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Forbes Daily Briefing

Meet ‘Pepper’ Baumer, The Man With Hot Sauce In His Blood

Forbes Daily Briefing

Forbes

Business, Tech News, News

4.418 Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2026

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Every week at the Crystal Hot Sauce factory, just north of New Orleans in Reserve, Louisiana, two train cars full of mashed cayenne peppers arrive on the tracks just outside the plant’s back door. The peppers are then pumped into four 20,000-gallon mixing tanks where the mash ferments under the sweltering Louisiana sun into a slurry. After water and salt are introduced, the slurry is ground into hot sauce that’s poured into glass at 125 bottles per minute. “We are New Orleans in a bottle,” says Alvin Adam “Pepper” Baumer, the third-generation owner and CEO of Baumer Foods, maker of Crystal, from the floor of his plant where the scent of capsaicin (the chemical compound that makes peppers spicy) lingers in the air. By Chloe Sorvino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:04.2

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0:59.9

Today on Forbes, meet Pepper Balmer, the man with hot sauce in his blood.

1:06.9

Every week at the Crystal Hot Sauce Factory, just north of New Orleans and Reserve, Louisiana,

1:12.6

two train cars full of mashed cayenne peppers arrive on the tracks just outside the plant's back door.

1:13.6

The peppers are then pumped into 4 20,000 gallon mixing tanks, where the mashed ferments

1:19.6

under the sweltering Louisiana sun into a slurry.

1:23.6

After water and salt are introduced, the slurry is ground into hot sauce that's poured into glass at 125 bottles per minute.

1:32.3

Speaking to Forbes from the floor of the plant, where the scent of Capsason, the chemical compound that makes pepper spicy, lingers in the air, Alvin Adam Baumer, known as Pepper, the third-generation owner and CEO of

1:46.1

Baumar Foods, maker of Crystal, says, quote, we are New Orleans in a bottle.

1:53.5

We're a red and white checkered blazer with a pin of his hot sauce fastened on his lapel.

1:59.1

Baumar continues, saying, quote,

...

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