# The out-date was struck through by the food itself

> Masking tape on a pickling crock predicted a date and got it wrong by a week, and the correction is in the same hand, written a fortnight later.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/pickling-crock-date-label

A strip of masking tape, rucked where it was pressed down by hand, stuck to the side of a stoneware
crock.

CUCUMBER. 2.5% BRINE. IN 14.08. OUT 28.08 — with the 28 struck through in red, and 04.09 written
after it.

Whoever wrote the second date used the same tape, the same crock, and almost certainly the same pen.

## What does this strip of tape actually say?

Two dates for the same jar, a fortnight apart, in the same hand.

IN 14.08 is a fact — the day the cucumbers went into the brine, and nobody's going to argue with
that. OUT 28.08 was never a fact; it was a guess, made on day one, about how long a 2.5% brine would
need to finish the job. The red strike-through and 04.09 are that same guess, corrected once there
was something to taste.

## Why did the out-date need correcting at all?

Because fermentation runs on its own timetable, not the one written on the tape.

Brine strength, room temperature and how much sugar was already in the vegetable all change how
quickly the fermentation actually finishes, and none of those are visible from outside the crock on
the day it's sealed. Fourteen days was a reasonable first guess for a 2.5% brine; twenty-eight was
what the cucumbers actually needed, and the only way to find that out was to open the lid and taste
one.

## What makes a date label worth keeping accurate rather than just replacing?

Keeping the wrong date legible under the corrected one.

A fresh strip of tape with just 04.09 on it would read as though somebody knew the answer from the
start. The struck-through 28.08 sitting underneath is the more honest object — a record of a
prediction that turned out to be wrong, overruled once by the same person who made it, in front of
anybody who reads the crock afterward. [A recipe card's own correction, written years later in a second ink](/stories/recipe-card-with-a-splash), keeps the same wrong number legible for the same reason.

## Isn't this just relabelling, the same way tape goes on an old tin?

Not quite — nothing here was reassigned to a new job.

[A toffee tin relabelled MARBLES in biro](/stories/marbles-tin) is a container being told
it now holds something different from what the manufacturer printed on it. This tape never changed
what the crock held or what it was for — CUCUMBER and 2.5% BRINE are still true on 04.09 exactly as
they were on 14.08. Just the estimate of how long the job would take got corrected, by the same
person, once the food told them they were wrong.

## Do I need permission to print a brine ratio and a set of dates?

No — a percentage and a pair of dates aren't anybody's property.

A brine strength is a ratio of salt to water, the same kind of fact as an oven temperature or a
cooking time; nobody licenses the idea that 2.5% brine takes roughly two weeks with cucumbers. A
named pickling company's own branding or recipe card would be a different matter, and licensable if
putting a real one on a shirt is the point — this crock's tape was handwritten, not printed by
anybody, which is what makes it free to be exactly this specific.

## Does this apply to ferments other than cucumbers?

Any ferment where the finish depends on conditions rather than a fixed number of days.

Sauerkraut, kimchi, and a cask of something stronger all get a first-guess date written down and
then, more often than not, moved once somebody actually checks. The tape's shape — a first date, a
correction, the same hand both times — is the format; cucumber is just what happened to be in this
particular crock. A [sourdough starter's own feed log](/stories/sourdough-feed-log) runs on
the same uncooperative clock, just measured in hours rather than weeks.

## Does it print well?

Yes — tape and marker are already a flat, high-contrast object.

Cream and red on an olive ground stay close to a real strip of masking tape, and the tape wants
keeping as an irregular, slightly rucked shape rather than squared into a clean rectangle — a hard
box around it would read as a label glued on rather than tape pressed down by a thumb. Keep the
strike-through visibly a strike-through: a line through the old date, not an erasure of it.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the crock at [JustOG](/) — what's fermenting, the brine strength, and both dates. Pick a
direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and
shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

The 28 is still readable under the line through it. Nobody scraped the tape off and started again.