Fermented hot pepper sauce

[sweetcell]

Because the pH is below 4.6 you can give them a water bath for 30 min if packed hot or 60 min if room temp to make shelf stable.

at what temp?

 

[hottpeper13]

BOILING water bath, just like jam or tomatoes.

 

[dawn_kiebawls]

what is your favorite food to put hot sauces on?

Wings, pizza, eggs, burgers, gumbo, chili, nachos, tacos, burritos, rub it on a steak before I grill it, I use it to marinade various meats, use it to do a wet-rub if I'm smoking, rice, fish, sushi, sandwiches...Pretty much everything I consume is turned up. If I wasn't lactos-intolerant I'd probably put it on cereal lol.

Awesome looking salsa 'verde' by the way!

 

[Miraculix]

Wings, pizza, eggs, burgers, gumbo, chili, nachos, tacos, burritos, rub it on a steak before I grill it, I use it to marinade various meats, use it to do a wet-rub if I'm smoking, rice, fish, sushi, sandwiches...Pretty much everything I consume is turned up. If I wasn't lactos-intolerant I'd probably put it on cereal lol.

Awesome looking salsa 'verde' by the way!

Maaaan am I hungry now.

 

[BGBC]

So I found myself with an abundance of peppers this summer and decided to give a few sauces a try. So far, not bad, but on my most recent batch I was given a few poblanos after I had already started fermenting the peppers. Would I be able to roast these poblanos and add them at blending for some extra flavor? Or will having non-fermented peppers give this a drastically short shelf life/cause other issues?

I've used roasted peppers pre-ferment. I've added some ingredients post-fermentation for flavor purposes (ginger, garlic, etc), but not in significant quantities. If it was me, I would have added the add'l peppers to the fermentation, even if it was already a couple days along.

do folks here have thoughts or feeling about vinegar vs. brine when it comes to blending?

I usually end up adding 50/50 vinegar and brine at blending. All brine would be too salty/funky, but need more liquid to get the thickness correct.

for my sauces, i need to add some sort of liquid when i blend otherwise the sauce turns out way too thick. i wonder what other liquids could be used... beer? wine? spirits? acidic fruit juice? coffee?!?

In my latest batch, I cold-brewed coffee grounds in white vinegar and used that in the final product. Coffee doesn't really come through that strongly, but it's there in the background.

 

[BGBC]

personally, i heat the blended mush until it boils at the edges, mix thoroughly to ensure everything has reached pasteurization temps, let cool, fill, and store bottles in beer fridge. no need to fill bottles hot, IMO, hot sauces are pretty resilient thanks to their low pH and lack of fermentables (lacto and other bugs already consumed those in primary).

If you're storing in the fridge anyway, why pasteurize? You lose any benefit from the 'live' cultures

what is your favorite food to put hot sauces on? many mornings i make myself a breakfast burrito (scrambled eggs and cheese on a tortillas, with occasional avocado and/or leftovers mixed in) and i couldn't imagine eating one without some homemade heat.

I've made so much hot sauce this year, it's going on everything. For eggs, we've been mixing it in with the eggs before cooking (and then adding some after if it still needs more heat).

My other favorite breakfast is savory oatmeal - instead of cinnamon, sugar, peanut butter, etc, add in your favorite combo of tahini, olive oil, soy sauce, hot sauce, shredded cheese, sauerkraut, etc

 

[PCABrewing]

I just finishing putting my first batch of fermented hot sauce together about an hour before even thinking to look on here for tips! I'm excited, but thinking back on how (not) well my first beer turned out I'm cautiously optimistic.

Garlic, ginger, orange bell, a couple mini sweet reds, some carrot, a smoked/dried New Mexico chili, 2 delicious peaches, 6 or 8 habaneros and a scotch bonnet. 3% brine. I'm hoping for a sweet heat that is an appealing shade of brown lol.

I need to quickly figure out how to get an airlock attached to the lid of the mason jar though. I thought it would be as easy as drill a hole, insert grommet/gasket thing, stick airlock in. Come to find out (after everything was in the brine) my largest drill bit is too small that will be a project for tomorrow.


Anyway, @Yooper my wife and I just got back from a road trip up through the UP and loved it! We camped at Sleeping Bear Dunes a couple of nights, Spent another couple of days camping and kayaking around Pictured Rocks and made our way back home to Nebraska. I love it up there...I'm not a big fan of those Pasty things though lol

If you get back up there try camping at FJ Mclain near Houghton in the UP.
You can get a campsite almost on the beach and if it is a warm summer you might even be able to tolerate a dip in the big lake.
Water so clear you can see your toes when you are chest deep.

