r/FermentedHotSauce

My peppers are coming in slow but steady but not enough to start a batch to ferment for sauce. Would it be ok to freeze them until I have a big enough batch?

OK so I am trying out my first fermented hot sauce and my peppers are literally fermenting on their own (( BORING)) I'm planning on roasting some rhubarb to mix with it with some garlic, onions but can I also roast the peppers after they're fermented?

Hey folks, I've tried this twice and have, on neither occasion, gotten any meaningful fermentation. 2% brine, by mass. On the second time I tried adding some kimchi to seed, and still no fermentation.

I am trying a vacuum bag, vacuumed, but that's not generally a preservation method on its own. Maybe I'm popping the helpful bacterial cells?

Any tips or suggestions?

Planning on Habanero and Ghosts this time, and I need to do research on garlic in fermentation. My favorite hot sauce is Garlic Reaper.

I'm wanting to get into fermenting hot sauces as I like fermentation (I ferment my own sodas and mead) and I like hot sauce, but I don't want to be spending money on proper jars or lots of peppers and special ingredients before I understand the process a bit better. I've got a 400ml jam jar that I want to make a test batch in, but recipes are annoying. The "simple" recipes I've found tend to have one or more of these problems:

- Are in American units (ounces are the worst because I never know if they're talking about fluid ounces or weight ounces)

- Don't say how much final product there will be

- Measure final product in teaspoons/tablespoons (seriously tho if you're getting to the point of counting more than like 3 tablespoons, pick a new unit. Also tablespoons and teaspoons are barely a standard measurement, especially for solids where weight could be given instead)

- Are massive batches

- Use some obscure ingredient that I can only get online (I'm in the UK our shops sell like 3 spices total)

It seems like a really interesting hobby but these things are definitely putting me off. Could anyone help me to find (or give me) a simple recipe that can be made in a 400ml jar, uses metric units, and gives me a rough idea of how much sauce I'll end up with by the end? The main spicy peppers I can get near me are birds eye chillies and scotch bonnets.

I have been growing some peppers in my yard and a friend recently gave me some fermentation equipment that looks to be for mason jars and I wanted to try making hot sauce. Thing is, I have no clue what to do, the equipment is unfamiliar to me.
What do I need to know for making hot sauce? I have cayenne and jalapeno peppers that have turned out so far, but I also will have Tabasco and poblano peppers.
I’ve done very minimal research, I’ve seen that I need vinegar and salt but I don’t know what 2% salt means (percent of what?) and I’ve seen that there is a 2-4 week timeframe for lots of stuff.
So what will I need to do to make the hot sauce and, from what I’ve gathered I’m putting the peppers in vinegar in the jar, how do I transfer the stuff into a new bottle for having hot sauce.
Thanks in advance for any help, and the more info the better, I don’t have any experience with fermentation so I don’t know any lingo.

What kind of vessel do you use to make large batches of fermented hot sauce? Like larger than a half gallon. I've been fermenting for over four years and I like to leave my ferments for over six months- I'm not sure if that's overkill really but I've had hundreds of different kinds of hot sauces and it seems like any kind of fermented hot sauce is better than the best non-fermented hot sauce

First batch I did was a pretty standard red fresno mash with garlic and a bit of carrot. Tasted fine, nothing special, kind of one-note. I basically set it and forgot it for like 3 weeks and bottled when I remembered.

This second one I'm doing right now (fresnos again but with mango, shallot, and a few habs for kick) I've been actually checking on every day. Burping when I need to, tasting at week 1, week 2, week 3. And the difference is wild. Around day 10 it tasted sharp and kind of harsh, almost vegetal. By day 18 something shifted and it got this rounder, almost fruity funk going on that wasn't there before. If I had bottled at day 14 like I did last time I would have completely missed it.

The thing nobody really told me starting out is that the ferment isn't just "done at 3 weeks." It actually goes through phases and if you're not tasting along the way you have no idea where the sweet spot is for that specific batch. My first one I probably pulled way too early and that's why it was flat tasting.

The annoying part is keeping track of all this. I've got a notes app thing going with start dates, brine percentages, daily pH if I remember, taste notes, and it's already a mess after two batches. I can't imagine what it looks like for you guys running 5 or 10 jars at once.

I've been kind of messing around with putting something together for myself to handle this, jar tracking and taste log stuff mostly. Nothing fancy. If I actually get it into a usable state would a few people here want to poke at it and tell me what's missing? Would rather build it around how people actually ferment than just my own setup.

Also curious, when did you start noticing the flavor really change on your ferments? Was it gradual or did it kind of hit a turning point for you too?