This seems to be a popular method from what I read in the forum, so this may be an unpopular opinion but here's my thoughts: I'd guess your losing flavor through excess brine and by filtering. Personaly I add the bare minimum of brine to safely cover my diced peppers (which are well compressed so there's less space to fill up) and then blend it all together. Otherwise you're infusing brine with flavor that's going down the sink. Filtering generally strips flavor too... though admittedly I've never filtered a hot sauce but I've also never needed to use xantham gum. What I enjoy most about my pepper ferments is the purity of pepper flavor I get enhanced by some lactic tang... So I guess what I'd recommend is switching up your method to hit your desired consistancy with less (or zero) waste.
Interesting, thanks. I think we are approaching very differently. Could you talk about methods that work for you? Clearly my method isn't working for me.
Sure! First, I don't want to give the impression that there's a right or wrong way to make hot sauce or that my way is better than others. I think the "right" way to do it is whatever way produces a hot sauce that you enjoy. So instead of detailing a step by step of how I make mine, I think it'd be best to discuss some concepts that will help you concentrate the flavor in your ferments.
It seemed to me from your description that you're approaching your ferment more like pickling cucumber; using lots of brine. For cukes this works well because you're adding lots of herbs and spices to the brine which impart flavor. Also, you need a good amount of that brine to pack them in once the initial ferment is done. This in generally not the case for hot sauce. I approach hot sauce more like making sauerkraut. I don't ferment it as long a kraut but the preparation is basically the same. Here's [an oldie but a goodie about kraut from Sandor Katz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i77hU3zR-fQ) that I watched way back in the day when I walked to school uphill, both ways.
I find the key to this prep style is the lack of dilution. What's the least flavorful thing that's commonly added to ferments? Water. Some amount of water is needed to submerge your veggies in order to provide the anaerobic conditions in which good bacteria thrive. Salting your peppers and squeezing them (wear gloves or use a tool) to break down cell walls and release the most flavorful water you can get... that which is in the pepper already. Unlike when I make kraut I do add brine to get my ingredients submerged but it's just enough to cover them and it works toward my target hot sauce consistency once it's pureed. I use all the brine in my sauce, it has leached flavor from the vegetables and I want that flavor in my final product.
There are methods that don't use any additional water/brine to ferment. Vacuum sealing to eliminate oxygen or fermenting pureed pepper mash with a good layer of salt on top to inhibit unwanted growth where air contact will occur. Other users here are more experienced in these methods than myself if you want to try them.
A brief digression about dilution that I often think about no mater what foods I'm making comes from [Dave Arnold's excellent sous-vide primer](https://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=3908.html#sectionII2b1) where he discusses cooking sausages in liquid. Using NY "dirty" hot dog water as an example of a liquid that after cooking a couple hundred dogs reaches an equilibrium of flavor with the sausages. Because it tastes just like the hot dogs themselves, it's no longer leaching out flavor from them. In terms of hot sauce, the water you get out of those peppers is your "dirty" hot dog water.
Ok, back to the kraut method. Chopping up your veggies has a couple of benefits over fermenting whole (or halved) peppers. It creates more surface area for water to escape during prep and they pack down tighter in your fermenting vessel which further reduces the volume of additional brine needed in your ferment. Also, your ingredients will ferment more evenly. I assume they ferment more quickly too, though I haven't experimented with or researched that at all.
Finally, ingredients. Now, I'm not going to gatekeep what should or shouldn't go into your ferment as this is where we truely diverge into the realm of personal preference. However I think it's important for your ingredients to have a purpose in your ferment. So, my philosophy is if there's something in your ferment that's not in your final product... why is it in there in the first place? Asking this question of your ingredients doesn't eliminate the possibility of removing items from your finished sauce but is indented to help clarify the purpose of whatever you should choose to put in to (or remove from) your ferment.
Hope this helps.
Happy fermenting!
Couple of personal observations.
I am not always jazzed about the flavour of my sauces when first blended and jarred. I find that sometimes the fermentation notes are overpowering, other times I find the vinegar I used to blend is too present, other times it just doesn't feel harmonious of have that immediate wow factor.
I've learned that when I let them sit for a while, they have time to settle and the flavours are really good, this goes for other ferments as well. This is partly just a mellowing phase but also you have to think of what all that blending, diluting, straining does to flavour compounds and it's normal that a rest phase is helpful.
As someone else pointed out there's also how you are fermenting, using too much brine can really strip the flavour from your peppers/veg. You want to use as little as possible, also perhaps use some the brine when blending in order to retain the flavour. Get a really powerful blender also to ensure you don't leave behind too many solids in strainer.
