ottawapepper

I want 300 jars. when can you ship them to me. I hope $1 a jar will cover your costs.

What are you going to do with all the money you are making on these peppers.

So you are making bottles of dry chipotle powder. How big is the bottle. one ounce ? Dry powder must be expensive. Why not buy 100 pounds of powder and transfer it to the farmer and quit the business.

There is a place in England that sells hot chile powders for a fortune and he sell out all the time. What you are doing you deserve a huge price. Why not import the powder from Mexico. It is very expensive even in Mexico.

Well dont feel too bad. I have 19 plants of one variety. It gives up tiny tiny peppers. After days of picking all summer and saving them up. I have put together a quart of peppers loose in a jar. It is dammm slave labor. Except I am both slave and slave driver.

Next year I will grow giant chiles. Pick one huge chile and it will fill a quart jar all by itself.

I always wanted a smoker. Now reading your tale of woo I consider myself lucky to not have one.

Can you let out the secret of how much you get for the powder?

Do NOT click on the link below. It sells chipotle powder for cheap cheap cheap. Please do not commit suicide when you find out all this work was for nothing.

I love being a chile head. hahaha. I get to do slave labor for pennies an hour.

Here is a link that might be useful: Low cost chipotle powder in bulk

When you have to do it it's no longer a labor of love...It becomes work.

I know a guy who had too many peppers (he went to a feild end of season pick all you want for $10.00-filled a pickup) to smoke dry so he baught an aluminum shed and put rack shelves on the walls and a rack with several shelves in the middle.
He used an electric heater and a habachi for heat and smoke to dry the peppers.
He did a couple hundred lbs. at a time.
I don't remember how long it took,but you couldn't breath in it at first.
Once the water started to dissapate it wasn't bad but at first it was like breathing in a pepper spray sauna if you went in.

He eventually fine tuned the smokehouse.
Insulated it and put a couple small bathroom fans in it to move the moisture out.
He made a firebox outside(might have been a homemade smoke generator for pellets) and used a wireless thermometer to keep things at the right temp.
He ended up doing jerky,whole Turkeys,hams and sausages in it too.
It worked pretty good untill the fire dept. and health dept came around.
They wanted stainless steal,no more extention cord,and a ton of other stuff.

He never should have started selling his smoked stuff by placing adds in the newspaper etc.
He had more than enough sales to keep him going through word of mouth,he got greedy and pissed off the local BBQ joints who turned him in to the health dept.

hey all you chipotle makers,
i tried my first small batch of chipotle last week using the standard red jals. i let a friend try a pod and he loved it. so what does he do, brings me a very corked grocery bag full of green jals. and wants me to smoke them for him. have any of you smoked green smoked jals? how is the taste different from the reds? has anyone ever tried smoking them with alder, the traditional wood to smoke salmon here in the northwest. i have both pecan and mesquite i've brought up from texas, but would prefer to keep those woods to smoke red peppers and maybe a nice steak.its not like a have a lot of pecan or mesquite. anyway, thanks any and all that can shed any light on chipotle making.--bob

Hi,

There is a huge variation in pricing out there for Chipotle powder. Sort of makes me wonder where some of the Jalapenos are coming from and the purity of the powder. I guess the value add for local customers here is that everything from growing to grinding is local, 100% pure and pesticide free. The only thing that isnÂt local is the hickory used for smoking.

I donÂt mind telling you that the spice jars are selling well for $8.75 Canadian a jar. The Farm is supplying the peppers and bottles and I am supplying the electricity for the smoker and wood chips. We are splitting the grinding tasks. We are splitting 50/50 on sales so my cut is $4.37 per jar. To be honest I really havenÂt sat down and figured out the hourly rate based on effort to produce a jar. Based on sales to date and rough estimates IÂll be able to recoup my capital investment this year. IÂll have plenty of time to work out whether or not itÂs slave labor when the snow starts falling.

