Half jalapeños in a 3% salt for pickled pepper poppers and a mix of habanero, scotch bonnets, ghost and carolina reapers for the hot sauce. Same salt ratio.

Do you just dry and grind for the flakes?

I grind the solids after drying them and use it mostly in barbecue rubs but wherever it need a funky/spicy seasoning.

Using the lees is interesting, and I've never thought about it. You ever keep your fermentation liquid to use as a condiment? Obviously, I use some to blend in with the peppers to make hot sauce, but usually I end up with extra, and there's plenty of flavor in it.

It's basically the same as Hawaiian chili pepper water or Puerto Rican pique.

I believe its an airlock. As the contents ferments, gasses build up. The airlock allows excess gasses out, but doesnt allow anything in

those are airlocks. They let gas out but not in. Lactic acid fermentation happens more readily in the absence of oxygen. You can have lactic acid fermentation without this setup, but it's much easier to control the end product with the airlock setup.

If oxygen is present you're more likely to get other types of bacteria/fungus doing metabolic stuff and screwing up the process by making things taste horrible (or worse...)

Ziplock bags with water to keep the peppers under the brine.

You can add basically whatever veggies you want but I’m keeping it simple this year.

It’s a lacto-fermentation.

Basically the 3% salt keeps the nasty bacteria away until the lacto guys bring the ph down to about 4ish and you create your own vinegar in a similar process to making sourdough.

Sort of. It's more complex than that, but yeah. You basically add your peppers (and everything else), add water + salt, seal, and wait. There's yeast all over the peppers that will start digesting the sugars and break things down. You then just blend it all up when fermentation is done and you've got some of the best hot sauce you can get.