Best Hot Sauce 2015 + Recap

As I mentioned earlier in some of the quarterly Updates, this was a sort of nervous-making year, with no strong contenders at all until much deeper into the year. 2015, however, came on very strong towards the end and fortunately, I didn’t wind up having to resort to past years or even look at a lower overall aggregate score than the weighty past victors, something I wasn’t sure would be the case for the vast majority of the year. The pool, however, seemed shallower and I say seemed, but looking back, the sauce for last year, Born To Hula’s awesome Ghost Of Ancho had no competitors at all. 2013 saw Blair’s Pure Death come in and just take over immediately. Once again, there was no competitors to that, either. 2015, then, while weaker overall (maybe in 2016, I will do an average compositing of the aggregate score for the respective years), was the most strongly contested for the highest title since the year of inception. That first year, in 2012, was the Happy Beaver from CaJohns’s edging out the BICH, also from CaJohn’s and the El Yucateco Green, easily the hottest competition this blog has seen (no pun), since all three of those are, by rights, champion-level sauce.

This year, as mentioned, not until very late was anything even remotely in that rarefied air. Then along came October and the Tortuga Hell-Fire. A short while later, the VooDew Honey Doo sauce came racing up behind it and the heat, as Glenn Frey once famously mentioned, was on. Both of these had the same cumulative score, 9, that self-same score of all the previous champions, though the Hell-Fire had the slight edge in heat and flexibility and the Honey Doo the slight edge in flavor. They certainly were not making my decision any easier and I began to debate ways of pitting the two off. Did I choose which one I finished first? The Honey Doo was gone by the 10^th of December, still a decent amount of the Hell-Fire left as of this posting. Did I put both bottles on a counter, blindfold myself, spin around in circles and pick whichever one I closed my fist upon first? Which one I didn’t shatter after dizzily crashing into the counter? Maybe use a coin toss? Best 2 of 3? 3 of 5? Announce a co-winner? 

The Honey Doo, to be frank, has a built-in advantage of being more flavorful, which is the most desirable characteristic in a sauce. It also has the “specialness” of being my 100^th full review of a sauce and it seems fitting that that particular hallmark also be the Sauce Of The Year. I did also finish it much faster, as noted and if I were to pick which I liked better, it would be that one by a slight amount. So, without further need for agonizing, I hereby announce the Voodoo Chile Voo Dew Honey Doo as the 2015 Sauce Of The Year from the TSAAF, joining the other luminaries from previous years, which will immediately follow this paragraph. Before I post that list, though, I do want to take a moment to say I have been very impressed by the other offerings from Voodoo Chile and Tortuga and think that both of them are among the very best companies that the hot sauce world has to offer.

TSAAF Sauce Of The Year winners:

2012 Sauce Of The Year: CaJohn’s Happy Beaver

2013 Sauce Of The Year: Blair’s Pure Death

2014 Sauce Of The Year: Born To Hula’s Ghost Of Ancho

2015 Sauce Of The Year: Voodoo Chile’s Voo Dew Honey Doo

Starting to get a very good statistical backlog here and it was definitely sort of interesting and fun reading for me to go back to the other years where I made similar posts and compare. Obviously, the major change this year was one I had hinted about right around a year ago and that was adding pictures to the various posts. I started that once I hit 100 sauces covered with a full review (if I counted the mini-reviews, I hit that figure long ago, but I don’t count those as that was something I only did in the infancy of TSAAF and abandoned entirely thereafter). It was, in some ways, a long time coming, but an important thing to remember here is that zero of these sauces are sponsored, meaning that I pay for every sauce that appears here fully, 100%.

I am currently at about 42 sauce pics posted out of a possible 106, so roughly 40% there vs. the total, though, again, I will always be a few shy, possibly (probably) more as I find out more info about what’s actually available out there. I basically have 2 more solid locations locally to mine, so my guess is that I’ll probably approach 80 of the already reviewed sauces, but not quite make it. Frankly, many sauces are more trouble than they’re worth to buy just for a picture or even to find a brick-and-mortar to hunt them down for a photo. Then we have the Blair’s Death line and the various Tabascos, which come in boxes, which I won’t be taking pictures of as I will only be posting bottles of the actual sauce, so I basically have to run into them open somewhere (excepting the Pure Death, of course, which I tend to keep on hand). The photos I’m going to be putting up will be those of the bottles only, preferably with at least some sauce still in them. I’m also going back and continuing to clean up some coding errors, but I suspect that particular task will never quite ever fully be done…

