not sure why you're getting mad at me, I just share facts about fermentation and pickling vegetables with you from Wikipedia and other reliable sources, because I like pickling & fermentation and enjoy sharing cool knowledge.

> Sauerkraut is a salt fermentation, but not with a brine

Sauerkraut is made with the immense amount of water that is in cabbage, and salt, i.e. a brine. Brine is just salty water. When you add salt to cabbage as you do when making Sauerkraut, you literally end up with brine and cabbage. Sauerkraut is pickled food because it is a food preserved in a brine, in this case through fermentation.

> Pickling is the process of preserving or extending the shelf life of food by either anaerobic fermentation in brine or immersion in vinegar.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickling

> their are many types of salt brine fermentations, like soy sauce, but wouldn't call that pickled either.

Soy sauce is indeed a fermented salt brine. But what food is it preserving? None, just the liquid itself. So it's not pickled, it's just fermented.

But if you use soy sauce to ferment and preserve say vegetables, then those vegetables are said to be /pickled/. There's even a word for it (Shoyuzuke)

it is correct to say sauerkraut is both fermented AND pickled

'pickled' just means preserving something in a brine. This can be done through an acid brine like vinegar and heat treatment.. or through lacto-fermentation (a salt brine which helps a particular type of bacteria, which produces acid, grow.)

Even in just the context of cucumber pickles at your grocery store, you can often find both types and not even know it.

Cheaper brands on the shelves like Vlasic will be heat-pasteurized in a vinegar brine, normally not refrigerated as there's no live bacteria producing gasses so the jars won't explode.

While other brands like Claussen, Mt Olive, etc. will be in the fridge section because they were lacto-fermented and need to stay cool to slow the bacteria to keep them fresh longer (and avoid unwanted pressure buildup in the jar.)