On 06/23/13 3:31 PM, sometime in the recent past George Shirley posted this:
> On 6/18/2013 3:49 PM, Mark Curry wrote:
>> Hi all - regular lurker here with a question.
>>
>> Last year took I took a dive into making various pickles with mostly
>> success. Dilled Carrots, Olive Oil Pickles, and a few quick pickles
>> were a great hit.
>>
>> The Half-Sours that I tried tasted ok, but were mushy.
>> Most are still sitting in the fridge waiting some kind of
>> use as a relish or chutney, where the texture won't be noticed.
> Fermented pickles don't do well at all with Pickle Crisp Mark, PC is
> primarily for making fresh pickles and, even then, they need to sit in a
> dark place for a few weeks in order to be crisp.
>>
>> Found out about Pickle Crisp in this newsgroup, and want to
>> give it a try. I'm not sure on the use for fermented pickles
>> however - should I add the Pickle Crisp before fermentation or
>> after? It's just another salt, so I think it shouldn't affect
>> the fermentation too much. The package doesn't help much.
>> Most of the recipes I'm using are from The Joy of Pickling
>> by Linda Ziedrich
> Pickle Crisp is calcium chloride and, if I remember correctly, is made by
> treating limestone, in the instance I'm aware of it was Texas caliche rock,
> of which we Texans have a lot of. Primary use for calcium chloride is for
> road "salt." A road salt that doesn't rust your car out.
George, I think your comment that calcium chloride doesn't rust your car out
is in error. Here in the northeast they have been using it as a liquid
slurry to treat the roads before snow or icing can be packed down by
traffic. The result is a lot of premature break-lines rusting out and other
forms of accelerated rusting even greater than NaCl - regular salt. Just
saying

Jarden (Ball)
> dropped the PC for awhile but brought it back in a more efficient form,
> larger pieces.
>
>>
>> Looking for suggestions from the more experienced folks here.
>
>>
>> The garden just gave us about 5 lbs of cukes - kids can only
>> eat soo many fresh. There's a few quarts worth ready to go...
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Mark
>>
>>
> Best advice I can give you for fermented pickles is to keep them in ice
> water, very near freezing for a lengthy time and then ferment them. Lots of
> recipes for fermented pickles on the web and how to keep them crisp. Hope
> this helps.
>
> George
>
> I thought I had sent this earlier but never saw it show up.


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Wilson 44.69, -67.3