The final change to both this and the wine blog (HSC) is to add a TOC page for both. In that process, I discovered some interesting (to me, anyway) artifacts for this blog. The letters currently NOT represented by any sauce in that list are: F, K, N, U, X, Y. Part of my subsidiary goals next year will then be to try at least once sauce starting with those names. The most well-represented sauce line is a tie with CaJohn’s and Blair’s, both with 6 entries. This is entirely coincidence, though and not representative of anything other than a random observation. It does, however, stand to reason as if there are 2 kings, arguably, it would be those two…

My current standby sauces have changed little. They are currently:

*Emeritus Everyday sauce: Trappey's Red Devil

*Everyday sauce: Blair’s Pure Death Sauce

*Grilling sauce: CaJohn's Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero (BICH)

 Mexican-style sauce: Arizona Pepper’s Chipotle Habanero Pepper Sauce

*Emeritus Asian-style sauce: Huy Fong Chili-Garlic Sauce

 *Asian-style sauce: Zenso Sweet Chili Sauce

 *Louisiana-style sauce: Irazu Cayenne

 Sweet-hot sauce: CaJohn's Happy Beaver

 *Wife's sauce: DannyCash's Salvation Garlic-Serrano and/or Bottled-Up Anger

 *= Not looking for a replacement

Another subsidiary goal will be to try to get the Mexican sauce more pinned down. While I certainly enjoyed various of the Chipotle-Habanero combinations this year, I haven’t found “the” one quite yet. This has actually been somewhat of an ongoing struggle, since a lot of them seem to like to pollute their sauces with onions, which generally ruins it for me. So, I limp on by with “making do” sauces…

Let’s get to some metrics. This is post 128, which makes 32 this year, compared to 23 for 2014, 61 for 2013 (though I deleted several in that broader clean-up I mentioned and the new total is now 52) and 21 for the last quarter of 2012, which is what was left of the inaugural year of this blog. I’m not going to include them here, but the breakdown for the various sauce reviews is available in the other 3 End Of The Year posts for the respective years, should anyone else be interested in this and so inclined to compare numbers. Maybe if I wind up doing this 10 years, I’ll do a retrospective graph or something.

That aside, more blog numbers:

Total posts (including this post): 128

Total views (as of this writing): 8103

Total single sauce full reviews: 104

Total double sauce full reviews: 1

Total sauces full reviewed: 106

Total mini-sauce reviews: 20

Total sauces reviewed, combined: 126

Total unopened sauces waiting on shelf for review: 13

Total opened sauces waiting for review: 0

Total open bottles in fridge: 13

Door sauces: 8

Back of fridge sauces: 5

Highest viewed review: 345 - Valentina's Extra Hot
Highest viewed article, any type: 345 - Valentina’s Extra Hot

There is, of course, also the wine thing, my blog there, the Happy Sippin’ Companion (HSC), which has now 42 posts, 37 of which are reviews. It has drawn, to date, 449 views. I don’t spend the time there with metrics that I do here, but I’m not going to take the space for it here, either, save to say that I do get into that…fairly heavily, in upcoming Editions in that blog. You can click to that blog from my profile.

Then we have Yelp. My review count is now 977 reviews and 112 updates, which is a total of 1089 reviews, all in. Further, I was "First To Review" 106 times or around 11% of the time.  I also have 643 "Friends" (feel free to add me, if you wish), 18 "Fans", submitted 1 Event, which was one I'm enormously gratified to have been able to take part in (Inland/Outland from Svavar Jónatansson) and created 14 Lists. My distribution of ratings falls in the order of:  45 or ~4.5% at 5 stars, 302 or ~31%  at 4 stars, 480 or ~49 % at 3 stars, 136 or ~14% at 2 stars and 14 or ~1.5% for 1 star, which marks more a development than anything resembling outright change from last year. Further metrics are available on my Yelp page, which you can click to from my widget. Additionally, I also have several on tap that I haven’t gotten around to posting as of yet.

So, as we put another one in the books, as always, thanks for dropping by. If there’s any changes to suggest or sauces you’d like to see me get to, please drop me a line in the comment section of any of the reviews.

