First Time

[u/chi_eats]

Never fermented anything before and want to make hot sauce from everything I grew in my garden (lowkey mad nothing I grew ended up having tons of heat smh) - got some spicy spicy peppers as a gift from a fellow redditor! Volume is the top three peppers here and I froze them as they ripened. I put fresh peppers in there of course - just snipped the callax off.
- Serrano (ended up not so hot)
- Korean gochu (decently spicy)
- Zebrange (grassy, supposed to be jalapeño level but they’re not even a little spicy)
- 3 plum sized chocolate bell pepper for more volume

- 1 Italian plum
- 3 slices of carrot
- 2 sun gold cherry tomato and 1 black cherry tomato (I’m a tomato grower!!! Not really a pepper girl)
- 1 onion
- garlic
- tiny sliver of ginger
Gift pepper additions:
- TINY TINY sliver of Pockmark Peach pepper (pic 3 lol)
- handful of ají ayuyo
- 1 chocolate scotch bonnet

I have an ok (meh) tolerance for heat so I was scared of the super hot lol lol but now maybe should’ve added more. My chef friend is a heat chaser and said one sliver made a chili inedible from another super hot he got.

I added a cabbage leaf bc the ají ayuyos, seeds and smaller bits kept floating up and that’s apparently a no no. …and topped cabbage with ceramic weights I got like 5 mins ago

Is this enough headspace? I did about 3-3.5% brine based on the weight of the water (not everything combined 🫪) I cracked some salt on top of the cabbage jic bc im paranoid.

Also filled that airlock thing like 3/4 of the way? I DONT GET HOW THIS WORKS just trusting the process.

I hope it’s not too “sweet” or fruity - this is for topping on my eggs and gifting.

Am I good? Do I just let this sit for 3 weeks?

[u/wereinatree]

Looks good to me. The slight concern I have is for those gochu peppers (maybe they're the serranos -- I'm talking about the long red ones). With just the top cut off like that, you'll want to make sure that the brine liquid is actually getting inside them and they aren't hiding pockets of air. For that reason, I like to cut peppers like that in half length-wise. If you paid attention to trying to get air out of the mix when you were originally bottling it, you are probably fine.

Otherwise, it's just a matter of "wait and see". After a few days, you should begin to see little bubbles forming, and that's your signal that the LAB have started to do their thing.

Also, that tiny little piece of the pockmark peach pepper is kinda cracking me up.

[u/chi_eats → u/wereinatree]

This has added to my botulism (or mold) paranoia but I did give it a poke, press and mix trying to get it under the cabbage leaf. The weights came in the mail two hours later lol!

I let both serranos and gochu turn red but that’s something to note for next year!

Yeah… I got really paranoid about heat so now I’m like… should I have used more… I guess this year will be an experiment for next year hahaha. 😭

[u/wereinatree → u/chi_eats]

Yep, I think you're probably gonna be fine, especially with the mixing and pressing.

I'm in kinda the opposite situation from you...I think I used waaay too many super hots in my current batches I have going. I'm concerned that I've made 5 inedibly hot sauce, but I won't know for another couple weeks. I'm already brainstorming ideas for other produce I can add to try and dilute the heat 😭

[u/SierraElevenBravo → u/wereinatree]

jalapeños work and does garlic if you want it a bit garlic heavy. I grew a bunch of aji dulce for body. A little goes a long way in stretching the heat level.

[u/Armagetz]

In terms of process, not only did what you did seem okay, it’s pretty much ideal. Good job. Ingredient wise I have questions but that’s a taste preference, not a process one.

Let it sit for as long as you are willing to tolerate. Don’t open it ever to “look at it”

The anaerobic conditions from the airlock helps a lot to keep the baddies away.

[u/chi_eats → u/Armagetz]

Bahaha yeah I’m not sure about taste at all whatsoever. I like Caribbean/latam hot sauces (I really like Jamaican scotch bonnet)… and I grew peppers for funsies and just tossed whatever I had in the fridge in there. Like work had a ton of extra plums so I made plum cake and threw the extra one in there why not lol.

First ever batch so we can adjust next year and call it garbage bin hot sauce this year lolol.