[Ari]

I’ve discovered a flaw in using jars without pickle weights, it’s not the pickles so much as the herbs that all want to float to the top and be a potential growth medium for bad things.

I think the cucumbers in Jar 4 already had some mold growing as I found a tiny amount of blue green attached to white on the jar top outer ring and some white spots on the cucumbers under the water where it tried to grow before being stopped. I wiped all the jars, lids, and rims down. Mold’s reaction to salt water is generally to form a protective barrier before either growing very slowly or dying, so there shouldn’t be any nasty metabolites, but I guess I’ll find out.

None of the others seem to have issues, but are all cloudier than previously at this time. I now have the hypothesis that the ‘half herb’ jar is going to turn out the best as it has the least amount of floating bits spending time at the interface.

Either way I’m certainly going to hunt the E-Jen at the local asian stores or (gasp) buy them online, as go figure, it would solve most of my issues.