preservation Soaking Reapers & Scorpions in White Vinegar

[RoachSlim]

I sliced up a bunch of Reapers and Scorpions (100's of them), put them in glass jars (large GT's Kombucha bottles), poured hot white vinegar into the bottles, and screwed the caps back on. My intention is to let the peppers pickle for a while then blend them up into some super hot sauce. I have never made a serious batch of hot sauce so I'm kind of winging it. 
 
Three questions for the community: 
1) what do you think about this idea?
2) how long should I let them sit in the jars before blending? 
3) should i store the jars in the refrigerator? 
 
thanks

 

[dragonsfire]

I dont heat the vinegar, using undiluted natural ACV will kill any bacteria, past mixes I used 25% by volume of vinegar.
24 hours should be plenty, I blitz them right away. Ive placed them in room temp with the 25% concentration (with salt).

 

[Siv]

So I'm no food scientist so I'm not qualified to give advice. I can just tell you my own experience.
 
I've put cut peppers in straight cold vinegar several times and they just pickle and keep for a very long time. The pH of white distilled vinegar is around 2.5 so I don't think any bad stuff can survive that. If a shelf stable sauce is to be pH4 or lower, you can dilute as DF suggests and as long as the pH remains below 4h you should be fine. Note that pH is a log scale so if you take pH2.5 vinegar and dilute it with an equal amount of water, your ending pH is going to be something around 2.6-2.7. Note that your peppers contain water so you don't want to have a vinegar solution with a pH of 4 and add peppers to it as your resulting mix will have a pH greater than 4.
 
Having a pH meter, for fun I tested a bunch of different vinegars I have at home. They ranged from pH2.5 to pH3.5 so not all vinegars are created equal.
 
Also, boiling vinegar for extended periods of time may not be a good idea as acetic acid boils off at a faster rate than water. So the longer you boil, the higher the pH gets.

 

[ShowMeDaSauce]

Ive got a bottle of just peppers and vinegar that is so old i forgot how old it is. Probably over 10-15yrs old now. NOTHING grows in it and the vinegar is rather tasty too.
 
I usually make a batch every year from leftover greeners that ran out of time to ripen. I hot fill and forget about them. Never seen any of them spoil.