Batch 24 Fermented Hot Sauce Pepper Addition Number 7

This is the final addition of fresh peppers for Batch 24

One final fresh pepper addition for Batch 24

Well, that was quick.

I was guessing a couple of weeks ago that with all the flowers on the pepper plants we’d get one more large(ish) harvest of peppers and that would be it for the year.

Instead a storm out of Alaska moved in, dropping the first snow of the season in the mountains and bringing nighttime temperatures down below freezing here in the foothills. That was too much for the peppers to handle, so they dropped their leaves and flowers and brought the season to an abrupt halt. I picked what remained of the peppers – maybe 12 ounces of Cayenne and Fish peppers – and took them up to the house to add to the fermenter.

I also ID’d several pepper plants that I’m going to dig up and overwinter in the greenhouse so I’ll have an early start on the season in spring. (More on overwintering peppers in this post.)

Turns out that remaining 12 ounces of peppers were enough to top off the second fermenter, so, now that they’ve been added, I’ve moved both fermentation vessels off to a cool, dark corner of the garage where they’re going to spend the next couple of months while the lactobacillus finish munching on the sugars in the peppers, converting them into a funky (and hopefully delicious) sauce.

Fermenter #2 is now full of peppers

The next major milestone for Batch 24 will be a tasting, probably sometime in between Christmas and New Year’s.

I will be looking to see the differences between the two fermenters (fermenter #1 has been going for a month longer than #2), as well as where the flavor is (grassy, funky, sweet, etc.).

Depending on the results, I may blend them all together and/or add some toasted oak to the mix to give it a woody-vanilla kick.

We shall see.

Author’s 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 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. I write these notes to track the progress and hope I learn how to produce more good than bad.

Batch 24 Timeline