(upbeat music) (gentle music) (light upbeat music) - My name is Matthew Mini, and I'm the owner of Funky's Hot Sauce Factory and Funky's Foods.

We are located in Bellingham, Washington, in Whatcom County.

At Funky's, we make sauces that are packed with flavor.

(upbeat rock music) To me, my favorite sauces are not just hot.

They're flavorful, well balanced, and they should complement your meal.

So when I speak to somebody who is afraid of hot sauce, I try to turn them onto it with our mildest sauce.

If you like hot sauce, you could actually build your heat threshold as you get used to the spiciness of it.

Years ago, my wife and I had traveled to the Seattle area, just from a curiosity.

We moved here and we've fell in love with Bellingham.

We love the Pacific Northwest and our kids are thriving here.

They're doing really well.

It's excellent for growing, I would say, most things and with the help of a greenhouse and some cold frames, you can grow peppers just fine here.

(light upbeat music) I started making hot sauce in early 2000s when we were growing all the peppers in Northern California.

It was just a hobby.

It wasn't until 2018 after getting laid off from a job here in Whatcom County that I decided to just go for it.

My nickname, Funky, came from my old bandmates in the early 2000s.

They nicknamed me Funky for the way I play my guitar.

We were very much a dark, heavy, you know, alternative style rock band, but the drummer and I liked to lock into these funk grooves.

When I started making hot sauce as a hobby back then, I just put these silly labels on it and give it away to friends and family, and I just called it Funky's Hot Sauce Factory and the name stuck.

In 2022, we got into the Bellingham Farmers Market.

(gentle guitar music) The Farmers Market's been huge for us and a lot of other crafters, creators, and farmers of course.

It gets your creation, whatever it may be, and your produce that you grow on your farm directly into the hands of the consumers and they can come and talk directly to you and get to know your company, what you are, what you stand for.

They know that you're a real thing, you're not just a product on a shelf.

So the connection is what's so important, I believe, and reaching your community on a one-to-one basis.

One thing I hear often from my customers is that they're really impressed and love our hot sauces because of the flavor, which is huge.

It's very reassuring because that's what I try to do.

I don't make novelty level hot, hot sauces.

It's all about the flavor.

We like to use a lot of local ingredients in our sauces, from peppers to lemon grass to ground cherries, and anything else we get our hands on like coffee.

We've got coffee on one of our sauces.

I think it's really important to support other local businesses and, you know, shine a light on them as well 'cause we're all part of this community, and keeping the money that's generated in our local community is really important.

Music puts me in a really creative head space.

It also just plays into me, creating something in the kitchen.

So sort of along those lines, we have a sauce called Stellar Fuzz.

And I tried to name my band Stellar Fuzz in 2004, but my bandmates promoted it down.

(laughs) So that name was like in my mind for years.

Fuzz, it's commonly used to describe a guitar tone, like a fuzz tone.

It's a heavily, overdriven and sort of tone for guitar.

The word also inspires me in a way, like when I'm thinking about spice or with that particular sauce, there's ginger in it and the fuzz to me is like the gingerness of that sauce.

Stellar Fuzz is the sauce that's on "Hot Ones" right now, which is Season 23, and it's in the number three position, which is a pretty sweet spot to be in because most people's comfort range tends to be around there.

And with that, we've gotten some pretty good reactions to our sauce.

A few people stand out, of course, and John Oliver was by far the best episode so far this season.

His reaction was fantastic.

- [John] The Stellar Fuzz Funky's Hot Sauce.

- [Host] Yeah, the names are getting fun.

- Yeah, aren't they though?

Actually like that.

This is gonna be the moment, I remember somewhere over here, as the good times.

(Host and John laughing) - One bit of advice that I might offer to other small business owners is to definitely pursue your dreams, be passionate about it, and take calculated risks.

You won't advance if you don't take those risks.

(upbeat playful music) Here at Funky's Hot Sauce Factory, half of our sauces are fermented.

We've currently got about 16 sauces and 8 to 9 of them are fermented.

I started fermenting in the early 2000s as a hobby hot sauce maker.

Here, we've got a Carolina Reaper mash with onion and garlic.

This is a Reaper chili right here.

This little guy weighs in at 1.3 million Scoville in comparison to jalapeno, which is about 4,000 to 8,000 Scoville, so considerably hotter.

You want to keep about a 3 to 5% salinity in your ferment.

So what that means is using sea salt, which is what I like to use.

You can also use kosher salt, but I prefer sea salt.

So you chop up your veggies, pack 'em into an airlock container, like this giant one here, and I would recommend, in addition to the salt water that's in there, I would just kind of sprinkle some salt on the top and create what I call just a salt cap and then you put your airlock down on top.

The main reason I love fermentation are all the flavors and nuances that are basically unlocked out of the fruit or vegetable when you ferment and you get all these other flavors and essences that we're hiding, in a sense, before.

This batch of ferment is gonna become Seeing Stars sauce, we got right here.

It's Carolina Reaper base, like I mentioned.

We won the Grand World Champion Award for the sauce few years ago and that has caused us to have to make quite a bit more of the sauce.

So I would highly recommend starting a batch of ferment at your house.

The fermentation adds to the complexity that you're gonna taste in the finished product.

(upbeat playful music) - [Presenter] "Made There" was made possible in part with the support of Visit Bellingham Whatcom County.