To be honest, my end of the arrangement doesnÂt involve too much effort. Cutting the peppers is a lot quicker and easier than tending to their growth requirements and picking them. TheyÂre sliced, put on racks and popped into the smoker. The automatic feed on the smoker takes care of the smoke supply. I supply a constant amount of smoke for 3 - 4 hours and then knock the temp up to 150F and dry for another 16 - 17 hours. I just need to check temperatures once in a while and unload when they are thoroughly dried, about 20 hours. The grinding using a regular household coffee grinder is the really tough part. The grinding process produces a very fine powder which quickly irritates eyes, nose and throat. IÂm going to be investing in a proper mask today.

I did have my tongue in cheek in my original post. This is not something I "have" to do. ItÂs just taken off faster than I expected and before I actually worked out what the return needs to be. To be honest I am still enjoying myself and still get a charge whenever another bottle sells. ItÂs kind of flattering when someone likes the fruit of your labour enough to pay for it. WeÂll see how long it lasts ask me in a few more crates worth of smoking! LOL

Bob,

I have done all red, all green and combinations of both. To be honest I do not notice much difference in flavour. You will get a darker powder using the green.

As for using Alder, I canÂt comment. I primarily use hickory and have on occasion used mesquite. I believe pecan is the traditional wood that is used for smoke in Mexico where Chipotle originates from.

Bill

I thought mesquite was used in Mexico.

how much is in the jar for the $8.75

I think the prices I found on the internet were for dried powdered Jalapeno but not necessarily smoked. Maybe you can purchase the powder and then smoke it.

I have never smoked a pepper in my life so I know only a little about what I read in passing. I have never tasted it either. Maybe if I did then I would be smoking it for the improved taste.

I have read also that the quality of the product is very dependant on the process and the smoker obviously. apparently it is not easy to duplicate a real good Mexican smoked chipotle. But then what do I know. Only what I read in a few places.

Right now I am involved in making some Jalapeno Hot Sauce. Even that is too much work. I could never sell it for the labor I put into those few peppers. But I am having a lot of fun making a big mess.

Just buy it from someone else

Here is a link that might be useful: My Fav dealer

I used to smoke only chinense variety peppers like the Caribbean Red and make powderss. However, this summer I was able to source some beautiful red jalapenos at the flea market and decided to make chipotles. I made some powder that I really liked and then moved to chipotle in adobo sauce. It's really simple to make and lasts about a month in the fridge. It's amazing all of the things you can do with chipotle in adobo sauce.

As far as making the chipotles, I now simply smoke them with mesquite on my Weber for about an hour or so. Whole with the stems.

Then I take the peppers and finish them in a dehydrator and that takes about 24 hours.

I then place them in a freezer bag and stow in the freezer. That way, I can make powder as needed as well as chipotle in adobo sauce.

I don't grow jalapenos because of the ease of finding them in the markets. However, I do believe it is my all-around favorite.

dangould,

The jars contain approx. 1.5 Oz of powder.
You are correct that mesquite is used in Mexico but from my research pecan is the traditional wood used for smoking chipotle peppers. As I said earlier, I have used mesquite with good results.

byron,

Yes I could buy powder in bulk and resell it but you missed the point that people like and trust that produce and products from this farm is 100% local.

I think if I could purchase Red Ripe Jalapeno then I would not grow them either. The red ripe are so much better than the green.

I can only get a little to go ripe for me. It is frustrating. Most of the crop is green at the end of the season and a little is red ripe.

How much red ripe Jalapeno did you score and at what price. The green jalapeno are about $2 a pound on the low price end around here. And they are the lowest cost hot pepper on the market. Most are around $4 and up like the Scotch Bonnets.

Really the selection of hot peppers is very poor in my opinion especially compared to what I can grow.

I would love to score a box of red ripe Jalapeno in a fea market.

dangould,

Your profile says you are in the US. Unless you're in Alaska you should be able to get a crop of red Jalapenos without too much trouble.

