cooking Fermented Sauce: To cook or not to cook?

[Pnak0tic]

Hi, I've been making my own sauce (and lurking this board) for a while and I've started doing fermentation last year and had 2 or 3 good mashes that I turned into sauces, but I'm still far from an expert on the subject
 
For now all the ferments I've been doing I have simply just processed the mixture and added vinegar or lime juice, but I've seen a lot of people here mention that they simmer the processed mash before bottling it
 
I have a new mash coming of age soon and I was wondering if I should maybe try this, my question is: what exactly do you get from cooking the processed mash before bottling? Does it alter the taste in a significant way? Is it just a texture thing?
 
I'd like to know the opinions of people doing both cooked and uncooked so I can know better what to do with the one that's coming. As mentionned earlier I've done a few ferments already but since it was always with wildly different ingredients it's kind of hard to compare.
 
 
Thanks in advance
 
 
Also, here is a picture of my mash, I've made it with leftover habaneros from another sauce I made that had habs and bhuts. The mash is habaneros, peach and carrots and I used whey from plain yoghurt as a starter. I don't have an airlock so I just do the old burping method, but now that it's been a while there isn't much pressure building up inside the jar and I don't have to burp it as much as in the first few days
 

 

[SmokenFire]

If I am bottling woozys I will cook my fermented mash - cook/food mill/bring back to simmer/stick blend/hot fill.  If the ferment is just for me I'll break the half gallon batch into smaller pints, date them and put them in the fridge to eat/age.  Some of my sauces are just straight ferments - from the jar to the stove to the woozy.  Other sauces get fermented and then that mash is mixed down with vinegar and/or citrus and/or other ingredients before processing.  It's personal preference really.
 
Once the ferment is done you can leave it as is (store em in the fridge to slow fermentation) OR you can cook to stop the fermentation.  Length of fermentation time really effects the flavor and heat.  The standard ferment I do changes flavor as it ages; at 4-5 weeks its bright red and hot.  As that ages it becomes a really wonderfully complex thing - the garlic starts coming out more and more, and the heat becomes a little creeper.  Gets darker too.  One batch I have is 6 months old (non cooked, cold storage) and is probably my favorite thing ever.  Wish I could wait that long for all my stuff.

 

[oldsalty]

Great answer SmokenFire!