preservation Shelf life homemade vinegar based sauce

[ohmatic]

so i made my first real hot sauce about a week or so ago and love it.

all homegrown peppers, see the pics.

now i used two white vinegars in the process to act as sort of a conserving agent and simmered it for quite a while (20min or so) with lid on,
before putting it into a sanitized jar and once cool into the fridge.

now, about a week later i see some small air bubbles in there whcih i do not know if there have been before and am worried
that something may be alive in there and working. the lid of the jar is still "sucked inward" as i bottled it hot, so no excessive gas buildup as of yet.

ingredients:
various chili peppers
onion
garlic
salt/pepper
one bell pepper
little bit of sugar
white vinegar
bit of cornstarch to thicken it up

so, what do you guys think? btw for the first hotsauce i LOVE the taste, soooooo good hell yeah

 

[AlabamaJack]

IMO if the tops are still sucked in, the item is still good...as you probably know, if there is gas buildup inside causing the top to "pop up", there is a reaction going on inside the jar and probably not a good reaction either...

 

[ohmatic]

thank you for the reply jack, i am much a fan of your pics/videos - any current projects ?

how long is the average shelf life of your sauces, as far as i remember you made a lot of sauces.

 

[AlabamaJack]

thanks ohmatic...no special projects right now...just in the middle of harvesting the Mississippi Scorpions...watching this storm and hoping it doesn't damage the plants too bad...Butch is getting it much worse that my plants are right now...he is about 200 miles west of my crop...am in the planning stages for next year...thanks for asking...

you can't use my shelf life as a guide for yours because I only pressure can...pressure canning IMO insures you get near zero growth of any baddies in your sauce because of a couple of things...pressure canning temperature is about 240 F @ 10 psi which kills botulism spores...and botulism is the worst IMO

I have jars of stuff I made in the winter of 2009 that are still good...

with that being said, I am not qualified to comment on your "hot pack" method since I don't do it that way...

maybe SalsaLady, Candice, or one of the other sauce makers on the forum will chime in here...

 

[Prehensile]

Vinegar is a mild acid I wonder if the corn starch may be the culprit, could it be reacting with the vinegar?

 

[webblh]

Ohmatic, i would only use a pressure canner for that. Most stuff that you use a water bath process for must be tested to make sure it is safe. You can always leave it in the refrigerator until used. A lot of my jars of tomatoes have very small bubbles inside the jar, as long as there is no growth it should be fine. That's only my opinion since they haven't been tested. Good luck.