MICROBIOLOGY FOOD ALLERGY TESTING FOR MY HOT SAUCE CO...

Now I’m on to the serious side of my sauce the health and safety of my sauce for public consumption and the SCIENTIFIC CONFIRMATION AND PAPERWORK to ensure this 😱  This is a really important part of my Hot Sauce Company structure.  So I have had to learn about what is required in order to sell a sauce in a shop or online, there are different laws, if I wanted to sell from a farmers market stall the legal requirements are less, but I want to set this company up to my best standards.

I’m loving putting my PA’s through this challenge, supporting me and helping me go the professional distance with my hot sauce company, a great learning experience for all of us as none of us have experience at this intense level, but that’s what I love, pushing the boundaries and not just mine! 

So I’ve opened a account with ALS laboratories one of the UK’s leading analytical testing services for food and I have requested full testing for my sauce including a shelf life as my sauce is ambient and a once opened safe use by date.

Testing Required 

Microbiology 

Microbiology:  ensuring food is safe from microbiology contamination, a legal requirement of all stages of the food chain.  Pathogens, salmonella, listeria, E.coli 0157, shigella, typical enumerations, coliforms, E.coli, enterobacteriaceae, pseudomonas aeruginosa, staphylococcus aureus, (TVC) total viable count, yeasts and moulds.

Chemical & Nutritional

Ash, fat, protein, carbohydrates, dietary fibre, energy, fatty acid profile, moisture, sodium, sugar, vitamins and minerals.

Food Allergy and Allergen Testing

There is 160 foods/ingredients that cause allergies but the top 14 have to be labelled by law.  Celery, celeriac, cereals including gluten, wheat, rye, barley, spelt, kamut, crustaceans including lobster, crab, crayfish, prawns, langoustines, eggs, fish, lupin including seeds, flour and pastas, milk, molluscs such as clams, mussels, whelks, oysters, snails and squid, mustard, nuts including almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, cashews, pecan, Brazil, pistachio, macadamia nuts, peanuts, sesame, soya beans (soya) and sulphur dioxide sulphites.

This is a very important legal requirement for labelling and legislation.

Contaminants

Substances natural or man made which have unintentionally contaminated food through the production process.  Toxins, bacterial, natural substances eg: mycotoxins and marine biotoxins, while bacterial/fungal contamination can be eliminated with heat treatment the toxins can remain in the sauce as contaminants.  These can be heavy toxic metals:  aluminium, arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, tin. Mycotoxins: 3-acetyyl deoxynivalenol (3-ADON), 15-acetyl deoxynivalenol (15-ADON), aflatoxins B1, B2, G1, G2.  Aflatoxin M1, deoxynivalenol (DON), diacetoxyscirpenol (DAS), HT2 toxin, fumonisins, fusarenon X, Nivalenol, Ochratoxin A, Patulin, T2 toxin, T2 trill, Vomitoxin, Zearalenone.  Illegal Colours:  orange II, para red, rhodamine, Sudan I to IV.  Others: 3-MCPD (3-monochloro-1,2-propanediol), benzo(a)pyrene, dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs (polchlorinated biphenyls), GMO testing, Melamine, PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons) and potato glycoalkaloids.

Vitamins, Minerals & Additives Testing

Miscellaneous Food Regulations define what can and can not be added to food.  Vitamin A (retinol), B1 (thiamine), B2 (riboflavin), B3 (niacin), B4 (choline), B6 (pyridoxine), B9 (folic acid), B12 (cyanocobalamin), vitamin C (ascorbic acid), vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol), vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol), vitamin E (tocopherol), vitamin H (biotin), vitamin K1 (phyllquinonine), vitamin K3 (menadione), beta carotene (pro vitamin A).

Trace Elements & Minerals

Calcium, cobalt, copper, iodine, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium, sulphur, zinc.

WoW

Thank goodness all I have to do is make my sauce and send it to the laboratory and they will do all of this.

WAX SEALS

I’m looking to stamp the top of my waxed seal bottles, this means I need a embossed seal.  There are 100’s to choose from but I like to be individual!  So I am experimenting, this week I have received a embossed seal that is of my King Oscar painting, it’s not quite right, I think I would like it bigger and encased in a circle rather than a square.  The company who make my pin badges did really well from my uploaded photo but this embossed seal is to small to show the detail. 

I have also got a simple O for Oscar which is larger, so now I think I will see if I can get my King Oscar image on a bigger stamp, I am thinking I might have to go to a expert to design the art work for the company.

