First attempt at FERMENTED chili sauce

Loosely followed this guy...

What I did differently was add garlic to the ferment, as well as per the video, fried and added at the blending stage. Also I added sugar.

Some of differences side by side for easier comparison... 

	Joshua Weissman	GV could-be-wiser-man
chili	540g	221g
chili padi	nil	68g
garlic	nil	103g ferment; 53g fried
vinegar	150ml white vinegar	75ml pineapple vinegar
water for ferment	1150ml	746ml
salt for ferment	51g	23g (2% total weight)
sugar	nil	2TBsp + 1 tsp
oil	0.5 cup	0.25 cup rice bran oil
fermentation	5-14 days	24 days
brine added to blend	42ml	2.5 TBsp

The ferment looked a bit iffy. I was preparing myself for throwing it all out. 

But after emptying it, it looked ok. The white cloud like patches in the mix turned out to be the garlic disintegrating. Tasted the brine and chili, it all tasted and smelt good. 

Made up a batch of 2% salt water just to rinse the chili and garlic, coz the top layer had some kahm yeast on it. 

The brine was sieved multiple times, each going through a finer mesh. First the big sieve to separate the main solids from the brine.

Then a finer sieve to remove, I think, some garlic that had disintegrated. Washed out all the sieves then ran it through multiple layers of cloth. This got rid of the yeast, and was the slowest process.

The resulting brine was more translucent. Tasted salty and hot.
Then came frying up some more garlic.

note: the final taste wasn't as garlicky as I expected. I used half the chili the video asked for but more than 3 times the garlic. Either our garlic is shit or our taste buds are dull from all the chili and garlic we consume everyday. I think a combination of both reasons.

Blended and added the rest of the ingredients according to the video. The result...

The true test was the family having it for lunch with some roast chicken. All said it was better than the last 2 batches :)

How I can improve...

 - add some pepper to the ferment

- try ACV instead of PCV for the vinegar. PCV is milder in taste.

- will add garlic only at the final stage. the fermented and fried garlic must have taken out some of its strong flavour. It definitely made the chili milder

- I wont ferment more than 14 days to minimise the loss of heat.

- add water and psyllium husk to add body/volume. I didnt so this time coz I wanted to taste what fermented chili sauce was like without any unnecessary ingredients.