Talked to a brewer friend about lactobacillus and now I'm rethinking my whole hot sauce process

They said most store-bought ferments use isolated cultures instead of wild ones, and it hit me that my unpredictable results might actually be the GOOD part, but has anyone else felt torn between consistency and letting nature do its thing?

3 comments

3 Comments

lee58217d ago

Wait, they actually use isolated cultures? I thought everyone just tossed veg in brine and hoped for the best like I do. That explains why my last batch of Carolina Reaper sauce turned out weirdly sour and fizzy at the same time.

blair_torres7017d ago

Honestly, I used to think the same way until I messed up a batch of habanero hot sauce so bad it smelled like a barn. Your fizzy sour issue sounds exactly like what I got from letting wild yeasts take over before the good bacteria could do their job. Once I started using a real starter culture from a ferment I had going well, my sauces turned out way more consistent. Now I keep a little jar of brine from a successful ferment just to kickstart new batches and it's made a huge difference. Might be worth trying if you want to save those Reapers from tasting like soda pop gone wrong.

michael_williams17d ago

See this same thing play out in my garage with my sourdough starter. I used to just mix flour and water and pray, got some weird funky smelling bread that barely rose. Started keeping a little bit of the good starter alive and feeding it regular, now every loaf comes out consistent. Same principle applies to hot sauce, fermentation, even making kombucha. People act like it's some complex science but really it's just keeping a little bit of the good stuff around so the bad stuff doesn't take over first.