Fermented foods

In addition to fermented beverages, fermentation has traditionally been used in making a variety of foods; traditionally all were made at home, and they still can be by anyone interested in expanding their fermentation experiments beyond beer or wine. In many cases, as with #cheese, #sausage, or vinegar, beer or wine can be used as an ingredient as well as an accompaniment.

Some of the best known and most commonly homemade fermented foods are discussed below:

1 Cheese
2 Vinegar
3 Sausage
4 Pickles
5 Sourdough Bread
6 Olives
7 Yogurt
8 Sauerkraut
9 Kimchi

Cheese

Probably the best known fermented food is cheese. With a few exceptions, cheeses of all kinds are made using bacterial and enzymatic cultures. Home cheesemaking is also becoming popular among people in the brewing community and the "slow food" movement. Cheesemaking at its simplest is much faster and easier than brewing or winemaking, and can be very rewarding.

Vinegar

Home wine makers often think of vinegar as a bad side effect, but it is in fact a fermented food in its own right, created by the secondary fermentation of alcohol by acetic acid bacteria. It's easy to pull off and inoculate a portion of a batch of wine, and the flavor of true brewed vinegar is much more complex and interesting than some commercial vinegars which are made with non-fermenting methods.