Zombie Cajun Hot Sauce Review

Zombie Cajun Hot Sauce

Back a while ago, when I had run myself dangerously low on one of my perennial favorite sauce types, the Louisiana-style, I went hunting and sort of randomly came across this on Amazon. Now, I don't typically buy sauces from there, mostly because it's not free shipping on those things when they build a hefty markup into the price and if I'm going to pay exaggerated monies, I'm going to an actual brick-and-mortar locally first. This (and another counterpart coming in a later review), for whatever reason, struck me as somewhat intriguing, despite my usual disdain for novelty sauces. Sticking the word "zombie" onto a hot sauce label does not strike me as reasonable, in any capacity, so these sauces had everything working against them, yet I went forward with the order anyway.

By the time I got them, of course, I had forgotten I'd ordered them at all, so they were sort of a nice welcome surprise. The follow-up from one Ricky Hooter, who evidently is the mastermind behind all of this, was also a bit unexpected, but a nice touch. All so far, so good and they were yet another company who has apparently gotten the memo and is now aligning with those in the industry pushing flavor far more than any SHU rating.

As to that flavor (and consistency), it's on par with your usual Cayenne-based Louisiana-style hot sauces. I wouldn't put it as high as either Irazu or Trappey's Red Devil, but it's probably right around the TryMe Sunshine(s) range or so, i.e. very solid, but more middle-of-the-road. There's no sweetness here at all, so it definitely stays true to the Louisiana-style motif, which is something I appreciated quite a bit. One thing I do note is that it does have a bit of bitterness I find unappealing when taken straight. Obviously, we rarely will eat sauce straight unless we're just opening the bottle and trying to get a feel for it, but why this matters is that if you over-sauce something, the negative traits can be amplified to the extent of potentially wrecking your food. Overall, this tends to work well with the usual foods, though without a restrictor cap, over-saucing could be a possibility.

You won't have to worry about rendering it too hot to tolerate, though, even if you do over-sauce. Heat is mostly non-existent, another shared attribute with Red Devil. Frankly, I could have definitely used a higher charge with this and given that the last few bottles of the Louisiana-style have tended to have a greater degree of spike to them, I found myself missing that attribute. It's definitely on the lower side of what I usually like, but I think they designed it more for accessibility.

Bottom line: It's a fine, perfectly acceptable sauce, no more, no less. I don't know that I would get it again, due partially to availability. Amazon's price point definitely makes future purchases of this a struggle, but frankly, there are other sauces in this segment I prefer more.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 5

Jak Jeckel Gourmet Hot Sauce Review

Jak Jeckel Gourmet Hot Sauce

This has nothing to do with the actual sauce, of course, but Jak Jeckel just might have the coolest website of any sauce manufacturer I've seen. Here, we have a healthy section devoted to the "Flavor Travel" of each respective sauce, as well as a much lengthier "Flavor Profile", which I think is supposed to be basically tasting notes and a kinda sorta ingredient list. Oddly, though, one of the major components of the flavor of this sauce, the Chipotle pepper, is entirely absent from that back panel ingredient list on the bottle itself.

That flavor is dominant in a good way, much like the Chipotle Tabasco and much like that other sauce, this one more resembles a BBQ sauce. It is not, however, an actual BBQ sauce anymore than that other, but the similarities are remarkable. This is clearly a very skillfully crafted sauce, though, relying not at all on vinegar or even so much as using it, in an effort to allow the peppers to be fully experienced. This is, after all, a company that takes pains to pointedly observe that they are "flavor first", above all...as am I, of course and so goes the TSAAF, naturally. So...more of a foodie approach for this relatively new company.

None of that matters if this sauce isn't any good, of course. It is, I'm pleased to say, quite good. So good, in fact, that the makers do something I normally consider a heinous sin and state emphatically that is not a hot sauce on the website...I'm leery now and it gets worse when I look at the label where they bury what could very well be a vast cornucopia of ingredients in a couple nondescript blends of both "Jerk Seasoning" and "Jak Jeckel Seasoning Blend". There is definitely cracked pepper in it, the second most dominant flavor behind the Chipotle in the sauce. Since I love cracked pepper, this is by no means a bad thing.

However, I'd almost say that this, in addition to the Habanero Salt also listed, is far too many dry ingredients, but the results are fairly stunning and definitely tasty, so it gets a pass. This seemingly "kitchen sink" approach does result in both one of the most accessible as well as most flexible sauces I've run across, so what they're doing is clearly working.

