Fermented Hot Sauce :D

[ryantr0n]

Anyone do any tabasco style fermented hot sauces?

I just got a bundle of chilies from a lady at work that grows em and doesn't eat em. Fermentation seems to be the logical method of preparation for me :p

Recipies?

Tips?

Tricks?

Huzzah!

[mr x]

Talk to Rubbertoe.

Sent from my Nexus S

[RubberToe]

Goto thehotpepper.com to the sauce making forum. there's a sticky about fermenting peppers. Peppers don't have much natural lacto. A starter helps.

Sent from the brew timer.

[RubberToe]

Make sure you have enough brine to cover the peppers. Also make sure you give them pleny of time... I'm thinking 3 weeks at least. If you have a ph metre or strips you can test along the way.

[RubberToe]

Sorry for all the spam, lol. Here's a couple posts I made in Jan 2010 on the subject that might be helpful.

Hey all, last week I put up a jalapeno mash and thought I'd post about it.

I tried a mash in July and it flopped mostly because I didn't use enough brine. I've learned more since then so here's another go at it. Last time I used kefir as a starter which worked OK but this time I had some live sauerkraut on hand so I used that.

I read in a thread about sour dough starters somewhere that adding pineapple juice to reduce the pH gives the lactobacillus a head start on the competing mirco organisms. It turns out that it didn't even affect the taste. They used the juice to give a starting pH of 4.

OK, about my mash.

I am fermenting it in a 1.5L wide mouth mason jar with the lid loose enough to let gas expel. I processed about 1.5 lbs (guessing) in my food chopper and combined it with 2 tbsp of pickling salt, mixing well and giving it 15-20 minutes to extract water from the peppers.

I prepared some extra brine. In a pot I boiled 1L of water with 2 tbsp of pickling salt then let it cool to near room temperature (I did this before to give it time to cool).

I also added 2 tbsp of sugar to my pepper mixture. My theory here is to give the lactobacillus some extra food to eat since there's not a lot of sugar in the peppers. I transfered the peppers / salt / sugar mixture into my mason jar. The brine was definately not enough to cover the peppers. I then added some pineapple juice (guessing - maybe 1/4 or 1/3 a cup) and some of my brine until everything was fully submerged. Some pepper pieces did float on top. I also added what brine I could spare from the sauerkraut I made a couple months ago. The sauerkraut brine will be my starter since it contains live lactobacillus, and lactic acid to reduce the starting pH.

I left it at room temperature in my kitchen and it only took 3-4 days to start fermenting and bubbling happily. It should only take 3 or 4 weeks to ferment out most of the sugars and I'm hoping it will come out nice and acidic (low pH). Aim for a pH of less than 4 for food safety! I think this one will be much lower.

After this one's done my plan it to cook it to stop any fermentation / biological process, soften it up, and possibly strain it for a super smooth sauce. It should not taste sweet at all, something I haven't been liking in my recent fresh sauces; it will be somewhat tart.

Here it is today, 7 days into it. The bubbles push much of the peppers to the top (the separation you see). Every day now I give it a swirl to let them settle. In the past I've used something to weigh them down (keeping them submerged) but there's enough brine now I am not worried of anything growing on top.

I took the day off of work today to get some things done around the house and one of them was finishing the mash and making a sauce. I measured the pH of the mash before any of this and it came out to be 3.24 so I think my experiment with the pineapple juice, sugar, and extra brine was a success.

I brought the mash up to a simmer on the stove to soften it up before putting it through my kitchenaid food strainer. That part didn't work out so well since it didn't separate the pulp enough. I mixed the solids back in and liquified it all in the blender after that.

I started with about 1.2 litres of mash and after running it through the blender I simmered it on the stove for a while to reduce it since at the time I felt it was too runny. It reduced quite well and I ended up adding 2/3 cup of white vinegar. I simmered it a bit more (higher temperature this time, before bottling it. I only got 4 1/2 woozies out of it (5 oz).

The sauce has a real nice tang to it and I can really feel the buz on my tongue like other aged pepper sauces but this is more pronounced since there's more lactic acid than vinegar in mine. After bottling it and cooling for a bit it is much thicker than I thought it would be. I would have diluted it more but I didn't feel like using xanthan gum on this one. Also it's just jalapeno so it's not as spicy as other peppers / sauces and I didn't want it to be too weak. I'd say it has a decent heat for jalapeno.

Oh yeah, as I suspected it's a little salty so I may reduce the amount of salt next time.

Here's the final product:

[ryantr0n]

Nice - thanks, Rob!

I'll probably make a little starter up with some of my pickle juice - I have some cabbage to do too.
Maybe i'll build that up in a big jar and use the extra brine for the peppers.

I've got enough info to at least start thinking about it

[RubberToe]

That sounds like a good plan. BTW the next time I do this I probably won't run the peppers through a food processor before fermenting them but just chop in half or large chunks. Good luck with it and I look forward to how yours turns out.