Making a Pepper Mash for the First Time
While the plants are doing their thing under the grow lights, impatiently awaiting the arrival of warmer weather, I figured I’d take a crack at my first pepper mash/fermentation. But, before we get into what I have done in my first attempt, I must note that I am, by no means, an expert on the subject of fermentation so please take what is written below as the words of a novice.
Making pepper sauces isn’t anything new for me. I’ve been honing personal favorite flavor profiles for a few years now with fresh and frozen peppers. I typically make very small batches for the family (mostly me) in an effort not to have too much laying around without any sort of preservative. Fermenting the peppers (and the resulting bacteria byproduct) prior to mixing the sauce will make it easier for me to leave completed bottles sitting around for a bit longer.
For this first attempt, I kept things pretty simple in terms of the ingredients – peppers, garlic and salt. The blend of Carolina Reapers, Moruga Scorpions and MA Wartryx ended up weighing 108g and the chopped garlic came in at 10g. Based on everything I have read, I needed roughly 2% kosher or sea salt to get the fermentation process rolling.
I don’t have any of the hardware for fermentation that you typically see with regard to jars and airlock tops. So, once all of the ingredients were thoroughly mixed I tossed it all into a prepared vacuum seal bag and closed it up nice and tight. I made sure to keep a good amount of extra space for the carbon dioxide (a byproduct of fermentation) to expand into.
The sealed bag was placed in a cool dark corner of the basement and we’ll be checking in on the process periodically to see how it’s progressing.