Portland Fermentation Festival celebrates second year back after pandemic hiatus

The Portland Fermentation Festival — also known as “Stinkfest” — is a celebration of all things fermented, from kimchi and kombucha to pickles and miso. Started in 2009, the festival returned last year after taking a three-year hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic. Once attendees pay admission, all of the featured fermented products are free to sample, trade and take home.

We’ll talk with the three “Stinkfest queens” who organize the festival. Liz Crain is an author who’s written several books about fermentation and the Portland food scene. Heidi Nestler is the CEO of Wanpaku Foods and a nutrition instructor at Quest Center for Integrative Health. Claudia Lucero is a cheesemaking book author and the CEO of Urban Cheesecraft.

They join us in the studio to share more about the fascination with fermentation and what attendees can expect from this year’s festival.

The 2024 Portland Fermentation Festival will take place from 6 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 10, at the Ecotrust building in downtown Portland.

Related: Meet Oregon’s fermented foods pioneers: The Shockeys

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Portland Fermentation Fest is happening next Thursday, also known as the “Stinkfest.” It is a celebration of all things fermented from kimchi and kombucha, to pickles and miso. It started in 2009, one of the first festivals of its kind in the country and returned last year after a three-year COVID hiatus. I’m joined now by its three current organizers. Liz Crain is an author who’s written several cookbooks as well as books about the Portland food scene and fermentation. Heidi Nestler is the CEO of Wanpaku Foods, a Portland-based natto maker and the nutrition program coordinator at Quest Center for Integrative Health. And Claudia Lucero is the CEO of Urban Cheesecraft, a maker of DIY cheese kits. She’s also the author of numerous cheesemaking books. It is great to have all three of you on the show.

All: Thanks for having us.

Miller: Heidi, first. How did you get into fermentation?

Heidi Nestler: Well, I lived in Japan in the early 90s and I think the foods that I was most attracted to were the fermented foods that I was encountering there.

Miller: Were they ones that you’d encountered before?

Nestler: You know, I knew about miso. But then I was encountering a lot of different pickled things ‒ pickled vegetables ‒ and taking notes and learning about them and receiving the starting cultures from the kindergarten teacher and really learning about that there. And then when I returned to the United States, I wanted to dig deeper into different fermentation traditions.

Miller: What was it about learning about these foods that made you say… I mean, it’s one thing just to try something in a country that you’re not from, to like it and then to move on. But you did anything but move on. I mean, you, this became one of the central pieces of your life. Why?

Nestler: Yeah, I think initially it was a way to connect with the culture. My language skills were very much still emerging and so it was a way to connect. And then I just really was intrigued by the flavors. It was just things that I had never tasted before. And then just to understand the biology of it all was intriguing as well.

Miller: Can you describe natto?

Nestler: Natto is a traditional Japanese fermented soybean and it’s different from miso and it’s different from tempeh. It’s sticky from the fermentation process. So it’s typically eaten for breakfast. And so it’s often described as an acquired taste, but I loved natto the first time I tried it.

Miller: When I’ve made sauerkraut in the past, it has gone through a kind of sticky super viscous, goopy phase, to me that’s been a sign that I’ve done something wrong, but natto is supposed to be goopy.

Nestler: Yes, that’s a sign of success with natto, for sure.

Miller: Claudia, what about you? How did you get into fermentation?

Claudia Lucero: In about 2006, I joined a CSA here in Portland and you know, lots of rainy weather, lots of beets and green beans and didn’t know what to do with them, so I got into fermenting pickles. And then from there I easily moved into butter and then yogurt and then I was like paneer. Oh my gosh. So easy. How does everybody not do this? And so then once I started cranking out the goat cheese and the mozzarella, I was like, I must tell everyone. And so over two years of more learning and honing down my recipes, I started teaching. And so then it really grew from there. People’s interest really fueled me.

Miller: Liz, what about you? What was your starting point for fermented foods?

Liz Crain: A very fruitful garden. So I moved to Portland in late 2002 and then 2003, I had my first home backyard garden and it was just so abundant and there were so many veggies that I needed to do something with. I don’t know if you remember Mirador Community Store on Southeast Division.

Miller: Yeah.

Crain: But I went there.

Miller: I rented a pressure canner from them 12 years ago.

Crain: They had so many great ‒ I’m sad that they’re closed ‒ but so many great preservation and pickling and homestead-y kind of goods. Sandor Ellix Katz’s book “Wild Fermentation” just came out right in September that year. I got it. I got a pickling crock. I went home and the rest is funky fermentation history.

