UPDATE: Video support now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZYKJn4_LQg Part of me is tempted to greatly simplify this and call it Tiger Sauce Amplified and On Steroids, which, while somewhat accurate, is also woefully inadequate. My initial impression on tasting it plain was that it was a similar sort of sweet/hot sauce and the immediate reminiscence was of that, but 2 seconds later, the similarity ended. Whereas Tiger can be quickly cloying and has a feel and taste of "cheap" to it, requiring it to be used very judiciously, BICH is on a level where it could be poured into a shot glass and slugged. Very few sauces tasted good enough to consider drinking (not that I would), but this is one where I found myself thinking..."yes, but I could." Sweet-hot is always high on my list and this one fills the bill magnificently!
The heat is almost perfectly orchestrated. It is a slight delay, then a steady build into an overall crescendo of notes that is not too bracing, but at a pleasant enough level to let you know that it's there and you may commence with the happiness over that fact. The grace notes of vinegar and the chipotle overtones are fantastically well done, but the real skill, for me, came in the use of the Jim Beam Black. It is hard to imagine a better choice of bourbon for use here. While Jim Beam Black is a bit too sweet for me to keep on hand for drinking (I much prefer Eagle Rare as my on-hand bottle for bourbon), it is still an excellent bourbon and that exact sweetness really shines here. The choice is sheer brilliance and it shines through very nicely in the sauce.
While I have tested this extensively on nearly everything I can think of -- including eggs -- along with the standards of pizza and chicken strips, I found it interesting on tacos, but not something I would choose again. The taste is so delicious that I don't think there is a way that adding it to anything would be necessarily bad, however, it borderline clashes, which makes for the taste to be curious and a nice change of pace, but not anything that would be necessarily used regularly. I think where it really shines is on the grill. While slightly thin, it sticks well enough to food and it has a somewhat heavier, darker taste that it can easily be used for anything from hamburgers to chicken to steak to pork. This is another marked difference from Tiger, which works well on fish, chicken, rice and mashed potatoes and very little else. The BICH also caramelizes incredibly well and the very slight astringency from the vinegar would make this a fantastic mop or finishing sauce for ribs.
Bottom line: I still have a great many sauces in line for testing before I add another one to my standbys, but I have a sneaking suspicion that when I run out of this bottle, I will be buying another couple next time I hit the store or order online, presuming I can find it. At $10 for a 6.8 oz. bottle, the enjoyment per dollar level is the highest I've found this year, excepting maybe the Red Devil. The only thing that gives me some degree of pause is the availability of it, which may be an issue at some future point.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 2
Flavor: 9
Flexibility: 7
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10
Overall: 7
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