food-safety Plastic Bottles & Hot Sauce Safety

[SedHot]

Hello Sauce Makers,

I've developed a fermented hot sauce recipe that I'm quite proud of, but I'm facing a slight challenge. The sauce's pH level is currently 4.2, which is only slightly lower than the recommended safe level of 4.6 for optimal shelf stability.

To address this, I plan to pasteurize the sauce by heating it to 190°F for 20 minutes. However, I prefer using plastic bottles for their convenience (squeezability and lightweight). The bottle manufacturer recommends filling the bottles with the sauce at around 150°F.

My concern is whether this cooling step (from 190°F to 150°F) might significantly reduce the pasteurization effectiveness achieved during the initial heating process.

I would greatly appreciate your insights and any advice. I'm new here and I'm already learning so much by just reading the previous threads.

 

[salsalady]

to THP, SedHot!

If you plan to go legal with the sauce, this is something you will need to work with the Process Authority on. These comments are based on USA sauce makers. I'm not familiar with other countries' hot sauce business policies. These general comments are for basic hot sauce safety.

If the fermented sauce is currently 4.2, it is probably still fermenting at a slow rate. If you put it directly into bottles, it will continue to ferment, build up pressure an maybe eventually ka-boom the bottle at worst, or PFFFST! spew all over the place when the bottle is opened. Cooking the sauce will stop the fermentation process as well as pasteurize the sauce for food safety.

Bottling the sauce in plastic at 150F will not sanitize the bottle.
Bottling at +180F in glass and inverting is for sanitizing the bottle, not so much the sauce. Sauces are generally recommended to be heated/cooked around 190-200F to pasteurize the sauce, then it is HOT FILLED in the bottles and INVERTED for 2-5 minutes to sanitize the bottles.

For now, until you get to the point of working with a process authority to go legit, I'd suggest using glass bottles and the Hot Fill-Hold processing method detailed in the Making Hot Sauce 101 thread.

While you are giving away sauces ( Not Selling! in any way, shape, or form... see the Business Thread) if friends or family want you to ship them some of your sauce to try, ask them to pony up a couple bucks to cover you postage for glass bottles.

Some plastic bottles say they are safe to bottle at 180F. But the heat margin for those bottles is very narrow. If the sauce is heated a few degrees above 180F it may melt the bottles. Most home sauce makers cannot maintain that narrow of margin of temperature, which is why most just use glass.

Hope this helps. Welcome and most importantly, Have Fun !
salsalady