Hi Ache, I tend to play around with my potting mixes, but the basics are potting soil from Bushel Stop, pine bark chips, coconut husk chips and those clay balls that orchid folks use a lot. I like my potting mixes to drain rapidly, even though it means more hand watering for me. For Blueberries I use coarse peat moss and pine bark. I want "chunky" soil, not fine mixtures that pack down. When I don't have coconut husk chips on hand, I use bagged Orchid mixes added to standard potting soil. I usually have to add soil every year or so, and sometimes root prune the trees. I've not had much luck using plain old potting soil. It seems to break down too quickly and ends up too wet. Lisa

Ah, okay great. Thanks. I'm so used to home brew starting so quick that I think I expected to see something sooner. I think I'll follow your advice and keep oxygen to a minimum next time. do you use any kind of culture to help things along or just rely on whats on the peppers? As it happens, I gave it a stir this afternoon and quite a lot of bubbles poured up to the surface, so something is happening. Might have just jumped the gun. I'm also starting to see a layer of liquid forming at bottom of jar. Do I need to worry about every spec of pepper that sticks to the jar? Should I be pushing those down? Or does the air lock take care of the risk of mold? Should I keep stirring or just leave it alone for a month? Sorry, new to this. I've uploaded a pic of current state. You can see a few bubbles against the glass. But it's very subdued compared to anything like home brew.

the 2 recipes are almost identical. 2 qts chopped peeled cored tomatoes 1 1/2 cups chopped seeded hot red peppers 1 qt vinegar divided is the same as 8 cups (64 ounces) canned, diced tomatoes, undrained 1½ cups seeded, chopped Serrano peppers 4 cups distilled white vinegar (5 percent) the rest is minor. But I like the recipe or both recipes. but I still have a question for Zakker. How do you grind up the peppers. blender or food processor or something else. *****using 1:2 vinegar. That a lot vinegar purchase!! I take it you mean 1 part mash to 2 parts vinegar. I suspect this is a common ratio that commercial people use. I suspect some of the cayenne people use more vinegar to dilute the salt. but lousiana hot sauce is cayenne mash with vinegar and it is kind of salty. Might be able to figure the dilution from the final salt and a good guess on the starting salt. Of course all mfg will rave about their process of making hot sauce. Tabasco sure does. But it seems to me that if you add 2 units of vinegar to the 1 unit of mash then why bother fermenting. You have so much vinegar that you may as well just use the pure vinegar method. Just putting the question to you to see what you might say. I really wonder if you can taste a difference. I would say that any fermentation taste is gone from tabasco. It tastes like flavored vinegar to me. And aging the tabasco sure is a waste of time and energy. I can not imagine that doing it with say a couple of weeks aging would be just as good as the 3 years of aging they claim. and the oak barrel might be ok for wine but I doubt it does anything for hot sauce. and what do you think of lamalu's 2 quick easy recipes. no fermentation. nice tomato taste. John do you know if you can ferment the tomato juice. Can we mix tomato juice and hot peppers and ferment them. The problem I see is that the tomato juice is already pretty low acid so it might not ferment properly. by the way pretty cool that you could purchase 100 pounds of hot peppers. I assume at a good price. Bye the way I have never been a cayenne fan. To me they always seemed hot without much flavor. just blind heat. well at 50,000 SHU they are hot and I dont find much flavor. For example I like habanero at say 350,000 SHU with good flavor. for some reason they do not have that same heat that cayenne has. However, It is interesting they have a new hybrid cayenne type with low heat. that has possibilities because the cayenne has nice high yield. so in a small garden maybe I can get more pepper for my hot sauce. then heat it up with other stuff. but zakker you seem to talk about the flavor of cayenne. so i find that interesting. what do you think of other pepper flavors. or maybe you like to get the flavor from the food and add the heat using cayenne. Bye the way ship 100 bottles to me pronto.

by opening the jar did I ruin the fermentation? Not at all. Many folks use a type of semi-open fermentation where it is not fully sealed from the air. Think of pickle barrels or some kraut crocks. All it means is that once opened to air exposure bacteria are allowed in and now you will have to skim off any scum that develops every couple of days. Next time you won't want to fill your container nearly as full as you apparently did this time and weights are usually only used when solids (not liquids) are fermented. If it blew the airlock and the lock was the correct size for the container then too much gas was allowed to build up inside the container. Cracking the lid open a bit every couple of days prevents that. That usually means too much kefir was added or the air temps are too warm. Dave