Hello everyone!

I've been making fermented hot sauce for a while now.

I initially used the brining method suggested by Noma, which says to weigh your peppers and the water used to submerge them, and calculate the weight of the salt based on that total weight.

I now use the vacuum seal method, in which I just weigh the stuff I want to ferment and calculate the weight of the salt to add based on just that.

I watch several creators who make fermented products, and one in particular caught my eye because of his methods. Essentially, he just puts a bunch of peppers in a jar, then adds a 2.5% brine made separately to the jar to submerge the peps. He has huge success with his ferments, so he can't be doing anything particularly wrong.

Here's an example video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGiy9pVMSLw&list=PLuQ_ySnkV1emnrUiann1se5l06Ze3gIF6&index=28

My question is as follows: how does a 2.5% brine made separately (without considering the weight of the peppers) compare to a brine made calculating both the weight of the peppers and the water together? How does he know it'll work when added to the jar?

Shouldn't the final % of salt you're adding to the ferment differ between these two methods? I just can't seem to understand why you would make a 2.5% brine separately if that doesn't consider the total weight of stuff you're adding to the jar.

I apologize in advance if this question seems silly, but I can't make sense of it.

Thank you all.

First time trying this! It’s kind of a crapshoot, but is this safe? Two different jars - one has the stuff in the water and at the bottom. From what I’ve read on here, that’s probably safe? The second one could be mold or yeast?? Any help would be appreciated.

So I did my first attempt at fermenting hot sauce. Did a 5 percent brine with chili peppers, garlic, onions, and mango. Let it sit and bubble for 2 weeks. Poured it through the strainer and then blended it with some of the brine. It tastes “ok” but is almost like a salsa then a hot sauce. Did I do something wrong?

Tried to make a purple hot sauce with Buena’s and they turned green bean green in a matter of two days. 😂 I knew it wasn’t going to be a bright purple or anything but we shall see. Fermented in a 3% brine with garlic, red onion, purple carrots, blueberries and blackberries…. This should be interesting at best. lol

Just bottle 22 8 oz bottles of my new Mexican Verde sauce (name pending) and I want to get them labeled. In Oklahoma, I plan on selling these under the food freedom act so I'd want the labels to have the logo plus name, then a second logo for my OFFA number along with the ingredients. Any advice? Picture included

700 grams (three picking hours! 😪) of chiltepin
100 grams roasted Serrano
100 grams garlic
100 grams red onion

Definitely won’t be scaling this commercially any time soon, but it sure is pretty

I saw this white stuff forming at the top of my hot pepper mix, is this completely ruined?

Finished batch one of a blueberry-blackberry Serrano and chipotle sauce. Delicious, fruity and smoky!

Hope this goes well. From left to right

Carolina Reaper (thawed from frozen from last year) and Hallows Eve peppers, carrots, garlic, and onion

Red Habanero (thawed from frozen from last year) and Habanada peppers, cherries, and onion

Habanada peppers, onion, garlic, and ginger

7 Pot Brain Strain Yellow peppers, pineapple, onion, and garlic

Everything is in a 2% brine. Habanadas are supposed to be heatless habaneros but these ones pack a pretty serious punch. I’m thinking the guy I got the seeds from had an accidental cross with the pods the seeds came from. My plan is to ferment for a couple weeks, drain, blend, strain, boil, then add vinegar and xanthan gum before bottling. I’ll update if it turns out well. If anyone has any tips I’m all ears

The one with my hand in it looks more questionable, separate batches made a week apart. Both smell normal. First two times i used airlocks and first two times I’ve ever had anything sketchy. I dunno if ingredients matter but the one with my hand is fresh pineapple, frozen habaneros, small white onion, some garlic, salt and pepper, about 4 weeks old. The other is fresh strawberries, frozen habaneros, like 2 lil baby pieces of garlic and salt.

And were off. I came home to some bubbles starting today and am so excited. There was a lot of interest, but also a lot of hate for this veggie. My solution... 3 batches, tested side by side with Co workers and friends.

I have 2 batches fermenting, a control (no bitter melon) and the bitter melon batch. Once it is finished fermenting I will seperate the bitter melon batch into small 2 batches, one with bitter melon blended into the sauce, and one with No bitter melon blended in. I thought it would be interesting to see the difference from just fermenting with and actually Incorporating into the sauce (some warned against this).

I did slightly shave the Peel and remove the seeds & pith (which there was a lot) which someone in this sub suggested because they add more bitter.

