fermenting Dry Mash Fermentation Done - What Now?

[drimnarr]

Forgive me for what's probably a stupid question, but this is my first time doing this and I'm kinda winging it. I bought some Brazilian Starfish seeds last year and planted them, and they're literally taking over my house. The good thing is that I got a quarter pound of peppers.
 
I put them in a food processor with 8% of the weight of the peppers in salt, some lemon juice, and three cloves of garlic.
 
After two weeks, it smells sublime and tastes smooth and hot
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
So the stupid question I have now is... what now? Do I add vinegar? Do I add water? It tastes absolutely amazing, smooth, mellow, and spicy. I feel like just keeping it to spread on some tacos, but the goal here is hot sauce. So how do I turn this into hot sauce?
 
 
Thank you very much for any help in how to proceed!

 

[salsalady]

to THP , even though you have been here for a few months.
 
 
Looks like you have preserved the peppers with the salt and other ingredients.  8% salt is a bit steep, but the flavor can work out in the end, that's OK.  If you want to keep the same flavor and make it into a sauce, I would suggest....
 
add enough water to make it a little 'sludgy'
run the 'sludge' through a food mill to remove all the seeds and skin bits while pushing all the juicy bits through to the bowl.
 
work it- work it-work it---- add a bit more water if needed...
 
 
Then process as described in making hot sauce 101
 
 

 

[drimnarr]

to THP , even though you have been here for a few months.
 
 
Looks like you have preserved the peppers with the salt and other ingredients.  8% salt is a bit steep, but the flavor can work out in the end, that's OK.  If you want to keep the same flavor and make it into a sauce, I would suggest....
 
add enough water to make it a little 'sludgy'
run the 'sludge' through a food mill to remove all the seeds and skin bits while pushing all the juicy bits through to the bowl.
 
work it- work it-work it---- add a bit more water if needed...
 
 
Then process as described in making hot sauce 101
 
 

 
 
Thanks for the tips!

 

[emanphoto]

I'd run it through a blender first as I find, in my kitchen, going from fermenting directly to the mill gives a watery sauce.  Using a blender after fermenting and before the food mill step breaks down the seeds and skins a lot so that the resulting sauce is much thicker.  
From there I'd follow saleslady's tips as you want to get that salinity down. Vinegar helps preserve it and adds a taste which you may or may not want.  Usually fermented sauces are pretty sour when at the 3-3.5pH level, so taste-wise vinegar isn't necessary but may or may not be a nicer taste depending on your tastes.

 

[drimnarr]

I'd run it through a blender first as I find, in my kitchen, going from fermenting directly to the mill gives a watery sauce.  Using a blender after fermenting and before the food mill step breaks down the seeds and skins a lot so that the resulting sauce is much thicker.  
From there I'd follow saleslady's tips as you want to get that salinity down. Vinegar helps preserve it and adds a taste which you may or may not want.  Usually fermented sauces are pretty sour when at the 3-3.5pH level, so taste-wise vinegar isn't necessary but may or may not be a nicer taste depending on your tastes.

 
 
So I actually just added a bit of water and ran the whole thing through a food processor for several minutes. The consistency is actually just how I wanted it, smooth and creamy, PH at roughly 3.8.
 
Happy with the results!
 
 
 

 

[emanphoto]

There ya go!  
I run mine through the blender for exactly one minute which breaks down the seeds somewhat which then can pass through the food mill as illustrated by the bottle on the right.  This SEEMS to make the sauce hotter as one might expect.  
Enjoy