Ten Years of Fermenting: What a Decade Taught Us About Patience

By Jeremiah & Rachel · Off the Deck Hot Sauce · June 30, 2026

The short version: Ten years of making small-batch fermented hot sauce taught us one stubborn thing — you can't cheat time. Everything good we make is built on that fact. This is the longer version: the batches we lost, the season we refused to rush, and the three-year ferment that proved the point.

Ten years ago, we made hot sauce in two-quart batches on a home counter, selling under cottage food rules to anyone willing to try it. This summer marks a decade since that first lucky ferment. We've made a lot of sauce since. We've also lost some — and the losses taught us as much as the wins.

A decade is long enough to learn what's worth keeping. So instead of telling our origin story again, we want to tell you what the ferment itself has taught us. Because the real education didn't happen on day one. It happened over ten years of long days, temperamental batches, and a refusal to take the fast way out. If you've ever wondered what separates craft fermented hot sauce from the bottle on the grocery shelf, this is it: time, and the willingness to spend it.

The night we lost five ferments at once

A couple of years ago, we had a very bad night.

The first two vessels were obvious: Brettanomyces. A wild yeast infection — uncommon, but not unheard of. We knew what we were looking at. The next three were something else entirely. The brine had gone dark brown. The smell was nauseating. The ferments were simply dead.

Every batch is a real investment. Time, money, and the lost revenue of product that will never reach a bottle. So we did what we always do when something goes wrong: we investigated. We tested everything. Our starter cultures. Our produce washing. Our prep. And then we tested the local water.

It came back at a pH of 9.6.

That's extremely alkaline — alkaline enough to kill Lactobacillus, the bacteria that drives lacto-fermentation and that our cold-processed sauces depend on. Our water was working against the very ferment we were trying to start.

So we changed it. We started building every brine with purified water, which runs an average pH of 7.3 — a far friendlier starting line for the bacteria doing the work. We began rotating our starter cultures more often to keep them vigorous. And we started tracking exactly what produce, from which farm, went into which batch — so that if anything ever drifted again, we could trace it.

We didn't lose those five ferments for nothing. We lost them and built a more resilient process on top of the loss. That's what a decade does: it turns expensive mistakes into the systems that protect everything you make next.

The season we could have cut corners — and didn't

The 2022 market season was bumping. We felt like we were trying to outrun a fireball.

Revenue is the lifeblood of any business, and when your back stock starts to get thin, the temptation to rush becomes very real. Pull a ferment a little early. Stretch a batch. Ship it before it's ready. Every maker knows that pull.

We didn't do it. Early on, we decided the single greatest investment we could make in this business was an absolute dedication to quality. We are in this to make products we are genuinely proud of. If we ever put out something we're not proud of, we've lost our way — and we hate being lost.

That's not a marketing line. It's how we make decisions when it's hard. We answer to ourselves, and ourselves is a tough customer.

What a decade changes

Plenty has changed in ten years.

We started at home, making two-quart batches under cottage food rules. Now we work out of a commercial kitchen, fermenting in five- to six-gallon batches. We started with whatever chilies we could find. Now we only use chilies grown in our region — the Red River Valley — because we've tasted the difference and we won't go back.

We've learned to read a ferment. To troubleshoot the ones that go sideways and understand exactly what went right in the ones that sing. Our process is refined now, the result of a hundred small adjustments made over a hundred batches. None of them dramatic on their own. All of them adding up.

And yes, we've gotten faster. We now produce more than ten times the volume in the same window of time as when we began. The cyclist Greg LeMond said it best: "It never gets easier, you just get faster." Ten years in, that's exactly right. The work is still hard. We're just better at it.

What a decade doesn't change

Here's what we still do exactly the same way, on purpose, even though there's an easier path:

We tie ourselves to the harvest. Our growing season on the Northern Plains is short, which means we set up a full year's worth of product in a six-to-ten-week window each year. During harvest, that's 80-plus-hour weeks. Long days, late nights, more peppers than seems reasonable.

We could simply order peppers in as we need them, year-round. There's nothing wrong with that — plenty of good makers do. But for us, working with local farmers means the produce is better. Fresher. Tastier. And it means we get to know the people and the land behind every bottle. That's worth the 80-hour weeks. Every time.

