Special to the Tribune Chronicle This photograph of Charlie Garrett of Newton Falls was taken right before he made his presentation to the judges of the 2017 Ohio Signature Foods Contest. Garrett's Hot Pepper Relish was one of two winners selected this year.

NEWTON FALLS — Around Newton Falls, Charlie Garrett is known as the “Hot Jam Man.”

That reputation might start spreading soon.

Garrett and his Hot Pepper Relish was one of two winners in the 2017 Ohio Signature Food Contest, sponsored by the Center for Innovative Food Technology and the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation.

“I was really, really surprised,” he said. “I’m proud of the product, but I felt it was a fairly simple product and the competition was fierce.”

Jim Konecny, manager of marketing and communications for CIFT, said about 50 recipes were submitted statewide and 11 finalists were selected to present their creations to a panel of judges in a similar format as the ABC reality series “Shark Tank.”

“It was a nice panel of impressive people,” Garrett said. “It was a little disconcerting at first.”

He gave his presentation with samples of the relish, which uses a hybrid inferno pepper — a yellow / red pepper with medium heat — in a tomato-based sauce, and he also gave them a sample of his hot pepper jelly, which is the most popular offering of the Garrett’s Garden Life products he sells at the Newton Falls Farmers Market on the last Saturday of the month. Garrett said he had a hunch things went well, because each finalist had a 15-minute slot with the judges, and the panel ended up spending 28 minutes with him.

This is the third year for the statewide competition, Konecny said, and CIFT has sponsored regional competitions in Ohio for nine years.

Winning will give Garrett access to resources to take his hot pepper relish from something he makes at home to something that can be sold commercially.

“He’ll receive things like shelf-life testing, a batch run to determine how this is going to go on large-scale production, labeling help,” Konecny said. “Really from start to finish we’ll look at this product, do a nutritional analysis and help with his overall business plan.”

A recipe using locally sourced ingredients is one of the elements the judges looked for, and Garrett said all of his peppers come from northeast Ohio.

“The inferno has pretty much become the common pepper for Amish growers,” he said. “It’s meaty, flavorful and right down the center medium-hot. As the season moves on, it turns red, gets a little sweeter, a little more developed, but no matter where you are in the crop it’s always been a good pepper.”

Garrett, 49, said he’s been tinkering with the recipe for about a decade, which originally was an old West Virginia hot pepper recipe.

What happens next depends upon how much time Garrett can devote to the product and how much time he can spend in Toledo, where CIFT is based.

“I’m hoping to capitalize on it as we move into the fall season,” he said. “I definitely want to have it out in bottles by early spring.”

agray@tribtoday.com