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fermenting Another two ferments bite the dust

FGpepperguy

FGpepperguy

Well I grew 24+ varieties last year and most of my ferments haven't been great.  Maybe I'm my worst critic.  I've got a bunch of cans/bottles of finished sauce in the garage and haven't even touched them because I think they are sub-par.  Well I had two ferments left over from the summer.  They were actively fermenting for 3 months and then I put them in the frig for another 2.  From the ingredient list, you can see I lost energy at the end of the season... not even listing types and ounces of each......
 
First one
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Second one... more on this one later..
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First one into the pot.
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Cooked for 20 minutes and into the blender for a long time, then through the food mill.  This is what it looked like along with the mash for drying powder (learned from SmokenFire)
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PH was dang low.. Calibrated also.
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Second ferment looked like this.
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Once I cooked it and got it through the blender I couldn't stand it.  Smelled awful.  Not rotten, but just like......... not sure.  So it went into the trash.
 
 
Here is the finished product of batch 1, with the remainder ready to go into the food dryer for powder.  The sauce has quite a bite on the mid/back end that I don't like at all.  Really of a rough sour taste which is the ferment but not sure how to even it out.  Any ideas?  I did throw a little honey in, but it didn't help...
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Salsa Lady suggested in another thread adding the same amount of fresh ingredients as to what was fermented, so you could reheat and cook up with some additional ingredients to get it where you want it.  Shame to have sauce you aren't going to eat after all that work and waiting.
 
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FG!  Sorry you're not happy with your ferments bud.  Lots of things you can do to balance; honey is one of my favorites and I also use turbinado sugar/agave nectar at times.  Some ferments I do come out pretty strong, and I'll mix those down with white or rice wine vinegar and a touch of citrus to get the final sauce I want; for certain recipes the dilution ratio is roughly 1 cup of the fermented mash to 1-2 cups of vinegar so it's possible you're not cutting that mash down enough.  
 
Could also be that you're just not into the tang that fermenting imparts to peppers - different strokes for different folks right?   
 
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Additional salty/umami and sugary ingredients can help balance bitter.
 
Rich Strong Flavor Savory type foods- Soy sauce, fish sauce, tomato paste, worcester sauce, ect
 
Below is quoted
 
"While the four classic flavors are all pretty easy to isolate and describe, the fifth flavor, umami, is a bit harder to pin down.
In Japanese, Umami translates roughly to “Good Flavor” or “Good Taste.”  That seems like as good a definition as you can get for it… it’s the flavor of goodness!"
 
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