Fermenting Chillies (part 1)

Back at the end of my chilli growing season last year I had way to many chillies that I knew what to do with. I have them dried whole, frozen whole, pickled and ground to a powder all over the house in Jars and bags.

So when I had to harvest the last of  the Chillies in the greenhouse I didn't know what to do with them all.

I have a book called Abundance: How to Store and Preserve Your Garden Produce Growing Harvesting Drying Pickling Fermenting Bottling Freezing by Alys Fowler. In the book there is instructions for making your own Tabasco Sauce. So back on the 24th of November 2013 I started of my own Tabasco/Pepper mash.

I cut the tops off of 250g of long sweet peppers and 250g of small hot chillies and wizzed them up in the food processor, seeds and all to make a fine pulp, put these in a jar with 27g of salt (5.4% by weight). The book says 30 parts chilli to 1 part salt which is 3.3% but I didn't get enough fluid from the chillies so I had to add a little more. After 2 days there still was hardly any liquid so I topped up the jar with some boiled and cooled water and sealed it up with a airlock in place.

There is so much conflicting information on making a fermented pepper mash/sauce that I now don't have a clue what to do now that it's been sat in the jar for three months, it did ferment for quite a few weeks but has now stopped by the looks of things.

I can smell the aroma of chillies through the cling film and it smells good. From what I have read 5%+ of salt is what is classed as a strong brine solution so it looks as though I have far to much salt in this ferment. Ah well, the up side was that I had next to zero mold on the top ( kahm yeast ) so that's a good thing I guess.

I think the next stage is to add vinegar, I'll check the Ph before I do this, I have read that it needs to be below 4.5 so that nasty bugs don't grow in it. I'm going to need a bigger jar as well.