Tabasco

I have a Tabasco pepper bush planted for hubs.  It doesn't quite look like this yet.  Maybe next summer. 

I found a really interesting thread on GardenWeb Harvest forum; mentioned was Jean Andrews, the Pepper Lady.  She wrote The Pepper Trail.  Sounds like a really interesting book to read.

Her recipe for Tabasco like sauce is:

Homemade "Tabasco" Sauce
Jean Andrews
12 Tabasco chiles
1 clove garlic, peeled
1/2 to 1 cup herbed chili vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
In a small nonreactive saucepan, boil the
chiles and garlic in 1/2 cup of the vinegar until tender. Place in a blender with the salt and sugar and puree. Run through a metal sieve if necessary.
Dilute this paste with more vinegar until it is the consistency of rich cream. 

Storage options include:  freeze in ice cubes, store in refrigerator or BWB for 10 minutes. 

The real TM Tabasco sauce is aged for 3 years in oak barrels.  Another GW writer suggested smoking some oak wood on the BBQ and putting those oak wood pieces INSIDE the pepper sauce you are marinating.  That I think would work really well for fermented pepper sauce.

Next up I found:

Fermented Pepper Sauces (Tabasco)

Note: This recipe requires pulling the liquid from the peppers, so they must be fresh, fleshy and of the right state of ripeness. At Avery Island they still use the original "critique baton rouge", a red stick tinted to the exact color of the peppers to be harvested. Peppers not matching the "critique" are rejected.
Please remember - old or over-dried peppers are the key to failure. This is true for all hot sauce recipes that use fresh versus powdered chile peppers.
Ingredients:
Tabasco chile peppers
Salt
White wine vinegar
(See below for amounts of each.)
Directions:
Prepare mash.  Grind peppers (any amount), seeds and all, in a medium to fine grind. Add ½ cup kosher salt per gallon of ground peppers. This ratio of mash to salt of 32:1 seems to be the best but can vary depending on the quality of your peppers. Put mash & salt mixture into a glass or crockery jar. Press the mash down and cover with saucer or other lid . Liquid will form.
Age (ferment).  Allow to age at least 1 month. Longer is better … McIlhenny ages their Tabasco peppers for 3 years!

Allow fermenting until the mash stabilizes (stops fermenting). After aging is finished, place mash in a new clean and sterilized jar. Add sterilized white wine vinegar to taste and age for about another week to blend the flavors together.
"Pulling" the peppers.  Run the mash through a chinoise, fine strainer, or, last resort, throw it all into a bowl lined with cheesecloth, fold the cheesecloth up into a ball and twist & squeeze until the juice is extracted. Salt to taste. Bottle the juice and keep in the refrigerator.

Must go fertilize Tabasco plant now.