cooking Separation in Hot Sauce After Cooking

[emanphoto]

I'm ready to ditch cooking as part of my bottling process after my 2nd attempt being less than satisfactory.  I'm thinking that keeping the sauce refrigerated is the best way to go.  Just make a raw sauce and keep it refrigerated from manufacture to sale.
 
My first attempt of course I scorched the sauce and in my 2nd attempt I got a separation of something in there.  Also the sauce went from a lovely bright red/orange color to a darker brownish red despite no scorching this time.
So no joy with cooking my thai chili sauce.  It takes a good long while to bring a 3-4 liters of sauce gently to a boil and all that time over heat doesn't seem to be helpful in the appearance or taste.  
 
Here is a link to a photo of my last batch.  It is a closeup of the neck of the bottle showing the separation.  Bright red oily looking globules at the surface and particulates that don't show when I don't cook.  Granted they are really small but it doesn't look good and I worked too hard at this.

 
Also, after seeing the Tabasco sauce video I posted recently, I think that if the no cooking method is good enough for them, it should be good enough for me right?  Please correct me if I'm mistaken!  
 
My method was this.
 
1. Ferment the mash for 30 days using only sea salt
2. After 30 days, run the mash thru the food processor 1 more time and strain. 
3. Add the requisite amount of vinegar
4. Bring the sauce to boiling for 10 minutes while stirring with a wooden spoon the entire time, then
 
5. Move the sauce pot to a larger pot for double boiling while bottling
 
All bottles were soaked in a dilute bath of bleach and water, then thoroughly rinsed and turned upside down to drain.
 
The pots were heavy duty stainless, the boiling pot being Calphalon brand. All bottles were capped and inverted for 30 minutes at least after filling.
 
As far as I can tell, I've done everything right despite the results.  
 
Looking forward to any comments.
 

 

[jhc]

Separation is normal. You can try and find some xanthan gum if you want to next time. 
 
As for cooking, I wouldn't buy a sauce in Bangkok that needed refrigeration the whole time, but you know your customers better than I do.

 

[emanphoto]

Thanks that's good to know.  
 
That's the thing RE: cooking or not. I wanted to go with the methods posted here in 101 and elsewhere on the site using cooking to stop the fermentation and to make it safer than a "raw" sauce with vinegar in it.  Then the results are not so nice looking, which, vs safety, is no contest but still.  Then I see that sauces like Tabasco are not cooked and they are basically doing what I was doing in the beginning when I first started experimenting. 
 
I leave out my sauces here at home and the ambient temp is 80-90+ everyday year round except when the AC is on in that room.  They all have vinegar in them, even though the pH after fermentation is 3.5 or less, to stop the fermentation and help preserve the sauce.  Without cooking there is a fresher taste to them.  Frankly I'll use the sauce I burned recently on my own cooking just to use it up and it seems ok to me except for the black specks. So I'm not super picky for myself except when it comes to botulism lol.
 
So I'm not seeing any problems in months and months of high temp exposure cooked or not.
 
As far as the market I have friends who make hummus which has a very short lifespan of something like 2 weeks even in the fridge and they sell pretty well.  We see each other at food events and they have to bring the stuff in in coolers with blue ice packs.  There's a market here for artisan natural products although I dunno if anyone is going to get rich from it.  

 

[The Hot Pepper]

Boiling for 10 minutes is not cooking it is pasteurizing. For cooked sauces, I cook a lot longer and on a simmer.

 

[Shorerider]

Those tiny red blobs look like oil, I mean, what else besides air would rise to the top of the bottle like that.
 
Can you post a list of ALL your ingredients, quantities don't matter.

 

[emanphoto]

Have it all written down.  All the veg is dry smoked for 30 mins, no oil and no oils added.  I weigh the veg before and after smoking as well.
Salt is 3% of the total weight after smoking, 3120 GMS.  Didn't catch the final pH before adding vinegar but it was probably 3.5 or less.
 
THAI CHILI 3390 GMS BEFORE SMOKING, 2720 after
 
9 HEADS OF GARLIC  298 GMS BEFORE, 272 GMS AFTER
 
24 SHALLOTS 136 GMS BEFORE, 130 GMS AFTER
 
TOTAL WEIGHT AFTER 3120 GMS
 
SALT 106 GMS
 
4 CUPS WATER
 
pH 3.8 May 16, 2018

 

[Shorerider]

At a guess, I would say those red blobs are from the smoke. Try the same recipe without the smoke and see if you get the same results.

 

[emanphoto]

I smoke with apple wood.  Since the smoking is really part of the whole caché of the sauce, it's not something I want to give up.  
Boiling the sauce, as I did, seemed to bring on the separation.  As per The Hot Pepper, perhaps doing it on simmer might be better.  
 
My thoughts are to just put the filled bottles in boiling water bath for 10 mins and then cap.  I'll get some vacuum and still maintain a somewhat raw sauce needing refrigeration.  
 
Thoughts?
 
(yay i figured out how to get photos to appear!)
 

 

[Shorerider]

All I meant was for the purpose of finding the source of the blobs, not a solution. I do really think they are oils of some type. 
 
If you boil the sauce without the cap on, you're asking for a big mess. Follow the correct methods for hot water canning/bottling (with the lid on) and you will be fine. If you hot water bath, there will be no need to refrigerate until the bottle is opened, but the shelf life (even if refrigerated) will be limited. 
 
I don't have much in the way of separation issues with my sauces, and they both boil and simmer. They can simmer for up to 2hrs in total sometimes. 
 
