Best Hot Sauce 2021 + Recap

I assure you I did not mean for this to be late, but, as they say, 2021 had to fit one final bit of fuckery in at the end. If you read the placeholder part before, it details the sordid saga of the fight I had with my Dell computer, which also happened to have the content I will get to shortly and which I could not get working, nor secure the file, until just now. In short, Dell refuses to stand behind their machine, though it did not even make 5 months of operation (and is well under warranty...and was more expensive). Clearly, they do not care once they have your money, so, I say this with all the venom and sincerity I can muster: fuck Dell computers. I will never buy another and strongly encourage anyone who does not want to fight with the miscreants they have on "support" to follow my lead. Anyway, that aside, on to the show...

The blog now enters its 10th year...though not quite 10 years old until fall next year. This has also been one of the more personally tumultuous years for me, ever, with a series of “major life events,” happening with little break between, right in succession, and I would be hard pressed to say most were at all on the positive side. Everyone has troubles, particularly in these pandemic times, and I certainly won’t be spending time here with a litany of the ills this year has laid at my feet, but they caused me to miss, among other things, the last grill-out of the season, and it was very narrow thing that I kept my unbroken streak of months with a review posted in this blog intact. Missing 5 of 6 weeks across September/October also ensured that the Carolina Reaper experiment will press on into 2022, as I was not able to conclude it in 2021 (and which means a new record-holder hottest pepper will probably be crowned next year). However, specific to Reapers, I am hopeful I can keep my tolerance sufficiently high enough to enjoy those without the affiliated cramping, which I rarely get once it’s up there, but most definitely do not enjoy. I almost am inclined to say it is not only a higher than normal necessary tolerance, but perhaps even a different one, more specific to Reapers. More discussion of Reapers will follow throughout this blog.

Even for all of that, I blew by last year (50 posts) and the previous high year of 2013 (52) in terms of posting, passing both of them in November and managed to complete the alphabet with a "U" entry before the end of the year. A bit frustratingly, views were down for the blog slightly this year compared to last year. Views overall tend to be really specifically related to the actual sauces and since I don’t really do a lot of stuff that’s either mass market or the very latest thing on the chilehead side, I never quite know what will draw...or when. Most of the top 10 reviews for this blog tend to be what I consider archive sauces, in that I’ve done most, if not all, of them quite some time ago. This was started, like all of my other various blogs throughout the years, more for me, though, and I really enjoy doing it, so there won’t be any forthcoming changes anytime soon, other than continuing content. Me not posting on a schedule, except for the quarterly updates, probably isn’t especially helpful, but we work with what we got...I formerly tried not to keep more than 10 open sauces at any one time, as I’ve found that I will start neglecting other open bottles (I try to finish all the sauces entirely) and keep passing them over, particularly if they’re not quite as resonant as some of the other ones, but the Quarterly Wing Things has allowed me a bit more latitude. 

In more positive news, if I maintain even remotely this kind of pacing next year, I will hit 300 sauces in full reviews. I don’t have quite enough at hand to hit that number now, so sounds like another shopping trip will be in the works (oh noes lol). I do have some new stuff planned for 2022 on the FOH non-sauce video side, if people ever get their heads out of their asses enough for COVID to subside. As hinted at in December, which also saw the highest posted video total (14),  I am definitely going to be reintroducing the Head To Head Spicy Chicken sandwich battles, though a touch differently in the future, as well as some surprises, which was touched on in November. I still don’t know if I will reach enough content for the entire year, as of right now, I have enough in the can through Q2 and into Q3, including special holiday and hopefully my grilling season mustards (may have to add BBQ sauce this year...maybe) postings, so I should come really, really close to the full year. I love doing that stuff. The regular hot sauce videos are cool also, don’t get me wrong, but the non-sauce stuff, since I don’t cover it here, is a nice change of pace and gives more of a full rounding to the chilehead experience.

Speaking of a fuller rounding of things, I *finally* was able to find a hot sauce that functioned well as a dessert sauce, namely the Hellfire Sauceress (check the review), which I then followed up with the Twisted Peach Reaper from Eddie Ojeda, which seemed to beg to be put on peach pie, which I did, and it was delicious. That is probably my pick for all-around best peach hot sauce, just fabulous.

