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fermenting Jacob's Pepper Mash

A little late, but as promised here is a thread showing how I make my pepper mash. Aging the peppers makes an excellent sauce. Real smooth flavor and no vinegar, which I like. Never been a fan of a hot sauce where you only taste vinegar.

The bacteria needed to acidify the mash and turn it into a great sauce is naturally occuring and can be found everywhere. The key is to give it an environment to thrive before the bad bacteria and molds get a foot hold. The age old method is to add canning salt to the peppers to about 10-15% by weight cover with a layer of salt and let age. I am a little paranoid, so I use a starter to get mine going. Some people use kefir for this, but I prefir sourdough hooch. You can make this by mixing 1 cup of flour to 1 cup of distilled water and let sit for a day. Then throw half of it out and add 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup distilled water to the half you kept. Repeat everyday until it starts to bubble and smells sour with a beer smell to it. Then it can be kept in the fridge and "fed" once a week or so by following the same process as when you started it. Now, the hooch is the liquid that seperates from the flour/water mixture.

Here is a picture of my hooch. Notice the hooch on the top. It is dark, smells like alcohol, and full of the good stuff to get your mash going.
DSC01120.jpg



Now that you have your starter, time to make the mash. I prefer to add everything together to ferment and acidify so there is no need to add vinegar later. Like I said, I prefer the taste of the peppers, not vinegar. You can add whatever you like to it to get the flavor profile you like.

The bounty I pulled from:
DSC01122.jpg


So, here is the recipe I used:

By weight

6 oz Hot peppers (mixture of trinidad congo, caribbean red, marouga red, red devil's tongue, couple 7 pots, scorpions)
2 oz white onions
1 oz carrots
1 oz tomato

add to that

2 medium cloves of garlic
1 tbsp canning salt

Wash everything real good, deseed peppers if you wish (I do), and put in a blender with 1/4 cup distilled water and chop finely.

DSC01123.jpg


Now it is ready to add to the container that will hold your mash. Some people use carboys with the water locks, expensive fermentation crocks, but I use regular quart canning jars. Don't worry about pressure build up in these, you don't seal them so the air will escape rather easily.

The recipe above yeilds about 1 cup of mash. I put it in the jar and add distilled water to about 1" from the top. Then add about 1 - 1 1/2 tbsps of the hooch to the jar. Place the top on the jar and give it a shake to mix the contents. I store it in a cabinet to "cook" for about 6-8 weeks. Don't forget to write the start date on the jar.

DSC01124.jpg


Now on to the good stuff. Here is the mash finished fermenting and ready to finish. This was the first one trying out this recipe so it was only a half batch to see if I liked it before making a lot.
DSC01118.jpg


a Ph measurement
DSC01117.jpg


and after cooking down, I yeilded 2 about 2 1/2 woozies of a wonderful sauce.
DSC01119.jpg


End result is a wonderfully tasting sauce that is smooth, not overpowering and goes great with about anything. A real winner. I currently have 6 jars at various stages right now and will do several more before it is done. I hope this helps anyone who is interested in trying this and thanks for looking!

jacob
 
Thanks for sharing the info Jacob.

For a starter or at least to kick start the sourdough starter do you think a probiotic product could be added? I was thinking of Yakult drinks which have 6.5 billion live Lactobacillus casei Shirota bacteria in it.

:beer:
 
Thanks for the responses. The sauce is great, very smooth consistancy.

Timmy,

The sourdough starter is a mixture of yeast and lactobacillus bacteria. Not sure about the yakult drinks as I have never had them, so couldn't say what it would do for the starter. I wouldn't think that just a little would hurt anything though. But yeast products will speed it up. My first attempt at the starter failed miserable because I used tap water instead of distilled. Got moldy quick. SO, I started 2 more jars, 1 with a boost of regular dried bread yeast, and the other using distilled water the same as above. The one with the bread yeast foamed instantly and had to go into the fridge, and yielded ready hooch very quickly, like maybe a week. But, with a little patience, the one with distilled water foamed in maybe 5 or 6 days and was ready to go the fridge usable in maybe 2 weeks. I think the wild yeast starter has a better "sour" smell, and since I love sourdough bread and will use it for that as well, I have since thrown out the one started with the bread yeast and now have 2 jars of the wild yeast starter. Long story short, yes you can use the commercial yeast products to boost it, but it shouldn't be necessary.
 
