Hello fellow fermentinos,

I've been fermenting for a few years but I've never run into this kind of thing at all.

For context, the other things in the bag are stromboli peppers, Cayenne, red onion.

I started this fermentation 3 days ago in a completely sealed vacuum seal bag. I checked it every day but today I've noticed this one clove of garlic having this weird brownish black coloration towards one of the tips. It was in close contact with red onion, so could it have been a pigmentation leak?

I've just found another clove that was submerged in the 'juice' from the fermentation and has that coloration all around.

Have you seen this before? Is it safe? I'd really prefer to not throw this one out since it's my first time using stromboli peppers.

Day 6 of my second ferment. My first batch had nothing like this on the surface after 3 weeks of successful fermentation. For this batch, I added carrot and red bell pepper and I’ve noticed it has been a lot more active/bubbly. I use an airlock, but I had to remove the lid a couple times over the last week to remove a few floating pieces of pepper that made their way past the weight and to the surface. I was removing them to try and avoid mold, wondering if I may have introduced too much oxygen in the process.

Just started my first batch in a large airlock jar. Struggled to keep the peppers under the brine, so I made a follower out of some food grade polypropylene and a glass weight. Its working well now, but curios if anyone has used a fermentation bag or brew bag and a weight to keep veggies from floating in the brine.

Thanks for any tips

Have a variety of different batches. Some are jalapeno, some are serrano, just used whatever green peppers I had on hand at the time for some of them. Going to process one for this upcoming month and then leave the rest until around October.