COLUMBUS, Ohio – Jack Moore has turned his love of spice and his culinary skills into an artisan line of fermented hot sauces.

He and his wife, Nicki, experimented with fermented hot sauce, testing it on family and friends. After getting favorable results, Black Cap Hot Sauce was on the market in 2021. Two years later his wife quit her job and the two have been at it ever since.

After working several years in Cleveland area restaurants, the couple returned to Columbus in 2016. Jack was no stranger to Columbus, having gone to culinary school there and working in the area.

“Nicki had a job with Watershed Distillery as their Northeast Ohio sales rep and through the grapevine, I heard Watershed was opening a restaurant distillery combo in Columbus,” Jack said. “They didn’t know anything about opening a restaurant, so they reached out to me and Nicki to do some small-time consulting.”

Eventually, Jack took over the entire kitchen operation for Watershed. Things were going well until the pandemic forced the couple out of the restaurant.

Their downtime was a defining moment for their hot sauce. “COVID changed everything,” Jack said. “Our Black Cap Hot Sauce is a product of COVID-19, it’s one of the silver linings of not having a restaurant to work in.”

Moore has always been a fan of spice. “I just love spicy things,” he said. “I didn’t necessarily love the hottest of the hot, but I was the party trick guy – I would eat the hottest of the hot and I could eat it and not be overly affected by it – hot sauce was kind of always my thing.”

His love for hot sauce combined with his love of fermentation resulted from his restaurant experience. “Fermentation was just kind of like mind-blowing to me as a chef,” Moore said. “Whatever restaurant I worked at always had a house hot sauce that we normally made when someone asked for a side of hot sauce. I started fermenting peppers when I was in Cleveland, just experimenting – I loved the outcome.”

The types of peppers used in the Black Cap Hot Sauce have a lot to do with Ohio’s growing season and the consumer’s heat tolerance. “I would love to have more peppers available here in Ohio but the pepper growing season is relatively short,” he said. “Also, the heat level for the average person is not very spicy.”

Jalapeno is what Moore considers the pepper of the masses. “Almost anyone can handle jalapeno,” he said. “I would say 80 percent of the public is OK with that and for me, that’s about the heat level for the average person.”

As Moore was searching for a pepper with a little bit more flavor complexity, a similar heat level to Jalapenos, and year-round availability, he let his kitchen experience lead him to the ideal pepper for his needs.

“I found Fresno peppers, which were very similar to a red Jalapeno,” he said. “They have a really nice fruitiness and some sweet natural sweetness to them. More importantly, whether I was working with a local farmer or not, I could order Fresno peppers from a produce purveyor year-round.”

After searching for a shared kitchen space to produce their hot sauce in Columbus, Jack and Nicki found most locations overcrowded or out of their price point. Being familiar with the territory between Cleveland and Columbus, they found a facility in Mansfield, Ohio, about halfway between both cities.

“The price was right, there was plenty of space, they had a lot fewer people, and it was smack dead in the middle between the two cities,” he said.

Because Black Cap Hot Sauce is fermented, the process must be regulated. “We’re still considered an acidified food, which means we have to be in a commercial kitchen,” Moore said. “We’re fully inspected by the Ohio Department of Agriculture and FDA regulated just like any other canned product or fresh product you might see in the grocery store.”

A happy coincidence of going to Mansfield was that they were able to find and partner with a cooperative of urban and rural farmers in Richland County. “I didn’t know it going in, but it turns out that that’s the same facility that the Richland Grow Op uses as their aggregator hub,” he said.

Spending time in that community kitchen, Moore was able to meet the farmers that were bringing in produce and build relationships with the people who determined where the produce was going.

“Buying food for me is more about the relationship that I have with the person that’s growing the food or selling the food,” he said. You know, the fact that I was able to stand there and get to know some of these farmers and get to know how Richland Grow Op is trying to support their community – you know, that was important to me. They’re not trying to get rich, they’re not to do this for a quick buck.”

The relationship has evolved from the first year when each side was learning about the other. “It was kind of just seeing what was coming in – like, I could use that or I could use this,” Moore said. “Just as much as I learned about them, they learned about me and what specifically we use in our product and the volume we used.”

By the second year, farmers were growing Fresno peppers specifically for Black Cap. 

“It’s not all Fresnos,” he said. In addition to Black Cap Fresno, which is offered year-round, the Moores do several one-off seasonal items that evolved from what the cooperative has available.

Black Cap Hot Sauce is shipped coast to coast and may be ordered from their website. In addition, the sauce can be purchased at retailers in Ohio, including Giant Eagle Market District stores and a variety of independent retailers.

“We feel like that’s kind of where our niche spot is those independent retailers that love supporting local, love hearing what the farmers have – that’s kind of our bread and butter,” Jack said. “They may not move the volume like a Giant Eagle Market District would move, but more importantly, there’s a lot of education that goes along with our hot sauce and fermentation.”

During warmer weather, the Moores take their Black Cap Hot Sauce to various central Ohio farmers markets.