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McIlhenny Co Brand Pepper sauce
McIlhenny Co Brand Pepper sauce
The Avery Island Experience
The Avery Island Experience
Avery Island: home of McIlhenny Company where Tabasco sauce was invented in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny.
A tour of the facilities for making Tabasco from growing peppers, aging the mash, to bottling and shipping.
The grounds were well maintained and nicely adorned.
Process of making Tabasco Sauce.
Process of making Tabasco Sauce.
Tabasco peppers grown from seed stock of plants grown on Avery Island.
Ripe peppers are picked by hand. To ensure ripeness, pickers compare peppers to le petit baton rouge (a little red stick). Peppers are ground into a mash on the day of harvest, mixed with salt.
The mash is put in white oak barrels that were previously used for Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey.
Salt is placed on top of the sealed barrel to keep out contaminants
After aging for up to three years, the mash is strained to remove skins and seeds. The resulting liquid is mixed with vinegar, stirred occasionally for a month in these huge barrels.
Top of stirring barrel.
Bottom of stirring barrel. About 8 feet tall.
Bottling plant, over 154,000 bottles were prepared by 1pm today, according to the bottle counter. The production number is the date 030419 and has expiration dates 18 months, 2 years and 5 years depending on the type of sauce.
The Tabasco brand pepper sauce bottles are the common two-ounce and 5 oz bottles, up to 1 gallon jug and down to a 1/8 oz miniature bottle. The sauce is sold in more than 185 countries and territories and packaged in 22 languages and dialects.
Big models of peppers used in different sauces.
Old Advertisement.
What to do with your empty bottles of Tabasco sauce.
Lunch with Tabasco.
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