fermentation almost always ends with dead microbes. beer kills itself from CO2. bread dies from being baked. they are both still fermented.

Fermented foods have good microbes in them while they are fermenting up until something kills them - they are still very much fermented though regardless of whether the microbes are alive or not. The fundamental alteration has already happened.

Now, if you're looking to eat them specifically for the microbes, and not for the flavour, then you'd have to look for something that has not had the microbes killed off, for sure.

I'm on 2%. And 2% of the weight of the produce, not water! Also add some other stuff in there. Mango this time round. Some spices at any point of the process too

Not the original poster, but hopefully still helps: I chopped the peppers very roughly. Essentially, I made sure that the liquid could reach the insides easily. For small peppers, I just halved them. For the larger ones, I took out the seeds. But I didn't do it perfectly. Some people say the seeds will make the sauce bitter. I didn't have that problem.

I have used a wild mix of peppers. A friends sent some from his garden, we had some on our plants, so we just threw them all together. I only used yellow, orange, and red in the batch, because I didn't want puke-colored hot sauce but technically, the color doesn't matter. I've used cayenne, habanero, elephant, thai, lila luzy, and another one I don't remember the name of. For a milder sauce, you can also add some non-spicy bell peppers.

You should have at least 1/2 of them fresh but can add dried ones to bulk things up. You need some fresh ones to get the fermentation going, though. Definitely, no moldy ones!

It's a lactic acid fermentation. Don't overthink it. There is a shitton of salt in hot sauce that keeps most things in check. The fact that the fermentation happens under brine (i.e. not in air) takes care of the rest. Of course, do your own research, but hot sauce is rather easy. I just clean the jars under hot soapy water, then again to get rid of any and all remnants of soap, and then fill with tap water. But I'm in Europe, so there's no chlorine in the water where I live. You might need to use another kind of water or do some water treatment (chlorine evaporates if you leave the water open somewhere).

After the fermentation, we used a blender to mix it all together with some vinegar. The brine is great for chicken. We didn't filter the final sauce, so ours had some seeds in it. It was great on egg and toast or in cooking. You can filter again at the end to get a smoother, more liquid hot sauce.

1. I half them, leave the stems on and seeds in.
2. I use lombok, birds eye, madame jeanette, scotch bonnet, jalapenos, anything I can get my hands on really, all peppers are best.
3. Fresh ones, dont use ripe, old or frozen,, ripe is a gamble, old will get mold and frozen will be sterile. You can add frozen peppers with the fresh ones but you need fresh ingredients to start lacto fermentation.
4. lacto bacteria, it is everywhere all around you, even on your face. You do need a sterile jar and the enviromental influences kept to a minimal.

Search 豆腐乳罐 (keywords: fermented bean curd jar) and you can see that while some brands seem to load on the chilli (chilli is super red don't forget), there are other brands that look like they wrapped it in kimchee. It's quite variable and according to the customer's taste.

I mixed up tofu with bean curd, so I probably should have said fermented bean curd.