The most recent thing I've read (which really wasn't read, but instead watched) was a video from the Discovery Channel series "How It's Made" on the production of hot sauce:
Here's a breakdown of the process:
1) Peppers are hand picked for quality control.
2) Lots of salt: A mash is created by combining ground peppers and salt. A few more steps later, the
tops of the wooden barrels in which the peppers age is covered with a thick layer of
salt to collect juices that are released during the fermentation process.
3) Speaking of barrels and fermentation: I had no idea that hot sauce was
aged, like wine and scotch. Not only that, it ages for 3 years!
4) Once removed from the barrels after the 3 year
fermentation process, the mash is churned with vinegar for 3-4 weeks.
5) There is no cooking involved to make hot sauce. Instead, vinegar is used as a natural preservative.
6) Seeds are removed, and the sauce is finished!
7) The final product is then taste-tested and bottled in glass to keep out oxygen.
The greatest lesson from this video is that the process of creating and bottling hot sauce uses many of the same steps as my personal favorite liquid: scotch. Both are stored in wooden barrels for several years to age for taste and quality. And both are bottled in glass to ward off that nasty oxygen and it's taste-ruining effects.
However, there is a one major difference between the two: I would gladly take a job as a scotch taste-tester. Hot sauce taste-tester, though? Not really my thing.
I'll take those pallet-cleansing and heat-cooling ice cream sandwiches, though.
-JJ
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