mash then why bother fermenting. You have so much vinegar that you may as well just use the pure vinegar method. Just putting the question to you to see what you might say. I really wonder if you can taste a difference. I would say that any fermentation taste is gone from tabasco. It tastes like flavored vinegar to me. And aging the tabasco sure is a waste of time and energy. I can not imagine that doing it with say a couple of weeks aging would be just as good as the 3 years of aging they claim. and the oak barrel might be ok for wine but I doubt it does anything for hot sauce. and what do you think of lamalu's 2 quick easy recipes. no fermentation. nice tomato taste. John do you know if you can ferment the tomato juice. Can we mix tomato juice and hot peppers and ferment them. The problem I see is that the tomato juice is already pretty low acid so it might not ferment properly. by the way pretty cool that you could purchase 100 pounds of hot peppers. I assume at a good price. Bye the way I have never been a cayenne fan. To me they always seemed hot without much flavor. just blind heat. well at 50,000 SHU they are hot and I dont find much flavor. For example I like habanero at say 350,000 SHU with good flavor. for some reason they do not have that same heat that cayenne has. However, It is interesting they have a new hybrid cayenne type with low heat. that has possibilities because the cayenne has nice high yield. so in a small garden maybe I can get more pepper for my hot sauce. then heat it up with other stuff. but zakker you seem to talk about the flavor of cayenne. so i find that interesting. what do you think of other pepper flavors. or maybe you like to get the flavor from the food and add the heat using cayenne. Bye the way ship 100 bottles to me pronto.