For those who may be unfamiliar with the phrase "value-added farm," one needs to look no further than the Hoppy Acre, where Greg Kessler's two tucked-away acres in Amagansett yield unusual hot peppers and garlic for hot sauce and salsa, hops for beer, and indigo for natural dye.
It's "a farm that produces goods or grows vegetables to make into products," Mr. Kessler recently explained. Given the already bountiful agricultural community in Amagansett, with farms like Quail Hill, Balsam Farms, Amber Waves, and Vicki's Veggies among local favorites, "we realized we didn't want to compete, but complement the other offerings in the area."
Mr. Kessler, who worked for many years at Quail Hill, started the farm with a partner in 2017 in the Peconic Land Trust's Farmers for the Future program, and he is now its sole owner with a staff of three. His hops go to the Springs Brewery, a fast-growing upstart in the East End's craft brewing scene. The hot sauces and salsa are bottled under the label Springs Fireplace at the East End Food Institute in Southampton.
"We mostly work with rare peppers, just because the flavor profiles are so much different," he said, comparing them to the different varieties of lettuce or eggplant that one can find at farm stands here. "Using different peppers sort of expands the palate a little bit more and you can really, really taste the difference from our hot sauce to another one."
Mr. Kessler's sauces are "flavor-first," he said, which means that the "the heat comes after." He has four varieties: Tesuque, Aji Peach, and Fermented Green Sriracha hot sauces and a salsa roja, all with pleasantly rustic textures and the "slow burn" of which Mr. Kessler spoke.
Let's start with the mildest one. Tesuque is named for a pueblo in New Mexico that developed the primary pepper used in its making. "It's perfect for your morning eggs and toast or on a taco, whether meat or chicken. . . . It's very versatile because it has so much flavor," Mr. Kessler said.
His hottest variety, the Aji Peach, relies on the aji limon pepper from Peru as well as the Aleppo, a Syrian pepper that is one of the oldest still in cultivation, National Geographic wrote in 2016. The sauce, which is not sweet but still peachy, corresponds in taste to its neon-orange color in the same way the colors and tastes of kids' juice boxes do.
Somewhere in between is Mr. Kessler's sriracha, which incorporates jalapenos and poblanos, the most common peppers used in hot sauce, but with an eight-week fermentation process. "This is a garlicky, sweet, funky, spicy sauce," he said. "Fermented foods are so delicious, and this is one example of that." He recommends using it to spice up some guacamole or put on fish, steaks, chicken, and Chinese food leftovers.
The salsa roja's texture has a loose, farmhouse feel to it, with a moderate heat level that works well on the table with a bowl full of artisanal tortilla chips.
The sauces retail for $12 each and can be found online at thehoppyacre.com. Provisions in Sag Harbor and Water Mill, Hen of the Woods in Southampton, the Eastport General Store, the S&S Corner Store in Springs, and Peterson's Seafood in Montauk also carry Hoppy Acre sauces.
