gagger, you could be right. I plan to spoon as much of the salt that I can off. It's mostly very crusty and easy to see! I have tasted the liquid at the edges, and it's YES! VERY SALTY! Underneath, there is no salt, so I'm hoping it will equal out. I will definitely update this thread when it happens, but it sure is fun to watch the ferment. I'm thinking 2 or 3 weeks, and then hit it with vinegar and bottle. If it is too salty, lucky me, I've got a bunch of frozen jalapenos in the freezer, so I may have to ferment those without salt, and add them to the salty batch. I could probably kick up the ferment with a little sugar and some wine yeast. Tobasco ferments in oak for 3 years! I don't think I could do that! Waaay too long. I even have an oak barrel, but that is for wine! Most of the joy of doing this is anticipating the flavors that happen, and sharing it with family and friends, with them knowing they can't BUY this stuff! They have to come for a visit to get a taste!! My family likes heat! We are California natives, and have lived close to Mexico forever, so we do like it Spicy HOT!! tracydr, So you added vinegar after 10 days, right? Good luck with your canning! I prefer freezing, fermenting, brining, stuff like that. I fear the lid of the pressure cooker flying off and hitting me! LOL!! Nice to see you post, so i know the garlic in your ferment did not kill you! The sour dough starter gave me a lot of comfort with fermenting. half flour/half water, the bubbles come, and over the years, it just gets better! I don't have a dog or a cat or a fish. Just my Yeasties! And I only have to feed them now and then! Suzi

I know this was said before, and I appreciate everyones advice. I just ordered 100+ "Red Cherry Bomb" seeds to be the bulk base of the sauce and now wondering what I should go with to make different variations. I only saw 2 options to buy from at "Amaz" for Red Cherry Bombs and I like the idea they are fruity and not as hot as others. Now for my next purchase. For example I will do a (Hot, very Hot, and Extremely Hot). But still looking for the best flavor with the 3 variety of sauces, I will just ad more or less of the following Hotter peppers below. 1.) Orange or Red Scotch Bonet? 2.) Orange or Red Habenro? 3.) Red/orange BHut? 4.) Other I prefer red or orange for the color but if you think different let me know about chocolate. I just love teh look of a bright red or a redish/orange sauce. The other thing is I would like to grow these in containers if possible so smaller the better. My area is 6b located between Philly and Princeton Thanks Again -----Edit Updated--------- Sorry for update but just saw a good deal on teh web and just purchased the following below, 1. Cayenne Red Long Pepper (100 seeds) $2.30 2 Caribian Red Hot Habenaro (50 seeds) $1.29 I figure for about $3.50 I could not go wrong. I am still interested in Scotch Bonnet and the other Habaneros ect... and after further research I think the Bhut may be too hot. But with the Cayenne, can use it for sauce or just make a bunch of powder and the Caribean for $1.29 was a deal with free shipping and they were running out of stock.. This post was edited by thebutcher on Tue, Apr 2, 13 at 15:17

I was looking for hot sauce recipes here and found this thread. Here is my recipe, which I posed on the Cooking forum last year: Habanero Chili Sauce The way I make it is to take a bunch of habanero chilies (12 to 20) and put them in a grill pan so that they will not fall through the grates of the barbeque, and then I char them slightly over mesquite charcoal, but you can use whatever charcoal you like, but it must be charcoal or wood to get the smoky flavor that I like. I usually roast a few cloves of garlic in the pan with the chilies, and I also roast a few of the large red or yellow bell peppers, to make the sauce a bit milder and make it go further. After the chilies are charred, I move them to a Pyrex or Corningware pan that has a good lid, and I let them steam covered. They must be covered right after they are removed from the grill. You can use whatever ripe chilies you have, but cayenne is not a very good choice because it is not very fleshy. You can include the tiny Thai chilies also, but I generally only use fairly large chilies, as they are better for making a sauce. After the chilies have cooled (sometimes in the fridge overnight), I remove the stems, some seeds, and some of the skin that is loose and put them through a food mill with the garlic, but you can use a sieve or colander, as long as the holes are small enough for the seeds not to pass through. Be careful of fumes at this point, and you may want to wear a snorkel to avoid breathing them in. You may want to wear rubber gloves also, but I generally do not. The worst part of it is when you have to rinse out the food mill, for when you do this, even more fumes come up in the air. When you have the bulk of the chilies through the food mill or sieve, add salt and vinegar - I generally add one part white Balsamic vinegar for four parts of chili puree, and I add a fair amount of salt - about one tablespoon per cup of sauce, but you can add more to help preserve it. I freeze some of it in plastic bags, but I have found that it keeps fairly well in the fridge, if you add enough vinegar. A lot of people add carrots and other vegetables to this sauce, but I prefer to keep it pure, and that way I have the most concentrated flavor. You get a lot of flavor in this sauce in a tiny amount of it. I highly recommend that you add the red bell peppers, as they also give a good flavor and make the sauce go a bit further. Lars

"...the chipoltes I am used to our red while most jalanenos I find are green." That's right. Chipotles are made from ripe jalapenos, which I seldom if ever see sold fresh. Just the green ones are sold fresh. So far as I know, this is true of all chiles. Dried ones are ripe. Fresh ones are green. Anchos for example, which are ripe and dried, are the same chile as poblanos, which are fresh and green. I smoked and dried ripe jalapenos once when I had a bumper crop. I believe that originally the smoke was just a byproduct of drying them over heat. Mine did not get thoroughly dry after what I considered was a sufficient time for smoking. I had to dry them further in a very low oven with the door ajar. I didn't have a dehydrator at the time. I think the idea is to dry and smoke the chles without cooking them. I don't remember if I split them open before starting the process. I would do that next time. Jim