Batch 17 autopsy: the kkakdugi that went fizzy

Thirty hours into ferment the jar sounded like opening a soda. By hour 44 it smelled like a bakery had been allowed inside — yeasty, bready, wrong. Into the bin it went, after measuring everything I could.

What the evidence says

• Carbonation at 30 h: yeast party, not the healthy CO₂ of early LAB activity. The bread smell confirms it.
• Sugar load: I used the pear and a tablespoon of sugar "for color." Batch 12 proved color doesn't need the sugar; I just didn't believe it.
• Temperature: heat wave week, the jar lived at 26-28°C all weekend instead of the 18°C plan. Yeast loves that range; LAB prefers it cooler than that.
• Salinity check: 1.9% final — a touch low, and low salt is a yeast coupon.

Corrected protocol (applied in batch 18)

Sweetener: one fruit or sugar, never both. Minimum 2.2% final salinity. Heat-wave weeks: 48 h at 18°C maximum then straight to 4°C. And a cheap tip: a mason jar with a loose lid shows bubbling activity visibly, which is my only working "fermentation tachometer."

Three kilos of radish taught me more than three books. The books were wrong about how fast summer moves.

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