How to Make Awesome Hot Sauce

Last Updated: August 8, 2022

How to Make Awesome Hot Sauce

By Published On: March 11th, 20206.5 min readCategories: Projects, Recipes

Last Updated: August 8, 2022

Making truly delicious hot pepper sauce is easy thanks to the magic of fermentation

fermented hot sauce in bottles

Batch 19 of Sage’s Fermented Hot Sauce

TL/DR: Click here to skip to recipe

I love a good hot sauce.

Not that crazy “it’s so hot it has to be stored in a liquid nitrogen cylinder” stuff, but the spicy, complex kind that delivers a wave of interesting flavors as well as heat. For me, fermented hot sauces are the best at delivering that combination.

Fermented hot sauce, like yogurt, sourdough bread, Kosher pickles and other fermented foods, gets its unique flavor from a naturally occuring microorganism called lactobacillus. These little critters consume sugar and convert it to lactic acid which both helps preserve the food and creates unique flavors. Based on the type of pepper, the variety of lactobacillus in your surrounds, and the temperature and length of fermentation, you can make sauces that range anywhere in flavor from hot pineapple and vanilla to tangy curry and lemon grass.

Every year I make a batch of fermented hot sauce that takes nearly six months, but you can actually produce a pretty dang good batch in just a week. Even over a period that short, the fermentation process will convert the sugars in the peppers into new flavors and aromas you just don’t get with fresh sauces.

If you haven’t ever tried making your own, you definitely should. Here’s my basic and advanced recipes:

Hot Sauce Recipes

QUICK NOTE ABOUT LACTO-FERMENTATION:

These are simple lacto-fermentation recipes using brine. Basically we want a brine salty enough to prevent bad bacteria from taking up residence, but not so salty it prevents the lactobacillus from fermenting the sugars in the peppers.

The proper proportion of salt to water is ½ tablespoon salt for every 1 cup water.

The water should be filtered, not tap, and salt should be iodine free to prevent off flavors or colors. Just remember to keep to those proportions you can scale to larger batches with no problem.

Basic Fermented Hot Sauce
Easy, 15 minutes prep, 7 days ferment, makes about 1-½ pints of hot sauce

Ingredients

  • 1 pint ripe hot peppers chopped or sliced (I like the cayenne varieties)
  • 1 pint filtered room temperature water
  • 1 tablespoon (non-iodized) salt

Instructions

  1. Make the brine by mixing the water and salt until the salt is dissolved
  2. Place the hot peppers in an empty quart-sized jar
  3. Add the brine to the jar and stir to remove air pockets
  4. Cover the jar loosely and put in a cool place out of sunlight
  5. Stir every so often to prevent white mold from forming on the surface (if it does appear, just scrape it off with a spoon)
  6. In a few days the mixture should become cloudy and the pepper mixture should have a slightly sour aroma (this is the lacto doing its work).
  7. On the 7th day of fermenting, pour your pepper mixture into a blender (or use a stick blender) and puree the mixture until smooth.
  8. Transfer the sauce to clean bottles and cap.

The hot sauce is ready for use.

Because we haven’t stopped the fermentation by heating the sauce or adding a stabilizer like vinegar, this hot sauce will continue to ferment (though more slowly) in the bottle, gradually mellowing the sharp notes and changing the heat profile.

As long as you don’t open the bottle it should keep just fine at room temperature for several months. Once you do open the bottle, just keep it refrigerated.

Long Ferment Hot Sauce
Easy, 3-6 months ferment, makes about 1 gallon of hot sauce

I make one batch of this hot sauce every year. I start it in mid-September and finish in mid-March which provides an extended period of fresh pepper additions followed by a long, slow fermentation period over the winter.

Because of the long fermentation, the heat profile on this moves it from an upfront peppery hit, to a lower, slower build with lots of spice, grass and vanilla flavors followed by a smooth, hot finish that really sets the sauce apart from others.

I use my favorite hot pepper (an accidental cayenne/thai cross from 20 years ago), picked fresh from the garden, but you can use whatever variety or varieties of hot peppers you like most.

Ingredients

  • Ripe hot peppers (you’re going to add about 4-6 ounces each week)
  • 2 whole garlic cloves (peeled)
  • Filtered water
  • Non-iodized salt
  • 2 seasoned hardwood staves (oak, hickory, maple, etc.), bark removed
  • 1 cup white vinegar

Instructions

Week 1: Place a handful (4-8 ounces) of whole peppers in a large, non-reactive container (I use a 1 gallon pickle jar). Add enough brine mixture (water and salt at the 1 cup to ½-tablespoon ratio) to cover your peppers. Cover the container loosely and place in a cool dark place.

Week 2: Scrape off any white mold that has formed on the surface and stir the mixture. Add a handful of fresh whole peppers and enough new brine to fully submerge the peppers. If the peppers float, use pickling weights (or a zipper baggy filled with water) to keep them submerged. Again, cover loosely and return the container to a cool dark place.

Week 3: Repeat the steps in week 2, but add two whole cloves of garlic as well.

Week 4: Repeat the steps in week 2. If it’s fermenting well, the mixture should be cloudy and yellowish.

hot pepper sauce after 4 weeks

Four weeks of fresh pepper additions has fermentation going well

Week 5-11: Repeat steps in week 2 for as long as you have fresh peppers to add. Cold weather usually kills mine off in late Autumn, so I can add fresh peppers until mid-December. If your season is shorter, just skip to the next step (week 12).