The relationships you can taste

We've worked with some of our growers long enough to watch their youngest kids go from four years old to fourteen.

We've cheered on 4-H projects. The oldest now helps us in the kitchen during harvest — closing the loop from the earth to the bottle, one season to the next. We've worked alongside our growers to figure out which chilies grow best in their soil. Which ones taste best from which fields. The kind of detail you can actually taste in the finished sauce.

You can't shortcut that. It takes years to build that kind of relationship, and the flavor that comes out of it is a direct result of time spent — in the field, in the kitchen, and at each other's tables. It's the part of this work that's the most powerfully personal.

Why our #KojiHachi ferments for three years

If you want the clearest proof that you can't cheat time, taste our Jalapeño #KojiHachi.

We set those batches up in October of 2022. We bottled them in November of 2025. That's three years of caring for and monitoring a single set of ferments — three years of patience folded into every drop.

Most fermented hot sauce is built on lacto-fermentation: peppers, salt, water, and a few weeks for Lactobacillus to do its work. #KojiHachi is different. It's koji-fermented, using Aspergillus oryzae — the same culture behind miso, soy sauce, and sake. (The name says it plainly: koji plus hachi, the Japanese word for eight, a nod to the long minimum ferment.) Koji breaks down proteins and starches slowly, building savory depth that a quick ferment simply can't reach. The longer it goes, the deeper it gets.

And the flavor is out of this world. Deep, dense umami. An ethereal sweetness. A genuinely complex profile that unspools slowly across your palate. There is simply no way to rush that. It takes time. Period. Full stop.

That sauce is the whole philosophy of this brand in one bottle. Slow is not a marketing angle for us. It's the only way we know to get flavor like that — and it's why a true multi-year koji ferment remains rare, even as more makers discover the technique.

What we're fermenting next

Ten years in, we're not slowing down — we're going slower on purpose. When capacity allows, we set up koji batches we intend to age even longer, pushing toward two years and beyond on ferments we believe will be worth every season of waiting. We're still learning which chilies from which fields reward the longest aging. That's the work of the next decade: not making more, faster, but making the best thing we can and giving it the time it asks for.

Ten years in

We'll be honest with you: the hot sauce business is truly difficult. The hours are long. The ferments are temperamental. Some nights you lose five batches and have to become a part-time chemist to figure out why.

But through that difficulty, we make sauces we believe are world-class — sauces that stand out in a crowded marketplace because they could only have been made this way. Slowly. Stubbornly. By people who'd rather wait three years than ship something they're not proud of.

Thank you for ten years. Here's to fermenting through the next ten.

Frequently asked questions

How long has Off the Deck Hot Sauce been making fermented hot sauce?

Ten years. We started in 2016 with two-quart batches under cottage food rules and now ferment in five- to six-gallon batches out of a commercial kitchen, using chilies grown in the Red River Valley.

How long does it take to ferment hot sauce?

It depends on the method. A standard lacto-fermented hot sauce develops over a few weeks as Lactobacillus builds acidity. Koji-fermented sauces take far longer — our Jalapeño #KojiHachi spent three years fermenting, from October 2022 to November 2025, to develop its full umami depth.

What is koji hot sauce?

Koji hot sauce is fermented using Aspergillus oryzae, the culture behind miso, soy sauce, and sake, rather than (or alongside) standard lacto-fermentation. Koji breaks down proteins and starches over months or years, creating a deep, savory, umami-forward flavor. Our #KojiHachi is koji-fermented for a minimum of eight months, with select batches aged for years.

Why does fermented hot sauce take so long to make?

Because flavor like this can't be rushed. Lacto-fermentation needs weeks for acidity and depth to build; koji fermentation needs months to years. Time is the one ingredient you can't substitute.

What makes your peppers different?

We source chilies grown by local farmers in the Red River Valley and work directly with our growers to match the right chilies to the right fields. Fresher produce, deeper relationships, and flavor you can taste in the bottle.

Curious where the patience pays off? Explore our koji-fermented sauces and lacto-fermented sauces — or read the story behind Off the Deck.

Taste ten years of patience — shop the Award Winners Flight →