As mentioned earlier, I also am getting closer to finally being out of both Scorpion and Reaper sauces, a day I look forward to with some degree of relish, particularly in the case of the Scorpions, which I would not be saddened at all never to partake of again. I probably will not get further sauces with that pepper, other than sauces on The Hot Ones. I will say the Reapers are growing on me a bit, but I find them a really contextual pepper. In the right application, they’re fine, certainly not quite to the level of the Ghosts, in terms of my enjoyment, but fine. In the lesser applications, they definitely make me wish something else had been used, but I probably won’t be excluding them. They are definitely one I need to be judicious with, though, as they induce internal reactions quite unlike any other pepper or even extract, sometimes hours after consumption, again quite unlike any of the other superhots or extracts. Reapers will appear again a bit later on in this post.

I managed to fail on my stated goal from last year (as I also did last year and I think also 2019, when I started doing the FOH video series) of having a FOH support video for every single sauce that got a full review in the blog this year. Possibly that will be something that I manage in 2022, now that we’re well in the 10th year, but there are zero years of the blog where there is a video support for all the full written reviews. I do have at least one in every year of the blog, however. Trying to get videos for every sauce with a full written review for the year, I find very difficult with certain sauces, though, if they come into conflict with my “life is too short for bad sauces” mantra and I don’t feel I have to consume them again. Absent a pressing incentive, my prevailing sentiment becomes better to bin them, be done, and get them out of memory to move on to better things. I do try very hard to shoot videos for every sauce that has a full written review, though, so for one not to have that usually means it is something truly egregious.

So, once again, that remains a goal for 2022. I’m also getting close to getting caught up on the archive sauces I have flagged to try to get to soonest. However, I don’t know how many of those I’ll be actually doing in 2022, given that I still have not caught up to sauces I bought in 2020, which brings up another goal, which is to not acquire more sauces until my backload of new, unopened bottles is at least down to single digits.

I have now reviewed (and for most of them, also filmed and posted) at least one sauce from every season of The Hot Ones, and at least one sauce for each of the 1 - 10 slots. I do notice that there are a few sauces in the early seasons where I have done a written review, but not a support video, and I have those on the list to get to, but given that they are archive sauces, they are not a priority and probably will be among the last to be done, especially the ones I didn’t find particularly compelling. There are also a few that are in mini-reviews rather than full reviews and those I’m still trying to decide how interested I am in converting them to full reviews and then shooting video content for them. That, again, is pretty far back on the list, if at all. The priority order of sauces that appeared on the show, as it stands now, is as follows:

1) Sauces I’m greatly interested in, that I have not done a written full review on, that I can get locally, either via one of the Burn Your Tongue locations or Pirate O’s or possibly Grove or grocery stores.
2) Sauces I’m greatly interested in, that I have not done a written full review on, that I can get reasonably easily online.
3) Sauces I’m greatly interest in, that I have not done a written full review on, that I can only get via The Heatonist.
4) Sauces I’m less interested in, that I have not done a written full review on, that I can get locally, either via one of the Burn Your Tongue locations or Pirate O’s or possibly Grove or grocery stores.
5) Sauces I’m less interested in, that I have not done a written full review on, that I can get reasonably easily online.
6) Sauces I’m less interested in, that I have not done a written full review on, that I can only get via The Heatonist.
7) Sauces I have done a written full review on, but that I did not particularly enjoy.
8) Sauces I have done a written mini-review on.

As can be seen, The Hot Ones sauces don’t make up even close to the majority of content that hits the blog (or the FOH video series), so it could be 2025 before I get anywhere near shooting videos for some of those very early season sauces. However, the first 4 seasons for the Hot Ones are done entirely, at least in terms of some form of written review, with a couple other seasons very close, which puts me at 25% of all seasons, at least for as many sauces as were in consideration (see list at right for more information on that) for me to do. I have a number of those at hand to continue on and am hopeful I can get to the halfway point in 2022, though we, as they say, will see.

In terms of raw numbers, as of right now,  across 16 seasons, there are a total of 91 sauces out of 160 (10 per season) that are both available and that I would consider doing (meaning they do not have an onion component). Deleting duplicates gives a revised total of 60 individual sauces. Of that pool of 60, I have done written mini-reviews on 8. Of the 52 remaining, I have done written full reviews on 16. Of that pool, 3 are written reviews only. This leaves another 36 sauces to fully realize the completion, of at least written reviews, through 16 seasons. There are no seasons that I would consider doing all the sauces in entirety, but there are several seasons with 6 sauces and 7 sauces. The season with the highest number of sauces is Season 2, with 8. The season with the lowest number is Season 6, with 3 sauces. It is well worth noting that I also created another FOH Playlist, this one just for The Hot Ones sauces, if you want to follow along specific to that.

