Our Story
This business was born from starting over.
I grew up in Boise, Idaho, hands in garden soil before I knew what a probiotic was. Our family grew everything: fruit trees, peppers, corn, tomatoes, and we preserved every bit of it. That garden was my first classroom, and the kitchen was where science and love met. Fermentation chose me early.
By 21 I was brewing beer. Then winemaking. Then cheesemaking. Then mushroom cultivation. I spent years learning what makes living cultures thrive: the chemistry, the timing, the silence you learn to trust. I built a manufacturing company. I scaled things. I thought I had figured out how to build.
Then, two years ago, I broke my neck returning to competitive wrestling. My business collapsed in my absence. Five months in bed, then months more rebuilding, professionally, physically, and personally. The passion I once had for manufacturing had quietly left. I took six months off to slow down, get quiet, and find my way back to myself. Looking back, I needed that time the same way a ferment needs time in the dark. Broken down, sealed off from the outside world, quietly transforming into something new. You can't rush it. You just have to trust the process.
"I was not meant to stay broken. This new chapter is here to be built from joy and love, not from grinding through pain."
The spark came from an unexpected place. In therapy, I was working through a meditation from a modality called Internal Family Systems, a practice of connecting with different parts of yourself. In that meditation, I found myself hanging out with little Josh. My childhood self. And he wanted to make kimchi. That was it. Simple as that.
That week I went and bought the ingredients. Made a batch. Took some pictures and sent them to friends. The responses came back fast. "How much for a jar?" That was the moment Brine Time was born. Not from a business plan or a late-night strategy session. It came from a co-creation between my childhood self and my community. Both of them pointing me home at the same time.
I sold out at my first market event. Doubled the batch. Sold out again. Doubled it again. Eight weeks later I'm writing this About page for a passion project that is reconnecting me with my childhood self, the kid who loved the garden, trusted the process, and found meaning in watching things transform. The fermentation is literal and metaphorical. Given the right environment, broken-down things become something nourishing and alive.
I'm not a doctor. I'm a fermentation obsessive, a systems thinker, a comeback story, and someone who genuinely believes that living food and intentional daily habits can shift the way you feel and how you relate to your body and the world. I'm building Brine Time Fermentation to share that with you.
With gratitude,
Joshua Paulson
Founder & Fermenter, Brine Time Fermentation
