Lacto Fermented Hot Sauce

nutty_gnome said:

So what is a decent book covering the how-to of lacto-fermented hot sauces?

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As far as books I recommend Wild Fermentations by Sandor Katz. Not a lot about hot sauce but lacto-fermentation in general. His website had good info too www.wildfermentation.com

Also check out thehotpepper.com which was mentioned earlier in this thread. Some good in-depth write ups and threads on fermented hot sauces

Tamarlane said:

those look great - are they all straight super hots? no carrot/mango/onion/etc to mellow them out?

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The set of 3 jars just has peppers and the 2 has carrots added. After they are done fermenting I will process in food processor and add a few things to it for taste.

Tamarlane said:

As far as books I recommend Wild Fermentations by Sandor Katz. Not a lot about hot sauce but lacto-fermentation in general. His website had good info too www.wildfermentation.com

Also check out thehotpepper.com which was mentioned earlier in this thread. Some good in-depth write ups and threads on fermented hot sauces

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Plus 1 on thehotpepper.com

NibblesMN said:

Is there any reason kefir wouldn't work as a starter? It's mostly lacto but there's usually a zillion other critters in there too. I'm gonna try it either way. Worst case I guess I get (super) spicy kefir.

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For what it's worth, kefir worked beautifully and made a proper sour in 3 lbs of hatch chilies. I'll definitely make this again.

Oh man, I'm all over this!:rockin:

NibblesMN said:

For what it's worth, kefir worked beautifully and made a proper sour in 3 lbs of hatch chilies. I'll definitely make this again.

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How much kefir did you use?

richbrew99 said:

How much kefir did you use?

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3 tablespoons. I was tempted to use more since I didn't know how active it would be. But 3 tbsp was plenty!

NibblesMN said:

Is there any reason kefir wouldn't work as a starter? It's mostly lacto but there's usually a zillion other critters in there too. I'm gonna try it either way. Worst case I guess I get (super) spicy kefir.

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Page 117 of The Art of Fermentation he says that you can use whey, kraut juice, pickle brine, or other starters if desired.

Sounds like it's a pretty flexible ferment. A google search turned up lots of people using keifer with claimed success.

Fermented first, then strained the brine out, blended and strained out the solids today (jalapeño, poblano, sweet orange pepper mix, with some garlic). Great flavor, mild spice.

Pre-ferment:
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1442758957.837779.jpg

One week in:
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1442758982.773457.jpg

Pepper pellicle:
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1442759000.858398.jpg

Nevermind... after seeing that last photo and thinking of that in the house.....

BGBC,
I dig that pellicle photo. Questions for you... Did you use any kind of starter to kick off fermentation? How long did you ferment this? Did you save the brine to use for something else or toss it?

Tossed in less than a teaspoon of yogurt liquid to help get it started, fermented for 8 days at room temp. I tossed the brine this time, mostly because I didn't have anything ready to use it in and I'm heading out of town tomorrow.

nutty_gnome said:

Nevermind... after seeing that last photo and thinking of that in the house.....

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Don't be scared. Embrace the funk!

Ive started using fruit juices in place of water when i prep mine. Apple juice works realy well, next batch im giving pineapple a go.

Harvested all the peppers out of my garden and blended them up per the OP and added about 2 tablespoons of kefir. Most of my peppers ran out of warm weather days, and were still green, so the resultant mash was a bit on the murky side. We'll see how it turns out in the end.

I just stem and halve chiles from the garden. I cover them in a 5% brine and ferment from about 3 weeks or until no more bubbles rise. I then blend the chiles with some brine and strain through a fine mesh strainer. I then add an equal volume of vinegar and that keeps the ph low enough to be shelf stable. I have a plain one in bottles now, a garlic hot sauce feementing, and hopefully a Mexican style of it stays warm enough for a few ore weeks. All mine this year ate Serrano and ring of fire chiles.

Quaker said:

Most of my peppers ran out of warm weather days, and were still green,

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Place them on a paper towel by a window that gets sun. In a day or so some of them will have fully ripened.

Chris_The_Rogue said:

Place them on a paper towel by a window that gets sun. In a day or so some of them will have fully ripened.

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Excellent suggestion, but a week late. My mash is fermenting away now.

Guys, do any of you have experience with xantham gum, does it working, how you dose it??

matew90 said:

Guys, do any of you have experience with xantham gum, does it working, how you dose it??

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I use 1/8 tsp Xanthan gum and 1/8th tsp geletin for half a gallon of sauce. Heat a cup of vinigar up on the stove, sprinkle it in SLOWLY. It has a tendancy to clump.

