Kefirko Vegetables Fermenter 900ml | Ferment Fruits, Veggies, Make Kimchi, Sauerkraut & More| BPA Free Materials - Red

I am in love with this product - if you can be in love with a veggie fermenter! I have been wanting one of these for a while and am so excited to receive one! Firstly, the quality is amazing - the glass jar is thick and hefty, and it comes with all the accessories and things needed to easily and safely produce fermented produce. My first attempt is sauerkraut as it seemed the most straight forward (I usually buy Kimchi from the shops, so that will be next on my list!). The fact it contains the spring and weight so you can keep your veg submerged in the liquid, and the air valve on top to remove any excess air - they really have made this product straightforward and simple, having thought of everything. It comes with a recipe book too, which has clear, simple instructions with plenty of nice glossy photos. The only downside is the outside box (which is really pretty with it's branding) is a little flimsy and the glass weight was lose in the outer packaging having come out the product box, but I imagine it's quite an eco-friendly brand with it's minimal packaging. Despite the thin box, this is a great quality product and I'd love to fill my kitchen with more of these so I can make more recipes.

It makes making pickles really simple. It has some really nice recipes. I just wish it was a bit bigger.

This fermenting kit comes with a very useful guidebook which has an explanation of the basic principles of fermenting plus a bunch of recipes. I've put my first ferment in a few days ago- I haven't tested it yet. I've gone for courgette and lemon. This needed no water, as once salt was added, the courgette gave off loads of liquid. I found it was easy to do, but the next day the weight had gone slightly sideways in the jar, and a few bits of courgette got past it and floated up to the top. Although I had pumped out all the air I removed these pieces to avoid mould growing on the top. Maybe I need to not cut the pieces so small. I should imagine though that this would be a common issue with sauerkraut as the cabbage is shredded. It was good to have a kit which included all the bits I needed. This gave me the confidence to get started. Like other reviewers I thought the plastic tongs/ pounder device was a bit useless and not up to the standards of the rest of the equipment. But it's OK as a starter item, and then if you find that you like fermenting you can buy a better one or just use a pestle. This is a good starter kit and would make an ideal gift for someone who wants to give it a go.

I really enjoy a bit of lacto fermenting. I use 2.5% salt by weight (combined weight of water and veg). Using a dedicated fermenting jar seemed very indulgent, and maybe a step up from a mason jar that needs regular burping. In practice after use though, I'm not sure it's value for money. I liked the glass jar, I liked the convenience of the spring an the glass tamper to keep everything submerged, but similar results can be achieved more cheaply. The spring exerts a significant amount of force onto the vegetables, more than I've used before. It is squashing the daylights out of the less structural pickles and time will tell how the more rigid candidates likes carrot spears, stand up to the punishment. The air pump in the top lid appears next to useless to me. You press it and release it and air goes both ways, there's just no useful seal around the edge where the silicone meets the plastic. There's certainly nothing that functions as a useful valve.

This is a nicely thought out fermenter jar. It has a nice wide neck, making it easy to fill. The glass plate sits on top of the vegetables, keeping them immersed in the liquid. The spring presses gently down on the fermenting vegetables. It takes a large cabbage to three quarter fill this jar, and that can be added to with, say, carrots, to get a greater quantity in it. The result is a great tasting fermented snack or side dish. I have three jars bubbling away in my kitchen at any one time, and I include fermented vegetables in my diet every day. There is ample proof of the health benefits of fermented food and, of course, they taste great. My favourite is cabbage, ginger, carrots and garlic.

