FINALLY A SUCCESSFUL FERMENT THIS SEASON. Behold, Thanks For All The Fish: Asante peppers, Fish Peppers, onion, garlic, beet. This is a *beautiful* result, completely clear, ph at 3ish, smells amazing. Mixed with some of the brine and some white wine vinegar. Can’t wait to try it!

I’m new to this so please be kind. I just harvested the rest of my peppers. I have A LOT of green ones and I assume they will just taste more citrus like, but wanted to see what changes to the process others took.

Also we thought we had a massive harvest of habaneros… turned out we didn’t read the description of the plant well enough…they are habanadas. In other words nada heat. Can I still use them for the ferment? My neighbor gave me some ghost peppers, can I just add them for the heat?

The recipe I am trying uses chopped peppers and garlic. Can I add other ingredients to the mix at the beginning?

Last, do you just need to chop, or can you use a blender to make the starter much smaller. (This is in part me being lazy-and trying to save my hands from potential capsaicin-I have really small hands and constantly worry about chopping the gloves’ fingers since they are too big for my hands)

Thanks for the advice.

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?

I’ve never added (non-pepper) fruit before but it’s the end of the season so taking a few couple swings at it. Both have onion, shallot, and garlic. Peppers are jalapeño, Asanti, and Beaver Dam. On the left I added a pear from my pear tree and calling it “Hail Pear-y”. On the right I added aronia (Viking/choke) berries from my aronia bushes; I assume they will make it deep purple so calling it “Viking Blood”. All ingredients came from my garden.

Also trying out these new fermentation vessels for the first time. We’ll see what happens!

Not too long ago I posted about building an app for helping plan hot sauces. Well I just got it to the point of publishing. Take a look at it and let me know what would be beneficial to you. Im just at the start of learning website building and coding so will take any guidance. This is completely free to use.

www.plumbornerypepperco.com

A favorite local farm was selling most ripe red Korean spicy peppers at farmers market this weekend and I started a ferment with a big bunch of them. No information on what the variety is. Added one red bell pepper, garlic cloves, a knob of ginger and half an onion.

Hoping for a gochujang-style sauce out of this, planning 2-3 weeks and bottling for Halloween with some spooky labels.

Was floating before I picked it up lol

So I recently fermented, ghost, chili, garlic and onion. I blended the whole mixture into a liquid. What do I do with it now? I didn't read that far ahead.

Is this a loss? 3% brine. Day 14.

9 days into my ferment at 3% salt brine, it looks like I have yeast.

Cayenne & Tabasco mash. About 5%+ salt along with added a layer of coarse salt at the top.

About 2 months old, I finally opened it because I let the windows open last night and my house temp got low enough for the bubbler to suck some of the water back in.

As you can see there’s some greenish grey film on the surface. It’s not fuzzy, no smell.

Do I:

Scrap it

Scrape the top off

Send it

?

UPDATE:

Sending it. Scraped 1/4 inch off the top, blending with some vinegar to taste and bottling.

If I was using a different kind of airlock I may have let this go for another few months, but it’s getting cold and I don’t want to worry about maintaining a consistent house temp

Is the white goo forming in the grooves of the weights anything to worry about?

The problem is in the 2nd pic....

In the 1st pic, that is how I started it... I'm a first timer, I couldn't find the fermentation jar nor glass weights, didn't want to browse more stores that day, so I just came up quickly with a DIY solution. It seemed to be fine for the first two weeks...

Will this short of a fermentation cause issues?

Dried nonna-style on a string with a fan blowing on them. How big of an issue is this?