Kay,

I think kahm yeast mold or other and is why I now do an air-tight system with a lactic acid bacteria starter.

The foam at the initial start was possibly beneficial.

Not an expert here, and a learner too.

I have not had such an horrible start since went to a closed sysem w/starter.

jt

OK, there are a lot of possibilities as to why your pickles went wrong.

Scum in-and-of-itself is not a bad thing, but it does need to be removed and mold is definitely to be avoided.

My first thought is "how warm did your house get?" There's a fairly narrow range of temps desirable for fermenting. Over 75 is not good.

Also, were the pickles weighted so that none were exposed to air? Ideally you'd cover the pickles with a sterilized weight to hold them beneath the brine and then cover the crock with a lid or cloth. One option for a weight is to use a big food-safe bag (i.e. extra-large ziploc) filled with additional brine so if it leaks it won't harm the fermentation process by weakening the solution. You want a bag big enough to fill the crock to the edges so there's minimum exposure to air.

It's possible your soft pickles were floaters, not sufficiently covered with brine.

The fruit flies are definitely a bad sign. I have never had flies even remotely interested in my pickles and if they were they'd have to get through the cover, which isn't going to happen.

Let us know if any of these conditions might be the answer to your problem. If not, we can suggest other possibilities.

I hope you don't give up. It's darned discouraging to lose a batch of pickles but if you stick with it, a real long-fermented pickle is heavenly.

Carol

Thanks for your responses. I did cover them with a gallon bag of brine and tried to make sure that all the pickles stayed under it. There was a really hot week in there. Up in the 90's, tho' I am sure the house stayed in the lower to mid 80's. Still too hot, eh?

Yeh. I thought the fruit flies were a bad sign. I've made sauerkraut in the past and that wasn't a problem. I want to try again. Maybe I should wait for September and cooler weather.

Kay.

> There's a fairly narrow range of temps desirable for fermenting. Over 75 is not good.

I'm guessing that it was too hot and the pickles might not have been the best to start with. Just a guess.

Still working out for my own satisfaction the temperature thing. So far pepper mash is the only thing that I think temps in the 80s for up to 10 days are OK. And I think that a day or 2 in the 80s is OK to get any ferment off to a good start & then put in my cooler basement for a week or so and then into my fermenting fridge. I was told by a knowledgeable source that pepper mash likes more heat than normal ferments.

The way I do things is not lab tested so use my ideas at your own risk.

jt