Bottom line: Jak Jeckel is going to be one to watch and this is a fantastically flavorful sauce. There is precious little heat there and like the Tabasco Chipotle, this probably won't wind up in regular rotation, especially given the higher price point. Very enjoyable while it lasts, though.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 7

Phoenix Hot Sauce Review

Voodoo Chile Phoenix Super Sauce Hot Sauce

While I do not recall 100% fully, I believe this is the first sauce I've had with Smokin' Ed's Carolina Reaper, the current reigning highest SHU pepper in existence. I do, however, know for sure that this is the first one based on a "super food" detox drink mix, that being the Voodoo D-Tox. Now, clearly, the drink is not likely to use the Carolina Reaper and truth be told, there's precious little of it here also (they bury it in a "secret" mix of a few other peppers, so no idea the actual amount, but it's not hot enough to really have much...just enough to keep things interesting, I'd say). The bottle itself rates the sauce as "medium hot", which is probably fair. It's definitely enough to take notice, but not enough to run for the double chocolate chunk or whatever your favorite frozen dairy poison is.

The taste is curious as it does evoke thoughts of a smoothie, albeit a much spicier one than normal. That might be a bad description, actually, as it is nowhere near super sweet or anything, yet there is a very definite and pronounced fruit aspect to this. What we have here is stuff like cranberry, apple, blueberry, black cherry, pomegranate, all of which blend nicely. Flavor falls about in the middle as far as fruit-based sauces. This is a well-blended sauce, so you're not spiked with any one dominator and everything seems to play nicely together, but I've had considerably tastier fruit-sauces and, of course, much worse as well.

As with most sweeter sauces, this works well on lighter-colored meats. Truth be told, though, there's a lot I'd rather eat and this is more an intriguing sauce than an especially flavorful one. Once the novelty wears off, it will be curious to see how well it stands up, long-term.

Bottom line: This is a sauce that wouldn't be bad to have around, one that is interesting on a few levels. It's not necessary and there's no particular pointed need, but it would do well as the sauce you kind of keep around just to have a change of pace or when you want a flavor far from the norm.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 6

Zombie Repellent Hot Sauce Review

Original Juan Zombie Repellent Hot Sauce

Novelty sauces can be a mixed bag. Most of them that have a themed label tend to be junk; abrasively harsh substances that have little to no flavor and what is there is usually bad. This is one I happened to buy along with some others, mostly on a whim and consequently didn't get to it for a while.

Here we have orange Habaneros, which tend to be a bit on the fruity side to begin with, then spiked with orange concentrate, which does a nice job of really pushing that side of it. But make no mistake, despite being mostly orange Habaneros and orange concentrate. This is not particularly a sweet sauce and not anywhere near one of the fruit-based sauces out there.

It sort of reminds me of some of the El Yucateco sauces, particularly the Caribbean, but with a blast of orange. The citrusy nature of this makes it a very curious sauce but one more restricted to lighter meats, chicken, fish, pork, et. al. It's not by any means a bad flavor, but I wouldn't call it necessarily a great one, either. There is plenty of back-end heat here and it calls to mind that Habanero was, at one time, the world's hottest pepper in the record books. It also doesn't really dissipate much and builds a respectable level that I found both surprising and enjoyable. It's nowhere near the raging fury of a superhot or extract sauce, to be sure, but is a very large note in the sauce.

Bottom line: This one can serve a purpose as both a solidly charged novelty gift, one step above with pretty good flavor as well as a very solid sauce for the lighter meats. I don't know that I really have a place for it in my regular stable and so may not be getting it again, but I'm definitely enjoying its stay while it lasts.

Breakdown:

   Heat level: 6
   Flavor: 7
   Flexibility: 6
   Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 6

TSAAF At 100

After the last posting, this blog has finally reached 100 sauces reviewed. Well, full reviews, that is. If I count the Mini-Reviews I did in the beginning, but no longer do, it’s more like 118. It has taken [3 years, 1 month, 19 days – oddly enough, I launched it on a 09/11] to hit that, owing to a few things. Those things include dietary changes, job changes (while this was a highly rewarding move, in this one respect, it delayed reaching this total considerably, though obviously that’s minor comparatively), repeats of sauces (though this is kind of the point, except for one forgettable one that I predictably forgot…and then wasted money on again and another that got a second chance and improved its rating somewhat) and even lifestyle changes. I try to finish all of the sauces generally, which tends to delay things still more, given those other circumstances, a number of which I’ve written about in various updates. I also don’t include other stuff in there; no snacks, no wing sauces, no barbeque sauces, no dry blends, no fast food or restaurant offerings, just straight hot sauce. 

