Like last year, this was not a strong year for sauces…mostly
because I didn’t get to many of them. In fact, I’m going to let the numbers
speak for themselves (all sauces not directly linked here can be clicked to directly from the Table Of Contents page).
Total posts (including this post): 147
Total views (as of this writing): 8768
Total single sauce full reviews: 119
Total double sauce full reviews: 1
Total sauces full reviewed: 120
Total mini-sauce reviews: 20
Total sauces reviewed, combined: 146
Total unopened sauces waiting on shelf for review: 9
Total opened sauces waiting for review: 0
Total open bottles in fridge: 13
Door sauces: 4
Back of fridge sauces: 3
Highest viewed review: 357 - Valentina's Extra Hot
Highest viewed article, any type: 357 - Valentina’s Extra Hot
If you compare and contrast these
vs. last year, they are all down comparatively and last year itself was a down
year to begin with…so the slide continues, mostly unabated. In fact, for the
last 3 years, I’ve used Black Friday/Cyber Monday to load up and re-stock, but
I still have sufficient of a backload as to make that pointless. It is taking
me a long, long time to claw through sauces, for the most part and I can’t even
imagine when I’m going to re-up again. I don’t see this changing notably, if at
all, in 2017. I do still need to re-visit the pictures of some of the older
sauces that haven’t made it up yet as well, but that is about as back burner as
it can be.
Despite the sort of molasses crawl I’m doing with sauces
this year, I did have a few contenders. For a while, I thought it would be between
the Water Of Life from Terrapin Station (link to this sauce and all others I've reviewed is in TOC) and Pirate O’s Surface Of The Sun, but
in reviewing this, that was because I was mistaken on the ratings. WOL came in
at a 7, while SOTS was an 8, sort of rendering their competition over
immediately. I would have given the edge to the SOTS for pure flexibility, but
I did find another 8, that being the Boar’s Head Jalapeno, which is remarkably
flavorful and flexible. I also found another 7 in B.J. Bull’s Hot Sauce, but that
one wore on me after a bit and the Jak Jeckel Red, also at 7, which I liked
better, but not enough for it to be in actual running for SOTY.
So, competition this year was rather minimal. SOTS was the
leader, in my mind, but to compare vs. BHJ head to head, we have an edge to
SOTS in heat and in value, about equal in flavor and a very slight edge to the
BHJ in terms of flexibility. Thus, it was not much of a competition and SOTS
was not seriously challenged at any point. However, if I'm being honest, this year is a notable step down from previous winners, a trend I'm hoping changes back in the other direction next year. As it is, your clear winner this year,
with a rating a point less than the eventual winners of the last 4 years and
less than some of the runners up of those previous years:
Previous 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
My current standby sauces are unchanged. They are:
*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
There is, of course, also my wine about blog, the Happy
Sippin’ Companion (HSC), which has now 55 posts, 50 of which are reviews. It
has drawn, to date, 741 views.
Then we have Yelp. My review count is now 1209 reviews and
144 updates, which is a total of 1353 reviews, all in. I was "First To
Review" 138 times. I also have 755 "Friends" (feel
free to add me, if you wish), 30 "Followers" and am up to 16 Lists. My
distribution of ratings and further metrics are available on my Yelp page,
which you can click to from my widget. As always, I 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.
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