Get Ready for the 2025 Portland Fermentation Festival

miso-jorinji-portland-fermentation-festival-2019-oregon — Jorinji Miso is some of my favorite miso made here in Portland. Scene from the 2019 Portland Fermentation Festiva.

It’s almost that time again—time for the 2025 Portland Fermentation Festival, aka Stinkfest, as it is lovingly called. This celebration of all things fermented, fizzy, and alive has been going on since 2009 (with a break during the COVID pandemic). Here are the details about this year’s Festival.

I have to say, for whatever reason, I’ve had multiple conversations about fermentation lately. Over with the Burger Ritual folks yesterday, we talked about how frying lactofermented pickles would probably kill anything beneficial about them—as well as kill much of the flavor—so it makes sense for them to fry up vinegar-brined pickles (which they make themselves). And at a recent She Flies event, I encountered a woman who meets up with a group of friends regularly to talk about and share the fermented products they all make in the Portland area.

Fermentation is in the air, it seems. Plus, it’s pickling and preserving season! This is a great time of year to connect with the art of fermentation.

The Basics

The 2025 Portland Fermentation Festival takes place on Thursday, October 9, 2025 from 6pm to 9pm at the Ecotrust Building in Northwest Portland, where it’s been for many years. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door—just one ticket type, unlike in years past, where they had separate pricing for attending sessions with invited speakers. Your ticket will get you access to everything, from the Bacterial Petting Zoo to the array of samples during the tasting part of the event. BTW, kids 12 and under get in free.

What To Expect

Here are some of the things you’ll see at the 2025 Portland Fermentation Festival:

Starter Barter & Adoption Center. “Bring a vinegar, kombucha, sourdough, etc., starter, take a starter.”
Bacterial Petting Zoo. New to fermentation? This is the place where you can get up close and personal with SCOBYs (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), cultures, and all sorts of fermentation mothers (e.g., vinegar, sourdough starter, and dairy and water kefir grains).
Tastings. This is the premier event for sampling different fermented products in Portland. You’ll find ferments like kraut, kimchi, dairy (e.g., kefir, yogurt, cheese), meat/fish, soy (e.g., tempeh, natto, miso), grains/bread, non-alcoholic drinks (e.g., kombucha, water kefir, kvass) and those with alcohol—and more.
Meet the makers. Get tips and recipes from amateurs and pros in the world of fermentation.
Dillon T. Pickle. That’s right, this big dill of a mascot of the Portland Pickles baseball team will be at the festival. He’ll be doing a sour pickle demo (that’s so meta, as the kids used to say) at 6:30pm, the first demo of the evening.
Raffle. They’ll be giving away KrautKeepers to 25 persons who have bought their tickets in advance online. It’s “a new reusable silicone fermentation tool designed to keep veggies submerged below the brine in gallon jars, from small biz owners Mike & Aaron out of rural Iowa.”

The Non-Commercial Aspect of the 2025 Portland Fermentation Festival

This is a point of pride for festival organizers Liz Crain, Heidi Nestler, and Claudia Lucero, as well as one they cherish: “The Portland Fermentation Festival is, and always has been, a non-commercial event. Once you purchase your ticket and enter the festival you will not be sold to. The wide array of food and drink ferments are not for sale, they are there to sample.”

Their mission is to foster connection, to educate, and encourage community with fermentation as vehicle.

At the writing of this article, there are still tickets, but not for long. You can buy yours here.

2025 Portland Fermentation Festival
Thursday, October 9, 2025
6pm to 9pm
Ecotrust Building, 721 NW 9th Avenue, Portland
Tickets: $15 in advance, $20 at the door. Buy tickets here.
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