So back on topic, do you have to inoculate with Lactobacillus? Or just rely on nature?
I always have more hot peppers than I can eat and this might be a good alternative.

 

[sweetcell]

So back on topic, do you have to inoculate with Lactobacillus? Or just rely on nature?

no innoculation needed, plenty of lacto hanging out on the peppers.

I always have more hot peppers than I can eat and this might be a good alternative.

DO IT

 

[sweetcell]

All brine would be too salty/funky, but need more liquid to get the thickness correct.

to date the majority of my sauces have been brine-only and they've turned out great. not too funky nor salty, but that's just according to taste buds around here (which do skew heavily towards salt). like you, i've recently moved to a 50/50'ish mix and plan on sticking with that.

If you're storing in the fridge anyway, why pasteurize? You lose any benefit from the 'live' cultures

so this is probably a topic for another thread ("the debate thread"?), but: i don't buy into the live cultures/probiotics thing. lacto cannot survive your stomach acids, so by the time the probiotic gets to where it can be absorbed (small intestine) there is no difference between the recently-killed lacto from a probiotic and the long-dead lacto in my pasteurized sauce. since i don't care about having live lacto in my food, i'd rather have the benefit of stability that pasteurization brings. but this is just me, i fully realize many many people seek out live cultures for their (purported) benefits. i also acknowledge that i could be full of crap

love the savory oatmeal suggestion, thanks!

 

[Genuine]

I'm glad I found this thread. I recently got into making my own hot sauces and currently doing my first fermented one. Previously I fire roasted half a pound of habanero's, along with a red pepper, half an onion and 4 garlic cloves. Once roasted, I threw those into the blender with 3 fingers of salt, sugar, half cup of white vinegar and half a cup of water. It was a great savory hot sauce with some decent kick. This time around I picked up the Ball fermentation jar kit and doing half pound of habanero's with a half pound of scotch bonnets, 4 cloves of garlic and a quarter of an onion. It's been in there for about 3 days now. I plan on using some of the brine and vinegar in the blender when it's ready.

 

[sweetcell]

doing half pound of habanero's with a half pound of scotch bonnets, 4 cloves of garlic and a quarter of an onion.

wow, your heat tolerance is clearly higher than mine! your recipe is essentially all hot peppers, and no carriers/fillers. both habaneros and bonnets are listed in the 100K to 350K SHU range... should put some hair on your chest.

my hot sauces are typically 40-50% hot peppers and the rest carrier/filler. other than garlic, my favorite non-pepper ingredient is pineapple. i'll be making ver.2 of my pineapple/habanero/garlic/ginger sauce for my next batch.

 

[Genuine]

wow, your heat tolerance is clearly higher than mine! your recipe is essentially all hot peppers, and no carriers/fillers. both habaneros and bonnets are listed in the 100K to 350K SHU range... should put some hair on your chest.

my hot sauces are typically 40-50% hot peppers and the rest carrier/filler. other than garlic, my favorite non-pepper ingredient is pineapple. i'll be making ver.2 of my pineapple/habanero/garlic/ginger sauce for my next batch.

Well, a big reason for it is from going through covid and losing my taste and smell. The only thing I could pick up was extreme saltiness/sweet or anything spicy. So when I couldn't taste anything else, hot sauce went on anything and everything. That evolved into watching Hot Ones at night and really peeked my curiosity. From there I ordered their Da Bomb Insanity sauce and that sauce is about at my limit. The sugar in the recipe helps out a ton because it starts out sweet, and then the heat shows up about 8 seconds later. When it's on a wing, the heat doesn't come through as much as you would think so it's very restrained in that aspect. Now, if you do a spoonful of it, then it's a different story LOL! So, it's a great savory sauce with a kick but nothing that I would find over bearing. I was hoping it would be hotter considering the amount of peppers I put into it. I've brought a batch into work and made wings for the guys to have them try and most everyone said the same. They considered it savory with a nice heat level, but nothing that's mind-blowingly hot.

 

[sweetcell]

Da Bomb Insanity sauce and that sauce is about at my limit.

lol, like i said your tolerance is clearly higher than mine - and now we know why, COVID. have your senses of taste and smell come back to "normal", or did COVID permanently affect those?

