Fermented hot sauce? What?! You mean like beer?
When it comes to hot sauce there’s generally two paths you can take in its creation: vinegar or fermentation. At MF Heat Co. we use fermentation because it creates a more flavorful, nuanced, and shelf-stable sauce than its vinegar based sibling. That’s not to say we don’t use vinegar in the creation of our hot sauces, we use it to balance our fermented mash and to create a more stable environment during the fermentation process.
Our sauces don’t end at the mash though. The fermented pepper mash is just the beginning. In fact, each of our sauces starts with its own unique blend of peppers, garlic, and other special super hot peppers. After a few weeks, we pull the mash out and begin the next stage of cooking and bottling. More peppers, fresh herbs, and seasoning gets added to the mash and voila, a sauce is born.
So, why ferment? It seems like a lot of work. And it is. But if we were content with just a simple vinegar base and adding dried spices to a pot, we wouldn’t be making sauce. We set out to make culinary inspired sauces, “a culinary inspiration and destination for every sauce,” is what we tell our fans. By fermenting and creating a unique mash for each of our sauces, we know that when you drip and dip the sauce onto your dish you are getting a balance of flavor and heat.