Just rescued a month-old jar of sweet pickled garlic out from under the stairs and discovered it was leaking... lid bulging. Oh dear! :o
Popped the lid - and it FIZZED! :o Same effect as cracking a bottle of elderflower champers.
Remembered I hadn't plunged the cloves into boiling water before pickling them. Could it be that natural yeasts on the cloves have reacted with the sugar in the sweet vinegar solution (which was boiling when it went in but the volume of cloves might have cooled it fast to blood heat) and what I've got is alcoholic garlic???? :-\
moonbells
Wow! Have never had exploding pickles before! Alcoholic garlic.....could be rather good in a Bloody Mary?
I would`nt eat them it sounds is if they have gone off die to fermentation.
I'm avoiding them but Sir seems to think they're fine. I told him that he'd better not come crying to me if his tummy gets the collywobbles but so far he hasn't. And he's happy I won't touch them cos he gets more!
I shall be prepping a second lot shortly, with the requisite boiling done this time!
moonbells
You can get this problem is the acid content in the vinegar is too low. It needs to be an absolute minimum of 5%. If there is a sugar solution present, it could be that this is diluting the acid content.
You could try salting the garlic first. Put cloves in a bowl, cover with a very thick layer of salt. Next day, add more salt, repeat for 2 more days. Then rinse off salt, add hot undiluted vinegar and any other spices.
I'd be concerned about eating any vegetable/fruit that is fermenting without control i.e. you didn't intend it to ferment. You can get some nasty build-ups of bacteria in some instances.