We will get into the SOTY discussion more, but first, as we usually do, some numbers...some of these numbers I failed to collect before the end of the year, thanks to that computer issue also holding my spreadsheet, so I'm just going to go with what is current as of 01/07/22, when I'm finally updating this.

As usual, all written reviews for sauces can be clicked to from the Table Of Contents page (link on right):

Total posts (including this post): 315
Total views (as of this writing): ~29,895
Total sauces full reviewed: 266
Average rating, all full review sauces: 4.47
Total mini-sauce reviews: 36
Total sauces reviewed, combined: 302
Total full review sauces with FOH video content: 127
Total unopened sauces waiting on shelf for review: 18
Total open sauces waiting for blog review: 5
Total open sauces waiting for video support: 4
Total open bottles in fridge: 14
Highest viewed review: 1,590 - Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce
Highest viewed article, any type: 1,590 - Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce

Current standby sauces are:

*Emeritus Everyday/Louisiana-style sauce: Trappey's Red Devil
*Emeritus Asian-style sauce: Huy Fong Chili-Garlic Sauce
*Everyday sauce (and current overall favorite): Blair’s Pure Death Sauce
*Grilling sauce: CaJohn's Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero (BICH)
*Mustard-style sauce: Inner Beauty
*Pizza sauce (used instead of actual pizza sauce): Boar’s Head Jalapeno Pepper Sauce
*Mexican-style sauce: Blend of Irazu Fire-Roasted Habanero + Pallotta Hot Fire Habanero
*Louisiana-style sauce: Irazu Cayenne
*Sweet-hot sauce: CaJohn's Happy Beaver

 *= Not looking for a replacement

Ok, as promised, after all of the usual business out of the way, it’s time for that SOTY discussion. I got a couple of contenders right away in the year, with dual entries from Big Red’s, a hot sauce company from down in Arizona that I’m really rooting for (go check out their newly revamped website).  Those were the God’s Wrath and 3 Kings, and of the two, I was leaning a lot more towards God’s Wrath, but the year was far from over.

A lot of the buzz I’d heard about was the Gindo’s line and I finally got to it this year with the Honey Habanero, which immediately vaulted into competition and supplanted the God’s Wrath as leading contender. It was also one of the fastest I’ve finished any sauce and it was an 8 oz. bottle as well. Fast forward a bit and I got to the Gindo’s Original, which was frankly jaw-dropping delicious. I liked it so well I burned through the bottle I had and immediately got another so I could get it into one of my Wing Things (and also try it as a pizza sauce). Well, I wound up splitting with my soon-to-be-ex wife, who made the dough from scratch for those pizzas, so I did the next best thing and got some croissant dough and made mini-pizzas with it. Delicious, but I still like Boar’s Head Jalapeno for that specific application better.

Anyway, I wound up whipping through the 2nd bottle in no time also, which makes it 16 oz, three times the usual 5 oz. bottles of “regular” sauces, and something I’ve never done before for any SOTY candidate.  This also made it back to back years of having a single manufacturer with two entries into the SOTY competition and the first time it had ever seen two entries by two different manufacturers. Also, this was a fairly heavy Habanero-heavy year, though the Ghost showed up a couple times as well.

The Gindo’s Original was looking really really strong to take the crown, but right before all the shit hit the proverbial fan in September/October (see Q3 2021 update for more on that), along comes Silk City and their Badass Jew sauce, which is phenomenal. That sauce I enjoyed greatly, particularly in breakfast burritos (probably the equal of the Gindo’s Original, which is also great there), but when I put them head to head, I definitely wanted to eat the Gindo’s Original more (and, in fact, was sorely tempted to not pick up a 3rd bottle  - I didn’t because my backlog is kind of intense again). Preference is a huge part of things, but I couldn’t look past the nearly overwhelming compelling urge to get more of  the Gindo’s Original. However, it still wasn’t clear sailing. Enter John Hard of CaJohn’s, a company seemingly perpetually in contention, in late October with an entry I’d had on the back burner for a while, Reaper Sling Blade, which marks, unless I’m not recalling correctly, the first time any Reaper sauce has ever been in contention for SOTY. It is a fantastic sauce, but it wasn’t necessarily the first thing I’d reach for when I opened the fridge door, which was definitely the case with the Gindo’s.

