Reply To: Kimchi temperature control in summer

Hi, I live in a place where the room temp is between 77F to 95F. I usually let it sit in room temp overnight (about 80-81F) for 8 hrs then stick it in the fridge.
If you salted it enough, it won’t get mushy even if it’s over fermented a bit. I once over fermented my kimchi by letting it sit at room temp for 24 hrs. It went from fresh tasting along w/ all the sharpness of its seasonings to just plain ripe kimchi ( slightly sour and melded flavors) after that 24hrs. Even after I put it in the fridge, I had to finish it within the week or else it’d get too sour to eat. These days I only put out 1/4 to 1/2 cabbage worth of kimchi out to ferment so I can eat it or cook with it right away. Everything else go straight into the fridge where they can ferment slowly up to a whole year or more. But around here 10lbs kimchi won’t last more than 3 months as we eat a lot of it.

Hope that helps