When I do a pepper mash, I’m using 2% of the pepper weight of salt, with enough water to cover. Small peppers usually just get crushed or chopped in a Vitamix at low speed to prevent cracking the seeds. If you don’t have a Harsch crock or fermenting crock, there are a bunch of places selling mason jar kits with glass weights to hold the peppers under the liquid. “Submerge in brine and all will be fine.”
In order to keep everything under the glass weights, I used some flexible plastic screen, used to top dehydrator shelves. This was cut to the shape of the inner jar diameter. It’s flexible enough to get through the mouth of the jar, but springs back to make a good “follower”. A follower is an object, cabbage leaves, etc which sits above the ferment and below the weight. This keeps the product submerged.
Instead of yoghurt starter, my preferred starter is a small amount of fresh kimchi juice. Yoghurt bacteria are not really great at plant ferments. Leuconostoc, Weisella koreensis and Lactobacillus are present in vegetable ferments, like kimchi. Fermented batters made from rice and bean flour, such as Indian idlies, can also be very helpful.
Because these organisms are much more common inside cabbage leaves and typically sparse or absent on peppers (bacteria hate sunlight and dry), I have made effective starters by peeling off some regular European cabbage leaves or Chinese cabbage (Napa/Michihili) and rinsing them off in a bowl. Then, that water gets put into the fermenter.
Fermented hot sauces are rarely shelf stable for long. The typical method to drive the pH down to around pH 4 or below is to add vinegar. To reduce diluting the hot sauce with excess vinegar (5% acidity), you can use Essig Essenz (25%) acidity. Citric acid can be used, but adds a certain flavor.
Currently, I’ve got 9 half-gallons of pickled Grenada Seasoning + Rocotillo (true) and 6 half-gallons of Grenada Hot Red + Jamaican Goat. The former are mild, while the latter are blazing hot. Unlike a ferment, these were cored, deseeded and packed tightly into jars. Because of the water content in the peppers, 100-125 mls. of Essig Essenz is added, plus enough vinegar to fill the jars right up to the top, to exclude air, which can discolor the pickled peppers.
While a ferment adds certain flavors and softens the peppers, the above method uses room temperature vinegar and allows pepper enzymes to soften the fruits. It’s too acidic to spoil and there’s almost no oxygen. More fresh pepper taste is retained. However, very small peppers and those which are juicy, like Tabasco peppers, are impractical to deseed and require fermenting. Fermented Charapita peppers make outstanding hot sauce! The flavor, no matter how you handle it, dissipates in time; the complex fruitiness slowly disappears. I made some freeze dried Charapita pwder and will experiment with adding that to sauces, as needed.
The jar lids are plastic, screw-on types, with a silicone rubber gaskets, which I got from a fun little company, Mason Jar Lifestyle. These lids are airtight and don’t rust.
After 4-6 months, or more, the peppers soften and get liquified in a Vitamix, keeping the hot and mild separate. After blending to taste, Balsamic vinegar (a little) and salt get added and the half gallons of blend get a bunch of white oak sticks, which get lightly charred, toasted to impart a bourbon flavor component. This needs to age a minimum of 6 months before filtering and bottling. After aging with oak, it’s usually necessary to bump up the heat, as the sauce gets a bit milder. I just add more of the hot mix or a tiny amount of Carolina Reaper puree.
If your ferment is really foaming hard, it may be good to put the fermenter in a slightly cooler spot, slow it down to prevent eruptions or clogged air locks.
Yellow and orange peppers usually come out of a ferment a beautiful color, because there is no oxygen and the peppers hold their colors in the CO2 rich brine. Sadly, they’ll turn a muddy color over time. The easiest solution is to use red peppers or a majority of red peppers in the mix, and keep oxygen away. Fill containers to the top, once there is no fermentation, of course!
Another destroyer of color is light. I use the dark amber-colored Ball jars which exclude 99% of light (especially uv) and/or brown paper bags to cover the jars. Then, they’re kept in a cool, dark basement.
