Brooklyn Brew Shop vs DIY Hot Sauce Kit
Two very different approaches to homemade hot sauce. One gives you the fermentation experience; the other gives you the finished mash and skips straight to blending. Here's which matches your goal.
| Feature | Brooklyn Brew Shop | DIY Hot Sauce Kit |
|---|---|---|
| ASIN | B07K2B8QB1 | B09MMLB6LP |
| What you get | 1/2-gal jar, glass weight, airlock lid, pencil, kosher salt | 1.5 lbs fermented pepper mash (6 varieties), 8 bottles, 8 labels, gloves, pH strips, 20-page recipe guide |
| Peppers included | ❌ None — you buy your own | ✅ 6 varieties: Carolina Reaper, Trinidad Scorpion, Habanero, Malagueta, Red Jalapeño, Amarillo Escabeche |
| Fermentation | ✅ You ferment your own peppers (5–14 days) | ❌ Already fermented — skip to blending |
| Bottles included | ❌ | ✅ 8 Boston Round glass bottles + labels |
| Yield | Depends on your peppers (a few bottles from 1/2 gal) | Up to 45 bottles of sauce |
| Heat range | Whatever peppers you choose (total control) | Mild (Jalapeño) to extreme (Carolina Reaper) |
| Blender needed | ✅ Yes (you provide) | ✅ Yes (you provide) |
| Made by | Brooklyn Brew Shop (craft brewing brand) | Award-winning hot sauce manufacturer |
Where Brooklyn Brew Shop wins
The full fermentation experience. If you're on Culture & Crumb, you probably care about the process — not just the product. The BBS kit gives you a proper fermentation vessel with airlock and weight, and you control everything: which peppers, how much salt, how long to ferment, what aromatics to add (garlic, onion, fruit). The result is a sauce that's genuinely yours. The equipment is reusable for future batches, other vegetable ferments, or even small-batch sauerkraut. At ~$57, you're buying a fermentation setup, not a one-time project.
Where the DIY Kit wins
Volume, variety, and instant gratification. 1.5 lbs of pre-fermented mash from 6 world-class pepper varieties — including Carolina Reaper and Trinidad Scorpion — would cost a fortune to source fresh and ferment yourself (4+ lbs of fresh peppers went into making it). You get bottles, labels, and a recipe guide. You can have finished, bottled hot sauce in an afternoon. Up to 45 bottles means you can experiment wildly — mix varieties, add vinegar, blend with fruit — and still have plenty to give away. Made by people who manufacture hot sauce professionally.
The honest downsides of each
Brooklyn Brew Shop: You need to buy your own peppers, which adds $10–30 depending on variety and source. No bottles included. The 1/2-gallon jar limits batch size. The fermentation takes 5–14 days before you can blend — this is a multi-week project. If you just want hot sauce on the table, this is the slow road.
DIY Kit: You skip the fermentation entirely — if you're here to learn fermentation, this kit doesn't teach it. At $60–80, it's the most expensive option on this page. The Carolina Reaper and Scorpion mashes are genuinely dangerous — handle with gloves, don't touch your face, and keep away from children and pets. The bottles are generic Boston Rounds, not the woozy-style bottles you see on commercial hot sauce shelves.
Verdict
If you want to learn fermentation and control every variable: Brooklyn Brew Shop. It's a fermentation kit that happens to make hot sauce — the equipment serves you long after the first batch.
If you want to experiment with blending and bottling immediately: DIY Hot Sauce Kit. It's a blending kit that happens to use fermented ingredients — the fermentation was done for you by professionals.
The best of both: Buy the Brooklyn Brew Shop kit for the equipment, ferment your first batch of jalapeños (easy, mild, forgiving). Then buy the DIY Kit's pepper mash later when you want to experiment with extreme heat and creative blending — use the BBS bottles or buy woozy bottles separately.
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