The 537 gang, from left: Levi Funk, Jeremy Morton and Jonny Hunter.
Anyone who has attended a big beer event at the Funk Factory Geuzeria and Taproom has probably seen the bottles from 537 Co. for sale. Formerly known as 537 Hot Sauce, it’s a company formed by friends Levi Funk of Funk Factory, Jeremy and Molly Morton, and Forequarter’s Jonny Hunter, and they’re preparing to take 537 to the next level with an annual membership club called 537 Selections.
537 ferments its hot sauces, often in used lambic barrels. Unlike novelty hot sauces that chase higher and higher heat levels on the Scoville scale, heat is not the primary motivator for 537.
“The hot sauce world is a lot about heat and adding ingredients. We think that what we have is process,” says Hunter. “I don’t think there’s a hot sauce company that has more understanding of fermentation than this one.”
Jeremy Morton (Funk describes him as a hot sauce fiend) emphasizes the end goal, one enabled by the relatively slow and complex fermentation process. “It’s all driven by a goal to achieve a taste.”
The project started about four and a half years ago, when Morton and Funk filled the first barrel of what would become 537 hot sauce. “It was actually made in the same basement as Levi’s first barrel of lambic,” Morton recalls.
“We got to the point of, ‘How do we go from the fermented mash to a bottled product,’” Funk says, “and Jonny offered to help.”
Since then, 537 has released two batches of hot sauce that share biological continuity, like a sourdough starter or kombucha scoby. The third batch was more of a one-off, called Breakfast Sauce and fermented with salami cultures. They’ve been sold primarily at Funk’s taproom, but also at Underground Butcher and Lowry Hill Meats, Underground’s Minneapolis butcher shop, for about $12 per bottle.
Now, thanks to the bounty of the 2017 pepper season that allowed 537 to acquire large quantities of specific pepper varieties all at once — plus raking in quite a load of peppers at Amish produce auctions in the area — the Selections club is almost ready to launch.
Individual pepper varieties like Krimzon Lee and Aji Rico — “a stunningly fruity pepper,” says Hunter — will be the backbone of the lineup of single-origin sauces.
The 537 Selections club will be limited to 100 buyers, at $100 per person. Members will receive 12 sauces plus some bonus fermented goodies throughout 2018. Morton notes that it's not a sauce of the month club per se, as the sauces will arrive in 4 or 5 shipments throughout the year, each containing multiple bottles. The peppers are all fermenting now, with as little as a month or so required to turn them into a bottled product. Hunter says that bottling will begin shortly after the holidays.
A fourth lambic barrel sauce is in the works as well. “‘Barrel Four’ is the new and unique name we’ve come up with so far,” deadpans Morton.
Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct the name of 537 Co. (it was previously identified by its original name, 537 Hot Sauce Company) and to clarify the number of shipments customers should expect.
