My goal is to make hot sauce with a consistency similar to Tabasco brand or Frank’s and bottle it so it can be safely stored at room temperature (I want to be able to give it to friends and family without making them sick).

I think I have a good understanding of how to make the sauce: I’m making a vinegar based sauce and I’m going to ferment it before bottling it, so it should have a sufficiently low pH, which I plan on testing anyway.

My biggest problem is that I can’t seem to find reliable and consistent directions for bottling homemade hot sauce. After a lot research it seems like there are two methods: processing the capped bottles in a boiling water bath or heating the sauce to 185 ^◦F and then pouring and capping it.

I have several questions: which method is safest and most effective (and USDA endorsed)? How do I know if the caps are properly sealed? Can 185 ^◦F be bottled and capped and then boiling-water-bath processed? I’ve read in some protocols for the boiled sauce method that the bottle needs to be inverted to sterilize the lids and properly seal them; does that work?

If anyone out there has experience (and success!) with bottled hot sauce, I’d be very appreciative of any advice that you could give me.

Thanks!

Properly fermented hot peppers mixed with a vinegar base will generally have a pH lower than 3.0. Think of sauerkraut or any other fermented product.

George doesn't heat process his. He ferments and ages and once ready decants the sauce into sterilized jars which are then capped. The mixture is shelf-stable.

I'm just not finding much on extension sites regarding fermented pepper sauces; generally this method seems to fall outside their purview. But George knows what he's doing. He's listed in rec.food.preserving's FAQ as one of their experts. I've linked to one of the threads in which he discusses how he ferments his peppers, but a search of "George Shirley" + "hot sauce" will yield quite a number of threads.

Carol