Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

What they are, how they are used, when they need to be used, alternatives etc.

• ~10 wide-top food-safe gallon jars

• air bubbler to help ‘weak’ ferments with oxygenation
• heating pad and temperature controller, often used for heading seedlings
• ‘food warm bag’, to maintain consistent temps. I double them up for double double insulation.
• nice funnel(s), sieve, cheesecloth etc.
• dozens of starter cultures, molds, etc.
• oven is the best place to protect and continue ferments.
  • I use oven for general storage now, so other options are used.

Quick summary of all the equipment I have that I use in fermentation. It’s not exhaustive, and if I remember something that was missed out, I will keep adding in the future. Here’s a list in short description of all of them. Fermentation vessels. Um. About 10 to 12 white, top, food-safe, gallon-sized containers. The first four were gifted by my friends from Virginia. The remaining ones I have repurposed, using old kimchi jars, knowing that I know for sure, for acidic fermentations. In addition, I have eight really high-quality, fine, resealable bottles for storing kombucha or rice wine or other fermentable liquids. They were also part of the gift package that my friends in Virginia sent me. In addition, I have about 16-ounce bottles of those slim, zero-calorie seltzer drinks. I use them as general containers after fermentation has completed. They’re not super duper pressure safe, but they are safe for acidic liquids. The upside is, since they’re made of plastic, they will not break and create dangerous shards. Instead, they will just leak, causing me much trouble with mopping and cleaning up, but no health concerns.

A bubbling stone and an air pump. I repurposed an air bubbler used in aquariums. It was never used in an aquarium; I was the first user ever, and an air pump to go along with it. I use it to assist some of my ferments that take a long time to start, that need a lot of oxygenation. You have to be careful with this. Some of your ferments will do best when they are not overly oxygenated. Some will need a lot of oxygen a lot in most of their stages, and some ferments will need a lot of oxygen only at certain parts of their fermentation cycle. I’ve successfully revived milk kefir culture and kombucha culture using the bubbler technology. Heating pad and temperature controller, often used for heating seedlings. I bought them off of Amazon for, like, 30 bucks. The heating pad can go up to 120°F, I think, and the temperature controller also has about the same temperature. It’s great equipment to have, particularly in the winter when ferments might slow down or shut down completely because of cold temperatures. Something to remember, which should be obvious, but we often tend to forget these things, is that this setup will not cool your ferments if the temperatures are too high in the summer.

Food transport bag to maintain consistent temperature. I double them up for double insulation. These are the kind of bags that are carried by food delivery folks. I have two of those because they were cheaper when bought in two, but I realized the insulation actually improves a little bit if I have two of them. That way, I’m saving up on heating costs and not heating up my apartment unnecessarily when I don’t need to. Additionally, I also have a Styrofoam box I surround inside the food bags when necessary, so that the whole setup stays even warmer. I will almost always use the heating pad inside insulated bags, so as not to lose a lot of heat to my apartment. I also have several really solid funnels: a metal one and a silicone one. Sieves: a couple of small sieves and a large sieve. Cheesecloths, several, in addition to really… cloth. You might want to have cheesecloths and sieve cloths of various porosities because if you have an overly tight weave, it will get clogged up really easily, and you won’t be able to clear out your ferments well, and it will take forever. On the other hand, if you have a loosely knit sieve cloth, you will let a lot of solids pass through. I also have dozens of starter cultures and molds and starters. Uh, I have a couple of different kinds of yeast and sparkling wine, champagne and sparkling wine yeast. I don’t use beer yeast yet because Jeff Rubidge, whose YouTube channel I follow (I’ll post a link to the YouTube here), doesn’t tend to use it. Finally, if you don’t want to spend a lot of money while starting your fermentation adventure, you don’t need heating pads or temperature-insulated boxes. Often, an oven with the pilot light turned on will work. However, I have in recent years started using my oven for non-fermenting and non-roasting purposes, basically as a cupboard, so I use those instead. Additionally, an oven is an unnecessarily large space. You don’t always want to be keeping up the entire space warm for a small ferment or so. So, from a long-term economic perspective, it might make sense to get insulated bags and heater pads. I haven’t run the numbers, though. That’s all the equipment I have at this point in time. I’ll probably add a few or get rid of a few. It’s a work in progress, and I’ll update this post as things go.