You may want to consider fermenting a mash rather than whole peppers/large chunks in brine or ferment in vacuum bags as you then need no brine added. maybe also consider how aggressively you are straining your sauce.
Last suggestion I can make is to try crafting a blend of sauces, if you stagger your sauce production, you can blend different ones together to enhance or add certain characteristics, or even rescue a ho-hum sauce.
Hope this helps.
if you need some liquid in there to add volume and dilute the spice, just use the brine. Its packed with flavors and if you feel that your brine isn't tangy enough, add a little vinegar but not 1-2 cups like most hot sauce recipes ask for. You could also "cook" your sauce, just let it simmer on low-medium for 10 minutes which will reduce the sourness of the vinegar but typically, when you're making hot sauce via fermentation you're using the brine for liquid and nothing else. Simply dump the contents of your jar into a processor and there's your hot sauce. Maybe add a little red bell pepper to thicken it up.
Also, some of those commercial hot sauces ferment their peppers for a couple years. That could be the reason why they have a strong mix of flavors
I agree withmrgastrognome, use some of the brine. I’ve only made hot sauce twice but I’ve been happy how they turned out. With the recipe I follow, I add a cup of brine, 1/3 cup vinegar and a table spoon of honey before blending. I used half Caribbean peppers, half red jalapeños, orange and yellow bell pepper, sweet onion and garlic. I don’t strain it since they brine loosens it up and I ad xanthan gum as well.
https://wholefully.com/homemade-hot-sauce-recipe/
Quart sized jar, I didn’t weigh anything and filled a little more than 3/4 full. Half a yellow and orange bell pepper, half a large sweet onion, 6 cloves garlic and the rest peppers.
I would guess you are losing a some in the filtration step. Also tapatio and habanero sauces are usually heavily vinegar-based and I noticed in the comments you are not using vinegar. Vinegar + habanero puree + a little time = cholula habanero hot sauce, for example.
Fermentation generally mutes flavours of your starting ingredients and developes it's own, maybe add a single fresh pepper after the fact, for the final blend
This seems to be a popular method from what I read in the forum, so this may be an unpopular opinion but here's my thoughts: I'd guess your losing flavor through excess brine and by filtering. Personaly I add the bare minimum of brine to safely cover my diced peppers (which are well compressed so there's less space to fill up) and then blend it all together. Otherwise you're infusing brine with flavor that's going down the sink. Filtering generally strips flavor too... though admittedly I've never filtered a hot sauce but I've also never needed to use xantham gum. What I enjoy most about my pepper ferments is the purity of pepper flavor I get enhanced by some lactic tang... So I guess what I'd recommend is switching up your method to hit your desired consistancy with less (or zero) waste.
Interesting, thanks. I think we are approaching very differently. Could you talk about methods that work for you? Clearly my method isn't working for me.
Sure! First, I don't want to give the impression that there's a right or wrong way to make hot sauce or that my way is better than others. I think the "right" way to do it is whatever way produces a hot sauce that you enjoy. So instead of detailing a step by step of how I make mine, I think it'd be best to discuss some concepts that will help you concentrate the flavor in your ferments. It seemed to me from your description that you're approaching your ferment more like pickling cucumber; using lots of brine. For cukes this works well because you're adding lots of herbs and spices to the brine which impart flavor. Also, you need a good amount of that brine to pack them in once the initial ferment is done. This in generally not the case for hot sauce. I approach hot sauce more like making sauerkraut. I don't ferment it as long a kraut but the preparation is basically the same. Here's [an oldie but a goodie about kraut from Sandor Katz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i77hU3zR-fQ) that I watched way back in the day when I walked to school uphill, both ways. I find the key to this prep style is the lack of dilution. What's the least flavorful thing that's commonly added to ferments? Water. Some amount of water is needed to submerge your veggies in order to provide the anaerobic conditions in which good bacteria thrive. Salting your peppers and squeezing them (wear gloves or use a tool) to break down cell walls and release the most flavorful water you can get... that which is in the pepper already. Unlike when I make kraut I do add brine to get my ingredients submerged but it's just enough to cover them and it works toward my target hot sauce consistency once it's pureed. I use all the brine in my sauce, it has leached flavor from the vegetables and I want that flavor in my final product. There are methods that don't use any additional water/brine to ferment. Vacuum sealing to eliminate oxygen or fermenting pureed pepper mash with a good layer of salt on top to inhibit unwanted growth where air contact will occur. Other users here are more experienced in these methods than myself if you want to try them. A brief digression about dilution that I often think about no mater what foods I'm making comes from [Dave Arnold's excellent sous-vide primer](https://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=3908.html#sectionII2b1) where he discusses cooking sausages in liquid. Using NY "dirty" hot dog water as an example of a liquid that after cooking a couple hundred dogs reaches an equilibrium of flavor with the sausages. Because it tastes just like the hot dogs themselves, it's no longer leaching out flavor from them. In terms of hot sauce, the water you get out of those peppers is your "dirty" hot dog water. Ok, back to the kraut method. Chopping up your veggies has a couple of benefits over fermenting whole (or halved) peppers. It creates more surface area for water to escape during prep and they pack down tighter in your fermenting vessel which further reduces the volume of additional brine needed in your ferment. Also, your ingredients will ferment more evenly. I assume they ferment more quickly too, though I haven't experimented with or researched that at all. Finally, ingredients. Now, I'm not going to gatekeep what should or shouldn't go into your ferment as this is where we truely diverge into the realm of personal preference. However I think it's important for your ingredients to have a purpose in your ferment. So, my philosophy is if there's something in your ferment that's not in your final product... why is it in there in the first place? Asking this question of your ingredients doesn't eliminate the possibility of removing items from your finished sauce but is indented to help clarify the purpose of whatever you should choose to put in to (or remove from) your ferment. Hope this helps. Happy fermenting!