RE: the Hot Ones gauntlet, i might be able to survive the first half, but those upper sauces look painful. if i was ever invited on Hot Ones (not that i ever would be), i would skip Da Bomb - it's pure extract and no one enjoys it. seems like just pain, the common reaction to it is "why? just, WHY?!?". i've got enough such questions bouncing around my head

 

[BGBC]

my hot sauces are typically 40-50% hot peppers and the rest carrier/filler. other than garlic, my favorite non-pepper ingredient is pineapple. i'll be making ver.2 of my pineapple/habanero/garlic/ginger sauce for my next batch.

Carrots for me. The spicy carrots also make for a great snack post-fermentation. I tried pineapple, mango, and peach with habanero this year and all came out nice.

 

[Goat_Rock_Hal]

Greetings all,
I’m benefiting from a harvest of orange manzano peppers which I seed (de-seed? - black seeds btw), whack up in a food processor with some salt just until coarsely chopped, set up to ferment with the glass weight and rubber nipple arrangement and a splash of pickle juice in 1/2 gallon jars for a couple weeks, then blend with fire roasted orange bell peppers, roasted garlic, roasted carrots and some white vinegar. I strain the result through a two mesh strainer and end up with awesome tangy yellow hot sauce and a side product of yellow mash suitable for all sorts if things. Though I refrigerate these, I understand the live cultures help prevent spoilage.

 

[Genuine]

lol, like i said your tolerance is clearly higher than mine - and now we know why, COVID. have your senses of taste and smell come back to "normal", or did COVID permanently affect those?

RE: the Hot Ones gauntlet, i might be able to survive the first half, but those upper sauces look painful. if i was ever invited on Hot Ones (not that i ever would be), i would skip Da Bomb - it's pure extract and no one enjoys it. seems like just pain, the common reaction to it is "why? just, WHY?!?". i've got enough such questions bouncing around my head

I'd say I'm about 99% back to my normal smell and taste. There's been recent times when I've had my favorite foods and they taste like I remember them so that's great. Da Bomb isn't a sauce that I'd put any anything on a daily basis however it's fun to have friends try when they come over for wings.

 

[Nagorg]

This is the hottest sauce we have in the fridge. But its honestly too much! Like you said @Genuine, fun to break out when friends come over.

 

[pvpeacock]

I have been wondering if I could make fermented hot sauce without using the brine which is a bit too salty for me. At the same time, I don't want to use only vinegar to blend with the fermented peppers. Any other suggestions for liquids to blend with other than brine or vinegar? Would beer work (given that this is a beer web site after all)?

 

[sweetcell]

I have been wondering if I could make fermented hot sauce without using the brine which is a bit too salty for me. At the same time, I don't want to use only vinegar to blend with the fermented peppers. Any other suggestions for liquids to blend with other than brine or vinegar? Would beer work (given that this is a beer web site after all)?

a few options were discussed above. as far as i know no one has tried beer yet. i bet a sour/lambic-style beer would work well!

 

[pvpeacock]

Oooohhhhh, I have a bottle of Flanders Red that could be delicious in hot sauce! Great idea.

 

[Nagorg]

I have been wondering if I could make fermented hot sauce without using the brine which is a bit too salty for me. At the same time, I don't want to use only vinegar to blend with the fermented peppers. Any other suggestions for liquids to blend with other than brine or vinegar? Would beer work (given that this is a beer web site after all)?

FWIW, I used some vegetable broth and it seemed to work well. It has a savory flavor that tamed the vinegar "twang" without being too salty. I have no idea if there's any problem with using that but if there is, I sure havent observed it. The sauce is delicious and almost gone now.

 

[user 211287]

I have been wondering if I could make fermented hot sauce without using the brine which is a bit too salty for me. At the same time, I don't want to use only vinegar to blend with the fermented peppers. Any other suggestions for liquids to blend with other than brine or vinegar? Would beer work (given that this is a beer web site after all)?

Thats simple. You can buy lactic acid for brewing. Mix it with water to the pH you want. Best guess would be shoot for around 3.6pH. Add that to your ferment when making the sauce. I use lime juice often too. Actually pretty much any sauce i make gets lime juice added.

 

[dawn_kiebawls]

I haven't been active on here in quite some time so I'd like to photo-dump real quick and let you know what I've been up to:

This year I decided I'm going all in on my hot sauce/salsa/bloody mary mix game!

