Batch 22 Hot Sauce – Entry 2

Week 2’s pepper addition to Batch 22

Author’s 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 and, like wine and other fermented foods, each vintage is a little different from the other. Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad, so I write these notes to track the progress and hope I learn how to produce more good than bad.

A little over a week ago I began fermenting Batch 22 of my hot sauce using peppers from plants that have been in production since 2020.

Over the weekend I checked the initial ferment, which looks pretty good, and gave the peppers a stir. Then I added about two pints of fresh-picked peppers, added enough water to submerge them, and tossed in two tablespoons of Kosher salt to keep the brine active.

The fermenter after the second pepper addition

The weather has cooled a bit over the past week, so I expect the ferment will also slow, which is fine. We’ve still got around 12 weeks of new pepper additions before we send it off to over-winter.

Batch 22 Timeline