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Always take notes! :)

M

mitchNC

I opened the last of my pressure-canned hot sauce from last year.
 
When they forecasted frost last Fall, I harvested everything.
Put it in a jar with water, salt, turbinado.   Did I add garlic?  Herbs?  Who knows?
 
Fermented for about two weeks, added vinegar, blended, cooked, canned.
 
It's absolutely delicious.  Considering it has a handful of Reapers in it, it's not that hot.  Just really, really great flavor and delayed heat.
 
I'll never be able to recreate it because I was an idiot.
5 ounces of the precious stuff left.
 
But there's always next time.
 
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Totally, man!

All of my hot sauce recipes get written down to the gram. There are some I'll never make again, but some are almost perfect, and some are great jumping off points for other recipes.
 
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Same here, 95% of the time.  There is enough variation in a product where the chilies themselves can vary in heat etc.  With my notes, hopefully I'll know how to troubleshoot when things go sideways.  
 
The gotchas are when you do something mid-stream and forget to make a note which I've done.  
 
One of my ferment batches I just made the other day was not very active after 24+hrs with 3% salt.  To increase to 4%, I would have had to add 67 gms more to the entire batch already sitting in their fermenting bottles.  
So I mixed 50gms with 200mls of water and added a splash (very scientific and repeatable ;) ) to each ferment bottle until the 200mls was gone.  I didn't want to increase the full 1%.  
Next day boom! Massive fermentation activity.  Will this be repeatable?  Not exactly, but I now know a little extra salt will get things really going.  Made a note and next time will have the reference. 
 
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mitchNC said:
 
 
I'll never be able to recreate it because I was an idiot.
 
Click to expand...
 
That was me last year, but with Kombucha.
 
I made something with 4 different varieties of basil, even the barista at starbucks opens her eyes and said "wow" out loud
 
I have no idea how I did it, I haven't been able to recreate it ever since
 
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Still not foolproof though.  Some of the best beer I've brewed I have the recipe down to the water composition, but when I try to do it again it's not quite the same.  Sometime's you just have to appreciate that you found the magic and look forward to the next time.
 
 
But yeah, take notes...
 
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