Ithaca, New York · since 2019
We buy peppers from three farms inside sixty miles, pack them in salt brine, and leave them in barrels until the ferment tells us it is finished. Then we bottle it by hand, forty cases at a time, and put nothing in the jar that did not grow.
Meet the four Get a box every six weeks
The four
We have made the same four sauces since the second year. Anything new gets sold at the market first, and only becomes a fifth jar if people come back the next week asking for it. Prices are per 5 fl oz (150 ml) bottle; a box of all four is $48.
Heat 2 of 10
Green tomatoes and serranos fermented with fennel pollen. It tastes like the last week of the growing season: tart, a little grassy, and bright enough to cut through fat.
Goes with: fried eggs, fish tacos, white beans on toast, anything you would squeeze a lime over.
Heat 4 of 10
Our house sauce: red jalapeños fermented with garlic smoked over white oak, then thinned with the brine they sat in. Smoky first, sour second, hot last.
Goes with: pizza, burgers, breakfast sandwiches, the pot of beans on the stove.
Heat 7 of 10
Apricots charred over the same oak fire, then fermented with habaneros and carrot — carrot keeps the heat from turning thin. Fruit forward, and it does bite.
Goes with: jerk chicken, rice, roasted squash, anything that needs an argument.
Heat 5 of 10
Smoked morita chiles and our own cold brew, fermented with black garlic for ten weeks. It tastes like a campfire somebody put out with espresso.
Goes with: steak, chilli, braised greens, a bloody mary.
How we ferment
Fermenting is not a recipe so much as a room. Peppers come in on a Tuesday from three farms — two in Tompkins County, one over the line in Schuyler — and get sorted, stemmed, and weighed the same afternoon. Anything bruised goes to the market stall as seconds. The rest is packed whole.
We use a 3.4% sea-salt brine by weight, no starter culture, and thirty-gallon ex-cider barrels coopered in Trumansburg. A weighted plate keeps the mash under the brine, which is the only part that matters: anything above the surface is what spoils a batch. We lose about one barrel in every twenty and we have never once tried to save one.
Then it sits. We taste at two weeks, four, six, and open-ended after that, which is why the morita takes ten weeks and the green tomato takes six. Bottling day is the two of us, a funnel, and a hand-capper, four hundred and eighty jars, and a number written on each label by whoever filled it. Pasteurising would give us a longer shelf life and a flatter sauce, so we leave the cultures alive and tell you to keep the jar cold after it is open.
Subscriptions
Subscribers get the jars before the market stall does, and get the batch note card that says which farm the peppers came from. Skip a box, change your mix, or stop any time — you are emailing two people, not a system.
$42 per box
Twelve dollars less than buying the four separately at the market.
$80 per box
The test jar is whatever we were trying that season. Sometimes it is not good.
$48 per box
Next window closes 1 November; boxes go out the week of the 8th.
Joining takes one email. Tell us the box you want and whether you want it every six or twelve weeks, and we will add you to the next run. Email subscriptions@emberandoak.com or call (607) 555-0142. We invoice the week we ship, so no card sits on file. If you are buying for a shop, the same goes for wholesale@emberandoak.com.
Where to buy
We deliver these ourselves on Thursdays, so if a shelf is empty it means a slow week, not a distributor problem. Ring the shop before a long drive.
| Market | Day | Season |
|---|---|---|
| Ithaca Farmers Market, Steamboat Landing | Saturdays, 8 to 2 | April to November |
| Trumansburg Farmers Market, Village Green | Wednesdays, 3 to 7 | June to October |
| Winter Market, Triphammer Marketplace | Second Saturday, 10 to 1 | December to March |
Visit us
418 Elmira Road, Ithaca, NY 14850
We keep half-day Fridays for anyone who wants to see the barrels. There is usually something fermenting to taste and usually a dog, and we will not be offended if you only want to buy a jar and leave.
Tours of the ferment room depend on the barrels, not on us. If the door is shut with a clipboard on it, the batch is under airlock and we cannot open it — Friday next week will be fine.