So, deservedly, after wresting the top spot away from an entry from its own company, the Gindo’s Original held off two very, very substantial challengers, by a hair in both cases, to take this year’s Sauce Of The Year.  

Previous TSAAF Sauce Of The Year winners (links to reviews in Table Of Contents page):

2012: CaJohn’s Happy Beaver
2013: Blair’s Pure Death
2014: Born To Hula’s Ghost Of Ancho
2015: Voodoo Chile’s Voo Dew Honey Doo
2016: Pirate O’s Surface Of The Sun Hot Sauce
2017: Z’s Shield Maiden Hot Sauce
2018: Taco Jesus Cayenne Pepper Sauce
2019: Torchbearer Ultimate Annihilation
2020: Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper

If you want to read more from me, check out my wine about blog, the Happy Sippin’ Companion (HSC). It has been put on inactive status as of 2019, with no plans to resurrect it, but still remains up for viewing (link also on right).

I also slug away on Yelp, which you can click to from my widget. I’m, as might be expected, still off the pace for 2021, though I do not realistically expect it to change anytime soon. My distribution of ratings and further metrics are available on my Yelp profile page.

As always, I appreciate you dropping by. If there’s any spicy products or sauces you’d like to see me get to or any video ideas you may have, please drop me a line in the comment section of any of the reviews or support videos.

Uncle Keith's Code Red Hot Sauce Review

Uncle Keith's Code Red Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ozCQIPK_-o

The story behind this one goes something like me looking at the breakdown of reviews last year and noting that I was missing a number of letters, with "U" being among them. I could not get Google to do the kind of search I wanted in order to find a hot sauce company that started with "U" to complete the collection, but one day, stumbling about on Amazon, it finally occurred to me, after looking for something else entirely, that I had really taken an incredibly stupid tactic for that letter. One of the more common words to start with that is "uncle" and once I searched hot sauce companies that were "Uncle Somethingor other," I started to find a lot of entries. This company looked to be the best proposition there and, further refined, this sauce from the available lines. 

On the surface, it is a relatively simple sauce, featuring a couple of superhots, Habaneros, vinegar, salt, with the far less common ingredient of molasses, which I found intriguing. It didn't seem like there was a lot to go wrong there, even with me having less and less interest in Scorpions and still enmeshed in what is becoming a more pronounced battle to come to terms with the Carolina Reapers. Still, even if it was dreadfully awful, such as the lone entry for the letter "X" (see TOC), it would at least check off that box. 

What I found here was a slightly sweet, though with a substantial depth of flavor there, combined more or less with the floral Scorpion notes. At times, it reminded me a bit of the Tonguespank entry (TOC, again), which, even though it came up once I was well into my "tired of Scorpions" phase, still was a contender for SOTY. Scorpions can be good in sauces, but it is a very narrow gap for them to shoot into. With this one having that kind of pronounced flavor profile, it does cut down on the flexibility rather considerably. It essentially needs to have a food with a fairly neutral, yet strong, flavor. So, chicken strips are fine, but roast chicken chunks not so much. Pizza and the breakfast burritos I make also pretty solid, but mac and cheese makes me wish I had used something else.

The consistency is sort of runny, not quite watery, but it flows very fast, yet the molasses also makes it simultaneously sticky. It comes with a restrictor cap built into the lid, which is fine, as this sauce definitely needs it. Lots of good little particles floating around, which I dig, some of which are probably things like the Reapers and Scorpions, despite the presence of which, this is a relatively tame sauce for chileheads. I think it's probably on the border of what non-chileheads would find tolerable and likely over that line entirely.

Bottom line: If you like the flavor of Scorpions much more than I do, this will be more enjoyable, but it is a very unique and intriguing sauce, which can work quite nicely within that fairly narrow flavor window.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Adoboloco Hamajang Hot Sauce Review

Adoboloco Hamajang Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce appears in Season 5 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxCZp2YEMPE

This is another that's been on the backburner for a bit and shares a similar profile with the Kolohe Kid (reviewed elsewhere here), including down to identical ingredient panels. In the copy, however, there is the addition of Habaneros in the mix here, which makes for a kind of goofy way of listing out ingredients. Unlike the Kolohe Kid, this sauce is much thicker and much hotter, though the taste profile is similar, thanks in no small part to shared Ghost and apple cider vinegar ingredients. Here, however, the vinegar is nowhere near as assertive.

