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fermenting Got a question about fermented hot sauce

DatilDaddy

DatilDaddy

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So is this like the louisiana and crystal and tapatio and basically any other sauce that on the label says "Vinegar, peppers, salt"? I have been curious of how these sauces are made and if this is so, would like to make my own. Recipes are welcome.
 
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Most hot sauce involves vinegar, I'm pretty sure vinegar and yeast don't go together.

So yeah you'd have to make a pepper mash. Could possibly boil them in water for hours to soften/liquefy/sterilize them, then drop them in a fermenter with some yeast and see what happens. Couple weeks it'd have a fair amount of alcohol. Might have to add sugar initially though.

To make sauce with it you'd have to puree the mash, mix it with vinegar and bring it to a boil, then bottle. Don't want much of a boil since alcohol evaporates quickly.

It'd be an interesting sauce and something I'd be willing to try. Besides making hot sauce I also brew beer.
 
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DatilDaddy said:
So is this like the louisiana and crystal and tapatio and basically any other sauce that on the label says "Vinegar, peppers, salt"? I have been curious of how these sauces are made and if this is so, would like to make my own. Recipes are welcome.
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Hey Double D, the answer is yes and no. To start off I’m not sure about other Louisiana style sauces other than Tobasco being fermented sauces. According to the Tobasco they ferment their mash for around 2 years before making it into sauce. Fermented sauces as a general rule do not need any vinegar added. When I ferment a mash it comes out at about Ph. 3.4 and is well into the safe Ph. zone. So if I were to add vinegar to a sauce made it would only be to achieve the flavor profile I’m looking for. To me that would make it extremely sour though and not very desirable. JMHO.

Give a read through the Fermenting Peppers 101, if you haven’t yet and it will give you some more insight into what fermenting is all about.

Tinton said:
Most hot sauce involves vinegar, I'm pretty sure vinegar and yeast don't go together.

So yeah you'd have to make a pepper mash. Could possibly boil them in water for hours to soften/liquefy/sterilize them, then drop them in a fermenter with some yeast and see what happens. Couple weeks it'd have a fair amount of alcohol. Might have to add sugar initially though.

To make sauce with it you'd have to puree the mash, mix it with vinegar and bring it to a boil, then bottle. Don't want much of a boil since alcohol evaporates quickly.

It'd be an interesting sauce and something I'd be willing to try. Besides making hot sauce I also brew beer.
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Hi Tinton, we have alot of homebrewers on here and a really great guy, wheebz, who is the Brewmaster at Darwins on 4th in Sarasota and a great source of information about brewing and always willing to answer questions. Actually in fermenting peppers we use Lactobacillus Bacteria such as you'd find in the active culture yogurts. I actually don't think that using a brewers or vintners yeast would even do anything as peppers are really low in sugars.


HigherThisHeat said:
Anyone know if those name brand hot sauces he mentioned are result of fermentation? Are most commercial hot sauces fermented?
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Greetings HTH, commercial sauces are made all types of different ways. Were I to venture a guess though I would expect that most are not fermented sauces. The fermentation process is time consumming, I run mine from 30 to 45 days but as i mentioned above some run them for much longer. This would have to be allowed for from the begining and could mean for a sauce company that they would have to spend alot of time just making mashes before they ever made a bottle of sauce to sell but again JMHO.

Cheers,
RM
 
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