I've got two varieties of Jalapenos, Ghost Scorpion, Piri Piri, Cayenne, 7 pot bubblegum (the '7 pot' name comes from the fable that one pepper is hot enough to spice up 7 pots of soup...we'll see), Yellow Fever (another superhot, supposedly clocking in around 2 million scoville), Antep Aci Dolma (essentially a sweeter red bell pepper with the heat of a jalapeno. I'm very excited for these!), Korean Hot (traditional pepper used for kim chi), Hawaiian Sweet Hot, Caribe, a Red Scotch Bonnet and some others I'm sure I've forgotten about lol.

My Jalapeno seedlings are extremely leggy to the point they fall over under the weight of their cotyledons so I'm going to attempt to transplant them deep in hopes that they will put out new root growth but I fear I may not have a Jalapeno crop this season







On top of all the pepper varieties I've got 8 varieties of tomatoes going right now as well. I don't really like tomatoes so I decided I would at least grow the more unusual and weird varieties:







Here in zone 5 there is still time to get seeds started indoors - if anyone would like some pepper or tomato seeds drop me a line and I'll do my best to get some sent out to you in time

 

[ringneck]

I plant all my seeds every year too. When they get spindly like that it usually means there isn't enough light and they're stretching to reach the light. Previously I used T5HO bulbs, but for this coming year I upgraded to a Mars LED light. I also keep a small fan on the plants which helps bulk up the stalks.
I start my seeds around St Patrick's day to put in the ground around mother's day. (Chicago area / zone 5) I generally make adobo sauce or salsa - but this fermented sauce thread has me thinking of some new things for this coming summer...

 

[sweetcell]

love seeing the grows! unfortunately here in the PNW peppers don't do very well. i'm on the border between zones 8 and 9, thanks to elevation. our summers are hot but i fear not quite long enough. that, and all the wildlife would ravage them...

bought ingredients for my next batch of habanero + red jalapeno + pineapple + ??? sauce last week, only to be reminded that we're out of town this week... so i put everything in the fridge and will do the ferment next week.

 

[Nagorg]

It needs to warm up a little bit here. But I've really been enjoying the pepper sauces from last year and cant wait to get new batches going.

 

[dawn_kiebawls]

I got 5 of my really leggy jalapenos transplanted into red solo cups with holes drilled in the bottom. I buried the stems pretty deep HOPING they'll sprout some adventitious roots like tomatoes do and not just fall victim to stem rot but it was either that stake/trellis/train jalapenos because of some weak stems or throw them out. Everything else is looking solid though so I should be transplanting the rest of my peppers and tomatoes to solo cups either this weekend or next. I don't care what the groundhog or the mercury say, it's feeling more like spring every day


@ringneck - how many sets of true leaves do you usually wait to see before transplanting out of their seed cells/starters? Those are some healthy lookin' peppers you posted. I'll be thrilled if mine resemble them even slightly!

 

[ringneck]

@dawn_kiebawls - I don't transplant them at all. I start 2 pepper seeds each in 50mm Jiffy peat pods in seed trays. (The smaller peat pods don't maintain moisture consistently from my experience) As they start to get too dense and the light isn't able to get to the lower leaves, I thin down to 1 sprout per pod. They'll continue to grow and get too dense again, at which point I move 1/2 of the pods to a new tray and spread out the pods to 1 every other cell in the tray. I fertilize them with 1/4-1/2 of the recommended amount 2 or 3 times over the course of the 8-10 weeks before they go in the ground.

As the daytime temps get above 40-45, I move the trays outside during daylight and bring them back in until the overnight temps are warm enough. Usually during the last week or 2 the plants are outside full time.

I found light to be key. I have upgraded my lighting a few times over the years. Started with standard fluorescent shop lights, to T5HO shop lights, and now to an LED grow light. When I did use lesser powered lights, I found to keep the plants from getting leggy I would put the light only an inch or 2 above the plant tops (Assuming the light you use doesn't throw too much heat)

I start my tomatoes a week after my peppers in 4" pots. Tomatoes take less time to sprout, so usually this means they all sprout roughly together and stay the same height for the first several weeks while they're mostly under a grow light. Eventually the tomatoes grow bigger, so I use the bigger pots for them. I still don't transplant though, I start the seeds right in the same pot.

 

[Oldskewl]

It sounds like the Mars LED grow light is worthwhile. Which model(s) do you have? I was looking at the Mars Hydra TS 600W full spectrum. Looks like it can be had on eBay for about $67 shipped. I only start about 16 pods at a time.

 

[ringneck]

I have the Mars TSL 2000W, but I start over 100 pods each year. That 600W model should be more than enough for 16 pods