This one additionally has a nice richness with Ghosts being evidently smoked. The highlight is definitely on the Ghosts, as this is quite a bit hotter than the Kolohe Kid as well. There is some good, solid punch to this sauce, though nothing too challenging for chileheads. With the elements of this sauce being somewhat minimal, it also cuts down somewhat on the applications. It's fine on things like chicken strips, pizza and so on, but depending on the flavor notes of the food, this one somewhat easily loses it's additional components and the bitter notes of the superhot are the ones that read. It definitely does much better with either stronger-flavored or less complicated foods. 

There is also the matter of the color, which is a sort of brownish reminscent of beef gravy (though definitely not at all like that flavor profile). This isn't a vibrant hue, so the wow factor of putting it on food and making things more appealing and appetizing is largely absent. I wouldn't say it moves to the opposite direction, like the electric green of the El Yucateco and actually makes things visually less appealing or off-putting, but the color I find somewhat curious. There's not really a good explanation on the label of which varieties of the various peppers they're using, so the entire thing is somewhat shrouded in opacity. There is also the mystery of why a sauce of this consistency comes with a restrictor cap, but I presume its because the manufacturers are buying into their own hype and pretending this is dangerously hot.

Bottom line: If you like your Ghost peppers smoked, this is a pretty straightforward sauce that shows off that pepper variation well. It's a bit one-note for me, but definitely one I like better than the Kolohe Kid. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 5

Pepper Palace Black Rose Hot Sauce Review

Pepper Palace Black Rose Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2CNmvwZPRE

It took over a year, but I finally got around to the last of the Pepper Palace buy of 2020, the 6th sauce of 6. The rest are reviewed elsewhere in this blog, and a pattern has definitely emerged, at least in terms of flavor. I've mentioned it in the other reviews, but there is an aspect of certain sauces, where they have a coarseness, a lack of refinement, what I call a cheapness of flavor. All of the entries from Pepper Palace had them, though the effect of that varied from one sauce to another. Of those 6, I'd put this one probably 2nd, but that's not really saying much. 2 of them were nearly entirely inedible and did not make it to the videos. Of the other 3 that did, I only finished the bottle of one, which was the unfortunately named Uff-Da (as noted, reviewed elsewhere here). I briefly considered that as one I might consider buying it again, but testing it next to better-flavored sauces disabused me of that notion. 

For this one, it seems meant more as an everyday sauce. Jalapeno, Habanero and Cayenne are all present, though this reads more on the side of Cayenne than the others. There is a plethora of other stuff as well, including garlic, ginger, and sugar, which don't really assert themselves, but the latter of which lends there sort of an oddness to the flavor. A sweetener is not of objection; I love me a good, solid sweet-hot, but whatever sugar they chose isn't working as well here as honey probably would have, especially given the presence of Habanero. This leads to one of the issues with this sauce in that oversaucing will lead to an overpowering of whatever you're putting it on and very diminished returns. As an everyday style, though, if used judiciously, anywhere that might take a bit of sweetness works reasonably well with this.

Heat-wise, it's very moderate, as in little there at all, which was probably a given, considering that nothing too scorching is here and the ones that are seem meant more as flavoring agents than for reasons of picante. 

Bottom line: This is not only the last of the sauces I got from Pepper Palace, but probably the last I will ever get from them. As I've said before, life is too short for bad sauces.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 4

The General's Dead Red Hot Sauce Review

The General's Dead Red Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8T4ADHEBgw

This is one that I've seen advertised quite a bit online. The company is definitely doing a solid job getting the word out and have both a message (veteran-owned, militaryish-themed) and a tag (86% pepper content in all sauces) to differentiate themselves. All to the good there, although the usage of 86, which is presumably meant to refer to the slag "86-ing" of something, i.e. erasure, strikes me a lot as advertising more than any other facet. This extends down to the packaging (bottles are hand grenade-shaped, complete with a molded-in lever (non-movable, for appearance only) around the cap, and a dog tag on a chain fitted through the pin hole of said lever, which also reminds you of the 86% thing. Mine was part of a package called "Heatseeker," which is missile nomenclature, but not really representative of any attendant heat of the sauce, at least not for this one. I admit, though, given how much I love Cayenne peppers, I was pretty excited for this sauce, for what promised to be a sort of different, perhaps purer, take on the pepper, but I'd be lying if I said it lived up to that hope.