On the face of it, this fruit and vegetable fermenter kit is a great find because it contains all the components needed to ferment veggies and fruits: the jar, a plastic cover with a silicone pump that enables you to pump air out, a transparent cover with a one-way (in to out) valve, spare filters, a spring, a glass weight, an implement that is meant to be a pounder on one end and tongs on the other and an instruction/recipe booklet. I have always bought my sauerkraut and kimchi, but seeing this kit on offer with Vine in exchange for an unbiased review made me decide to try my hand at fermenting my own veggies. After a week of fermentation, I produced my own kimchi which tasted pretty good but I used a Korean recipe instead of the recipe in the booklet. The ingredient quantities I used were just a little over half the quantities cited in the Kefirko recipe book. I have a problem with the recipes - they are confusing. The kimchi recipe says the measures are for the large (1 quart jar). Apparently, there is a jar larger than the 848 ml one I have. 1 quart is about 946 mls and that measure appears to be somewhere in between the 848 ml one I have and the next size up. If selling this product in the UK, it would be ideal if measures were those used in the UK, of which a quart is not one. It would also be useful if every recipe had a clear statement at the top of the page of what size jar it was for. Ideally, the size of jar suitable to the recipe would be the jar that is in the product box, not a jar of some other size. I liked the idea of offering a complete set. This is good for a novice like me. What I did not like was the variable quality of the parts of this set. The jar itself was of good quality. The inner screw-on coloured top worked very well. I liked the day counter and the silicone part that enabled me to pump out air. That worked well. The spring was a great idea too as it did keep the veggies submerged in the juice. The transparent outer top did vent the smell. The biggest problem I had was with the glass weight. In the kit I received from Amazon, the glass weight was wrapped in a single layer of tissue and it was broken. The broken edge was sharp and because it was not securely packed, it fell out and wounded my hand when I tried to catch it and my foot, when I failed to catch it. I binned the broken weight. I looked for the UK supplier and rang them to ask if they could replace the glass weight and if not, whether I could buy one. They said they did not have spares in stock but very kindly offered to send me an entire replacement kit so I could try it. A new kit arrived with a well-wrapped, unbroken glass weight, which I have photographed. Although it was intact, a close look at the photos will show that the glass is quite blemished around the edges. I do not want to risk the glass cracking, so I have bought a set of glass weights that are heavier, thicker and totally unblemished. I used one of those weights and it worked very well, with or without the spring. The green implement was too flimsy to be of any use as a pounder, so I bought a wooden one. The tongs worked ok, but I have several pairs of tongs that I could have used. This product is currently being sold on Amazon for £29.99. If all the components of this set were of equally good quality and fit for use, I would have said this was a reasonable price. However, I had to spend £10 on the cheapest good quality veggie pounder I could find and £15 on a set of 4 good quality glass weights. This breaks down to £3.75 for 1 weight. I spent £13.75 extra to make up for the poor quality components, thus, if I had actually paid for this Kerfiko fermenter, I would have spent a total of £43.74, which is an excessive amount of money for this product. In my opinion, this product would be better if it included the jar, the two tops, a good quality heavy glass weight (so the spring would be unnecessary) and a solid, good quality tamper. Tongs are easy to find and cheap to buy, so in my opinion, their inclusion or exclusion from the kit does not make much of a difference. In sum, whilst a complete fermenting kit is a good idea in principle, if paying close to £30 for a small fermenting jar, I would expect consistently high quality in the components and greater attention to detail in the recipes provided to make them more convenient to use. A final note here is that the excellent customer orientation of the UK supplier has made a huge difference and this can make a less than perfect product attractive.

This veggie fermenter is marvellous! It comes with everything you need to ferment your own vegetables. You just put them in the glass jar with brine, use the squeezer to squish it all down, put the glass weight over the top and press down, screw the cap on and pump out the air. Truly, so, so easy. You can mark the date you started the fermentation process on the lid's dial so you don't miss a beat. I'm currently fermenting a batch of turmeric, and am so, so excited! In the box, you also receive a booklet with 25 different recipes, which is super helpful. I want to try kimchi next but fermented turmeric had to be first. You can order these in 2 sizes, and I have the smaller one at 848ml. I'm not gonna lie, it's pretty darn diddy, so you'll either need a few of them, or plump for the bigger fermenter. But, it's £29.99 so they're not cheap, by any stretch. I do like that they come in 4 different colours so if you were going to routinely ferment the same 4 things, you could colour code it... colour coding makes the OCD part of my brain happy. All in all, I would totally recommend this if fermenting is your thing. It's a brilliant way of adding some incredibly healthy things to your diet - and it's really kind of fun, too.