Hi Dustin,
to THP.
Your question encompases several different topics and hopefully others with knowledge of their areas will chime in.
When looking at recipes or posts, you need to separate the different terms.
"MASH" is a term which often used interchangeably with a couple different situations.
It refers to a fermented mixture of chiles and salt, but that's technically not correct. Any kind of ground up chile mixture (containing salt or not, fermented or not) could be called a
mash.
Tabasco ferments their "mash" (aka ground tabasco chiles....and I don't remember if they add salt at the mash stage or not...hopefully others will fill in the details....) and salt-capped for 3 years.
Getting back to your original post...there's a difference between the salt content of a finished hot sauce type product and the % of salt used in a fermentation process. Hopefully this will clear up a little of the the different terminologies and help you figure out what's what.
Basically, if you are looking to take fresh pods, grind 'em and immerse them in a salt solution.... some people do that process with NO additional salt, some add salt in every ratio up to 20%...many refer to the resulting mush as "mash". The salt helps in the first few days of fermentation to keep bad bacteria from breeding on the ground up chiles until the good bacteria can get a foothold in the chile/salt/water mixture. If you didn't have the salt in there for the first few days, the risk of botulism is high. BUT...having said that...natural fermentation occurs all the time and many use that method.
(correct me if I'm wrong, M8's) vinegar is not usually used in a fresh chile/salt fermentation situation. Once Vinegar is involved, then you're looking at a basic pickle or processed sauce. Not fermentation.
Hope this didn't confuse you even more. Check out the Fermenting Peppers sticky in the Making Hot Sauce thread for a wealth of information about fermentation.
Many folks take ground chiles (a "mash") and ferment them in a few different ways, some with salt, some with vinegar,...the thread "fermenting 101" is a great thread with TONS of information for those looking to do a fermented chile product. THe talk on that thread is to leave it in the fermentation set up for a minimum of 6-weeks and from there, it's as long as you want to leave it...
There are commercial "mashes" available. Those mashes are basically ground chiles with salt, no fermentation involved. Depending on the supplier, some chile "mashes" can be as high as 20% salt. So if the person is purchasing "habanero mash" it could be 80% habanero chiles and 20% salt. Some suppliers have 0% salt mashes. They are selling ground chiles of whatever the variety. No salt, No vinegar, No fermentation...just mushed up chile pulp.
Edit- sorry, this is a little out of sequence...but the info is the same~~~