.5 -1% xanthan gum by weight of your sauce, sprinkled so it doesn't clump and stirred or blended for a couple of minutes. Works great to emulsify a vinaigrette too.

I've got two jars going right now, roughly to the recipe given by the OP, except halved and using a variety of Chinese peppers chosen for convenience. I used a little bottle of Yakult as my starter and we were off to the races real quick.

I've scooped mold off the top of the mash every time I've stirred - it's not getting thick, but it's growing pretty uniformly across the top of the mash every day or two. Should I be worried about that or is it unlikely to affect my sauce? When I harvest in a day or two, will I be able to use the mash for future innoculations or culinary purposes, or should I toss it because it's been infected with mold?

FatDragon said:

I've got two jars going right now, roughly to the recipe given by the OP, except halved and using a variety of Chinese peppers chosen for convenience. I used a little bottle of Yakult as my starter and we were off to the races real quick.



I've scooped mold off the top of the mash every time I've stirred - it's not getting thick, but it's growing pretty uniformly across the top of the mash every day or two. Should I be worried about that or is it unlikely to affect my sauce? When I harvest in a day or two, will I be able to use the mash for future innoculations or culinary purposes, or should I toss it because it's been infected with mold?

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I am surprised you are seeing that much mold if you used a starter - might want to up the salt next time. Regardless it should not be anything to worry about. If you have any doubts you can always boil the final product or add vinegar to be safe

Tamarlane said:

I am surprised you are seeing that much mold if you used a starter - might want to up the salt next time. Regardless it should not be anything to worry about. If you have any doubts you can always boil the final product or add vinegar to be safe

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My past attempts at vegetable fermentation have almost all been failures, something I attribute to using way too much iodized salt and no starter bugs. This time I followed roughly the proportions of the first page recipe and used non-iodized sea salt. Next time I'll use a bit more salt proportionally, but should I keep using the sea salt or would iodized salt plus a starter stave off mold while still fermenting?

I wasn't particularly concerned about the mold, but I'm glad to see confirmation that it shouldn't be a big problem. I'll dip a pH strip in the finished sauce when I bottle it and add some vinegar if necessary, but I suspect it's only the mash that's susceptible to molding, as the liquid should be acidic enough to stave off any spores that find their way in.

No iodized salt, stick to kosher or sea salt. Reducing surface area helps too

I just finished up a batch. I used Trinidad Scorpions from the garden, serranos and garlic. 2% salt and some whey from greek yougurt.
It smells amazing. Even the smell burns. It tastes really good, right before it burns off your taste buds. Its insanely hot.

After letting my batches ride a couple days without stirring, I'm pretty sure the white "mold" I was scooping out was actually a pellicle. I'll be bottling soon and saving the mash for future fermentations and/or culinary experimentation; should I stir the pellicle back in before bottling or scoop it out like I've been doing?

im using 2% of non ionized hawaian salt, but my question is. does anybody ever try jamaican hot or habanero chocolate, wahat is tasted like ?? is it good for fermentation??

I decided to scoop out the pellicle before bottling for lack of responses. One more neurotic question: I got one 500 mL fliptop bottle filled right to the brim, though I may portion it out into other bottles later on. I put it in the fridge with the lid closing it up but with the bale open so gas from any further fermentation would be able to escape without blowing up the bottle or carbonating the hot sauce.

So, will this continue to ferment off the mash and refrigerated, or am I safe to close the bale and seal this stuff off?

edit: Spoke too soon on the "one more neurotic question" thing. I got home and the solids had precipitated out of the sauce, so there's 450 mL of slightly yellow-greenish liquid up top and some reddish mush at the bottom. Should I just shake it up before serving, or is there a better way?

You can strain the solids through a fine mesh, pushing hard to get all the liquid. If you want to stop fermentation you can add and equal amount of neutral vinegar and store at room temp.

No need to worry about CO2 production, especially in the fridge. After a week of fermentation or so you will not see much activity of that sort. Flavor will definitely change with age though

StonesBally said:

You can strain the solids through a fine mesh, pushing hard to get all the liquid. If you want to stop fermentation you can add and equal amount of neutral vinegar and store at room temp.

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I strained through a mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth, so I knew I would keep some solids in the sauce. What came out looked roughly like Cholula or Tabasco sauce - fairly thin with a little bit of body and a red-orange color. The picture illustrates what I saw after 24 hours in the fridge.