Miller: It’s interesting that for both you ‒ for Liz and Claudia ‒ your reasons were like the same reasons that this exists to begin with. That for tens of thousands of years, or maybe further back, humans have said, oh, I got a lot of this food right now, but I want this a month from now. And so let’s do something about it. Or maybe just it fermented naturally, and people realized they could eat it, and so they kept doing it. I’m not even sure if it was an accident, always, at first. Liz, how did the Fermentation Fest start?

Crain: Yeah. So I continue to get more and more interested in fermentation. Lots of projects at home. My kitchen counter was always filled with all sorts of jars bubbling and then I was food writing. I went out to Tennessee to interview Sandor Katz. I got really inspired by that trip. I learned so much. That was for the Sun Magazine, so long form interview. And then after that, when I came back to Portland. I met some new friends George Winborn, who had the Portland Kraut Collective and David Barber, who had Picklopolis at that time. I know it sounds like a colorful crew of people. And so the three of us founded the festival that year ‒ late 2009 ‒ and we had no idea how popular it would be. Line around the block.

Miller: And is it true that there wasn’t a fermentation fest like that somewhere else in the country at that time?

Crain: If there was, then maybe they weren’t using a website. I don’t know that we’re the first, but we’re one of the oldest and long lasting. But who knows?

Miller: Heidi, do you remember the first Fermentation Fest that you went to?

Nestler: I remember it well, that very one. I remember the call was bring one gallon of your favorite ferment. And so we made natto and we brought more than a gallon and it was a good thing because of that high attendance. And at the time I wondered if fermentation equaled booze. It was just like it was going to be alcohol.

Miller: This is Portland, is everyone going to bring beer?

Nestler: Yeah, exactly. What does that mean, free fermented foods?

So, it was very crowded. It was very hot that year, I remember…

Crain: And stinky.

Nestler: And stinky. Hot and stinky. I think that must have been where we got the name Stinkfest.

Miller: You say stinky. But I imagine that you appreciate all the smells that come.

Lucero: Oh, yes.

Nestler: Very much.

Lucero: But cheeses and you open a jar of kimchi and it’s just like your kitchen is scented now. So that’s the festival.

Nestler: Yeah, very much so.

Miller: Claudia, have you encountered people who say I can deal with, I don’t know, yeast and bread or cabbage, but getting dairy involved with fermenting, that does not seem like a home project?

Lucero: Oh yeah, That’s the fear. And I learned really early on because as I mentioned, I started teaching people and I would get people coming to my classes and they would want to learn something like ricotta and ricotta is truly like you boil milk, add lemon juice, ricotta, there’s cheese. And so when people started getting their heads wrapped around that even if the texture isn’t exactly how they figured, it’s still edible. Imagine you just made pasta, you eat it right away. Nothing’s going to happen to you. So the big job was teaching people what to look for, the more you went on, right? Like, is it really safe to leave yogurt out at room temperature with salt? What is making that work? What makes it safe? And so it’s been a lot of education, but you’re right. That is a challenge when it comes to dairy.

Miller: Heidi, it’s not just dairy though, right? I mean, how much fear do you have to walk people through if you’re trying to get them to ferment stuff? People in our culture, especially in the U.S., there’s a lot of obsession with putting stuff in the refrigerator immediately.

Nestler: Very much so.

Miller: Or tossing stuff out because it’s approaching the expiration date. And what you’re telling people to do is the exact opposite in general. Keep this out, let it bubble, let it get to the right the right time. How do you get people who might be nervous about that comfortable with the basic idea of fermentation?

Nestler: I mean, there’s the education piece, what is safe and what is the safety mechanisms with fermented foods. And also educating people around their senses. What are your senses? How can you taste a food and know if it’s safe? How can you look at it and know if it’s safe? And there’s that empowerment around learning these skills. So one of the things is learning about the foods and going home and saying I can do this and I can go home and ferment things.

Miller: Liz, my understanding is that once people get inside, there’s nothing for them to buy. There’s nothing that vendors or people who’ve set up stuff that they’re selling. It seems really different from a lot of conventions or festivals where you may pay to get inside and then it’s still a kind of commercial enterprise once you’re there. How did you settle on this model?

Crain: That has been intact since day one. So we really want people to come to the festival and, like Heidi was saying, feel empowered. So be more of an explorer and not a consumer. So of course, a lot of the professional makers are giving out cards and letting you know what markets that you can find their foods, at their ferments at. But we want the conversation to be around what is this thing? How do I make it? What goes into it? What culture does this originate from? We want everyone to just have really good conversations with one another. It’s community building.

