Well, we’ve had an absolutely gangbuster season for peppers this year. We love these seasons because at the end, we don’t have to make choices. We can just do everything we want!
Often, hot sauce is at the bottom of our crafting list. It’s not that we don’t like it or enjoy it. Quite literally, it’s exactly the opposite! We have a literal subscription that delivers new hot sauces to our doorstep every three months. We have and go through a LOT of hot sauce!
Our philosophy here is to let regions of the world that can consistently grow great and amazing peppers do the bulk of the heavy lifting for this product. But, when we’re up to our eyeballs in peppers at the end of the season, we have zero issues with allocating pounds or ounces to making up a fantastic fresh hot sauce!
Some years, we make the effort to craft a super-fine fermented hot sauce. Other years, we exercise a more basic fresh pepper sauce! If we’re being honest, though, it’s those fresh sauces that we crave and are unmatched by anything we could possibly buy.
Any and every hot sauce can be made for fresh eating. But, if you’re delving into the “preserved” realm, a bit more care is necessary. Whether fermented or a fresh sauce, the trick to preservation is to ensure your hot sauce has a pH of 4.0 or below. If that’s been achieved, your hot sauce is good for reasonable long term storage.
Whether you’re using fermentation or induced acids like vinegar to reduce that pH is fair game. The know-how is in balancing the sauce for short term or long term benefit, which is all in the acidity levels. Even when we know our sauces to be rendered “shelf stable,” we still prefer to keep them in the fridge to further reduce any potential risk.
When we’ve got a “fresh sauce” in house, it takes absolute priority. There’s only so many days of the year where a freshly crafted hot sauce is available to us, so we’re going to take every bit of advantage we’ve got. This is a huge part of northern living, to eat what you’ve got while you’ve got it!
We’re enjoying living fresh & spicy these days! Again, our focus right now is clearing out all those frost sensitive veggies. Preservation focused and eating fresh. Peppers definitely being among them!
