The Hoppy Acre: Springs Fireplace Hot Sauce

I followed Greg Kessler down a dirt road through a field of milkweed off Town Lane in Amagansett to his farm, the Hoppy Acre, where he’s growing hops, garlic, cilantro, cucumbers, horseradish and indigo.

Hairy vetch pokes through a fence. Clover grows strong enough to suppress smart weed. Prolific chickweed crawls suspiciously. Two fawns look for trouble, and a slider turtle nests in an abandoned concrete block along the edge of the property.

The Hoppy Acre is a certified organic farm and a member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York. A solar system runs the irrigation, which is pumped from a water tank.

Soon, German white hardneck garlic that he grew from his own seed and exotic peppers ranging on the heat scale will hang to dry in a new greenhouse.

“I like making stuff,” Mr. Kessler said. “I’m fascinated by seed saving and growing in general.”

Across the street, on another acre in the midst of an intricate patchwork behind Balsam Farms, he tends to Roma plum tomatoes and 20 varieties of peppers.

Peruvian aji amarillo, the true pepper for ceviche; aji dulce, the real pepper for the Puerto Rican dish sofrito; Jimmy Nardello, an Italian frying pepper; and Espelette, a red chili pepper brought back from a Basque butcher in the South of France are sold to local restaurants like Coche Comedor in East Hampton, Estia’s in Sag Harbor and Almond in Bridgehampton.

Mr. Kessler, a photographer by trade, grew up in Rockland County. His parents, a schoolteacher and an accountant, bought a home in East Hampton in 1960, where he now resides, in Northwest Woods. In between fashion shoots in locales like France and Italy, he scours farmers markets for produce specific to that area.

“I support the farm with my photography,” he said. “Hopefully, the farm will sustain itself this year.”

Three years ago, after a stint at Quail Hill, he planted hops, a forgotten crop with a history in New York State dating back to the 1800s. Downy mildew, a soil-borne fungus and cause for the industry’s demise, has remained a problem, however.

A trellis system supports two main varieties. Seven rows of vines climb as tall as 30 feet. As he snips off shoots with a powdery coating, he’s cautiously optimistic about his first commercial crop, expecting to harvest a couple of hundred pounds of hops this summer.

The popular Cascade serves a dual purpose in the brewing process, offering bittering and a piney-grapefruit aroma when added early. Columbia is added later to the brew and lends a lemony aroma.

A row of cucumbers and a patch of horseradish will be used to make horseradish pickle. He reached down, pulled a root out of the ground and handed it to me. “This will grow,” he said. “It can be invasive, so plant it in a container.”

Coriander has been slow going because of a cold spring. There was a failed attempt at cumin, although two survivors lurked among the weeds. “I’m still learning, that’s for sure,” he said.

In the three years it’s taken the hops to mature, he’s put out a line of hot sauces named after the main Springs thoroughfare, Springs-Fireplace Road, which took its name from the fireplaces used to send smoke signals to Gardiners Island. “I couldn’t believe the name was available,” he said. “What a great name for a hot sauce!”

Springs Fireplace offers two hot sauces, a sriracha, two salsas and the Peruvian Charapita, known as the most expensive pepper in the world. “It’s rare and a pain in the ass to harvest,” Mr. Kessler said. “The small berries need little fingers.”

The golden globes hold more heat and cost more at $20 a jar, compared to $12 for the hot sauces and salsas.

Tesuque is named after the traditional pepper from Tesuque Pueblo in northern New Mexico, and holds a heat index of three out of five. The famed Aleppo pepper, originally from Syria, lends a tad more heat to their Aji Peach hot sauce and brings out the stone fruit’s aromas.

“Salsa verde is our own wild fermented tomatillos, jalapeños and poblano and garlic,” said Kessler. “Salsa roja is made from our own roasted Roma tomatoes, jalapeños, poblano, garlic.”

The mash for the Green Fermented Sriracha is wild fermented for eight weeks, creating a complex, spicy, garlicky, and slightly sweet, sauce packed with gut loving probiotics. “We use the same ingredients as the salsa verde except there is no tomatillo,” said Mr. Kessler.

Springs Fireplace’s much anticipated salsa verde dropped at Cavaniola’s Gourmet Cheese Shop in Amagansett Square last week, and I cannot wait to try it. I got my hands on a jar of last season’s salsa roja at Amber Waves Farmstand and loved the rich, smoky flavor, cleaner than any other commercial salsa.

You can also find Springs Fireplace hot sauce at S&S Corner Shop in Springs and Provisions in Sag Harbor, as well as on their website, thehoppyacre.com.

The ingredients go into the kitchen at East End Food Institute in Southampton the morning after harvest. “Sometimes the day of, but that’s a little more tricky,” Mr. Kessler said.

The condiments are not too spicy. “Each one has a different spice level, like a slow burn,” Mr. Kessler said. “It’s not a trophy in someone’s pantry. We want it to be used to complement a dish.”

If you have it with fish, you know you’re having fish. “It tastes like fish with a little bit of zing,” he said. “It doesn’t overwhelm. Sort of like our philosophy here: We want to complement, not overwhelm.”

Mr. Kessler didn’t want to compete with the area’s surrounding farms; he wanted to complement them with value-added goods. Figuring out how much inventory to produce, how much it will cost, and creating a balance between supply and demand is not easy for a small grower. Still, he’s working on ways to expand.

“We are looking for opportunities,” he said. “Whether or not we’re ready for it is another story.”

Yet another story is the grand indigo experiment.

Woad was historically used as a blue dye, which has come back in favor. Aside from blue being Mr. Kessler’s favorite color, no one else was growing indigo — so he decided to give it a go.

“It’s a crazy process,” he said of harvesting, fermenting the plant extract, straining and drying the indigo. “The whole process takes, like, a week, and we do that here. It’s starting to get some buzz.”

With a little tinkering, the small John Deere cultivating tractor should be buzzing along shortly. The belly mounts allow the farmer to look down at the beds from the driver’s seat and cultivate in between plants.

Mr. Kessler is no stranger to tinkering. “I work on small cars now and again. I like engines. I like the mechanics of things,” he said. “Everything has to do its job, and then you’re okay.”