Fermentation in oil?!?!

[bein_bein]

No sure if this should be in the general chat section or what...

So, this summer we had an abundance of hot pepper from the garden, so after a ton of salsa, 3 hot pepper wines and still having left over peppers I came upon a new idea....Infusing olive oil with various peppers. So we bought a dozen or so bottles of olive oil. Sliced up some garlic, got some of the basil out of the herb garden, cleaned some of the hot peppers and sliced them into strips that would fit in the bottles. We then proceeded to place some garlic, herbs and peppers into each bottle, then filled the bottle with the olive oil and recapped. Some bottles had just jalpeno peppers, some had habanero and Carmen Del ray (think that's what they are called) banana peppers.. and so on.

Fast forward to today about 3months later. Since these were going to be Christmas gifts we decided to pull then out and have a look. We had open one earlier as a taste test, and it was GREAT. Today we noticed some of the bottles had a 'bulge' to them... hmmm
Carefullly started prying the top off and POP! THEY ARE FERMENTING!!?!?!? WTH?? Anybody else ever experience this? It's not all the bottles, only about a third of them. Think this stuff would be ok to use...or should I dump it? Def won't be giving as gifts....guess everyone gets wine this year...again!! lol

 

[BobF]

We've done quite a few olive oils infused with hot peppers, garlic and such. I always do the infusing in a sauce pan using heat. Not fry-the-peppers-heat, but hot.

I keep the pan on the stove and heat it up several times during the day, letting it cool in between. After leaving it over night, I strain it into bottles.

Never had anything ferment.