How to ferment hot peppers? How to ferment bell peppers? Doesn’t matter.
Lacto fermented Hot Sauce (or mild sauce) starts with fermented pepper mash. This technique is so simple and can be used with any type of pepper. It is up to you. Make what you like.
Adjustable to any pepper—banana peppers, carrot peppers, Thai peppers, Aleppo peppers, green chile peppers, ghost peppers, Fresno peppers, cherry bombs, jalapeños, shisito peppers…you get the ideaI. If you have it you can ferment it.
Pepper mash can be fermented in very small batches (say in a half-pint jar) or in a large-scale hot sauce plant. In this video we show you how to make a small batch. How long to ferment peppers? That depends on what you are looking for. At home fermentation you have the choice of how long you would like to ferment it. We suggest at least three weeks. Lacto fermented peppers develop more flavor over time. The thing is a fresh hot sauce is a flavor you will never be able to buy from the store. You can learn all the tips and tricks to make your own fermented hot sauce recipes in our self-paced online class. Our hot sauce fermentation book Fiery Ferments will also get you started with recipes that have been inspired from flavors all over the world.
Here's a fun fact. A large producer makes pepper mash by crushing whole red chiles with a hammer mill and adding a 5 to 8 percent salt ratio (our mash ratio is much lower at about 2%). This mixture is then put into barrels. Traditional Louisiana-style sauce makers procure the charred white oak barrels previously used by Kentucky whiskey distillers. The barrels’ wooden lids are fastened with stainless steel hoops and blanketed with a thick layer of salt. Tiny holes in the lids allow CO2 to escape. The salt blanket hardens due to humidity and seals the barrel fully after the active fermentation process stops.
