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Welp. Bottled the hot sauce the other day. Tasted *okay* but way too much like kahm yeast. Lesson learned: Needs more salt.

So, it's come time to finally make the first batch of sauce from the problem-child-ferment. It's been doing this periodically the entire time. I've been scooping and refilling the brine-layer every couple weeks with progressively more salt until I pretty much just supersaturated the water, but...

So, ran into a problem a few days ago: Using the rubber airlocks, they started to cave inwards instead of outwards, opening up at one edge on both of my two jars. None of the mash was exposed, as I've got glass weights on them and enough of a brine, but I found the kahm yeast was... clumping...

Also: Fermenting a mash that I've had issues with kahm yeast in the past, due to insufficient salt. Added more salt, and now a salty brine on top. Checked it the other day and the single-piece rubber seals I had had actually caved inwards, to one point exposing the top of the brine. The kahm...

Is it possible/problematic to ferment with dried peppers (so long as I also use other peppers and probably a little more water?) I'd like to use a few Ghost or Carolina Reaper in the future for added heat to my typical mix of peppers, but I'm finding it a little difficult to either find them or...

  Sure enough, a few days after this post of yours they did start to ferment... a bit more than anticipated, too. I actually had to remove some of the brine and mash because it swelled too much. I may have only give them 1.5" of headspace instead of 2".

It might be done being extremely active after a few days, but most suggestions I've seen say to wait at least 3 months. My first batch I waited only a month and it turned out relatively well but the flavor could have been a bit more pronounced.

  No, no "pop" with the jars and no visible bubbling inside the jars. I've done a couple of other ferments, each of them with a few jars that each gave some rather rewarding pops within the first few days and died off after a week.

My mash isn't fermenting (I used a yeast starter, and I know it was activated). It still smells fine, but it's been four days with minimal bubbling compared to my previous Wild Fermentation that was aggressively bubbling by day 2. Should I just add some more dry-yeast to the jars (I need a...

So, a problem has arisen: It's been four days thusfar. The mash smells fine - but there isn't any fermentation happening! Could this be because of too much moisture?

  Ideally, it's already toasted. Some of the sides are already thoroughly blackened. I'm more worried about introducing contaminants, and don't want to give it a burnt flavor, just smokey.

Pfft, naysayers. That's "open-air smoking" the peppers. Gives them a nice gasoline-like flavor. 

  I originally planned on toasted oak cubes, but I kind of thought to myself: What's the difference? It's still toasted oak, just previously used to hold whiskey. It's effectively what Tabasco uses. After a bit of soaking in Jack Daniels (and perhaps boiling, as you've suggested) I for the life...

This is my third ferment, so I still don't exactly know what I'm doing.       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...

The pepper palace is practically a must whenever we're near the Market in downtown Charleston. I've actually tried to overload my sauces with garlic to imitate their Fusion sauces.

  Attempting to rescue what I have of my mash. Scrapped a decent helping of the brine and top layer of the other jars (scrapped the one as recommended), combined them, up'd the salt content, and rejar'd them (after washing and boiling the jars). Each has about an inch of headspace, though...

  Oh hell that's a great idea.

  So, I misspoke (I'm new to this)  earlier when I said "fuzzy." It's filmy, like the above, which I suspect to be kahm-yeast, and never was fuzzy. This being said, would you still advise I scrap? All of them get filmy, but no fuzz. The scent is just yeasty. I'll try to condense down the jars...

  Was worried about that initially (my other jars are considerably better, I swear!). This one was, too, but my early skims for the yeast were a bit too liberal. (To be fair, the angle is bad to show the depth, it's more to show the yeast), and when transposing the image to the forum it...

  My one year batch took the biggest hit before I started using a salt-brine to cover the mash, though, it makes it the easiest to take a picture of. I feel silly calling it "mold" when I knew it was yeast (long day at work addled my brain, I suppose). Thanks for the link, I've got some...