After that much time, even though in the grand scheme of things, this is relatively meaningless, this still feels like somewhat of a big deal to me. I fully realize a lot of sites feature quite a number more reviews than this. One of the things I’m proudest of is that there are a lot of sauces here in this blog that are reviewed nowhere else. As much as spicy food is making its way into the mainstream, hot sauces on the fringe are not. It’s still mostly mass market stuff, which is kind of a pity. Still, I’m happy to at least provide what amounts to singular and unique reviews. This will compromise the next part a bit, in a way, but I think it’s a worthy change and serves more as enhancement.

The next part is, of course, the change to this blog upon hitting 100. That particular change will be adding photos of the bottles, particularly the front label (which started with the 100^th post), something I’ve been obviously telegraphing for a while now. This will have to be a work in progress, though and some of these will not wind up with pictures as several sauces are now gone the way of the dinosaur, never to be heard from again. Quite a few of them are still out there, but I’m not buying more bottles. I love y’all, but I’m not picking up bottles of bullshit for the sake of a picture. Maybe if I run into it in a store, but definitely not paying for inferior product or trying to slog through it just for the sake of the TSAAF, mighty and fun as it is…anyway, keep checking back for your favorites in the meantime, but I will make a separate post once the backlog is caught up or it will show up in one of the General Updates. As of this writing, 18 entries are done (basically everything open and in the fridge and what I could find in the store during this week’s grocery shopping), which includes 2 of the current 3 past “Sauce Of The Years” and the all-time most popular individual sauce on the TSAAF, the Valentina Xtra Hot. I have 62 left to do, as of now, but that list might be cut down radically, if I have a difficult time finding some of the sauces on the shelves.

I’ve also finished some general housekeeping. I’ve done a fair amount of cycling the open sauces this year and in addition to that, I’ve gone back through the history of the blog, both to fix a bunch of broken links when I changed the URL to the blog itself earlier this year as well as removing a number of posts, mostly commenting about the various results of a tournament Scott Roberts was running once upon a time (over a couple years ago now) on his website to anoint a crown prince of sauces that wound up basically being abandoned after it became clear that the results were too easily skewed by marketing forces and not necessarily a solid representation of what he was trying to achieve. It was a noble idea, to be sure, but the reality didn’t quite live up to the lofty premise.

A number of those sauces are long gone now and the contest never did get finally decided, so keeping those up was pointless, despite the various meanderings I put in there, as I’m wont to do, regarding various other items, such as snacks or whatever else I’d tried that some company or another had tried to market as spicy and my various thoughts. A lot of that is outside of what I really wanted the blog to do and while I like the General Updates as historical markers, I probably have enough of those as it is.

Even at something as relatively low as 100 sauces, unless you intend on going to the shows or ordering more or less online frequently, it becomes fairly difficult finding that many sauces without repeats, particularly when you have strong aversions to a fairly common ingredient, such as onions, as I do. Add to that my revulsion to extract and it’s not really too much of a wonder it took this long to get here…but it’s here now.

As always, if there’s any other changes you’d like to see, shoot me a line. Thanks for dropping by.

Voodoo Chile Voo Dew Honey Doo Hot Sauce Review

Voodoo Chile VooDew HoneyDoo Hot Sauce - [TSAAF Sauce Of The Year 2015]

This is it (finally). My 100th review of hot sauces and in it, we meet yet another first. The review preceding this was my first bacon hot sauce; this is my first Peppadew pepper hot sauce. Now Peppadew, as a pepper, is an astonishingly mild one, more sweet and tasty than anything else, so in a way, it's akin to trying to make hot sauce out of Bell or Cherry peppers, but this one relies on good ol' Cayenne and Habanero to add a dash of the heat to proceedings. That is not to say this is a firebreather; indeed, it is not, but there is enough there to give a charge and keep things interesting, yet comfortable all the while, meaning you can eat a goodly amount of this readily.

