The first rule of Fermentation Club is: You must try your home-fermented food or drink at least 24 hours before sharing it with others. And, unlike in that movie-famous club also starting with an F, the second rule of Fermentation Club is: You should absolutely talk about it. In fact, as far as club founder Cheyanne Rico is concerned, the more members spread the word about the delights of fermentation, the better.
Every fermentation project “is like a science experiment,” Rico explained, as time and microbial cultures break down ingredients such as milk into yogurt or cabbage into sauerkraut. “It’s fun to tinker and see what works, [to] watch something transform into something else — often something more flavorful and better for your gut,” the 30-year-old Burlington resident said. “I think of it as biological alchemy.”
I think of it as biological alchemy.
Cheyanne Rico
Rico’s Burlington Fermentation Club is one manifestation of the current enthusiasm for fermented, or cultured, food and drink. From hard cider to sourdough bread, people are intrigued — but sometimes intimidated — by the ancient culinary traditions that can produce deliciously tangy, funky flavors but also occasionally risk contamination with unhealthy forms of mold. Collective know-how helps.
Rico first joined a fermentation club at her local food co-op on the southern coast of Oregon. After moving to Portland, Maine, for her work in natural resources and agriculture, she launched a similar club there.
“It was a way to bring fermentation back into my life and to build community,” she said.
When Rico relocated to Vermont in August 2024, she again resolved to make friends through fermentation. She hosted her first Fun With Ferments meetup at Queen City Brewery in January 2025, spreading the word online and in person.
Rico struck up a conversation with Westin Reavis, for example, at a Burlington bookstore when she noticed he was buying books on fermentation. Reavis and his partner, Liz Getty, are now devoted club members. Getty, who owns the Burlington home-based bakery Getty Goods & Services, taught a sourdough workshop that brought 15 people to the November meeting.
Monthly meetups usually take the form of a tasting potluck and generally draw about half that number. Anybody is welcome to join the free gatherings, held on the first Monday of the month at Queen City Brewery. Regardless of their level of fermentation experience, all are encouraged — though not required — to bring their own experiments or favorite store-bought ferments to share.
Rico, Reavis and Getty were among six at the February 2 meeting. A high-top table tucked in a back corner of the taproom held the fermented fruits of the group’s labor, from a neophyte’s inaugural batch of kimchi to a professional chef’s chocolate-dipped, maple-fermented mushrooms.
The spread included a bottle of deep purple kvass — an eastern European drink made with beets — and crackers featuring the fermented rice solids left after brewing sake. To spread on the crackers or on flatbread leavened partly with koji, a Japanese starter used in miso and soy, there was cultured butter from Ploughgate Creamery in North Bennington and a cheese-like spread made from miso and hazelnuts.
Rico had also brought a large jar of pickled green tomatoes made by a coworker who could not attend the meeting. Her colleague had tried them the day before, though Rico — the tomatoes’ meeting “sponsor,” so to speak — acknowledged she had only tasted them a few hours earlier. “You’re still alive,” club member Ian McCallum-Cook said with an encouraging smile.
McCallum-Cook was sipping a Queen City beer, a category of fermented beverages subject to another club rule: In accordance with state liquor licensing regulations, participants may not bring home-fermented alcohol to meetings at the brewery. (The group did have one off-site meeting at a member’s home that featured a range of beverages, from dandelion wine to Mexican pineapple tepache to homebrewed beer.)
But even with BYO alcohol off-limits, fermented options remained plentiful, as evidenced by a newly acquired poster Rico shared with the group. Her excitement bubbled as vigorously as an active ferment as she showed off the “Periodic Table of Fermented Foods” developed by Michael Gänzle of the University of Alberta.
The range of diagrammed foods and drinks was much broader than the average person might expect. Tea, coffee and chocolate are all fermented during processing. Cultured staples from around the world include South Indian steamed idli rice-and-lentil cakes, West African gari made from cassava, the Central Asian mare’s milk known as koumiss, and Italian prosciutto.
“It’s so nerdy,” Rico admitted.
“It’s so cool!” Getty said, proving Rico had found her people.
Even a food professional in the group had things to learn from the poster. “I didn’t know that vanilla beans were fermented,” said Eric Hodet, executive chef of Adventure Dinner, an event and catering operation with headquarters in Colchester.
Hodet, an avid fermenter, had brought the most unusual treat to share. Following a method from the groundbreaking Copenhagen restaurant Noma, the chef had salted and fermented cremini mushrooms, soaked them in maple syrup, dehydrated them and then coated them in dark chocolate. Crisp chocolate shells yielded to savory-sweet morsels of chewy, umami-rich mushroom.
By contrast, James Harig of South Burlington was sharing his first-ever venture into home fermentation. He set expectations low for his large jar of cabbage kimchi, dark red with Korean chile flakes. Harig cautioned the group that he had found it only “slightly palatable” and too salty.
“I’m curious what others think,” he said. “I brought the recipe so people could help me figure out what’s wrong.”
Everyone tasted the kimchi and chewed thoughtfully. Some thought it was fine and would mellow a bit as it aged. Others suggested adding cabbage to balance the salt. Rico proposed using it in soup, where the salt would be diluted. She also noted that one of her recipes, the crackers made with lees from a Massachusetts sake brewery, hadn’t come out as she’d hoped. “I need to tinker with it,” she said, “and probably roll them thinner.”
As the meeting wrapped up, Rico mentioned that she hoped some members might pitch in at a fermentation table planned for the February 28 Burlington Winter Farmers Market. The club will provide salt, clean jars and equipment to make sauerkraut. The event is BYOC (bring your own cabbage), ideally bought at the market. Rico added that she could also use help hosting a club information table at the fourth annual Ferment Fest, to be held at the Soda Plant in Burlington on March 21.
The team at the Soda Plant business Pitchfork Pickle organizes Ferment Fest, which has drawn increasing numbers of fermentation fans every year. Although attendance isn’t tracked, Pitchfork Pickle owner Julia Irish acknowledged that the event has “blown up,” a testament to interest in fermented food and drink. She attributed that partly to the pandemic-prompted sourdough baking craze.
The festival’s goal, Irish said, is to help “people realize how much of our food and other things in our lives are fermented — like indigo dye — and how much of that is being done in Vermont.”
The event will include an indigo demonstration and a starter swap, similar to a seed swap, to which people bring bags or jars of whatever culture they’d like to share. Those could include a kombucha SCOBY, a ginger beer bug or a vinegar mother. Last year, Irish recounted, someone brought 10 bags of her great-grandmother’s century-old sourdough starter with a sheet detailing its history.
Irish built Pitchfork Pickle from her own home experiments trying to put cosmetically imperfect local produce to good use. She’s tickled to see so many people become fermentation enthusiasts.
In addition to Burlington Fermentation Club, Irish said, a University of Vermont club will table at Ferment Fest. She has heard of a similar group at Saint Michael’s College, too. The more clubs, the merrier, Irish believes — all the better to share knowledge and cultivate fermented food fervor.
“I love when people walk in [to Pitchfork Pickle] and say, ‘I make my own. I don’t need yours,’” Irish said.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Culture Club | At Fun With Ferments meetups in Burlington, fans of kimchi, kvass and kombucha unite”
This article appears in February 18 • 2026.
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