This is a pretty straightforward Cayenne sauce, with "Dead Red" referring probably to the coloration of the sauce rather than a deceased Communist or Republican. There is the addition of garlic, which moves this a bit away from the idea of a Louisiana-style sauce and more towards a Cajun.  This is also notably thicker than any Louisiana-style sauce and nearly every Cajun style I've had as well and it tends to hang out where it is poured, rather than run everywhere. The flavor, as noted, is definitely dissimilar to that of other sauces in either of the two categories I've mentioned, but it is not as far adrift as the company implies. The only major taste component that is drastically different is a chemically off-note to the flavor of this sauce, which I find rather distracting and annoying. I'm not entirely sure I'll be finishing this due to that. Heat-wise, they rate it 3 stars of 5, which is frankly outright absurd. There is nowhere near that kind of picante level to be found here. 

Bottom line: A lot of advertising and packaging going on here, to fit into the theme of the brand. The sauce itself is definitely unlike other Cayenne sauces and while it didn't really hit for me, fans of that pepper might want to check this one out.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Crazy Jerry's Brain Damage Hot Sauce Review

Crazy Jerry's Mind-Blowin' Brain Damage Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apQZMzvWglI

This is another that's been around for a while, but I haven't been particularly interested in it, given the extract component. I believe I needed another sauce or two for free shipping and threw this one in during a buy of some novelty sauces of around a year ago (my backlog can be...intense) and then promptly forgot about it for a while. I've lately been trying to make a more pointed effort to get caught up again and ran across it while looking for a fruit-based sweet-hot, of which I can never seem to have enough of. When I saw mandarin oranges as the first ingredient, I thought it was probably worth a shot and cracked it open.

The flavor was interesting, reminding me a bit of something smoky, with a bit of depth to the flavor..before the extract kicked in. For all that, I was initially going to note that I had mentioned in my recent review of the Blair's Mega Death (elsewhere in this blog) that using an extract automatically meant the sauce was ruined (by the extract) and the very next extract sauce (this one) that I had proved me wrong, but my initial impressions proved to be short-lived, once I was able to make enough room in the bottle to better agitate the sauce.

 The flavor is quite unique, sort of if you liquified say a holiday fruitcake that had cloves as one of its ingredients, then added an element of Chipotle. It's original to itself, for sure, but I'm not entirely certain it's something I'd constantly want to have, largely because I'm not really a big fan of cloves, either. Once the extract flavor comes screaming in, though, I'm definitely sure I don't. Flavor-wise, it does mesh with the neutral chicken strips, but I didn't find a lot of other applications where I was happy with it. At times, it was ok, but I usually would rather have had something else. Heat-wise, this is one of the tamer extract sauces, though you can get a fairly solid build (and lengthy tail), if you eat enough of it.

Bottom line: If you're after a sauce quite unlike anything else AND like cloves (a lot) AND don't mind extract, this is probably a good pick-up, but I ultimately found it more novelty (it usually comes with a pink plastic brain-shaped cover for the cap, though my bottle didn't have one) than anything else.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 3

Fresco Ghost Berry Hot Sauce Review

Fresco Sauce Ghost Berry Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

Update: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyS62nOB2-M

So, I have a little Thanksgiving-time tradition. I know we all have our various takes on this, from changing the type of pie to different sides served with turkey, to different ways of preparing the central bird, different stuffings, different methods of cooking said stuffings, etc. For me, mine is more chilehead-oriented and it came around shortly after I started this blog, with the Grapes Of Wrath sauce from High River (reviewed elsewhere here), which I was having a hard time figuring out where to use it. But, somewhere in there, I stumbled on using it for turkey and voila! The sauce worked well there and it got me on the train of thinking in terms of hot sauces for that special meal. 

Over the years, I kicked around the idea of different fruit-based sauces, ranging from tropic fruit-Habanero to more general sweet hots, but I always kept half an eye out for a berry-oriented sweet fruit-based sauce, as I've always loved the combination of cranberry with my turkey and anything that can keep in that lane is exactly what I want. So, for quite some time, that has been my guiding light around this time.

Enter this, which is one of the two berry sauces I happened to have at hand (the other one is coming, but probably won't appear until 2022 sometime). Of all the berry types I rarely see blackberry and seldom cranberry, but this is the first sauce that featured both...and black pepper to boot. It was set up to be very intriguing and came with the featured pepper my beloved Ghost, which is probably in my top 5 easily, of favorite peppers. Shaping up to be very nice indeed, but for all that, I was shocked when I had it on some nice air-fried chicken strips.  I definitely didn't expect the sauce I had, but it was a happy surprise. It's quite a lot lighter on the berry side of things than I anticipated, and I was anticipating something much sweeter, truth be told, but the combination of flavors works well together into a more or less cohesive whole. This is another stellar sauce from Fresco, who is a quite impressive maker. 