What matters in a hot sauce? Flavor, above all else and this one is packed full of it. It's at once slightly sweet, yet with plenty of tang and a complexity of flavors that all adds up to the final result of utterly delicious. In fact, mentioning Cherry peppers, those pickled ones are one of my favorite things and the first whiff of this upon opening the bottle brings me right there. To say it hits all the notes right is an understatement. It definitely is one of the best-tasting sauces I've had.

It also does very well going with nearly anything you put it with. I say nearly only because I haven't tried it on a few things yet, but the fairly wide variety I have used it on (I've not stopped putting this on stuff since I opened the bottle) has responded well. A couple reviews back, I mentioned the Caribbean Hell-Fire did a nice job of flavoring and complementing the food, rather than being overpowering, yet great-tasting, such as the Pure Death I was comparing it to and this one is like that. Excellent, fantastic flavor, yet it serves as complimentary, embellishing the food rather than overriding it. All in all, a very unique, yet incredibly skillful and well-crafted and created sauce. Small wonder it took home a Scovie Award...

Bottom line: This is nearly everything you'd ever want in a sauce, though it could use a slight dash more heat. It is something I've been thoroughly enjoying again and while I don't have a ready place for it in the stable, I wouldn't hesitate to get another bottle. Yet another Sauce Of The Year contender.

Breakdown:

   Heat level: 4
   Flavor: 10
   Flexibility: 10
   Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 9

Porcus: Infernum Hot Sauce Review

Voodoo Chile Procus: Infernum Hot Sauce

Lots of fun verbiage on the label touting this or that, mostly references to the underworld, which I'll let you read at your disposal, if you're so moved and can find a bottle. The picture of the Hellpig on the label is pretty cool, though. I can't quite tell if the sauce is bad in ideal or execution, perhaps a bit of both. It's take me this long to get to a bacon-flavored anything that's not bacon and if this is indeed, as the label claims, the best that bacon hot sauce has to offer, it will be a good long while before I get to it again.

Many, many ingredients precede anything that says "chile" or "pepper" and when it does, it is some nebulous and mysterious "blend". Lots of flavors going on here and with the inclusion of apple cider vinegar, the first ingredient, in fact, we wind up with something that tastes slightly rancid and very sou
r and it goes downhill from there. Nothing like a sauce that makes you gag with every bite...

There is a slight bacon-ish flavor there, but it is far too muted to do any good. I think the conception here is questionable, too. Ok, I get it, because bacon, right, but with hot sauce, I think it's more that you can put the sauce in or on the meat, but not put the meat (or meat flavoring) in the sauce itself. There is also little to no heat here. That this was a more expensive sauce is just rubbing salt in the wound and friends, I got fleeced on this one, taken for a ride big time.

Bottom line: This is a gross sauce, one of the worst I've run across, that I have no idea where you'd ever use as it wrecks everything you put it on.

Breakdown:

   Heat level: 0
   Flavor: -40
   Flexibility: 0
   Enjoyment to dollar factor: -28

Overall: 0

Tortuga Caribbean Hell-Fire Hot Sauce Review

Tortuga Caribbean Hell-Fire Hot Sauce

Now, I've said it before and I'll say it again that lord knows I love Cayenne pepper as my favorite and probably Louisiana as my all-around favorite style of sauce, but a very close second is probably the Scotch Bonnet. Yes, I know it's a close relative of the Habanero, which I have sort somewhat of an antagonistic relationship with, but I've loved the Scotch Bonnets since the day I had one. I think they have a more vibrant and fruitier flavor, are much better-tasting overall and are nearly the ultimate as far as peppers go with great taste and very good heat. This extends to the sauces as well and some of the sauces I've enjoyed most have utilized that pepper.

Now, I got this one when I was shopping for new Louisiana-style sauces, as frequently the Caribbean style will be close enough that I can make it work, albeit somewhat sweeter typically. That is also the case here, but this is pretty far away from a Louisiana-style. If anything, it's closer to more of an Asian sweet chili sauce, yet it's nowhere near that cloying, as those can frequently be. It doesn't have much of a vinegar blast, yet there is enough there to temper the sweetness of the cane sugar and refined enough that it's more of a hint. It also allows those wonderful Scotch Bonnets to shine through. This is a simply a very well-crafted and very well-designed sauce.

