The recipe disappears from your list straight away, and the app’s operator reviews the report.

You don’t see community recipes from these people, and they aren’t told. Unblock someone to see their recipes again.

Signed in as

Others see you as

Only the part before the @ is ever shown to other people — never your full address.

Found a bug, or want something added? Tell me what happened and I’ll take a look.

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Your recipes, ferments, photos and password are never included.

Bag Ferments HQ (bagferments.com). Last updated 4 October 2026.

This is a small hobby app for planning and tracking hot sauce ferments. It is run by one person, not a company. There are no ads, no analytics, no trackers, and nothing is sold or shared with advertisers.

What is collected

• Your email address, used solely to sign you in and to identify your recipes as yours.
• Your password, which is hashed by our authentication provider. It is never visible to anyone, including the app’s operator.
• What you create: recipe names, descriptions, peppers, ingredients and weights; ferment dates, notes and photos.

Nothing else. No location, no contacts, no device identifiers, no usage tracking.

What other people can see

• Recipes are private by default. A recipe is only visible to others if you tick Shared, which puts it in the Community list for other signed-in users.
• Anyone you send a share link to can open that recipe or ferment — including its notes and photos — without an account. Treat those links as public.
• Other users see only the part of your email before the @ (for example “alex”), never your full address.
• Your ferments are private unless you create a share link for one.
• You can report a community recipe or block its creator. A report stores your account, the recipe and the reason you give, so the operator can review it. Blocks are stored with your account and only change what you see — the person you block isn’t told.

Community guidelines

Keep shared recipes about food. No hateful, harassing, sexual or violent content, no spam or advertising, and no deliberately dangerous food-safety advice. Reported recipes are reviewed, usually within a day; ones that break these rules are removed from Community, and accounts that keep breaking them may be removed.

Where it is stored

Account details and content are stored with Supabase (database and authentication). The site itself is hosted by Netlify. Both act as processors on our behalf. Photos are stored inside the database as part of your ferment record, not in a public bucket.

Deleting your data

• Delete any individual recipe or ferment at any time from within the app.
• Delete everything using My account → Delete account at the bottom of the app. That removes your account, all recipes and ferments, all photos and notes, and any share links you created. It is immediate and cannot be undone.
• If you cannot access the app, email the address below and your account will be deleted.

If you send feedback

When you use Send feedback, the app attaches some technical context to help work out what went wrong: the app version, your browser and device type, screen size, language and timezone, which screen you were on, how many recipes and ferments you have, and a short list of any recent errors. You can see exactly what will be sent — expand “What gets sent with this” before you send it.

It does not include your recipes, ferments, notes, photos, password, or your full email address — only the part before the @, so I know who to reply to.

Children

This app is not directed at children under 13 and no accounts should be created for them.

Changes

If this policy changes, the date at the top will be updated.

Contact

Questions, or want your data removed? Email mattakers@outlook.com.

This method runs on a vacuum sealer. Got one? You’re halfway there. Don’t have one? Buy one — it’s the whole trick.

Salt plus no oxygen lets the good bacteria (lactobacillus) turn the sugars in your peppers into lactic acid. That sours the mash and preserves it. A vacuum bag is airless from the moment you seal it, so unlike a jar there is no surface for mold to grow on.

1. Prep

• Wash everything. Pull the stems off the peppers.
• Rough chop or slice — more surface area means a faster ferment.
• Garlic, onion, carrot and fruit all ferment happily alongside peppers.
• Wear gloves with anything hotter than a jalapeño, and keep your hands away from your eyes.

2. Salt — this is the safety net

• Weigh your peppers and produce, then add 2–3.5% of that total weight in salt. This app defaults to 2.5%.
• Use non-iodized salt — kosher, sea or pickling. Iodine slows the ferment down.
• Don’t drop below 2%. Salt is what holds the bad microbes back while the good ones get established.
• Toss until evenly coated and it starts to weep liquid.

3. Seal it

• Cut the bag long — about 2–3× the length of the produce in the bag, roughly 24 inches for most batches. The extra length gives the gas somewhere to go, and lets you snip the top and re-seal a few times without running out of bag.
• Use a gentle or moist setting, or chill the mash first. On full power the pump will pull brine straight into the machine.
• Leave plenty of headroom above the mash — it needs room to expand.
• Double-seal the top edge if your sealer lets you.

4. Let it ferment

• Room temperature, out of direct sun — 65–75°F / 18–24°C. Warmer ferments faster.
• Stand the bag in a tray or tub. Bags do sometimes leak, and brine stains.
• The bag will usually puff up with CO₂ within a few days — a good sign, though not every batch does it (see below).
• If it gets balloon-tight, snip a corner, press the gas out and re-seal — or use valve bags and skip the burping.

5. Signs it’s going well

• The liquid turns cloudy and the bright colors dull toward olive.
• It smells clean and sour, like a good pickle.
• Gentle fizzing when you open it.
• 1–4 weeks is the usual range. Two weeks is a solid default — taste it and decide.

6. When to throw it out

7. Bottling

• Blend it, then strain if you want a thinner sauce.
• Add vinegar to taste — and for keeping quality.
• Anything stored outside the fridge should be at pH 3.8 or lower. Check it with a meter or test strips, not by guessing.
• Not bottling shelf-stable? Just keep it in the fridge and use it within a few months.

These are general guidelines to get you started. If you’re preserving for the long haul, follow a properly tested recipe.