cayenne
Batch 22 Hot Sauce – Entry 5
The Indian summer could have put Batch 22 hot sauce into fermentation overdrive. Instead the pepper plants flowered again, so it's going to be Batch 22 x 2!
Batch 22 Hot Sauce – Entry 4
Topped off 1 gallon of Batch 22 fermented hot sauce with fresh peppers over the weekend. This will rest for a couple weeks before moving to the big fermenter.
Batch 22 Hot Sauce – Entry 2
The second pepper addition to batch 22 of the fermented hot sauce. After 12 more weeks of fresh pepper additions we'll send it off to finish over the winter.
Pepper Plants Celebrate Their 2nd Birthday With More Peppers
These 2-year old pepper plants have been frozen, burned, dried, drowned, and attacked by rodents from above and below. Ugly plants, but look at those peppers!
Peppers are Pooped Out
It has come to my attention that my Central American "Culebra Negra" peppers are not at all happy about the cold weather. It's the end of November so we've had a couple of near-freezing nights with 34° to 37°F lows right before dawn, but nothing that I would consider a hard frost. The Hidden Lake Hot Cayenne/Thai hybrids are still flowering and fruiting quite a bit, but the Culebra Negras are a different story. Seems these poor plants, with their burned and shriveled leaves, have a lot less tolerance for the near frosty temps.
Hot Sauce Batch 20 – Entry 2
2nd addition of peppers was a full pound split between Hidden Lake Hot and Culebra Negra (see photo). This should be more than enough to get a good ferment going before I pitch it to the barrel and add 10 - 15 pounds of fresh peppers over the next 10 weeks.
Video: Hot Pepper Cadets Class of 2020
The candidates for this year's 20th anniversary batch of slow fermented hot sauce include a super-sized batch of my Thai/Cayenne cross and a Honduran pepper called "culebra negra" (black snake).
Photo of the Day: Hidden Lake Hot Peppers
Hidden Lake Hot peppers are a Cayenne / Thai hybrid we grow every year for hot sauce Fifty degree swings between day and night temperatures are making tough for the plants remaining in the vegetable garden, but the Cayenne/Thai peppers we call "Hidden Lake Hot" are still hanging in there. They'll continue to produce right up until rain and frost does them in.
Photo of the Day: Hot Sauce Time
Fresh picked Habañeros and a homegrown Thai/Cayenne cross that I call Hidden Lake Hot. Ferment them on oak for six months or so and, bang! Hot sauce!