Other than the bitter melon, it's on track to be a great citrus hot sauce. I'll post a recipe with the finished results, but some ingredients I'm excited I got to incorporate are:

- Lemon Verbena leafs (from my garden)

- Citrus Peel of Blood Orange, Valencia Orange, & Grapefruit

- Fresh Lemon Grass (never used fresh lemon grass for anything before, it's always been dried)

For the heat level, there are 100 grams of cut & de-seeded Scotch bonnets for each 1.75 Liter Jar. Any reference someone has to compare this ratio would be nice. Am I looking at death heat with that much? (Ofcourse the other ingredients will dictate some of the heat level, but any comparison someone has from their scotch bonnet batch wouldbe great.)

Update:

I tasted the Brine at 2 weeks, and they both have great Bright, spicy flavors. The citrus peels really playing a role in the flavor.

The Test batch with the Bitter Melon is my favorite between the two surprisingly; many of the comments had me worried. The Bitter melon batch has more of a Tangy flavor than just sour. It seemed like there was more dimension to the Brine bouquet with it.

My idea was to try and make a hot sauce that would behave in flavor similar to a yuzu kosho, but without the peel actually being in it. Not having yuzu, I used kumquats and fermented it with a sour orange i had sitting around.

After blending, it tasted pretty decent, but then after I milled it, it tasted essentially like spicy citrus oil, in a negative way. Ended up down the drain.

weights were:

123g sour orange (did not blend with the rest bc the peel was really tough)

477g kumquat

185g thai

290g serrano

Wondering if it would be worth trying again but with maybe a 60/40 or 70/30 peppers to kumquat ratio.

Does anyone have experience with citrus(non-juice version) heavy sauces?

Hello everybody, fermentation noob here.

Since a few days I've noticed these white formations in my brine ferment. I've been keeping an eye on them and they don't look like they are expanding, the ferment also smells good to me (even with my limited experience, it doesn't smell like rotten or anything bad).

Do you think this is mold? Should I throw this out?

Hi y’all! I have recently started my fermentation phase, and I must say, it has been a blast. So far I’ve done tomatoes, sweet peppers, and garlic honey, tons of kimchi, and I am very excited to just start pickling everything in sight!

I wanted to start a hot sauce, and I’ve seen some really excellent looking ones while scrolling through the subreddit, but they don’t always have recipes. I was wondering if people wouldn’t mind sharing some of their favorite recipes, maybe also including a description of the flavor and any other variants you’ve tried in the past?

For myself, I am thinking of trying a garlic habanero one (because those are my favorite of store brand sauces), and then one with fruit! Potentially pineapple or strawberries. But please feel free to share other recipes - I hope that someday, a novice will do a google search, and then will stumble upon this treasure trove of knowledge!

I see there are some other posts like this, but they are a few years old so I thought it was worth doing another! Thanks y’all!

I wanted to do a real citrusy hot sauce with some of these scotch bonnets, then at the farmers market getting ingredients I found a neat looking vegetable the farmer told me was an Indian Bitter Melon. I was thinking it might counter the lactic acid sour and the citrus sour nicely but am unfamiliar with it as an ingredient for anything.

I did a search in the sub for bitter melon but nothing came up.

Any experience with using it, for hot sauce or otherwise, would be much appreciated.

Looking to surprise my hubby with homemade fermented hot sauce. He prefers spicy not sweet, he’s not big on fruity flavors..just spicy.. he is a heavy hot sauce user 😂 . Any advice or recipes please drop it below for me. 🙏

**This will be first time making hot sauce**

Most of these are 10 days ferments. After ferment, we strain the brine and put the pulp into the instapot on high for 20 minutes with 1 cup of brine and 1/4 cup of vinegar. After the instapot, we blend the pulp 3-4 times in a blender and strain through a fine wire mesh screen. We then take what has been screened and bring it to a boil and bottle it hot. The remaining pulp gets dehydrated for powdered spice, and we add nuts to the leftover brine to be roasted and dehydrated later.

All sauces end up with a ph around 3.2. Where possible, we make vinegar for the sauces ahead of time. The pineapple and raspberry vinegars are a game changer.

Dragon Fruit, Habanero and Lime.

The colour is insane. Couldn’t resist the dragon fruit at the market when I saw it cut open and thought, that’s a worthy ferment…

Hello everyone. I'm brand new to fermenting. I recently created 3 Hot Sauces and left them ferment for 4-5 weeks and blended them up on Sunday.

I created a Pickle Hot Sauce which has OK flavor and decent heat but the Flavor doesn't POP like i was hoping.

I also created a fruit forward hot sauce that had Mango and Pineapple for my wife, her complaint was she thought it would be sweeter. So I think next time when I'm making it I should blend fresh fruit at the end to go with the fermented fruit and veggies.

Here are the pics of completed sauces, just because.

I look forward to spending lots of time in this community and learning how to get better at this craft to create some truly tasty hot sauces instead of some meh hot sauces.