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<pre>Trudy,
Our process is not too much different to yours. The main point of
divergence is that we pickle in either 5% brine solution till debittered
(as you say, about 10 days or so) OR we put the olives, uncracked, into
10% brine solution for a MUCH longer period, again until debittered. We
then decant from this into a storage solution which is 10%brine and
Brown vinegar in ratio 1:1. That is we use, say 1 litre of brine and 1
litre of vinegar. A thin layer of oil on top to stop air ingress and all
is sweet!

We've recently tried decanting into vacuum packages with a much smaller
amount of solution (still the same ratios) and that seems to work well.
We also use rainwater, but the storage solution must reduce the
possibility of fungal (and other nasty) growth, straight water will not
do that!

Cheers
John Attwood
Tamworth
(Northern) NSW Au

Jeff & Trudi Hollinshead wrote:

> We put some table olives in brine changing it every day for about 10 days and
then put fresh rainwater in and oil on top. We now have what looks like a mould
layered in between the water and the oil. How do we stop this happening in
future? Can anyone let us know where we have gone wrong. We used rainwater all
the time as that is all we have where we live.
>
> Trudy Hollinshead
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
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