Week 12: Scrape any mold from the surface of the pepper mixture and stir thoroughly. Add your two hardwood staves to the mixture, making sure they’re fully submerged. Return to the cool, dark place.

Week 13-24: Now we’re just going to let the mixture continue to ferment and age. Each week take the mixture out, scrape off any mold and stir before returning to the cool, dark place.

Week 24: Let’s bottle!

  1. Pour your pepper mixture into a large bowl or pot.

    Fermented Peppers in the pot (click to watch)

  2. Remove the hardwood staves from your pepper mixture and use blender to puree it into a semi-smooth sauce.
    blending the hot peppers to make sauce

    Using a stick blender to puree the peppers

  3. Place a colander on a large, non-aluminum, pot and pour the pepper slurry through the colander to filter out the seeds, stems, and pepper pulp.
  4. Add 1 cup of white vinegar to the pot of sauce and slowly heat and stir it until it begins to boil. Reduce the heat and allow the sauce to simmer for 10 minutes (we’re stabilizing the sauce so it stop fermenting).
    bringing hot sauce to a boil on the stove

    Bringing the hot sauce to a boil

  5. Pour your hot sauce into clean, hot jars and seal. (I like to use 5 ounce bottles you can get on Amazon pretty cheap.)
  6. Allow the bottles of hot sauce to cool, then place them in a cool dark place to rest for a couple more days before enjoying.
a finished bottle of homemade fermented hot sauce

Batch 19 of Sage’s Fermented Hot Sauce

Because this hot sauce has been stabilized, it will keep for months (possibly years) at room temperature even after the bottle has been opened—no need to refrigerate to prevent fermentation from starting again.

Enjoy!

From the beginning

Check out these posts for the progress on the hot pepper sauce beginning with its start back in September 2019.

Share This Story on Your Social Media →

About the Author

author avatar
Sage Osterfeld
I’m just a guy with nearly an acre of dirt, a nice little mid-century ranch house and a near-perfect climate. But in my mind I’m a landscaper survivalist craftsman chef naturalist with a barbeque the size of a VW and my own cable TV show. I like to write about the stuff I build, grow and see here at Sage's Acre.

15 Comments

  1. […] fall I make a slow fermented hot sauce from the peppers in the garden. The base pepper is always the same, a Thai/Cayenne cross I call […]

  2. […] Want to make your own fermented hot sauce? Here’s how. […]

  3. […] Making fermented hot sauce is actually really easy. All you need is fresh peppers, water, salt and a little time. You’ll find complete instructions for both fast (1 week) and slow (up to 6 months or more) fermented hot sauce on my website here: How to make your own fermented hot sauce […]

  4. […] the first week of September got all the way into the dark corner of the garage where Batch 22 of my annual hot sauce was fermenting. The result of the additional heat was a lot more vigorous fermentation than I […]

  5. […] Note: Every year since 2000, I’ve made a slow fermented hot sauce from a Cayenne/Thai-cross hot pepper we grow here. The hot sauce takes around six months to finish […]

  6. […] Note: Every year since 2000, I’ve made a slow fermented hot sauce from a Cayenne/Thai-cross hot pepper we grow here. The hot sauce takes around six months to finish […]

  7. […] Note: Every year since 2001, I’ve made a slow fermented hot sauce from a Cayenne/Thai-cross hot pepper we grow here. The hot sauce takes around six months to finish […]

  8. […] Note: Every year since 2001, I’ve made a slow fermented hot sauce from a Cayenne/Thai-cross hot pepper we grow here. The hot sauce takes around six months to finish […]

  9. […] Note: Every year since 2001, I’ve made a slow fermented hot sauce from a Cayenne/Thai-cross hot pepper we grow here. The hot sauce takes around six months to finish […]

  10. […] Note: Every year since 2001, I’ve made a slow fermented hot sauce from a Cayenne/Thai-cross hot pepper we grow here. The hot sauce takes around six months to finish […]

  11. […] For a little extra zing, I like to throw in a dash of a hot sauce while cooking. I use Sage’s homemade hot sauce (recipe), but a commercial sauce like Sirracha, Tabasco, or Frank’s Red Hot work well […]

  12. […] Note: Every year since 2001, I’ve made a slow fermented hot sauce from a unique Cayenne hot pepper we’ve grown here since the early 1990’s. The hot sauce […]

  13. […] Note: Every year since 2001, I’ve made a slow fermented hot sauce from a unique Cayenne hot pepper we’ve grown here since the early 1990’s. The hot sauce […]

  14. […] Note: Every year since 2001, I’ve made a slow fermented hot sauce from a unique Cayenne hot pepper we’ve grown here since the early 1990’s. The hot sauce […]

  15. […] Note: Every year since 2001, I’ve made a slow fermented hot sauce from a unique Cayenne hot pepper we’ve grown here since the early 1990’s. The hot sauce […]

Have a comment or question? Share it with us! ↓

You Might Also Like These

Subscribe

Enter your email address to subscribe to get new articles by email

Latest Posts

Older Articles

Brought to you by




Go to Top