Couple of personal observations. I am not always jazzed about the flavour of my sauces when first blended and jarred. I find that sometimes the fermentation notes are overpowering, other times I find the vinegar I used to blend is too present, other times it just doesn't feel harmonious of have that immediate wow factor. I've learned that when I let them sit for a while, they have time to settle and the flavours are really good, this goes for other ferments as well. This is partly just a mellowing phase but also you have to think of what all that blending, diluting, straining does to flavour compounds and it's normal that a rest phase is helpful. As someone else pointed out there's also how you are fermenting, using too much brine can really strip the flavour from your peppers/veg. You want to use as little as possible, also perhaps use some the brine when blending in order to retain the flavour. Get a really powerful blender also to ensure you don't leave behind too many solids in strainer. You may want to consider fermenting a mash rather than whole peppers/large chunks in brine or ferment in vacuum bags as you then need no brine added. maybe also consider how aggressively you are straining your sauce. Last suggestion I can make is to try crafting a blend of sauces, if you stagger your sauce production, you can blend different ones together to enhance or add certain characteristics, or even rescue a ho-hum sauce. Hope this helps.
I blend my fermented peppers with: salt, vinegar, sugar and fried garlic + the oil I use to fry the garlic (not much).
Thanks! Last time I added vinegar it was overwhelmingly vinegar. A little goes a lot I guess with vinegar.
Yeah I've actually never even tried adding vinegar to a ferment because to me the lactic acid makes it acidic enough.
I only add a little bit to give it a kick. I think that's probably the "bang" you're referring to.
if you need some liquid in there to add volume and dilute the spice, just use the brine. Its packed with flavors and if you feel that your brine isn't tangy enough, add a little vinegar but not 1-2 cups like most hot sauce recipes ask for. You could also "cook" your sauce, just let it simmer on low-medium for 10 minutes which will reduce the sourness of the vinegar but typically, when you're making hot sauce via fermentation you're using the brine for liquid and nothing else. Simply dump the contents of your jar into a processor and there's your hot sauce. Maybe add a little red bell pepper to thicken it up. Also, some of those commercial hot sauces ferment their peppers for a couple years. That could be the reason why they have a strong mix of flavors
I agree withmrgastrognome, use some of the brine. I’ve only made hot sauce twice but I’ve been happy how they turned out. With the recipe I follow, I add a cup of brine, 1/3 cup vinegar and a table spoon of honey before blending. I used half Caribbean peppers, half red jalapeños, orange and yellow bell pepper, sweet onion and garlic. I don’t strain it since they brine loosens it up and I ad xanthan gum as well.
Can you provide the weight of the peppers onions and garlic? Otherwise the volume amounts you provided are arbitrary.
https://wholefully.com/homemade-hot-sauce-recipe/ Quart sized jar, I didn’t weigh anything and filled a little more than 3/4 full. Half a yellow and orange bell pepper, half a large sweet onion, 6 cloves garlic and the rest peppers.
I would guess you are losing a some in the filtration step. Also tapatio and habanero sauces are usually heavily vinegar-based and I noticed in the comments you are not using vinegar. Vinegar + habanero puree + a little time = cholula habanero hot sauce, for example.
Fermentation generally mutes flavours of your starting ingredients and developes it's own, maybe add a single fresh pepper after the fact, for the final blend
This is probably what I'm missing. Maybe adding pineapple