My water disappeared

[Gutted]

OMG.......OMG................OMG!!!

I've been visited by the phantom water reservoir thief just like you timlynne! He's like Santa Claus' evil twin! Is there no end to his dastardly games?

My crock water reservoir has dropped right down to the semi circle cut outs just like yours did timlynne. It was okay when I checked it before I went to bed and today it has dropped right down.

The thing is, I used oil rather than water so it couldn't of dried up, it was happily releasing air on a fairly regular basis, the last time I looked.

Therefore it must of got sucked into the crock or pulled back due to suction. Why has no one ever mentioned this before now?

I think that it could be due to the expansion of the ferment inside the crock which creates suction. It seems to happen near the end of the first phase when no further air is released. I can see no more bubbles or air being released!

The question is, are fermenting crocks just a crock of shit and don't actually do anaerobic fermentation because the seal is lost letting air into the crock?

Could this be responsible for mould formation that is sometimes experienced? Think about the water/oil in the reservoir, probably not that clean and maybe having mould spores in it, being sucked into the crock!

Mine is oil so at least I should be able to easily see if it is in the ferment itself. Time will tell!

[timlynne]

Gutted , I now have my answer it was sucked inside. I haven't added any water now in about a week and water is now coming up over the top and running onto the counter. I hope I will be okay as I noticed last week that there was so much vacuum that I couldn't even slide the lids. The water smells and looks okay. I'll let you know in 4-5 more weeks.

[Gutted]

Mine dropped so I added some oil and when I next checked it, the oil was right up to the rim and some had overflowed so I took some oil out.

I just checked it and the level is going down yet again!

To me, it looks like the back pressure is sucking the oil/water in the reservoir under the lid but not actually into the crock. The inner crock rims are higher than the outer edge of crock and therefore they do tend to prevent anything being sucked into the crock IMO. Pressure changing is sort of pumping it in an out of the reservoir. It's annoying because with mine it's happening fairly quickly which doesn't give much time to forget about it.

I am wondering what is causing this and whether it's a common problem. Maybe were just paying too much attention to it ;)

How much did you fill yours? With veg and water?

I didn't really fill mine very full with veg, I rather under filled it and didn't compact it that much. I left it quite loosely packed. However I put a lot of salt water into it and didn't leave much gap at the top. Maybe that is what is causing it?

I did use some half cabbage leaves, about 4 halves across the ferment and under the stones because the stones are far too small IMO. That was the only thing which is keeping it all submerged. All the smaller bits kept getting above the stones otherwise.

[EDIT] How much did you fill it? Did you overfill it? There is meant to be 20% or something like that space left for expansion. That might explain the water coming out of it.

As I said, I didn't pack it very much and there is piles of space, however I didn't leave much air space in the crock and I hope it isn't going to push out. Really, it should be inside a bucket to prevent any mess until I get it correct. This is my first crock ferment so I'm a bit of a crock noobie.

[timlynne]

Mine was just water no oil and I had the reservoir about 85% full when I started. I had my cabbage packed very tight and not much room maybe 2 inches

[Gutted]

It does sound like we both filled the crocks up too much. As I have already said, the veg was loosely packed and filled to approx 5 to 6 inches from the top. However the brine was filled up to about 1.5 inches from the upper rim. I figured that due to it being loosely packed, that the veg could expand and it shouldn't affect the water level to any great extent.

I have noticed that the temperature does seem to affect the reservoir level. When warm it tends to increase and when cooler it drops back. Maybe tighter temperature control might prevent that.

I won't fill the crock with brine to such a high level next time. Hopefully that will prevent the reservoir level from varying to much. It's been a real nuisance which I don't want next time.

[Gutted]

I would like to revisit this topic because I am experiencing a similar problem once again.

The same crock, which I thought I had left a decent sized space. Not packed down so I did not expect much expansion and yet the oil in the reservoir is once again being sucked back into the crock. This is after 2 weeks fermenting, prior to this it was all okay.

I let some air in because I have no intention of fishing oil out of the crock again. I would rather throw it out rather than spend all the hours that I did last time. So I lifted the lid slightly to let some air back in. The oil level was restored!

A couple of days later the same thing happened again. Once again I let some more air in and the oil level was restored.

There seems to be some back pressure occurring for some reason. Bubbles were coming out of the crock. I have a habit of twisting the lid to "encourage" the bubbles to come out. Sort of like "little things, please....."

