The fridge, a ferment's stop button
Every ferment runs the same course: it starts wild, it works through its plan's checkpoints, and then it needs a way to stop. Fermentation is alive, and living processes don't press a brake pedal, they respond to temperature. The cold shelf is the craft's stop button, and the app's eight plans all reach for it in their final checkpoints. The Ferment Wizard writes those checkpoints as real dates on your calendar.
Four plans, four cold entries
- Sauerkraut (NCHFP + UVM) finishes at 70–75 °F by around day 28, tart, still crunchy: refrigerate it, and it holds for months at the fridge's pace.
- Kimchi (CSU) wants the fridge almost immediately: refrigerate it by day two, best within a week after. The plan's pace is yours to feel.
- Shio koji (America's Test Kitchen) runs warm until day 14, thick and sweet-smelling, then the fridge, where it keeps up to six months.
- Kombucha (NCHFP + USU) bottles at day 10 and drinks within 30 days, the fizz finished in the bottle, the cold holding it there.
What the cold actually does
Cold doesn't sterilize anything. It slows the organisms enough that the flavor holds where the plan left it, the acid stays tart, the crunch stays crunchy, the carbonation stays dissolved. The fridge's part is control: the batch you pulled at its peak stays at its peak the way the plan intended, and the plan's own words carry it, refrigerate, then read the dates the wizard wrote beside each checkpoint.
Every plan's bench sheet ends the same way: the fridge row, with your date on it. Label the batch. — the cellar crew