Dill pickle perfection amid smokey skies

Eight quarts from eight pounds of cukes. Just put into jars, cloudy sediment may or may not settle, but is harmless in any event. Mere byproducts of fermentation.

Despite a lot of doubt about the edibility of these over the last couple of weeks, I ate two small ones today and have to say they were the absolute best I've made yet. Now, if I'm still alive and healthy this time tomorrow, I can safely say all those doubts were for nought.

Doubts? Yes -- because this was by far the stinkiest batch I've made yet. First, there was only the smell of freshly-fermenting dills, which was expected. After a week or so, the smell got really strong and really funky, making me wonder what the hell was going on. Last week I dumped the crocks into bowls, strained off the oak leaves, dill, spices and such to throw away, then put the pickles and brine back into the crocks to continue fermenting. I like to let them ferment for 3 full weeks, as it supposedly takes that long for all the good strains of lactobacillus get a chance to develop and grow. And while they taste delicious, the main purpose for me is the probiotic benefit.

I'd reached out to the folks at the Wild Fermentation support forum, but not one person responded to my plea for help and answers. Maybe they were afraid they'd be held liable if they told me this was normal and then I died, or got really sick. Mind you, I'm not completely crazy. The smell was never rotten or repulsive, merely really, really strong with something I couldn't place. At any rate -- today was the 3 week mark so I opened up the crocks again, unloaded the garlic and pickles into jars, filled the jars about half-way with brine from the crocks then added fresh brine to the top.

I generally don't do that if I have enough brine for all the jars, but something in me wanted to thin out the smell, which was actually barely noticeable by then. My semi-educated guess is that because this batch started fermenting strong and fast and kept it up for a week, there was simply more yeast byproduct, and that was what I was smelling. Over the last week, I'd decided that the funky smell had a yeasty character to it.

In the meantime, air quality in Eugene has been horrid for the last few days, as shown in these photos by my ever-favorite local photog, Brian Davies. The sun has been blood red every morning when it rises, and the moon has been about the same. Someone told me much of the smoke is coming from a big fire in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness near Brookings, which I find heartbreaking. I won't guarantee the spelling on that -- but it's close and I'm too lazy to look it up.

So that's that. Don't worry about me if I don't check in tomorrow -- doesn't mean death by dill pickles, just that there'll be nothing to write about.