Hello and welcome from Savannah GA. Good luck man!
Hello and HELP!
- Thread starter DocBruce
- Start date
from the PacificNorthWest! 
Hi Heating up: Thanks so much. Your picture looks just like my peppers but I don't want to get overly excited because I have seen photos of at least 8 varieties that look like them too. However, what really got me interested was your profile picture and the state of ripeness of the pepper in the pic. Mine ripen in the exact same manner... first with slpotchy stripes of orange and then turning that beautiful deep red color when they are ripe. If you know of anyone who knows of a bulk importer, I would be very grateful for that information. Thanks!Hi Doc, to me they look like Faria AKA Tobago Scotch Bonnet. My current favorite. I can take a shot of one cut open if that would help.
[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]Thank you everyone for your warm encouragement and help in identifying our peppers! It is very, very much appreciated.[/background]
[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get back on this forum, things have been really hopping for us. Both of our sauces ([/background]Doc's Jamaican Hot Sauce[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)] and[/background]Doc's Jamaican Jerk Sauce[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]) have been very well received and trying to keep up with demand has had me 'multi-tasking' (which I suck at, even in the best of times) and scurrying to keep up. We are in 11 stores now, including four of [/background]The Fresh Market[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)] stores. And I went from working in our [/background]MB Family Foods[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)] business part time to full time in less than 2 months. If this were a poker game you might say we are "all in" with this business. It's the biggest gamble we have ever made.[/background]
[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]Here is what we ended up doing: I found a great Co-Packer, [/background]Endorphin Farms, Inc[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)], located in St Augustine, FL (really nice folks). It took several test batches and a few months' time, but they were able to match both of our sauces, [/background]exactly[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]. I then traveled there and we made two 600 lbs kettles of our Jerk Sauce and one 600 lbs kettle of our Hot Sauce. Both of these were made from our previously unidentified peppers that I had frozen last spring, summer and fall.[/background]
[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]We also found a pepper grower (through this forum. THANKS!), Rob Richards of [/background]Pepper Rich Farms[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)], also (and amazingly) located very close to St Augustine, FL. Talk about luck! I sent Rob about 1,000 seeds from my 3 year old plants and he's growing 400 plants for us as I write this. Hopefully we will be covered on the pepper-front for the next year because once they start coming in, Rob can take them up to Endorphin Farms where they will be frozen and stored.[/background]
The[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)] [/background]Pesky Mystery Peppers:[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)] We were never able to positively identify our peppers, the ones I wrote about in my last post. However, due to my grow method (in pots, in our driveway) we accidentally had more than enough generations of our peppers grown in isolation for the DNA to stabilize (it takes 6 generations of fruit production). So, whether or not the exact same peppers are grown in bulk somewhere else in the world, we may never know. But for now we are trying our best to meet the demand for our sauces by essentially creating a new farm crop. I did send photos, a description and a few peppers to the University of Arizona where they were examined by a professor there. He thought they are a stabilized hybrid (a "homestead") but couldn't be sure which types of peppers crossed to make them. Unfortunately, there is no all-inclusive DNA database to work from (which I never knew) but I did read that there are a few people working to build a pepper DNA database.[/background]
[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]Sorry for the length of this post.[/background]
[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]- Doc[/background]
When you say not terribly hot, where on the heat scale are you referring? (heat can be subjective). Our peppers are on a par with the heat of an orange Habanero. Would you say the Panama is about that level of heat?
Hi, Yes, a few people mentioned the same. But it's not the growing method that gives the peppers their unique taste, it's the peppers themselves. I have 3 friends who grow them too and we all have different methods. One pal grows them in the ground and the taste remains the same. The proof is in the pudding, as the saying goes. I have used both friends' peppers making my sauce and the taste between the batches made with theirs and made with mine are identical.
I did as you and several others suggested and harvested seeds and now have a farmer growing for me, as well as bumping up the number of plants I grow to 40 this year.
Thanks for your reply.