It's this kind of skill in creating it that allows it to be so versatile. It's one of those sauces that you can use on nearly anything. Much like the Blair Pure Death sauce, this one can be used nearly everywhere, but unlike that other sauce, it's not hugely overpowering but so flavorful you can't help but love it anyway. This one accents and uplifts the food, in exactly the manner we hope for when we buy sauce, assuming that you're like me and buy for flavor and greater enjoyment and not in an exercise of blasting your mouth skin into tiny stringy pieces.

No discussion is really complete without mentioning the heat and while there's not a ton of it here, there is enough there that you're likely to miss it and it really gives a nice round level...bordering on a good solid punch to the mush, but never quite making it all the way there. It's around the aforementioned Pure Death, but not quite there. All in all, very well-tempered.

Bottom line: In case you hadn't gotten it by now, I've finally come across my first contender of 2015 for Sauce Of The Year. This thing is simply great and definitely a worthy addition to your stable.

Breakdown:

   Heat level: 5
   Flavor: 9
   Flexibility: 10
   Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 9

General Update Q3 2015

As regular readers of this column (or its archives) will know, TSAAF is greatly inspired by Scott Robert’s website (if you’re a chilehead, you should already know it, but if not, it’s http://www.scottrobertsweb.com/) and he has undergone another site renovation, as he is periodically prone to do, in an effort to both improve and keep things fresh. If you haven’t been there in a while, go check it out. I think it’s his best one yet. 

Obviously, the TSAAF has done little to none of this sort of thing since in the inception, it being the sort of thing that one has to make time to do so, as finding that time is out of the question. Scott works, I believe, in the field and is well immersed in the technology, which lends itself nicely to that task whereas I have no such interest, experience or facility to change things up greatly. The blog itself is not so far off from what I had in mind, as it is, aside from whatever change comes to pass (spoiler: probably adding a picture of the actual sauce bottle to the reviews - if anyone has any suggestions, I’m still wide open to those…) when it finally hits 100 sauce reviews. 

That number is fast approaching. As of this writing, it now stands at 97 (out of 129, including this, posts total), so doing the quick math, 3 more reviews in 3 months isn’t out of the question…I won’t, however, say it will be easy. Simple to type, sure, but not easy, given a shift in my job a couple months ago that has me traveling far more than at any other time in my professional career. Unlike Scott, I don’t now, never have and never will carry hot sauce with me into restaurants, so it will have to be when I’m home…I’ve also resumed an earlier diet shift from the spring that I temporarily dropped. Real talk here for a minute, the number one thing we put hot sauce on is meat and/or pizza. I haven’t had pizza at home in many months and can’t remember the last time there was a frozen one here at all. As to meat, my wife has elected to try on the vegetarian/vegan hat on again.  Since I eat out every day, if not more often, I try to make things easier by greatly tapering my meat intake at home. My son isn’t really a mega meat eater, either, so that just means there is less of it around in general. That then means a lesser opportunity for sauce, so there can frequently be a considerable lull in finding a use for hot sauce. On the plus side, open bottles are at a pretty low point, which means lots of room for new ones as the opportunities come up.

Less positively, I still don’t have any real contenders for Sauce Of The Year, with now 9 months gone. I’m not in full-on panic mode just yet, but I may wind up opening it up to previous years and get more bottles of previous contenders, both to see how they have held up and also to hold a “showdown” of sorts, possibly, where instead of trying to fit them in to whatever I happen to be doing, I make it a point to thoroughly test all of them. If it comes down to that, I will furnish a blow by blow breakdown of that testing. 

Wine blog is also churning along. I think that one is up to 32 different wines reviewed. I anticipate that one getting to around 40 or so by the end of the year.

In the arena of Yelp, my anniversary date of signing up is September 13^th and in the 2 years and 2 weeks-ish I’ve been on, I’ve hit 880+ reviews. I’m not going to breakdown the full stats until the end of the year, but I do an odd thing and typically write a fast review of a place if I haven’t reviewed it yet, but don’t always post it. Sometimes I will jot notes for a placeholder setting, sometimes it will be an actual change to an existing review or rating, but I frequently let a lot of those sit and sometimes gel for a bit. Where I’m going with this is that at any given time, I’ve got probably a couple dozen of those things waiting…I also have now 6 separate lists of places I want to get to, so that train will keep on rolling for some time to come…feel free to add me by following the widget and clicking through if you’re also on there and care to do that.

Next General Update will be the End Of The Year one, unless I hit 100 before that, in which case, that may get its own special post…stay tuned.