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Hi all. My roommate recently got some hot sauce that was "microbrewed" in PEI. I didn't know much about making hot sauce, and it seemed weird to me that the place was called a microbrew, so I dug a bit more. I found out that some methods of making hot sauce requires you to ferment the peppers. I think since I have all the airlocks and stuff, I would like to give it a shot. But there doesn't seem to be much information available on the internet, or else I am just using the wrong keywords in my searches.

Does anyone have any experience doing this, or does anyone know where I might be able to find more information?

Thanks

RubberToe is the man to talk about fermenting peppers. I'm sure he'll chime in when he sees this.

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Hey there, did someone say hot peppers??

Ok, the first thing about fermenting peppers is that it's not like fermenting beer or wine. When we're talking about peppers, pickles, and other veggies we're talking about lactic acid fermentation with lactobacillus, a bacteria that eats the sugars and produces lactic acid which preserves the food and has a wonderful flavour.

We must provide the lactobacillus with an environment where they can out compete other undesired bacteria (like botulism). This is done by adding salt and keeping the food submerged in the brine so it's not exposed to the air.

Fermenting peppers is just like making sauerkraut and there's enough naturally occurring lacto bacteria on peppers (although much less than on cabbage) to get the process going.

Do some research before trying this yourself. You'll want to find an acceptable amount of salt (by % weight) to add, likely with a brine.

BTW Tabasco sauce and Franks Red Hot are both fermented pepper sauce, although both add vinegar after the process.

Some good resources:
http://www.wildfermentation.com/
http://www.reddit.com/r/fermentation/

If you try it, good luck!

Also, I'm not sure to what degree that "microbrewed" hot sauce is fermented. It could just be a marketing thing.

I received an America's Test Kitchen "Made from Scratch" mag/book for my birthday, which includes an intro hot sauce recipe. http://americastestkitchen.buysub.com/h ... ratch.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I can scan this later on...

blacktip wrote:I received an America's Test Kitchen "Made from Scratch" mag/book for my birthday, which includes an intro hot sauce recipe. http://americastestkitchen.buysub.com/h ... ratch.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I can scan this later on...

Please do! America's Test Kitchen recipes are hardly ever the best recipes you'll ever find. But they are always achievable, well-thought out, and well-expressed and are usually fairly tasty. Excellent starting points for a ton of stuff and most often with a bunch of information about other things they tried on their journey.

I have some Trinidadian pepper sauce in my fridge that a colleague brought home (he's Trini and it's his Dad's homemade). I don't have the best palate in the world, but to me the main ingredients are garlic and vengeance. I'm going to start working on him for the recipe. It's hot as hell, but flavorful in a way that most domestic sauces I've tried can only dream of being.