Killer Chipotle Hot Sauce Review

CaJohn's Killer Chipotle Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T22R0H3HBFA

The original review for this sauce was written and posted on January 26, 2013. In one of the very rarest of occasions, I have decided to toss the entire previous review, as it was erroneous, and about 2/3 of it did not address the sauce at all, but rather inappropriately some of the hot sauce industry gripes I had at the time. This review, written and re-posted on December 20, 2020, is the salient one. I almost thought of deleting the entry entirely and doing a completely new review, but ultimately decided against it, because I had to redress the wrong that previously held this space.

I don't think I make that kind of statement without explaining a bit of the backstory, so if that is not of interest, skip ahead a couple paragraphs. Back in 2013, I was, as it seems like I've forever been, on the hunt for the "perfect" Mexican-style sauce, or at least one I would love enough to want to eat frequently enough to be my Standard. I thought I had found it a few times in the intervening years, but at the time of this, I had not. 2012 was my upgrade into the much wider open world of hot sauces than I have previously been familiar and I was greatly impressed by nearly everything I've had from CaJohn's, home of ace sauce mastermind John Hard. So, I already had inklings that I like a bit of smokiness for my Mexican-style sauces and that, of course, is the very nature of Chipotle.

I got the bottle and I wish now I had been doing pictures then, as the ingredient list was virtually identical to that of Happy Beaver. The sauce consistency, flavor, heat, everything was the same and I naturally thought it was a clone. I wasn't hugely bothered by this, as Happy Beaver has been on my Standard list since I've had it and it was a sauce I thought of so fondly, it was my first ever Sauce Of The Year in 2012, in a "year" that was only about three months, given the life of this blog. One of the other contenders it beat out that year was another CaJohn's entry, in fact. With this new bottle I have now, it is clear the sauces could not be more radically different. This one is runny and comes with a restrictor cap and flavor is wildly different (I got this and Angry Beaver and re-tested them side by side, as I always now do for the FOH video series, to confirm my memory of the impressions I had as well as these various written reviews over time). This leads me to suspect I either got a bottle that was mislabeled or this sauce (Happy Beaver is largely the same) has been reformulated.

What we have here is a very runny sauce, watery, in fact, somewhat reminiscent of a Louisiana-style sauce or a Tabasco. Indeed, the flavor profile is strikingly similar to the Tabasco Chipotle (also reviewed in this blog) and is nearly identical to the Dat'l Chipotle from the Brewer's 6 Pack (see Mini-Reviews) that I reviewed around this time last year. While the taste is closest to that Dat'l, which is a strong taste of Chipotle in a vinegar base, this one has the addition of a few other elements that raise the heat level somewhat more than either of the others mentioned. This also means this will need to be agitated heavily prior to use and possibly during as well.

Flavor-wise, the taste is basically that of Chipotle and the flavoring agent used to achieve this is Chipotle powder. Like many other chileheads, I had a lot of concern that we would start to see some problems with the CaJohn's line after it was sold and there has definitely been a lot of reshuffling of the label ingredient panels on various sauces since that happened. The sauces have mostly held, flavor-wise, at least for now, but that kind of reshifting has led to a dilution of quality in other sauce lines, so the jury is still out. 

Usage-wise, I wound up spiking barbeque sauce with the majority of that Brewer's Chipotle sauce, or using it to splash anywhere else I wanted a bit of smokiness. I suspect that will be the case with this and I will test it in the same applications I did with the Tabasco Chipotle, including ramen, to see how that shakes out, but I honestly do not have much use for that style of sauce and it took me quite some time to work through the Brewer Chipotle. It is, however, far too good of a sauce to bin.

Bottom line: If you like strongly vinegar-based sauce and feel that yours needs both some smokiness and a higher degree of heat than most else of what's out there, this is your ticket.

 
 Breakdown:

   Heat level: 1
   Flavor: 7
   Flexibility: 5
   Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4