Greetings, B~C!
to THP and congrats on getting this far in your venture! It is super exciting to get licensed and start the next phase.
For blending and such...
I bought a refurbished BlendTec smoothie blender for (~$350?) I think? Less than $400. The BlendTec puts my Ninja to shame. The BlendTec will completely pulverize everything for the sauce. And these are RAW ingredients! Peppers, carrot, onion, garlic, tomato, raisins, fruit, you name it...to the point where when I dump it out of the blender, it has some texture but no visible seeds or bits of skin. I'd compare it to a tomato sauce, maybe a pasta sauce that doesn't have chunks.
I start with all fresh/raw (sometimes frozen) ingredients, run it all through the BlendTec and then cook it all up. Everything is puree'd before starting the cook. If someone doesn't have such a good blender, then cooking the ingredients first, then blendering will help. I haven't found immersion blenders to be very good at getting a reeeeaaallly smooth consistency with no visible seeds or skins. Some use them and are pleased with how it works for their products. You just have to find what works with your ingredients, where you are processing, and what consistency you want the final product.
For the straining part, there are electric sieves for a couple hundred bucks. I have not seen any reviews or comments as to how well they work. I've used the hand food mills for large batches, but it is not something I'd look at using if I was doing that on a regular (weekly or even monthly) basis. It's good that you are using the tailings for other product so it's not going to waste. If you want a really liquidy sauce, then maybe getting an electric sieve would be the upgrade to do the trick.
You can work to lower the moisture content of your initial mix by looking at powdered acetic acid (what vinegar is) and powdered ascorbic acid. Maybe do a mix of 1/2 the vinegaracid you usually use and bump up the acidity with some powdered acetic acid. This would probably require the recipe to be re-certified by your PA.
What most do is just cook it down to desired consistency. One thing to be aware of when doing this with larger pots is that the last 1/4-1/3 of the sauce will be thicker just from cooking down during the time it takes to bottle the sauce,and you may have to add a dash of water.
Hope this helps. Have Fun and post pics of your sauce bottles etc. We luv pics~
salsalady
NECM! You Lurker!!! I didn't even see the "One New Post View Now" notice.