Hot sauce comes in glass jars. If they stand on the shelf long enough, do they go medium hot and mild, or do they just go bad?
The chief ingredient is usually vinegar. An acid base like that should last a while. But
even vinegar needs to be thrown out one day.
Here is what Tabasco says
Well they do say “The hot red peppers that fire up TABASCO® Sauce originated in Central America. They were first planted on Avery Island, Louisiana, over 130 years ago by Edmund McIlhenny.
At Avery Island, the hot peppers are carefully picked by hand as soon as they ripen to the perfect shade of bright red.” So the hot part is some pepper ingredients. Five years they say is the shelf life. And after that, my original question again.
Tabasco that’s kept around long enough will turn from a shiny red to a dull brown.
I don’t know whether the flavor deteriorates, because I’ve never kept any around long enough for this to happen. And I buy the BIG bottles.
– Uke, reaching for the Tums
tabasco? i thought this thread was about hot sauce.
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
[quote]
tabasco? i thought this thread was about hot sauce[/unquote]
Hey, now, let’s place nice! Cayenne bases make perfectly valid hot sauces, even if they don’t have the pep that habeneros do. Jalapenos, on the other hand… 
Re: the OP - my experience has been that hot sauces get stronger as they age. My WAG is the water evaporates, leaving a greater concentration of heat producing material.
Scott
Capsaicin is the chemical that gives hot sauce its heat, not vinegar (although the vinegar is an unfriendly environment for bacteria, so it will probably not go bad due to bacterial contamination). I don’t know how long it takes for the capsaicin to degrade, but we can guess by looking at how it responds to heat when you cook it. Since hot sauce does not usually lose a lot of heat when it is cooked for an hour or two at over 300 degrees, chances are good that at room temperature it will be stable enough to last for many months without losing its “heat”.
I’ve been told that if a hot sauce contains the seeds and the skin from the pepper, it will get (somewhat) hotter with age. This anectodal evidence came to me by way of an old Mexican woman who taught me how to make her secret salsa.
I thought Tabasco peppers were different from cayenne. Or am I believing marketing hype again?
Tabasco (real red Tabasco Tabasco, not the green Jalapeno stuff or their Habanero variety) does seem considerably hotter to me than, say, Crystal. I prefer the flavor of Crystal; I don’t rate hot sauces based solely on how little it takes to make someone do the Flaming Tongue Dance.
tabasco sauce is made from tabasco peppers, which are 30,000-50,000 Scoville units.
cayenne, while approximately equal in ‘heat’, is a different kind of pepper.
McIlhenny Co. (the makers of tabasco brand sauce) also makes a habanero pepper sauce, which is of course much hotter than their original.
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
Scotch Bonnet! Scotch Bonnet! SCOTCH BONNET!!!
From Torq:
That’s half the fun. Flavor’s the other half, but only once you’ve stopped running around in circles, sirens blaring and bells clanging à la Warner Brothers. 
Cave Diem! Carpe Canem!
now i’m hungry.
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
Ummm, isn’t the correct term chilies rather than peppers ?
Possible UL alert !
Columbus was looking for a short cut to the East Indies to get rich importing pepper (and other spices). So the natives (Indians) gave him chilies (pepper) and we have been confused ever since.
a) it is ‘chillies’
b) no, ‘peppers’ is correct
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox
I keep most every condiment in the cupboards, unrefrigerated. Not just hot sauces, but fish sauce, vinegar (all kinds) katsup, mustard, relish, bbq sauce, wostershire, syrups (all kinds) and soy sauce (all kinds).
I have found that anything sufficiently spicy, salty, sour or sweet takes a long time to spoil. These are all probably unfriendly environments for bacteria, as APB has already suggested.
I recently found a half-empty katsup bottle that got pushed to the back of the cabinet and sat there for almost two years. It looked & smelled okay, so I gave it a little taste and it tasted juuuuuuuuuust right.
I just don’t care for ice cold katsup on my hot home fries.
In hot sauce factories, the sign says,“Employees must wash hands BEFORE AND AFTER using the restroom.”
AskNott
Scotch Bonnets and Habeneros are the same thing.
chil·i (chl)
n., pl. chil·ies.
The pungent fresh or dried fruit of any of several cultivated varieties of capsicum, used especially as a flavoring in cooking. Also called chili pepper.
Chili con carne.
I’ll retract the pepper slam since I can’t recall where I saw it. But the above ref. and my cookbook (produced by Chile Pepper magazine) shows ‘chilies’ as the plural. I really thought that the appx. in that book had the history of the chile/pepper entymology but in fact it uses the terms chile pepper, chile, and peppers throughout. Maybe it was Bob Eubanks who said it.
Note to self:
Don’t use auto-quote if UBB codes are in reply to be quoted.
http://sammcgees.com says
“…in this super hot catagory is the Scotch Bonnet Pepper which is a cousin of the Habanero that lives in Jamaica.”
what is essential is invisible to the eye -the fox