How to make crock pickles

Here is a simple method for making crock pickles. In my continuing endeavor to eat only things we produce, nothing processed, I figured it was time to make some snacks, most of my pickles in the pantry I had canned are gone, so I figured I would make some crock pickles. So I had ordered a case of pickling cucumbers from my food supplier, will be interesting to see how these work since I have no idea when they had been picked

I went through and picked through them and disposed of any soft ones and packed them in a food grade bucket

I boiled 2 and a half gallons of water and let that cool

and dumped in in 1 and 3/4 cup of pickling salt

some will use a spice bag for the following ingredients, I don’t, so I dumped in a small jar of dill seeds and stirred well

I measured out a tablespoon of peppercorn and mustard seeds and added that

I took a head of garlic

and broke apart the cloves, these things are a pain to peel

so take a knife, lay the blade flat across the clove

and press down, it will cause the skin to rupture and will slide right off

so I peeled about 10 cloves and threw those in the pot

I measured out 2.5 cups of red wine vinegar and dumped that in as well, here is where I strayed from most recipes as well, most recipes call for distilled white vinegar, well trying to be sustainable as possible, it will be a lot easier for me to make wine and using the barrel system create wine vinegar instead of going and buying distilled white

I stirred it well

and poured it over my cukes

I set a plate with a pan of water on top to hold the cukes under the brine

and covered with a cloth and sat it in the corner, time to wait

After a week, I figured I would check out how the pickles are doing

looks good, smells good

so I fished a pickle out,

I sliced it up, middle was good, brine was forming a inner rind

I chalk this up as a success!