Best of luck with your sauce.
 
SR.

 

[emanphoto]

Yes thanks I understood and didn't mean to come across as disagreeing with you.  This issue may be something peculiar to this type of chili as well.  I don't disagree that this is some kind of oil.  
I see references on google such as "how to remove chili oils from your hands", a youtube video that, in the comments, everyone says doesn't work lol.  Also found this quote, "Capsaicin is an oil-like compound in the sense that it repels water." but no definitive description that says chilies contain oils such as we're seeing in my sauce.  
I'm assuming that the big mess you are referring to is from the expansion of the sauce from the heat causing it to overflow the bottle?  
I've read the descriptions of canning and bottling saying to have the cap on which causes me to think I'm misunderstanding as I would think this would cause the bottles to explode if tightly capped?
 

 

[Shorerider]

All good. They will not explode, there is some good info here on the process, or on the internet. 

 

[salsalady]

I think the drops are actually oil from the chiles.  There are a lot of pictures and videos of the inside of peppers, especially superhots, where you can see droplets of oil. 
 
Here's a picture from NMSU.

 
I have personally seen ones where the inside is almost fully coated with oily drops.
 
edit to spell NMSU correctly 

 

[salsalady]

also, If I may make a suggestion on the label-
 
"Ingredients- apple wood smoked red Thai chiles, shallots & garlic; fleur de sel & white wine vinegar."  Like the label and name, catchy.

 

[The Hot Pepper]

At a guess, I would say those red blobs are from the smoke. Try the same recipe without the smoke and see if you get the same results.

 
I think so.
 
Oils do vaporize. Pour olive oil on a fire and see. Okay so now why that is important. You said you smoked w/o any added oils. But your BBQ is full of them. From the grates, to the "seasoned" lining. When you smoke some of this will vaporize and cling to what you are smoking. The peppers will have a sweat to them. That is not all water. Then, this makes it into your sauce. The same way your smoker is "greasy" is the same way it clings to the chili. PS. Restaurants have grease traps above cooking areas. Same principle.
 
When you boiled it you caused a more obvious separation.
 

I think the drops are actually oil from the chiles.  There are a lot of pictures and videos of the inside of peppers, especially superhots, where you can see droplets of oil. 
 
Here's a picture from NSMU.

Trinidad_Moruga_Scorpion_2.jpg
 
I have personally seen ones where the inside is almost fully coated with oily drops.

 
I don't think so, that would kind of mean every hot sauce should look like this. I've smoked w/o oils and guess what, yup it's oily.

 

[The Hot Pepper]

I'm not sure what kind of smoker you have but electric is cleaner for sauce production. You may want to get a Little Chief or similar and use it for peppers only. Or if not dedicated to peppers any smoker where the wood and coal is not in the same chamber as the food, is cleaner as less oils will be heated. In sauce production they are not using backyard BBQs, so you don't see this issue.
 
 

 

[salsalady]

this is a fermented red jalapeno with onion and garlic sauce made last fall.  No smoke, just ferment and cook.  The bottles have been in the cases for a couple months.  I was very gently lifting them out of the cases, lots of separation. 
 
There are not as many drops as what the OP has, but there are definitely dark red drops at the top.  Pictures of 3 bottles.

 

[The Hot Pepper]

Very dark not sure what that is.

 

[emanphoto]

Thanks, that was the first version.  We think alike I've since changed it to:
Ingredients: Apple Wood Smoked
Whole Red Thai Chilies, Garlic, Shallots, 
Thai pineapple vinegar & Thai sea salt 
 
The name is a play on words.  Daeng means red in Thai.  I've changed the recipe so all the ingredients are of Thai origin so the fleur de sel was replaced w thai sea salt and white wine vinegar w/pineapple vinegar.  
Presentation & looks are important here.  A Thai person might say if looking at this sauce in it's settled state, 'mai suay' - not pretty.  Hence my research and line of questioning the wisdom of heating or boiling the sauce.
 
RE: Oils in the grill.  I'd say this is possible but perhaps not so likely?  I'd guess that there is some oil in my grill intermixed with all that carbon.  I do reuse the tin foil JUST for chili smoking.  
 
I'll come back to comment further as I have to present this sauce at an event today yay.  I still have to remake my signage now as, like so many other things, I've lost the original one I printed lol.
 
Thank you for all the responses!
 

 
 

also, If I may make a suggestion on the label-
 
"Ingredients- apple wood smoked red Thai chiles, shallots & garlic; fleur de sel & white wine vinegar."  Like the label and name, catchy.

 

 

[emanphoto]

Yes that is it.  Perhaps it's peculiar to red sauces as a wild guess, or something else I have no clue of, the latter being more likely.
I get some separation like the bottle on the right with my jalapeño sauce with it being clear-ish at the top, but that I can live with.  These weird oily floaters is what I am aiming to prevent.
 

this is a fermented red jalapeno with onion and garlic sauce made last fall.  No smoke, just ferment and cook.  The bottles have been in the cases for a couple months.  I was very gently lifting them out of the cases, lots of separation. 
 
There are not as many drops as what the OP has, but there are definitely dark red drops at the top.  Pictures of 3 bottles.

IMG_7001.JPG

IMG_7002.JPG

IMG_7003.JPG

IMG_7004.JPG

IMG_7007.JPG

 

 

[The Hot Pepper]

Put a full onion slice on your smoker when you smoke peppers and see if it has an oily sweat to it and any of the red color drops. With the white you can see it. Little experiment lol.