Q & A with the Berkshire Fermentation Festival

Looking to learn to make your own cheese or kimchi or taste a lot of delicious food and drink? It's all things fermented at this very unique and popular annual Berkshire festival.

The Berkshire Fermentation Festival is one of the most unique festivals offered in the Berkshires. In only their third year, they drew over 2,000 people to the county fairgrounds in Great Barrington. This is also one of the few festivals in the region not commissioned by a big non-profit or municipality but by young food enthusiasts and farmers dedicated to educating the public without a cost to the participant.

In this interview, we get an inside peak at this popular avant-garde event with co-founder, Michelle Kaplan.

Q. How did the Berkshire Fermentation Festival begin?

A. After going to a fermentation festival in Boston, the owner of Hosta Hill and I thought it would be a big hit here in the Berkshires with the popularity of local and slow food. We have a lot of farms here and there is a lot of carrots and cucumbers being grown. So what are you going to do with the surplus because they are just going to rot. Fermentation has many benefits. One of them is as a strategy for food preservation. We came in to teach these techniques.

Q. Could you give us an example of the fermented foods you promote and provide workshops on?

A. Everything from cheese to beer to wine to bread to vinegars to olives to chocolate. They are all products of fermentation and most people have no idea. The festival is free or by donation so it is open to everyone. It’s an opportunity for people to try cultured foods and take a workshop, get inspired and get connected to fermentation in some way whether it’s for its health benefits, the practicality of it, the unique flavor of it, the science, the art… to try to get people educated and celebrate these unique foods. It’s fun!

Q. What can people expect from the festival?

A. There are 45+ food vendors selling their products in a beautiful setting. There is a culture swap where people can bring sourdough starters, kombucha scobies, keifer grains and trade with people all day long. There are book signings and raffles, live music, games and a science corner where a microbiologist from Tufts University shows the microbes in fermented foods.

It is very different than a farmer’s market. To ferment means to boil or bubble and this is kind of social ferment. I see that excitement at the festival. It’s a wonderful thing. Last year, we counted 2,000 people here. It’s really a growing event.

Q. So you offer these workshops for free?

A. Accessibility is real priority of ours. It’s really an amazing opportunity. People can come and learn how to make cheese at home or kombucha or kimchi or even salami. You can do these things at home. You don’t have to be a professional. We’ve been fermenting food and beverages for a lot longer than refrigerators have been around. We teach the concepts behind these processes at the festival.

There can be some complications when you are fermenting meat, but for vegetables, it’s a really safe process and most people don’t know that. We demystify the refrigeration culture in these workshops. It’s important to know how we’ve survived for thousands of years.

Q. So why celebrate fermentation?

A. There are so many reasons from the process to the unique flavors involved. And this area is becoming known for its fermentation businesses from Hawthorne Valley to Hosta Hill to Real Pickles. We are really celebrating diversity and culture.

Q. And perhaps what is on everyone's mind. How is it possible that sauerkraut can smell so bad and taste so good?

A. Hahahaha.