My kimchi batch in a 5 gallon crock went from perfect to fizzy mess in 48 hours, took me a week to figure out the temp spike.

Damn, that's brutal. Bet the whole kitchen smelled like a science experiment gone wrong. Temp control is the silent killer with big ferments like that.

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david_price505mo ago

Temperature is just one factor. A good seal on the crock matters more in my experience.

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taylor_mitchell802mo ago

A week of temp control down the drain in 48 hours is rough, no two ways about it. That 5 gallon crock holds a lot of thermal mass, so when it spikes it really swings hard and takes forever to cool back down. The fizzy mess you got is probably the lacto going wild then dying off, leaving a weird acid profile that just ruins the whole batch.

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