The thought of lye on the black olives freaks me out. I pick them green and brine them in salt water which gets changed frequently. They are delicious and easy to do this way. I also brine garlic, herbs and citrus slices to add with the final red wine vinegar.

Google Olive Brine Recipes. The web is full of them.

Do they turn black while brining?
Thank you, will look it up!

desertdance: funny, most of the info I've seen calls for lye with green olives, but allows brining for black. I've only brined black (ripe in other words) olives, with great success also. There are loads of how to recipes online for this as well.

fireweed22: By now you've probably realized that the olives stay the same color through the brining, so however you pick them is what you get. In nature, olives tend to hang on the tree for months once ripe, and if they are not attacked by insects, can still be used for curing. But in your case it sounds like you might have to pick them all at once, and brine them in their various stages of ripeness. In my mind plump and purple is best, but green is obviously ok, as is black and shriveled as long as it is relatively intact (no insect damage or mold, etc...). Have fun!

It used to make me sad that there is nothing on Olives in this forum. There should be. I absolutely love both black and green, and I did so much research online, I never found that you can brine black ones. It's news to me! Thanks!

I'm so in love with the greenies. I include pink and purple because they are not yet ripe, and the jars look so pretty.

I have no idea what variety we have. They have enormous olives. I jerked a couple suckers off a few trees at a local golf course, and they grew. Mine haven't fruited yet after 4 years, but that golf course is handy, and I go prepared to pick while those men take FOREVER to find their balls which they always hit in the weeds, and to PUTT! An olive could go from green to ripe just in the time it takes them to walk around their ball, examine every angle and miss the hole every time!

As far as brinning one or two olives, that could take a long time. I'd put them in a black coffee cup and keep them in a cool dark cupboard and change the brine often. It has to be salty enough to float a fresh egg.

I found so much history on olives when searching for brine recipes. Ripe olives are bitter! So nobody thought to eat them, but then some fisherman found some that had fallen into salty water, tasted them, found them to be good, and so the myth lives...........~

I had about 6 varieties when I lived in central California. I would pick them at the green(unripe) stage because I preferred that flavor. Well, not the Greek (Kalamata) olive.

You need to remove the oleic acid. You can do that by soaking in a lye solution(very difficult). Or you can put them in a brine(salt) solution, easier but it takes longer. Brining has been around for a long time. Think of dill pickles or saurkraut.

It's easiest to pick them all at one time. If you like them green, do it earlier. Ripe, let them turn black. Or halfway between and get both.

Good luck.