• If you have a question about commercial production or the hot sauce business, please post in Startup Help.

preservation Vinegar alternatives

AzJon

AzJon

Howdy all!
 
Quick background, I really only make fermented hot sauces and know how to use that method to create acidity in the sauce.
 
What I'm curious about is making hot sauces using other acids to drive down pH. I have a few sauces that I ferment and have friends asking for it regularly. I am of course, happy to oblige, but fermented sauces are near impossible to create for mass production, which I am to do some day.
 
So, my question is, what vinegar alternatives are there out there that are less tangy than white vinegar or apple cider vinegar that can still create a favorable pH and still taste good.
 
I totally realize that vinegar sauces will never truly taste like fermented sauces, but I would like to get something as close to that as possible. Perhaps there are different vinegars worth using that are less tart?
 
Anyone run experiments in that department?
 
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
There are plenty of vinegars other than whitte and ACV. Rice wine vinegar is a mellow vinegar. White wine vinegar and champagne vinegar are others. I personally use mainly ACV but have experience with rice wine and champagne vinegars. If I didn't have ACV and wanted something mellow I would opt for champagne vinegar.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The problem with "mellow" less acidic vinegars is, well, they are less acidic. So if you are trying to peg the pH you will just have to add more and then well, it's just like the sharp vinegar. Because what makes vinegar sharp is simply acetic acid, the same acid that is in all vinegars. So if you are not buying the vinegar for flavor or the properties of what it is made from you could simply buy acetic acid itself and peg that minimum without any of the other properties of the various vinegars. You may notice "acetic acid" as an ingredient in some hot sauces. It is in many.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Upvote 0 Downvote
The Hot Pepper said:
The problem with "mellow" less acidic vinegars is, well, they are less acidic. So if you are trying to peg the pH you will just have to add more and then well, it's just like the sharp vinegar. Because what makes vinegar sharp is simply acetic acid, the same acid that is in all vinegars. So if you are not buying the vinegar for flavor or the properties of what it is made from you could simply buy acetic acid itself and peg that minimum without any of the other properties of the various vinegars. You may notice "acetic acid" as an ingredient in some hot sauces. It is in many.
Click to expand...
That was part of my concern. If I just end up needing to use more vinegar that's milder in flavor, I've defeated the purpose.
 
I use various acids in cooking and always appreciate them when they are present, but not loud. I use lime juice in my salsas, for example, but often just enough to add that something to the flavor that you might not peg as lime, but would definitely notice if it was gone.
 
I'll look into acetic acid and how it tastes in a sauce. Already have some citric acid around for canning, too, so maybe I'll give that a twirl.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Sounds like you already know what you are doing! I understand your post though, you are after that magic acid with no flavor. It's an interesting quest and I will follow this to see where it goes. Malic acid is found in apples and bananas. It has also been used in hot sauce. If you think about a lemon as compared to an apple, you know, it is less sour. Tastes like a granny smith apple level tart. You could look into malic acid.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The Hot Pepper said:
Sounds like you already know what you are doing! I understand your post though, you are after that magic acid with no flavor. It's an interesting quest and I will follow this to see where it goes. Malic acid is found in apples and bananas. It has also been used in hot sauce. If you think about a lemon as compared to an apple, you know, it is less sour. Tastes like a granny smith apple level tart. You could look into malic acid.
Click to expand...
Your help is much appreciated!
 
Its been an interesting learning curve so far. My fermented sauces I use like ketchup, liberally and on everything. The vinegar bases make a good sauce, but I use it more sparingly and feel like I need to pack much more pepper and adjunct flavor into the sauce so it comes through nicely when put onto food.
 
Anyhow, thanks for the eBay link. Maybe I'll just take a standard recipe and try it using each of the acids and see if one works out better than the other.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
sirex said:
There are plenty of vinegars other than whitte and ACV. Rice wine vinegar is a mellow vinegar. White wine vinegar and champagne vinegar are others. I personally use mainly ACV but have experience with rice wine and champagne vinegars. If I didn't have ACV and wanted something mellow I would opt for champagne vinegar.
Click to expand...
 
