Comments on: Fermented Hot Sauce Recipe: A Quick Guide to Fermenting Peppers https://chillichump.com/fermented-hot-sauce-recipe-guide/ Your Ultimate Guide to Growing Chillies & Making Hot Sauce! Est. 2006 Wed, 02 Jul 2025 05:04:15 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.4 By: Shaun aka ChilliChump https://chillichump.com/fermented-hot-sauce-recipe-guide/#comment-58803 Fri, 03 Jan 2025 14:11:27 +0000 https://chillichump.com/?p=21215#comment-58803 In reply to Robert Cripps.

Hi Robert,

Fermentation starting up again is down to a couple things. Either the fermentation didn’t complete, or more “food” for the lactobacillus has been introduced (ingredients added after fermentation completed). To 100% guarantee that fermentation is complete, you can do as you say, heat the sauce up to around 60’C for 5 minutes. Be careful not to heat it up too much higher than this because it affects the flavours.

Also you mentioned it isn’t botulism because the pH is too low. pH only affects clostridium botulinum, and will stop it from causing botulism. However if the pH of the fermentation didn’t drop quick enough, the botulinum toxin may have already been released…and the toxin is not sensitive to pH. It is however sensitive to heat.

Shaun

]]> By: Robert Cripps https://chillichump.com/fermented-hot-sauce-recipe-guide/#comment-58176 Tue, 19 Nov 2024 11:36:18 +0000 https://chillichump.com/?p=21215#comment-58176 Hi Shaun,
I’ve been fermenting my own hot sauces for several years now and I’m at the stage where we can’t possibly eat them all, or give much away as we live in a spice averse part of the world (Galicia in Spain) and the locals are not receptive to the charm of the chilli. So our finished hot sauces tend to be stored in terms of months rather than weeks. And there are too many to store them all in the fridge.
Recently I’ve had several batches that have started refermenting. It’s not botulism because the pH is too low. One batch has a pH of 3.45 and the other has 2.6.
I have two questions: What is causing the refermentation? Is it lactobacillis again? The sauces smell great with no suspicious or off aromas. I’m especially curious to know because my day job is winemaking.
I guess that I can pasturise them by placing the sauce filled bottles in a deep pan of water and boiling them for a few minutes. When we pasturise wine, it’s flash pasturisation before bottling and only for a few seconds before rapid cooling and that can affect the flavour of the wine. But this would heat the bottled sauce so it would be for longer (and cool more slowly) and I am concerned about the impact pasturisation might make on the sauce’s flavours.
Thanks, best wishes and keep up the great work.
Robert

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