When To Discontinue The Airlock

hi my name is Linda and I'm going to try to answer the question for you of when can I take my lid and air lock off of my jar when can I take my air lock off and use the stopper well the short answer is you don't take it off you leave it on till you eat to the bottom of the jar so someone would say Well then why do you include a stopper well the reason why we include the stopper is it's really for transport so let's say I'm taking this um to to a church event like I did last week or a family event like I'm going to next week I would take the air lock off of the top because it's a little awkward it sticks up it'll it's just easier to even break off so I'm going to take that off put my stopper in use it for transport and then when I get back home if there's any left then I would put the air lock back on now uh one thing to keep in mind is if you transport it's sitting out on a warm table and it's it's increasing in temperature then it's going to get active again and start producing more carbon dioxide which is going to need to escape if you got your stopper there you want to be aware of this and so you may need to come over and burp it every so often but generally speaking you're just going to leave your air loock on top now the long answer is there are kind of two reasons as to why we leave the uh air lock in the first is that this is a living food that we're dealing with whether you know let's say you've got sauerkraut here cabbage from one year to the next varies from one past to varies to the next and from one season part of the Season like late fall cabbage is going to be different than early spring cabbage so because of this variation of living Foods you're also going to have a variation in the amount of carbon dioxide and gas that's being produced and the amount of time that something needs so let's say when we put it in the refrigerator last year my sauerkraut I could tell it was ready to eat at 11 weeks this year if I put it in the refrigerator maybe it's not going to be ready until 13 weeks so if I have put it in the refrigerator with the stopper then I have interrupted the fermenting process because there's variations in temperature there's variations in humidity there's variations in atmospheric pressure and all of that makes it a little harder to just predict you know step one step two step three as if we had a Betty Crocker recipe so because of the huge amount of variation we recommend leaving your air lock on your lid now a second reason why we recommend leaving this on let's say I have you know decided that this is done and I were to put my stopper in I put it in the refrigerator and in reality there's still some uh significant amount of fermenting going on what's going to happen is without the air lock to allow for the exhaling of the carbon dioxide the stopper is going to keep that carbon dioxide inside and it's going to begin creating pressure okay so what's the big deal about pressure well scientists just some recent scientific studies are bringing out that lactic acid producing bacteria actually become misshapen Under Pressure so let's say if this is a normal shape that they should be and they kind of become bent and twisted okay so then the question is if they are misshapen are we going to be getting as beneficial a probiotic food as if we were eating normally formed uh lactic acid bacteria if it's under pressure and they're a little bit twisted and misshaping we're wanting a probiotic food that goes into our digestive tract and really does a good job of digesting other food and and bolstering our immune system but if they're misshaping scientists just don't know yet is that truly going to be as beneficial a lactic acid a beneficial fermented food as if it were normally formed lactic acid bacteria so for that reason we really do recommend you leave your lid on you leave your uh air lock on until you've eaten down to the bottom of the jar now some people will say oh my that's so tall I hardly have room in my jar well we have a little bit of a help for you we have a second air loock here it's a short two-piece air lock instead of the three piece air lock with the bubbler on in the middle and it still functions exactly like a normal air loock so if you were to put this in your jar you would save yourself it looks like they're about an inch and a half maybe an inch and 3/4 and that might be just enough space to allow you to keep a jar with an air lock in your refrigerator and I know sometimes it's a little hard to reconfigure our refrigerators um I myself have between 20 and 30 different jars 25 maybe different jars of fermented foods and I actually have a whole refrigerator Prime arily dedicated and I realize that's not optimal for everyone but if that's not an OP that's not an option then the short air loock might be an interim solution so that we can keep that air lock and a lid on our ferments keeping it full of well-shaped lactic acid bacteria so that it continues to be a living healing probiotic food I hope this has been helpful thanks for listening and I hope you're going to be healthy for eating all this wonderful fermented food

Channel: WellnessAK

Views: 35,319

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Id: 8tIn0hXMehE

Length: 5min 34sec (334 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 11 2014