What sirex says has merit though.
 
Rice vinegar is more mellow but also is less acidic. Usually 4.3%. So that doesn't really help in adjusting pH as you'd need more. Most vinegars are 5 to 7.
 
Wine vinegars can be more mellow because of the process (made into wine first) but they taste like, you guessed it, wine. ;) I love my red wine vinegar, it's a good Italian one made from chianti. I wouldn't really call it mellow either. Compared to white distilled and acv, yes. But it's for my salads not sauce.
 
Let's skip white wine vinegar and move straight to champagne vinegar. Supposed to be the mellowest, and the average is 7% acidity. So this may help. They use only pinot noir and chardonnay grapes and it becomes champagne first. Since it is not wine as a finished product it can be made anywhere unlike real champagne so you have to be careful in buying, you can get horrible ones, the good ones are pricey. But you could give it a shot: https://amzn.to/3crAHAN
 
Lastly I will mention cane vinegar. Made from sugar cane. There's a good and cheap (5%) brand from the Philippines I rec: https://amzn.to/2Z3JAg2
 
So personally I would try first:
1) Acetic acid. See if you can use pure acetic acid to achieve the pH without adding any of the various properties of the other vinegars that have flavors like wine, apple cider, etc.
2) Next I would try 7% champagne vinegar, to see if the process can actually mellow it enough for you, with it still being a high acid product.
3) Vinegar alternatives.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Alright, so my first step was to get an actual pH meter to test if my sauce was acidic enough from the start.
 
Yesterday, I made a batch of mango-lime-habanero sauce. Cooked all the good stuff together in about a cup of water.
 
I remembered I have this German product called "Surig" that is a self-proclaimed "vinegar concentrate" that is 25% acid. I reckon it has to be acetic acid in distilled water. I'm not wholly sure how you would get that percentage naturally. There is no labelling on the bottle that indicates what the contents actually are beyond "vinegar".
 
Surig is used in Germany  at a 1:4 Surig:water ratio and is often used as salad dressing (and as a cleaner, honestly) and in potato salads. I remembered that I use it often and it has a clean, neutral tartness to it, so I thought I would give it a twirl.
 
My recipe was as follows:
 
3 mangoes, halves and grilled.
 
3 shallots, fine minced
 
6 habaneros, destemmed
 
zest of 1 lime
 
Juice from 3 limes
 
1 tsp toasted and fresh ground coriander
 
1/2 tsp Surig
 
1 cup-ish water
 
1 generous tsp diamond kosher salt
 
Simmered in a pot for 20 minutes, blended, and strained. Came out pretty thick, but tasty. pH Meter reading of 3.8.
 
Overall I'm pretty pleased with the result. I will experiment a bit more with Surig in a few different batches, but so far, the taste is well hidden under other flavors and wasn't noticed by a friend that self-proclaimed, "doesn't like hot sauce that has vinegar."
 
So anyways, that's the update. The sauce is good, but could proabably use seom tweaks. I'll use it as a glaze on some smoked ribs tomorrow!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
@AzJohn, you could technically just keep concentrating vinegar by distilling off the water (since it boils lower than the acetic acid). It doesn't form an azeotrope as far as I can tell (all I could find was this data to go off of), so there's no limit on how concentrated you'd be able to get it. That's where food grade acetic acid comes from as far as I know.
 
As far as making hot sauces, I usually go with apple cider vinegar, because the extra flavors it brings sort of off-set the vinegar flavor.
 
Has anyone ever used a paraben as a hot sauce preservative? I know they get a bad rap b/c they're not 'natural', but they're a substitute to acidification, right?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yeah, I've found with experimentation that I can balance out the vinegar very well so that you don't really notice that "vinegariness" present in your basic tabasco. Including giving some to a friend to try that really hates vinegar sauces.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top