Is anyone else having this happen? I would like to know the cause so I can avoid it in future. I don't really want to keep having to let air into it but I also don't want oil or stale water being drawn into the crock.

Does anyone have any ideas? timlynne has yours been okay since you reported the problem?

[Bloods]

I have had the same problem!

I have a 10 litre Gartopf crock which I placed into a converted chest freezer where the temperature was carefully maintained using a 25 watt brewers heat pad at 18 deg C.

It was 3/4 filled with cabbage but I noticed the water in the moat was disappearing every couple of days and that there was definitely negative pressure inside the crock sucking the lid down when I tried to gently raise it.

It is now clear that the water was sucked into the crock and after four weeks of fermenting, I have just discovered that the batch was "off". Too much chlorinated water sucked into the crock and ruining the ferment

So why is there negative pressure developing in the crock? And how high/low should the water level be? And with hindsight, I should have used saline water in the moat in case any was sucked into the crock.

The lid does have the two little semi-circle cutaways on the rim. Should the water level just cover those?

Please help, so I don't ruin another batch of perfectly good cabbage.

PS At the same time, I put some of the cabbage into a Weck jar with an airlock device and it turned out fantastic!

[Bloods]

I have had the same problem and reading the forum it seems to be common but no-one seems to have an explanation for what is causing it. I have a 10 litre crock which I filled 75% with cabbage and its own natural brine. I made the mistake of topping up the water in the moat whenever it was down, but I was doing this too often and unbeknown to me, it was all being sucked into the crock and diluting the brine and ruining the batch

I had the crock in a converted chest freezer where the temperature was tightly controlled between 17.5 and 18.5 degrees C. Maybe the constant heating and cooling creates a pressure differential inside the crock? It does seem to happen at the end of the first phase as you have mentioned, so perhaps it's the result of the chemical reaction that's going on? I don't think the theory of changing atmospheric pressure sounds that plausible - it would have to be a big change?

[Rich23]

I know this is an old thread but I'm guessing many folks have this question still.
If you have a crock and the water is going inside then only 1 of 2 things can be happening, the pressure inside is dropping or the pressure outside has risen.
How can the inside pressure change? Temperature and Volume.
Overnight a drop in temperature could be enough to shrink your gas volume and draw the water back in.
The other way that volume could be changed directly is by bacterial action. When the bacteria consume carbon in your veg and convert it to CO2 the gas volume will increase noticeably, but the decrease in solids won't be. This is why the O2 gets displaced from the crock and eventually if you have enough CO2 the CO2 will start to be ejected. The only way for the process to go the other way is for gas to be converted into solid by some microbial metabolic process.
So, my advice, is to stick a little temperature gauge to the side of the crock (I don't know if the sticky ones will mark the crock so it could be stuck to a piece of paper and then the paper sellotaped to the side I guess) and then measure temperature and level of the channel liquid. If you can check atmospheric pressure too with a cheap barometer that would be interesting, although my guess is tempreature fluctuations are the larger influence. All this is great to get kids interested in physics too- I hope!
The practical advice is to fill your channel with water at the same saltiness as your contents so that if it does get sucked in then it doesn't matter. I was advised 15g salt per litre, but I know others talk about 2% solutions (20g) or slightly more.
Anyway I hope that sheds some light on the subject without taking away the self discovery that many people like .
Best wishes,
Rich

[Gutted]

Thanks Rich3 for your ideas and explanation.

The pressure outside will change a bit but I doubt it would be enough to cause too much of a problem. Your idea about the pressure inside dropping seems more likely.

That drop in pressure is I think where the big question lies. The volume should decrease as the bacteria consume the fermentation source converting to CO2 which would cause a back pressure ie suction and the CO2 would tend to counteract that a bit but maybe not enough if the temperature changes. It therefore be a combination of things.

I dislike the idea of using salted water in the reservoir so that it can be sucked into the crock because it could be contaminated with dust and dirt which I do not want inside my ferments. I will add that a crock manufacturer in Germany recommended to me using oil in the reservoir to avoid having to keep refilling the reservoir but this does not work because it gets sucked inside the crock and settles on the top of the ferment which is a nightmare to remove.

I have stopped using my crocks because of this and will not use them again until a satisfactory solution is found. The thing is a solution might not be possible if this is a big flaw with fermentation crocks.

I might start one going and use some temperature monitoring and a pressure monitor, which I have, to try and find out what is happening and when. ATM I do not have time for this so it will not happen until other things have been completed.