Fireside Tonic
For the week the wind turns mean.
ACV tonics
Raw apple cider vinegar, slow-steeped with fiery roots and sweetened with wildflower honey from just up the hill. Peak season runs from back-to-school through winter, but the shelf is stocked year round.
For the week the wind turns mean.
A cozy cold-season ritual.
a note from the kitchen
Small batches mean some jars disappear fast. If your favorite's gone, it's probably just fermenting, check back in a week or two!
Small batch, big opinions
Every jar we make is fermented in small batches, by hand, in Cortland, New York: raw, unpasteurized, and alive. Where most supermarket kraut is quick-pickled with vinegar in a matter of days, ours ferments slowly, the old way, for weeks or months. No heat-treating, no vinegar, no preservatives, no rushing. Just real vegetables, real salt, real time, and the wild cultures that show up when you let good ingredients do their thing.
Nothing is cooked or heat-treated, so the live cultures and their probiotics stay alive all the way to your fork.
We don't rush good food. Our sauerkrauts wild-ferment a patient 4 to 6 months, building the deep, complex tang you cannot fake with vinegar.
Cabbage from a multi-generational family farm in Central New York, organic beets from Chicory Creek Farm, napa cabbage and cucumbers from Plowbreak and Stick & Stone. Farmers we know by name.
A folk remedy, our way
Fire cider is a time-tested herbal infusion, a traditional folk remedy popularized by herbalist Rosemary Gladstar in the 1970s. Slow-steep fiery roots like ginger, horseradish, and garlic in raw apple cider vinegar and you get a warming, potent tonic, traditionally used to stimulate digestion and support seasonal immunity.
More than a decade ago, a local health food co-op asked us to make our own version. We were happy to oblige. Fireside Tonic has become one of our best sellers, and we haven't looked back.
We work with family-owned and operated Gridley Hollow Honey, just up the hill from our ferment kitchen, for the pure, local, raw wildflower honey in every batch. Take a spoonful straight, or whisk it with olive oil for a tangy salad dressing.
Living foods
We don't rush good food. While mass-produced kraut is quick-pickled with vinegar or hurried out in days, ours undergoes a slow, traditional 4 to 6 month wild fermentation. That patient aging lets waves of beneficial lactic acid bacteria flourish, fully breaking down the cabbage for better bioavailability and developing a rich, complex, tangy flavor.
The long ferment also generates postbiotics: beneficial compounds and organic acids made by the probiotic microbes, associated with gut lining integrity and immune health. Raw, alive, and honest. That is the whole point.
Naturally gluten-free · no added sugar, vinegar, or preservatives · nothing you can't pronounce.
From real kitchens
Good to know
From The Daily Brine
Local History
How a dairy valley in Cortland County became the cabbage capital of Central New York.
The Land
Why the Finger Lakes Region grows cabbage worth fermenting, starting with the last ice age.
History
From farmhouse crocks to the kraut factory line to the Land Army, women have always kept Upstate New...