I agree, there are just so few events these days that you go to and you don’t feel sold to. First and foremost, you’re a consumer. You’re there to take out your credit card to purchase something and that’s fine. But at our festival, it’s more about learning, connecting, sharing, bartering.

Miller: Bartering? So do people who come, inside their coats, do they have sourdough starters?

Crain: Yes. So the very first festival, this is a fun story. Nat West who had Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider showed up. So I was pouring hard cider that I had made from a backyard apple tree at my house. And he had a little tote bag. This was years before he started the cidery and he had a bottle of his cider, and he shared it with me. So yes, people bring… Last year, we were talking about how this young couple brought a bottle of guava mango fermented juice and they were pouring it at the entrance for people to try and it was really fizzy and tropical and delicious. So we really encourage people to bring not only cultures to share, but ferments to share, recipes to share. It’s all about coming together and doing this fun thing.

Miller: Heidi, do you have a favorite place in the festival, year after year?

Nestler: One of the things I really enjoy is seeing the sort of unique one-off ferments that people bring. So a lot of the exhibitors have companies, but they will use this opportunity – because it isn’t a commercial event – to just do a one-off ferment. And I’m bringing something special, but I’m not prepared to announce what it is yet. We’ll wait for it to be a surprise. It’s still in the works. But Mat West is bringing a chicken wing garam. And garam is a sort of Roman style ‒ traditionally it is a fish sauce ‒ but he’s making it with chicken wing. So a very flavorful sauce. So that’s always an exciting part of the festival to see what the fun things are that people make just special, their kitchen experiments.

Miller: Claudia, fermentation, it depends among other things, it depends on bacteria and yeast that are sometimes just in the air around us right now or on the surface of things.

Lucero: Yeah.

Miller. This is sort of a woo-woo question, but do you think that relying on just the invisible work of those microscopic critters, if it affects the way the human community interacts with other humans. I mean, you’re people who are all relying on this invisible community that just sort of gives us stuff, makes stuff for us if we give it sugar.

Lucero: What a great philosophical question.

Miller: So I am just wondering if it affects your community.

Lucero: Yes. I mean, I think the festival speaks for itself in that way because from the beginning, as Liz was saying, it was like, bring a gallon, share what you have. And it wasn’t back then that we had so many professional vendors out selling kombucha and cider and all of that. So it was an opportunity to tap into your sense of fun, to want to impress others, to ask opinions. And so there’s the community building and I think like a jar of sauerkraut or a wheel of Brie, we’re working in a relationship with these bacteria, providing the perfect environment for their growth and for thriving for them to not go in the bad direction, right? Where it’s not a control, but it’s a relationship. And so I think it’s absolutely a parallel to what we do with the festival and just what we can do in community, just giving neighbors gifts and sharing, like that.

Miller: Liz, where would you suggest that somebody start if they have never fermented anything themselves?

Crain: Well, I do think that kraut is always a very, very easy starter just because it’s two ingredients. It’s cabbage and salt and you know that, you’ve made it. I do also a really fast ferment. So I haven’t tabled since the very first festival in 2009, but I’m having a table this year and I’ll be pouring water kaffir. That takes only, in total, less than a week to produce a really delicious fruited water kaffir. But come to the festival, there’s all sorts of recipes that you can take physically with you. We print things out. The demos, we have some really great demos where that’s a good starting spot because it’s tactile. You get to see someone making the thing instead of looking on your phone and searching it on Google. That’s a good place to start.

Miller: Heidi. How would you describe the feeling of checking on a jar of something after a couple of days or a couple of weeks and seeing that it’s actually transforming?

Nestler: Oh, that feels magical too because…

Miller: Does that still feel magical to you?

Nestler: It still feels magical. I think that’s what’s so exciting and that’s why we keep doing this, really. I mean, because it is to see that transformation happening and to see how it changes, it still feels magical, very much so.

Miller: Claudia, you too, you still get excited by what these bacteria are doing?

Lucero: Absolutely. Unbelievable. I still post it sometimes on Instagram while cutting curd. Still, it’s such a thrill. You waited, you put in the Rennet, enzymes did their job, the lactic acid came out and you have this solid pot of curd that there you can now turn into mozzarella, cheddar, Brie, whatever you like.

Miller: Heidi, Claudia and Liz. Thank you so much.

Lucero: Thank you.

Nestler: Thank you.

Crain: Thank you.

Miller: Claudia Lucero, Heidi Nestler and Liz Crain are the three organizers of the Portland Fermentation fest. It’s happening next Thursday evening at the Eco Trust Building in Northwest Portland.

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