I made pickles for the first time this year using this recipe: Dill Pickles - All Recipes and they turned out GREAT! However, after 5 months some of the canning jars are starting to ferment. I first thought it was mold and I messed up on the canning but I opened a jar and smelled it and it smelled a little like sauerkraut. I tasted one and sure enough it had a little bit of a sauerkraut taste. I did some searching on the net and I find that with many people, this is a desired effect and I found many recipes for "fermented pickles". I would rather just have unfermented pickles and would like to prevent this. Anybody have any ideas how?

 

Just a guess...been a long time sisnce I did 'em....but I think you probably didn't boil long enough or at least they didn't get hot enough. The boiling is what kills anything that will cause the fermentation...I THINK!

 

Vic is right. How long did you process the jars? Did you use a boiling bath or a pressure canner? And most of all ( I know it is a guy thing) but did you follow the instructions?

 

I did everything the recipe says to except the water bath in the caner. I was following peoples posts on the page that said not to because they said they make the pickles mushy. And who likes a mushy pickle? Not me!

Here is what I did:

Sterilized the jars.
Sterilized the lids.
Packed the jars.
Brought the mixture of salt,water and vinegar to a boil.
Filled packed jars with boiling mixture.
Sealed jars and let them cool.
They all sealed.

I did also read on other pages that caning is not needed if you use boiling mixture and also due to the salt and vinegar. Guess that is wrong eh?

 

Ya, the last couple of years we started doing pickles and the caps not sealing properly has been the problem when this happens.

We have found that you need to have at least an inch of air space above the liquid so you should not overfill the jars.
Wiping the rim with clean paper towel before placing the caps helps ensure a seal, especially if you are putting dill on top.
Keeping the caps in hot clean water while you are processing makes the sealing surface soft allowing a better seal.

Quickly getting the jar tops cleaned and caps on after pouring in the boiling brine so the jar does not cool down also helps.

You can after about a week check that the lids are still sucked down, indicating an absence of air.
If they are slightly bowed up those jars have experienced a seal failure.
This year was particularly bad and have a dozen jars or so in the refrigerator that didn't seal as we too are not that crazy about fermented pickles.

 

Yep, pickles will mush out if you pressure can them. My bad. BUT, it is important that your brine is BOILING when it goes into the jars. My wife will run the jars through the dishwasher on the Sanitize mode. Man they are h-o-t when they come out, so hot jars, hot pickles, and boiling brine will kill the bacteria. As Greg says, make sure the seal area is clean and there is a headspace.

 

Doesn't refrigerating the pickles help make them get crunchy? (Like the pickle company with the stork?) Naturally, you would not store your whole cache in the fridge. But I'm saying that as you go to use them, if you put a jar in there, would that help to make them crunchier? Or am I mistaken? I'm no canner. This is just conjecture.

Also regarding heating the lids: Besides the softer seal, then does that also cause the lids to become even tighter once the lid cools down? Since heat is used to open stuck lids, to expand them, you'd think then that if you really tightened down a hot lid, that it would REALLY be hard to open once it got cool.

 

I forgot to mention heating the lids prior to placing them on the hot jars. You really don't want to bear down too much on the rings. Believe it or not, some air displacement takes place during the cooling period. The soft lid will eventually "stick" to the jar rim, which has been cleaned.

 

Humm...When we can salsa we have to make sure there is not too much headspace. So with the pickles I only left about 1/2". I wonder if I didn't leave enough?

I do(did) put the lids in boiling water before placing them on the jars.

All the jars sealed. The odd thing that helped me figure out they were fermenting and not just spoiling was the top button was pushed out. I thought the seal failed but if you pushed on the button it was hard like a can of pop. It was REALLY hard to open the jar and when you did you can hear the gas (CO2?) escaping.

Thanks for the input guys. Like I said, this is the first time I did this so I'm still learning.

 

Is there something that can make pickles gassy?

As silly as that sounds, I fail to comprehend if that is not somewhere in the equation, why then, if the pickling process involves heat - science would say that as it cools down in the jar, it has to draw a vacuum. And if it doesn't - then either the jar lids leak, or the pickles must be giving of a gas? ?????

Or am I wrong? Aren't the pickles and the juice put in the jars pretty warm or hot? Like I said, if so, then a vaccum has to be drawn, if not for reasons stated.

**************

 

If the seal holds the airspace remains in a vacuum.
If the seal leaks, air enters and the cucumbers begin to ferment.

At pickling time I will make a large jar of sun pickles by pouring a mix of room temperature water, vinegar, salt and spices over washed cucumbers and let them sit in the sun for about a week.

These can then be put in the fridge but don't usually last that long.