Portland Fermentation Festival

I definitely couldn't miss Portland’s first-ever Fermentation Festival (and a chance to say hello to Sandor Katz), so I made the trek down to the Pearl District for the Fermentation Festival from 6 - 8 pm at Ecotrust.

Fortunately it was easy to get there by bus. I just took the #9 and walked a couple of blocks around the backside of the downtown post office. The bad news, is said bus had no A/C and it was in the high 90's, so the trip was unbelievably hot and very uncomfortable.

Once I got there, I realized, Holy Cow, there's a lot of people here! You really couldn't walk through the conference room or anything. It's a wonder the fire marshall didn't show up, but I ran into Christi right away and said hello. It was a bit intense with all the people, so I didn't really do any sampling until the crowd thinned out a bit. Instead I walked down to the farmer's market right around the corner and meandered around there until some time went by, then tried again. While I was at it, I had a paleta. An hour later, it was slightly better inside.

Sandy was answering questions about fermenting (and its common mishaps), and I wandered around the room sampling stuff. Sandy's creative concoction featured okra and pears, among other things. Someone brought potato cheese, which was a huge hit. There were lots of samples of kimchi and kombucha, some lacto-fermented sodas, some coconut water kefir (agua de coco), lots of homemade wine and ale and cider, and other things I've probably forgotten about. A lot of people brought samples, and were there sharing samples of homemade fermented foods such as pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, kefir, and home brews. Someone even brought natto! I would love to learn how to make some of the things I've never gotten around to making before...I actually have recipes for most of these things courtesy of Wild Fermentation, but I still would need to obtain starters for things like kefir and kombucha.

I've been doing the home fermentation thing for awhile now. I don't know what initially got me into it--it could have been living in Japan and being exposed to things like miso and tsukemono (Japanese pickles), or simply eating my grandmother's homemade foods. I'm sure watching my dad brew beer in the kitchen was a source of inspiration too...

Whatever it was, I've taught a number of people how to make sauerkraut and kimchi, and when I lived at Declerye, we used to make pickles and kimchi and various wines all the time, since we had lots of produce from the garden in the summer. Since I no longer have such an enthusiastic audience, I don't do it quite as often these days, but I still make sauerkraut, brine pickles, and wine fairly often.

Home fermentation is pretty easy to do most of the time. It's a very low-tech process, after all, it comes from the days before refrigeration and pasteurization. You just need suitable containers, a ready supply of produce, and a few other relatively easy-to-find items (such as Kosher salt). Things that can go wrong are neglect (not paying close attention to a project), temperatures that are too high (things sometimes ferment too rapidly in warm weather), or too much oxygen (most things ferment more successfully when they aren't exposed to the air). Once you get used to the idea that it's totally normal to see some of the culture or bacteria growth on the surface of your pickles (just rinse if off if it bothers you), it's less problematic. You quickly learn what's normal (for example white stuff floating on the surface of kraut is normal), and what isn't.