Summary

 

Hot Sauce Comes to an End-but the smell in my garage does not!

 

I did not get any pictures for the last steps in my project because I have a broken ankle and it took a lot more energy to squeeze the peppers for all the juice they had:-) one of my cans molded over at day 12, but the other one I began squeezing at day 10. My suggestion to everyone is maybe a little more sea salt to help control the mold if you are doing this in the summer months.

 

With the jar of fermented peppers that was mold free, I got a strainer with very small holes so that no chunks of peppers can fall through. You put a bowl under the strainer to catch the juice from the pepper pulp. Wear gloves! I learned my lesson from skipping this step when cutting the peppers. Once gloved dump the peppers into the strainer, and begin pushing until you feel all the juice you can get has been squeezed out. This juice is the base of the pepper sauce!! Once you have this you can season to taste. I personally used vinegar.....and my boyfriend to taste test as o went along and added little by little until it was how I wanted. Vinegar does help tame the very hot selection of peppers that I used.

 

Overall, I had  lot of fun with this project and I think if given more time I could continue to trial and error until I had a good technique and mixture down. The great thing is that it can be as mild as you want or as hot as you want, it all depend on the peppers you start with! I may actually try again, although I did love my final product (I love hot stuff) I am curious to try it with the more conventional Cheyenne peppers that are found in franks hot sauce, they are just tough to find in this area:-) This stuff is great-but the wicked bite at the end is pretty intense and can only be used in moderation for the spicy fanatics out there! Thanks for following!:-)

 

Ps. A few tips for those who may try this:

--Wear gloves! Do not touch your face...... it burns! The juices from these fresh cut hotties is intense!

--Use more salt if doing in the summer, the heat seemed to speed up the action and allow for more mold if longer fermenting is desired

--Pick a place-out of smelling range to allow pepper-mash to ferment. It needs to be a place with relative climate control, however, the smell lingers for days and days even after it is finished!! My garage smells repulsive! Also, this smell doesn't mean it has gone bad, my sauce tasted great- peppers fermenting is just pretty intense! :-)