UPDATE: I am pleased to report that my garlic story has a happy ending. As I had mentioned before, I recently fermented some garlic cloves for about a month, but they unfortunately had a weird minty/menthol taste. I was going to throw them outside in the trash, but it was rainy that night, so I threw them in the fridge instead. I planned on tossing them the next day; however, I got really busy and ended up totally forgetting about them.
Fast forward to this week. I rediscovered the cloves in the back of the fridge behind some Xmas leftovers and thought, "Holy crap, my garlic!" I was finally going to toss the cloves but decided to give them a sniff first. To my surprise, they didn't smell bad. Then I thought, "What the heck?" So I fished one out of the jar and took a small bite. It was delicious!! No minty/menthol taste at all!
It was cool because the texture was still kinda crunchy like raw garlic, but the taste was similar to cooked garlic. I love this stuff!!
I think I'm gonna let my next jar ferment for 2 months (instead of just one) before throwing it in the fridge. Hopefully I get the same delicious results!