Janice, in your words "I'd end up making about fifty gallons of hot sauce..."
Do you have a favorite recipe for making this hot sauce?
I had many hot peppers last summer. The extra peppers were sliced and stored in mason jars with apple cider vinegar as a natural preservative.
Throughout the winter when I prepared chicken soup, I would use the peppers when sauteing the chicken for the soup. Then I would add the apple cider vinegar to the soup (2 Chinese soup spoons] in a 8 gallon pot.
The soup was mildly warm and help clear out my lungs when I had the flu. A great medicine without going to the drugstore.
I gave away many of my pepper jars as Christmas presents.