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fermenting Started a new ferment yesterday

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Pharthan

This is my third ferment, so I still don't exactly know what I'm doing.
 
 
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Ingredients:
Onion: 65.2g
Garlic: 150g
Serrano: 736.7g
Habanero (Green and Orange): 110g
Jalapeno: 779.7g
Water: 2 Cups (436g) + Top Brine Layer (~1/16cup)
Pickling Salt: 110g (~5%) + a few grams for the brine layer
A few scoops of activated yeast starter. (I let it run its course for a short while, since I haven't worked with it before)
 
Chose the lower salt-content due to blood pressure issues.
 
This time I made sure to boil as much of the equipment as I could for >5 minutes (much of it >10 minutes), as well as washing it beforehand.
 
Featured in the background are the smoking chips I plan to age the ferment with in about a week (after cleansing them in Jack Daniels first). Hopefully that gives it a smokey, oakey flavor. 
 
I don't plan on making a sample bottle of sauce until 3 months in.
 
 
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Pharthan said:
My first real batch of this was great with some lime and a tad bit of sugar, with rice vinegar to get it to a hot-sauce consistency. Everyone who's tried it loves it. The second jar went better than the first, likely due to lack of kahm yeast.
I've decided to cement the name as V3RDEGREE. Shout out to Navy buddies who get the reference. EM1(SS) is probably the only one who will get it - and will be rolling his eyes, undoubtedly.

Also:
So, found a new trick.
Bottled a variant of this sauce (used dried Thai Chilis instead of Habaneros) and it was sort of a flop. Mild heat, mild flavor. I added lemon juice and sugar, which probably cut the heat, but didn't add enough flavor. V4RDegree was a flop.

I had a small jar of that batch of mash left over that I decided I wanted to use for something else sooner rather than later, as I don't intend to repeat that variant of the sauce. Instead, this time around I drained the water until only half the mash was submerged (the brine was simply too salty to keep in the volume it was in), added lime juice, xanthan gum, and white-wine vinegar. It worked and now I have a delicious salsa. (I will probably go back to my original recipe to make more salsa, since it still tastes better than this variant)

I went this route because I figured upping the mass-per-volume of the mash would concentrate the flavor it did have, as well as the heat. I decided against sugar this time, and instead let the lime juice do the talking.

Recipe:
1 1/8 Cup of Mash
Juice of 2 Limes (+ some pulp)
5/8 cup of White Wine Vinegar
Xanthan Gum + some water
(I actually drained some of the liquid to give it more of a salsa consistency, afterwards, it was more like a thin salsa/thick hot sauce).

Overall, great success.
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I'd like to try that, it sounds like it would be good. I'm an old Navy dude (ABH-LSE) don't get the reference, but I think it would be good!  :cheers:
 
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