Trinidad 7 pod / 7 pot “Brain Strain” hot sauce

Trinidad 7 pot ‘Brain Strain’ chile pepper

I’m lucky to have a friend in town who grows his own variety of the Trinidad 7 pot (or pod) pepper called  “Brain Strain”. One of the hottest chilies in the world. No joke here, it will light you up. It rates up in the 1.2+ million Scoville range (jalapeno are in the 5000 range). It’s also very tasty with a tropical fruit flavor so it lends well to hot sauce. My friend developed this variety and grows a backyard full of them and to my benefit had a bunch of them to get rid of at the end of the season. When I showed up at home there was a large brown paper grocery bag filled to the top with this fiery little red, yellow and orange pods. After sampling one, spitting fire, crying, begging for mercy, hallucinating and then slightly recovering, it was time to make hot sauce.

I separated out the various colors and chose to make sauce with the deep red and yellow colors. The rest I sealed in vacuum packs and froze for later use. With the reds I was going to straight ferment them with nothing but sea salt and water. To the yellows I added pineapple and garlic along with the salt and water. I went with around 3.2-5% salt to weight ratio for both. Set it all up in my mason jar fermenters and let sit for 2 months. For whatever reason the reds started bubbling away in a few days, the yellows with pineapple and garlic took nearly 4 weeks before they gave any big hint of fermentation. Not sure if the garlic or pineapple slows fermentation. Once everything calmed down for both I processed each mash through the fine dye on a food mill, added vinegar put them back in the jars to rest for a week.

The red is hot as fire. Uncut it registers up there with some of the hottest non-extract based sauces I’ve ever had. Still has a good flavor with the fruity chile taste present, but the heat is the main thing. The consistency is pretty thick so next round I’ll cut with more vinegar.

The yellow is much more mellow and has a great tropical flavor. It’s also a little thicker than I like but it’s better than the red. I used some home-made vinegar made from New Belgium Frambozen beer, this added some needed acid with sweet fruity undertones. A great fit for this.

Equipment:

• fermentation vessels (instructions on what I use here)
• food mill
• food processor
• hot sauce bottles
• tongue of steel
• bravery

Shopping list:

Red

• 600 g red Trinidad 7 pot “Brain Strain” chiles (or other tropical hot chilies) seeded
• 20g sea salt
• enough distilled water to cover mash in fermenter
• yields 550 ml sauce once fermented and processed through food mill
• 6 oz Braggs Cider Vinegar
• 3 oz brown rice vin
• 3/4 tsp xanthan gum

 Yellow:

• 415g yellow Trinidad 7 pot “Brain Strain” chilies (or other tropical hot chilies) seeded
• 20g garlic
• 165g pineapple
• 20g sea salt
• enough distilled water to cover mash in fermenter
• yields 750 ml sauce once fermented and processed through food mill
• 1 cup New Belgium Brewing Frambozen vinegar
• 3/4 tsp xanthan gum

How to:

1. If using one of the more powerful chilies, warn your housemates and then
2. Put on protective wear. I suggest eye protection and at the least gloves. You’ll probably also want a mask of some sort. The airborne chile oils can really wreak havoc on your lungs.
3. Pick through the chilies and remove stems, cut out bad spots and seed. If you want more heat, don’t seed them.
4. Process the chilies (and pineapple and garlic if doing that recipe) in a food processor until chopped fine.
5. In a bowl combine chile mash and salt. Mix thoroughly.
6. Make sure your fermenting vessel is clean.
7. Add chilies to the vessel and cover with distilled water.
8. If using mason jar fermenters, leave at least an inch of room at the top for expansion once fermentation starts.
9. Cover jars with cheese cloth and secure with a rubber band
10. let sit out for a day or so to gather wild yeast.
11. Once fermentation starts (or after a few days) seal the jars with airlocks and set on a counter out of direct sunlight. You can just keep them open fermenting under cheesecloth but you have to be vigilant about clearing any mold that forms. The airlocks create an anaerobic environment so the mold will stay at bay.
12. Let them ferment for a month or until fermentation stops +10 days or so. You don’t need to be exact here but the goal is to let the fermentation do it’s thing.
13. Once you’re happy with the fermentation, process the mash through a food mill’s finest dye.
14. Save the solids and dry them in an oven at 150 until dried. 1.5-2 hours. Great as dried chile flakes… because that’s what they are.
15. Now comes the fun part. Taste the sauce you have. My measurements on vinegar were to my taste. You may want fiddle with that.
16. Add salt if needed.
17. Mix well and add back into the fermentation vessel or other air tight jars.
18. Let sit for a week or two to let thing meld
19. In a blender add the xanthan gum and blend for 45 seconds. This keeps the sauce from separating in the bottle.
20. Bottle
21. Find some labels and do a better job than I did.

Now comes the disclaimer part: Because of the fermentation and addition of vinegar, these are probably pretty shelf stable. But there’s no guarantee. One way to be more sure is to have the pH test to below 3.5. If you have the means to do that accurately, you can feel better with leaving these out of the refrigerator. I have fridge space so I keep them in there just to be safe. You can also heat process the sauce but that’s also not a guarantee.

What’s the risk? Botulism, that’s what. It’s nasty stuff, but it’s also pretty rare so as long as you are careful you should be fine.