For several years now, I have challenged myself to do something all year. I’ve done a year of running (twice), one of biking/not driving, and one year of getting into open water once a week. This year, I’m trying something different. I recently got more into fermentation so I want to make a new ferment every week of 2021. It might be beer or kimchi or vinegar or ??? The only rules (so far) are that I can’t count the same recipe twice and it must ferment for at least 48 hours. Below is a list of what I’ve fermented so far and I will continue to update it so I have a central location to track my progress.

• Week 1 – Dec 28 to Jan 3: Hazelnut Brown Ale – Brewed Dec 31 and pitched just in time for the start of the new year. It was racked on 12-Jan and should be ready by the end of the month.
• Week 2 – Jan 4 to Jan 10: Sweet Rice Qu – Steamed sweet rice with a Chinese yeast ball or qu thrown in. After a few days, it was still too dry so I added more water. A week into the fermentation, the rice started to breakdown, release water, and start bubbling.
• Week 3 – Jan 11 to Jan 17: Ginger Beer – Grated 8oz ginger into one gallon of water and boiled for 15 minutes. After flame-out, I added one more gallon of cold water and strained it onto three cups of turbinado sugar. Once cool, I pitched 4oz of ginger beer we made with ginger bug.
• Week 4 – Jan 18 to Jan 24: Lacto Tofu – Put cubed tofu into 1 qt jar. Added Korean pepper flakes, sesame oil and salt. Filled jar with water and a splash of juice from previous kimchi batch
• Week 5 – Jan 25 to Jan 31: Serrano/Garlic Hot Sauce – Sliced serranos and garlic into a mason jar with 2% salt (by weight). Crushed the mixture with a muddler until enough juice comes out to cover the mixture. Also, I’m using a Fermentation Spring & Lid. These make it so easy to keep everything submerged.
• Week 6 – Feb 1 to Feb 7: Lacto Cauliflower – Mix cauliflower with whole garlic and whole peppercorns. Ferment for a week in 3% salt brine. Also made a smaller batch with scotch bonnet powder and Korean chili flakes (kimchi-style?).
• Week 7 – Feb 8 to Feb 14: Kimchi – Purple cabbage, carrots, onion, rainbow radish
• Week 8 – Feb 15 to Feb 21: ESB – Time for another beer. This one will be the first I try to put some into cask-style containers for true British beer
• Week 9 – Feb 22 to Feb 28: Habanero hot sauce – Got a pound of habaneros decided to make two sauces. About 3/8 lb plus 1 apple and 1 lemon. The other was 5/8 lb habaneros plus ~12 cloves garlic. Both at ~3% salt brine. (Also made more lacto cauliflower… so good)
• Week 10 – Mar 1 to Mar 7: Plum vinegar
• Week 11 – Mar 8 to Mar 14: Over night sourdough
• Week 12 – Mar 15 to Mar 21: Sauerkraut
• Week 13 – Mar 22 to Mar 28:
• Week 14 – Mar 29 to Apr 4: Kimchi variation
• Week 15 – Apr 5 to Apr 11: Celery Root kraut
• Week 16 – Apr 12 to Apr 18: new version of lacto-cauliflower
• Week 17 – Apr 19 to Apr 25:
• Week 18 – Apr 26 to May 2:
• Week 19 – May 3 to May 9:
• Week 20 – May 10 to May 16:
• Week 21 – May 17 to May 23:
• Week 22 – May 24 to May 30:
• …

Update: I’m continuing to ferment a lot more food that I had previously, but not doing a new ferment every week. Most of my ferments are slight variations on earlier ones. There is a lot of slow sourdough, hot sauce, lacto-cauliflower, and sauerkraut/kimchi. They are too tasty to not make. I’m also making hard cider with apples we picked in our neighborhood. I will continue to update this when I do new, unique ferments.