I'm 100 miles +/- north of the NY border and I have no problem. Of course I start my seeds in Feb. under light and transplant at the end of May.

Bill

I do get red Jalapeno. I get more green ones however. also the crop of red ones is less than what I would like. I also find that if I leave the early set peppers on the plants that it stunts the plants and the total yield on that plant is then lower but the early ones get red ripe.

I just wish I had a real long growing season. I also wish I had a bigger garden. Dont we all. So far my crops of red Jalapeno are less than what I can eat over the course of a year. And I dont have a source to buy more red ripe ones.

anyway. dont pay too much attention to my moaning and groaning. I now have all winter to make big plans for next year.

Bye the way can I ask you if you take all the early blossoms off your Jals in the spring. And if so how do you time that. I have been leaving everything on the plants. but it really seems to set them back for a long time trying to push those early peppers. the plants hardly grow for a long time.

I didn't find any red jalapenos at the flea market today. I fear the season is coming to an end.

However, I did find green jalapenos for $1/lb at the grocery outlet and purchased 2 lbs.

In the future, if I find red jalapenos, I will buy what I can and make chipotles to put in the freezer.

At the local Kroger, they sell green Jalapenos for $0.99/lb. The red ones are $7/lb.

How much fresh pepper goes into an ounce of powder?

~james

WOW that is a huge difference in price.

the $1 a pound is cheap the $7 is expensive. I guess that might be why they dont sell red ripe around here. They would not sell well at that price.

I was wondering the same thing on how much fresh peppers does it take to make a unit of dry pepper. It has to be more than 2 to 1 and probably less than 10 to 1. Bell Peppers have more water and Jalapeno have more water than say a cayenne. I would put something like lettuce at 95% water or 20 to 1.

I found one statement on the internet that vegetables are 80 to 90 percent water. that would be 5 to 1 and 10 to 1. as an approximation. I will guess more than 6 to 1. Thus taking more than 6 pounds of jalapeno to make one pound of dry chipotle.

ottawapepper what kind of ratio are you getting. How many pounds of fresh peppers to make one pound of dry.

Bye the way, I find my red jalapeno to me more watery than the green ones for sure. So the ratio on red jalapeno would be higher than with green. I will guess the red to be closer to 8 to 1.

So where can we get this chipotle powder Ottawapepper?

Sorry Gang, been off line for a week.

Wow didnÂt think IÂd see my post still active.

To answer the how many pounds to make a pound question, let me qualify my answer a bit (because you may not believe me).

First, IÂm extremely paranoid about food safety. I dry the Jalapenos beyond any reasonable doubt of humidity. No moisture = no room for nasty growths. Thus, in a coffee grinder the powder turns out like talcum powder.

So my last batch of Jalapeno from the Farm was 9.4 pounds. After drying and grinding I got 13 1.25 Â 1.5 OZ jars.

Told you you wouldnÂt believe me. This is why IÂm suspect about the cheap stuff for sale out there. Done properly (ok my way) it would take a lot of Jalapenos to make a pound of Chipotle. In addition, we (I and the farm) choose the best Jalapenos for the Chipotle, not the stuff thatÂs in the bottom of the basket..

The season is over here for Jalapenos but next year IÂll post a picture demo of quantities and process for you all.

Potawie, if I recall correctly you are in the Ottawa area. You could search for the farm that holds Pepper Fest each year and buy a jar at full price or you could contact me at Ottawapepper(at)hotmail(dot)com and we could arrange to meet so you could sample the Chipotle.

I think others following this chain might like a second opinion yes/no?

Cheers everyone and thanks for the interest,

Bill

Sorry Everyone,

Just found out my scale left for lunch.

Just tested a 1oz coin weighed 2lbs and my 2lbs bag of sugar weighed ½ pound.

PLEASE disregard my references to weight in my last post.

IÂm really sorry if I caused any mis-information. IÂll post more accurate information when I replace my scale.

Bill