> you can leave the lid more loose

An alternative is to use a lid with a built-in water seal apparatus that acts as one-way valve to vent the carbon dioxide. Not having to think about manual venting or ingress of oxygen makes it a more foolproof process.

For thick-walled peppers, e.g jalapeño, a salt mash works as well as a brine and allows better control over the liquid content at the end. With a salt mash the thicker peppers release a lot of water that essentially becomes the brine, albeit at lower volume. For thin-walled peppers like cayenne and habanero, I usually use a brine or a combination of mash and brine. A weight can help keep the fermenting peppers submerged and compacted to make they remain anaerobic.

2% salt by weight would be the very lowest I would consider personally. Usually I use 4-5%.

A winemaker once gave me a sample of his own hot sauce which was great. The next year's batch he gave me, the body of it seems to separate a lot more to the point where it ends up with the sauce settled at the bottom and then brine/oil/whatever up top. In commercial sauces, I'm sure they have additives that keep it consistent, but I doubt he's doing anything like that. What's likely caused that difference over the previous batch?

A smooth mix of dissimilar substances is an emulsion. Keeping them mixed is called emulsification. Something that does this is an emulsifier.

I don't know what it is, and it could be something natural, but what was there and now isn't is some kind of emulsifier.

Xanthum Gum

I usually have a bunch of peppers fermenting together (with garlic) for blending into hot sauce. I tend to make ~30x what I use, and give out a lot.

it makes for a very fun hobby, with interesting rewards.

I would highly recommend others to try it if they get a chance, but as you said, the salinity is extremely important.

I'll throw another recommendation that people try it out. I got the Noma book (The Noma Guide to Fermentation, a really wonderfully written book) and got started with it. You can ferment such a variety of stuff.

My kids love it, my 4yo helps make lots of things. Fermented tomatoes (pulp is amazing, the liquid you get then is incredible in vinaigrettes and to poach fish in), fermented mushrooms, green beans are popular, kimchi (which is great because it's so expensive to buy here), strawberries. We've got some red sauerkraut on the go right now.

This book is excellent if you're a skilled enough cook to extrapolate the techniques out to other ingredients and make use of the results. Those results will be incredibly interesting almost unique ingredients in their own right and for that reason will not be easy to just substitute in for other things.

There's a reason most people start with sandor katz.

Yes, it's very much not a recipe book, that's good to highlight.

I think many here would like the style - it's a cover of the history, why and how something works and then a set of examples to showcase the variety with tips on how to use them.

For example, it'll explain what lacto-fermentation is & how it works, then give an example of fruit / berry / vegetable / mushroom / something else. Each comes with "how we'd use this at Noma". Given that it was a restaurant regularly chosen as the best in the world, sometimes they are a bit "extra". The base things aren't, but while I've made vinegar from things we picked I've not embarked on the more out-there projects. For anyone who hasn't read it, it'll also go into koji, shiso, misos, garums, kombuchas and vinegars.

> Those results will be incredibly interesting almost unique ingredients in their own right and for that reason will not be easy to just substitute in for other things.

I'm not sure I'd quite agree but I don't think we're at opposite ends here. The results are lots of base ingredients and information on how to use them. Substituting things is heavily encouraged (it's not saying here's how to do blackberries it's "here's how to do things like blackberries"). I've walked away from sections of the book with many more ideas and more confidence about what could be done.

I find it a very interesting book because it's less about giving a set of rigid things to do and more about showing the range and variety of what you can achieve. Also, it's written in a way that's not flowery but very passionate. I find it hard not to be excited when reading it.

I think a lot of techies would like it, but other sources are also excellent for taking you through how to use something.

It's worth a visit to Noma's fermentation lab + restaurant, too. It's a fun place. My favorite "bite" in the lab was fermented black truffles, which was such a unique and vibrant flavor.

as an aside, pickled leeks are an amazing addition as well!

Oh great recommendation, I've never thought about pickling leeks but feels like a natural extension of pickling onions.

I have found that fermentation with garlic leads to lots of kahm yeast, do you have issues with it? It may just be an issue with my salinity. I only have success brining whole or halved peppers.

Same and similarly I find onion impedes fermentation. I'm considering adding all of this after. With garlic there's the botulism concern, I'm not sure if this matters if you add acid to the mix after the fact.

"The botulism concern" isn't limited to garlic, botulism spores will be present on nearly anything you can ferment. Since lacto is also anaerobic, you're depending on the halotolerance of the lactobacteria to outcompete botulism early, and then they produce their own lactic acid to make it completely inhospitable.

Botulism gives up a lot of vigor for its sporing ability and doesn't do well with salt at all. The situations where it's a problem are when you don't have a source of acidity, like when you use heat which wipes the LABs but not botulism. Which is the domain of canning and things, not fermentation. Combining them is advanced level for this reason exactly though.

Right, so with a 2% salt brine the chances are basically nil.

it hasn't been too much of a problem, doing a very good wash of the garlic itself helps with this, and salinity helps as well.

I had the worst issue with kahm in a fairly low garlic fermentation, but am happy to try different amounts and report back.

editing to add:

I had 2 batches side by side, jalapeño, Fresno, garlic, and one had Thai bird, the other habanero. the habanero had a yeast growth, the Thai bird did not. all other variables were as close as possible to each other.

If you’re in the Bay Area, please add me to the list of lucky recipients of your hot sauce!

portland, but if you make it up I tend to have extras on hand.

I've found mash fermentation works fantastically in a vacuum bag

https://youtu.be/1IyrvH-Gexk?si=giwGdkPrLzxJc2AL

This technique works incredibly well with berries.

I've had issues with fermenting mashes in bags in the past. My suspicion is that blending ahead of time may have killed natural lactic acid bacteria on the vegetables. So, you could counter this by adding some ferment brine at the end (e.g., from store-bought kimchi). But, I now blend for the final texture after the fermentation rather than before.

The plastic Korean kimchi buckets (the ones that let you push all the air out) work especially well for this.

A few years ago, I discovered that I love making hot sauces. We grow peppers (jalapeno, serrano, habanero, bell peppers) and make gallons of fermented hot sauce each year from just 50 square feet of garden.

Agree about not not turning them in to paste, to avoid mold.

If you're in the bay area, Serrano are spicy and easy to grow as an annual here (they don't overwinter well).

My twist is to ferment them in (live) kombucha, and then constantly backslop new batches, adding different vegetables or fruit as bulk. No need for salt with this approach.

You aren’t using fermenting lids??? I wouldn’t recommend this for anyone because your jars are going to explode.

I have 7 pepper ferments from my garden this year. My favorite is with some sweet onions and garlic added to the peppers. If the peppers are too hot you can use carrots. The best tops are not the ones with a water lock IMHO.

I do use fermenting lids, I was just trying to make modifications to the original article's protocol with the same equipment

Basically like sauerkraut and fermented pickles.