Excellent post, very informative with no holes in the information. A++
Thankyou. I am going to try this now with my peppers, prediction: next time I go to the supermarket my wife will ask "what do we need distilled water for?" hehe
""
 
Hi Jacob,

How's the mash's going?

I've started two hooch mixtures today, one normal and one with the added lactobacillus bacteria :woohoo:

A question I have is does the hooch replace the need to add large amounts of salt? I noticed your recipe doesn't seem to have a lot of salt.

Are you using 10-15% salt to peppers/veg?

:beer:
 
Good luck on the hooch. I hope it gets started quick for you. Once you make a good mash, you will be hooked. I know I am.

The mash started to bubble a bit after 3 days. Just little bubbles along the side of the jar. I'll let it sit for about 6-8 weeks before I open it up. About the salt, you could use more if you like since the final product didn't come out salty at all. The reason for so much salt in mash is to create an environment where the bad bacteria can't grow while the good ones get established. With the hooch as a starter, the lactobacillus gets established so quickly that the salt becomes more of a taste thing then for preserving. I think I am a little less than 5% by weight on the salt.

Good luck!
jacob
 
Thanks for the help

I hardly use salt in cooking anymore and I seem to have a bit of an intolerance towards it now so thats great news on the salt.

So I'm guessing my hooch is working, heres my 1 day old hooch mixtures

hooch1sttwo.jpg


And then the test hooch that I added the lacto bacteria to:

hooch1stlac.jpg


It has a distinct dark line around the base where some dark colored fluid is settling, this mix has a bit of an alcohol smell to it.

I added some yeast to the starter, is that okay? I wasn't sure if you were using a flour with yeast already mixed in, like the pre blended bread flour.

So I guess I should split them and add some more water/flour.

Thanks for your help Jacob :beer:
 
The one with the extra yeast boost should be ready to go in the fridge for storage with all the bubbles in there and already smelling like alcohol. I would go ahead and add a 50/50 mix of flour/water to get the volume you want, them put it in the fridge. Looks like a good start. Let it age a bit to get the microbes up and it is ready to use. You can also add extra water to get more hooch. Say a 2-1 water to flour ratio.

I just used regular unbleached bread flour which will have a little wild yeast in it, but not much. The yeast boost is just fine for using the hooch for a starter, but will not give the same flavor as wild yeast will for sourdough bread. It will still be good, just not as sour.


jacob
 
That sauce does look nice and smooth. I'm new to the group and have been wanting to try a pepper mash. Thanks for the detailed and easy instructions! I'll have to try this next season when I'm able to get seeds for a few more pepper varieties! :clap:
 
Just started my sourdough hooch last night. I hope it goes well I'll let you know the outcome Jacob. I did as you described with flour and distilled water but I only did half the volume of each for lack of a bigger jar which I can't see any problems with. It would just produce less hooch right? (which just means I don't have leftover hooch to sell to the kids down at the local skatepark as alcohol (just kidding)).....
I think I will do a trial batch with an orange hab/chocolate hab combo, it would be fantastically fruity IMO. Can't wait.
Josh
 
jjs - That is AMAZING. You weren't kidding when you told me it was almost black. How long did it have to sit to get that black? BTW the finished sauce looks amazing. Do you strain the seeds out in the finished product? I thought about doing that because I figure between 6-8 weeks the seeds have served their purpose. I sure hope my test sauce comes out as good as yours.
 
Okay this is my first pic. I started it this morning in a salsa jar but when I came home in the afternoon, it was fizzing out all over the bench so I moved it into an old coffe jar with one of those plug type lids which is ideal cause it loosely seals itself when it's not letting air out.

IMG00157-20101027-1844.jpg



An old trick I used from my home brewing days, I clean everything first with unscented bleach/water mix then rinse and I don't touch again cause it will contaminate the cleanliness. I added more mix so it is 400ml measure of flour and 400ml of distilled water. It's already looking dark in the water so I think it is gonna work out fine. It's bubbling quite a bit.
 
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