Blair Presents: Zakk Wylde's Original Berserker Hot Sauce
This is the first product of the other of the two who are probably the major "small batch" hot sauce producers in the Chilehead world, Blair's Hot Sauce. The other one is CAJohn and the offering I had there was spectacular. This one was less spectacular, but overall quite tasty.
This is the mildest of the Zakk Wylde signature sauces and my first impression was this was an extremely skillfully crafted sauce. The habanero and garlic were initially very well balanced, with a hint of lime cutting through. As noted on the bottle, this did and does go very well with seafood and pizza and any other offering that would be paired well with beer. It does not, however, go particularly well with cheeseburgers.
It is also not a sauce I enjoying having by itself and there have been times that I thought the garlic was a bit overpowering, being reminiscent more of a garlic-type sauce than an actual hot sauce. There is some minor heat here, but I'd be surprised if the SHU rating was over 10K. Happily, none of the brightness I'm coming to strongly associate with habanero sauces was not present and for the most part, I found this enjoyable.
Bottom line: It is far from a polarizing sauce, but it won't work well with everything. What it does go with, it does spectacularly. What it doesn't go with isn't terrible, but does leave you wishing you had a different sauce. At $10 for 5 oz., this is not a particularly great deal, even with the keychain and the entertaining label pic of Wylde and one of his famous bullseye guitars as well as the "traveling case" look to the outer box packaging. I wouldn't be averse to using it again, but I can't foresee any future repeat purchase.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 4
Flavor: 6
Flexibility: 5
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3
Overall: 5
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