Will,

You're very close. The server actually loads the key properties (module version, supportedDatabases, etc.) from module.xml, not module.properties. The standard build process will translate module.properties into module.xml (via substitution into module.template.xml), but you aren't building this module (and you don't need to)... just copy content like the below to /resources/config/module.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.0.xsd">
    <bean id="moduleBean" class="org.labkey.api.module.SimpleModule">
        <property name="name" value="Fermentation"/>
        <property name="version" value="1.0"/>
        <property name="requiredServerVersion" value="14.10"/>
        <property name="supportedDatabases" value="pgsql"/>
    </bean>
</beans>

Your other files are perfect... I copied my module.xml plus your fermentation.xml & fermentation-0.00-1.00.sql to the appropriate locations in my externalModules directory and the module correctly created the new schema.

Adam