The amount of salt you use totally depends on the amount of water, the type of salt you use, and the vegetable you’re fermenting. Unless you’re storing the ferments for a prolonged period of time, you can just use tap water (some people like to boil it first) since the salt will prevent any unwanted bacteria from growing within a short period of time. The basis of a fermentation brine is just salt and purified water. The measurement is called the Scoville scale and the unit for the measurement is Scoville heat units (SHU). The intensity of a pepper is measured by the number of times capsaicin needs to be diluted by sugar-water.
You can make some great color pallets with those. Peppers can be white, red, green, orange, yellow, purple, even black. There are at least a couple hundred different peppers you can choose from for your hot sauce all with a different flavor and level of spice. The following is a list of hot peppers from most mild to most scorching. The stress under which the pepper is grown determines how much capsaicin it produces determining how hot said pepper is.
All hot peppers produce a chemical called capsaicin. The Carolina reaper pepper is one of the hottest peppers in the south, and it’s safe to say that if you’re a fan of the milder sauces, you shouldn’t use something with a Scoville rating of over two million. It should be abundantly clear that the pepper you use should focus on just how spicy you like your hot sauce. Salt does however slow that process, which is a great thing because it gives time for those funky flavors to come through. Lactic acid bacteria have a much higher tolerance for salt than most other bacteria therefore can keep fermenting the glucose even in high salt concentration levels. Salt doesn’t just keep your veggies fresh in terms of color and texture, it also prevents any unwanted bacteria from propagating into their colonies. Adding a high concentration of salt goes a lot farther than just impacting flavor. Thus far it seems that all you need to ferment a vegetable is said vegetable and some water, which is technically true be it one of the worst ways to ferment anything. During lactic fermentation glucose is converted into 2 molecules of pyruvate, the pyruvate is converted into lactate via an enzyme called lactate dehydrogenase, which as a result produces CO2 and lactic acid. Carbon dioxide is a by-product of any form of fermentation. Lactic Acid Fermentation (which is the one we’re using in this recipe) uses microorganisms like bacteria or fungi to convert sugar (glucose) into lactic acid to obtain energy. There are two types of fermentation, and while you could certainly go on all day about the science behind fermentation, these are the basics (the very basics):Įthanol Fermentation involves yeast (and some strains of bacteria) to convert a glucose molecule into 2 molecules of pyruvate, then into acetaldehyde (the chemical that causes hangovers and time/memory lapses after a night on the town), and finally into ethanol within a base depending on what you are fermenting (sugar in the case of rum, barley for whiskey, etc.) It’s not complicated and at its most basic, it’s just a combination of fermented peppers and vinegar.Ĭhoosing specific peppers to fit your taste and extra ingredients and flavors like garlic, honey, fruit, herbs, and spices. Whether or not you’re a fan of spicy foods or not, there’s undoubtedly a hot sauce out there for you, and what better way to explore the world of pepper sauces than making your very own.