I love the orange wax, I’m going also order some blue as well and do different bottles!

With lockdown still in force I am unable to make any hot sauce at present as I have no habaneros, this has made me re-think and I am going to grow my own, luckily my family has a small holding and we already grow our own vegetables and raise our own meat, I already grow my own carrots but now I’m going to try with the habaneros, I’m going to need a green house! 

AWESOME MERCHANDISE PIN BADGES

Very excited when this package arrived today, I love my point of sale give away merchandise enamel pins.  My label design was inspired by a painting a local artist (Teddy Salad Art) did as folk art of me and we all loved it, I then decided to use this painting as my brand on my hot sauce labels.  With lockdown for another few months for me I look forward to when I can move on with my hot sauce professional testing and labelling laws because then I can start producing and selling and giving away my awesome merchandise!

2.0 THE NEW BOTTLE DESIGN

With lockdown in full swing and especially for me I won’t be socialising for quite a few months, this not a issue for me as I have a great deal of projects on the go and lots of FaceTime and Zoom with all my mates.  I’m taking this time to research and develop my Profanity Hot Sauce.  I have decided that I want a bottle that is different to the rest on the shelf and have chosen a new dumpier bottle and to seal the cork stopper with wax, which I will, once designed stamp with my personality!

This now however means a total redesign of the label 😬. So art pads are out, white board is up and team work with lots of banter is going on putting some great and some silly ideas on the board to get us started.  One quote which I like is by my dad “ sauce you swear by’ 🤣

The New Bottle

I learnt a lot today with working with wax, it takes a long time to melt, it was incredibly hard to cut and mum almost lost a thumb!  Wax cools very quickly and if to hot becomes very thin for coating.  Also I don’t have a wax seal stamp so dad found a old pirate button of mine in the loft and I pressed to hard on the wax seal which I learnt cracks the setting wax, so in all great lessons today.

SCALING UP THE HOT SAUCE RECIPE

So I’ve got this awesome hot sauce but my recipe only makes 8 bottles and that’s not going to go very far!  So I’ve started to scale up the recipe and my sauce is not the same, still a brilliant sauce and has 90% of my original flavour BUT it is not my sauce and the texture has changed slightly, now I have been very accurate and scaled up the recipe exactly to the increased quantities, so why did this change the sauce?

So research on the mathematics for scaling up a recipe is what I have to.  

This has also given me time to re think my bottling, I wanted to give a good quantity of sauce in a bottle so I decided on a 250ml bottle, however as I work on producing this hot sauce I realised that as my sauce is so hot you only use a little each time and that size bottle could last a very long time!  The idea of my Profanity sauce is to blow your head off!  Most seriously hot sauces come in smaller bottles.

But I also want my Hot Sauce to stand out on the shelf, so I’ve designed my label fairly uniquely and very personal to my personality, but now I questioning is that enough?

So I’ve been thinking with my personality what can I do for that wow marketing catch your eye regardless if you were looking for my sauce or not?  So I have decided to try a a old fashioned wonky bottle and seal the cork top with a wax seal in orange wax of course!  This now means I have to design a wax seal stamp to emboss this wax.  I can’t wait to try this new bottle.

I’m almost ready to send my sauce of to the microbiologists for shelf life dating, nutritional analysis and allergy testing.  I’m pleased that my sauce has none of the main list of 14 allergy food items in it, is preservative free and made with all natural ingredients.

PROFANITY HOT SAUCE THE BEGINNING

Profanity Hot Sauce

This is named for the reaction it gives after tasting, if you love hot sauce that is full of flavour then whacks a punch this is the sauce for you.  Warning this sauce may cause blisters on your tongue and gums and induce Profanity!

So I’m turning 18 yrs old and wanting to start my own hot sauce company, at the moment I am in the fun stages of product taste testing and design, putting my personality and opinions on a label!

The more serious stages are looming where my finished Sauce will be sent to a food testing laboratory for microbiological testing, chemical nutrition and use by dating.  WoW that sounds serious and it is.  Food safety is of utmost importance for the consumer.  This also means regulations, responsibilities and liability insurance.

Next back to the fun with my web designers and social media team (best mates) planning the photos and wording and fun design to promote myself and my sauce.

Branding next fun designing my logo for t-shirts, bags, pins, chefs work wear, staff uniforms (mum and dad!), banners and giveaways.

Then on to marketing...where do I want to sell, local stores, local food outlets, farmers markets, chilli festivals, amazon pantry just to start.

Keep following to see my awesome journey where with a can do attitude you can achieve anything you try to in your own way.