1. Approx. 10 - 12 lbs fresh organic cabbage
2. Sea salt or kosher salt. NO iodine.
3. Salt should be measured at 2% of the weight of the contents.
4. Stuff like Dill, Juniper Berries, Caraway Seed, Garlic, Horseradish, Apples, Brussel Sprouts, Pickling Cucumbers. Season to taste: my favorite batch so far was just salt and cabbage.

Helpful measurements:
-- 1.5 teaspoons salt to 1lb cabbage (or less)
-- 1 tsp salt = 6 grams
-- 1lb. = 450 grams
-- 2% of (one pound) = 9 grams
-- 2.5 tsp kosher salt to one liter water

1. Chop up cabbage. I like to have a sharpening stone for the knife nearby -- cabbage is tough stuff. Recently, I've been using a food processor with the shredding attatchment. This makes the cabbage thinner and more uniform and the cutting faster.

2. Remove the cabbage cores -- I don't find that they soften up enough to keep in.

3. In large bowls, mix and work the salt into the cabbage until the cabbage starts to release it's water content (salt draws out the water -- that's how the cabbage stays crunchy) (FYI: aluminum bowl = bad).

(BTW--the photos that follow are not necessarily taken in order or during one particular batch. They are taken as I thought of it and used for example during any of the many dozen batches that I've made over time.)

...Use your fist to compress the cabbage into the crock. A potato masher works, too. This is to push the cabbage down into it's own juices.

These days I simply use a few apple slices on a layer to mellow out some of the sour. Nice mild effect. Tip: keep the apple on it's own layer and remove seperately. Otherwise your rueben will have sweet spots.

4. Keep going in layers. Up to 88% of the crock. Leave room to get your hands in there to place/remove the stones and achieve the proper water level. And you need headspace for the CO2 to create a vacuum space.

7. If the water level doesn't come 1" above the stones you will need to disolve 2.5 tsps of kosher salt per liter of water and add it to the crock until the water level is 1' above the stones (about the length of the tip of your finger to the first joint). There is a photo of the water level in a picture just below.

Any floating cabbage pieces can be removed if you can get them. BTW, check out how spotless the field is. Not even a little tiny piece will be floating -- nothing touches air. No air, no worries.

9. Keep in a comfortable room for up to 2 weeks. About 75 degrees. The water in the gutter will start to "pop" every 15 minutes or so as the oxygen is pushed out and replaced with carbon dioxide. That means it's working and fermenting is taking place.

A vacuum will eventually form. What's really cool is, as the barometer goes up and down based on atomospheric pressure, the water level in the gutter may appear to "disappear" and suddenly be really low. Don't panic. It's simply being sucked up inside of the cover by the vacuum being created by the oxygen being pushed out of the crock by the fermenting process. And over time, as the weather changes, so does the water level. Very cool to observe.

9. After 2 weeks or so, or about when your wife says the house is starting to smell like fart (you'll start to forget what was making the smell in the first place and you'll end up cleaning your disposal, the trash container, the dog...), move the crock to a coolish place like a basement for another 2 weeks to 8 months. The longer it sits, the more delicious it gets. But, the longer it sits the softer it gets -- although I've let a crock go for 10 months once and it was still crunchy. And awesome!

Here you can see, after 3 months, the lid has been lifted off the finished product. The water level is still 1" above the stones.

The pink color is due to some purple cabbage added to the mix. I added a small purple cabbage head and the whole batch turned pink -- perfect for New Year's (it's traditionally good luck to eat pork and sauerkraut on New Year's day).

The white areas are some cabbage that has escaped containment and gone scummy. Just remove the floating items with a spoon -- no worries; won't hurt you.

In this batch I'm separating out a layer of garlic. With this particular batch I only used garlic as my flavor. Whooo, it was awesome but seriously garlicky! My wife complained everytime I took off the lid off a container. I gave my brother some and his wife complained everytime he opened the fridge door!

I've also put cucumbers in before. Poke a few holes in them. They turn out to be sour pickles.

My dentist told me that her father used to pour beer into his sauerkraut. Seems like it would work but I can't find any information about it anywhere.

My inspiration for making sauerkraut was the idea of non-refrigerated food preservation and this book: http://www.wildfermentation.com. As a bonus, it turns out that fermenting foods is really good for your 2nd brain, the gut.

Here's a simple demo: http://how2heroes.com/videos/sides/sauerkraut.

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Sauerkraut: Sauerkraut123

Sprouting: Sprouts123

Vermicomposting: Worms123