Heat-wise, this is moderate, again surprisingly given how high Ghosts feature in the ingredient list. There are also Habaneros in the mix and even a bit of cumin, which somehow manages to not only read through, but to do so in a less offensive manner than normally. I didn't expect the combination of flavors to work together as well as it does and the sauce is indeed like nothing else I've had. Obviously, I was well happy with it on turkey as well as chicken, but I'd be inclined to give it a go on a burger as well. There is a slight propensity for this sauce to read as too salty, depending on what it's going on, so word to the wise there. Still, just another fabulous entry from the maker who produces my current favorite sauce from The Hot Ones show, their Chipotle-Habanero, also reviewed elsewhere here. While this one is not quite SOTY material, it was a very welcome addition to my refrigerator door.

Bottom line: Quite flavorful, unique, and fascinating sauce that would do well, particularly for those who are fans of any of the following: black pepper, berries, fruit-based sauces.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Pex Peppers Hornet Bomb Hot Sauce Review

Pex Peppers Hornet Bomb Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzBe1EbA0GA

This should be an easy one for me, a total win, absolute ringer. Habanero and honey together is one of the all-time great combinations in hot sauce and is a large part of what makes Z's Shield Maiden (reviewed elsewhere here) one of my SOTYs. There are a few flavor notes that when combined make me an instant fan and the Habanero and honey combination are definitely one of them...when done right.

This should have been in contention for Sauce Of The Year and right now, truth be told, it's in imminent danger of being binned once the nearest quarterly (Q4 -2021) Wing Thing is filmed for the FOH video series. In short, the sauce is more or less the equivalent of the Takis rolled chips flavoring system I dislike so much, in that it is overly astringent and somewhat lime-y, to an unfortunate extent. I can't tell if this is a batch problem (probably) or the design, but starting with a Habanero mash (fine), then adding more vinegar (hmmm), then the honey, then the lime, has rendered this to be a quite sour, with citrus notes, concoction, which is not really palatable...unless that's your thing. It is definitely not mine. 

There are a number of pepper particles in there, which is great, but I could not detect honey at all, not even a hint of sweetness. I almost debated adding honey myself to try to tamp it down, but that seems more like a waste of good honey than anything else (still not convinced on the lime). This is a very loose sauce, to the point where a restrictor cap wouldn't totally be out of line, despite it not being the type of sauce where that would usually be called for. That, in combination with the flavoring, creates a difficulty quite unlike the aforementioned Shield Maiden, where I could use it with near-ubiquitousness, in that I have not been able to find a solid application for this. It might be nice in a Bloody Mary mix or something, if I drank those, but it was a near-complete failure, thanks to that unpleasant taste nature I mentioned, on everything I tried it on, including Mexican pork dishes, which should have been a slam dunk. Heat here is very moderate and I strongly suspect, given the track record of Pex, that for this batch, the Habanero mash was over-diluted prior to bottling. 

Bottom line: Hugely (surprisingly) disappointing entry from a usually reliable maker. If you like the vinegar and lime combination better than I do, may be worth a go.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 1

Blair's Mega Death Hot Sauce Review

Blair's Mega Death Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce appears on Seasons 2 - 4 of The Hot Ones. 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjKlS_uTN40

I had this one for a while, ordered shortly after I started doing the FOH videos, when I struck on the idea of chasing down the sauces on The Hot Ones show, which was shortly after discovering that the show existed. I took it out of the box once I got it and watched as the various multi-colored sections of the sauce stared back at me, reminding me of shortly after I first started doing this blog...and put this sauce on the backburner indefinitely. I recall vividly the event that triggered this abrupt halt to a few of the Blair's line that I planned on getting to, referenced somewhat in the Zakk Wylde Stronger Than Death Berzerker sauce (reviewed elsewhere here) review, an event that caused me to re-rate that sauce and swear off of extract sauces indefinitely. I said forever there, but we all know how "forever" and "never" tend to go...

Fast forward to now and my now apparently annual tradition of trying to set myself internally on fire in December. This year was meant to be the year of the Reaper, which does a nice job of doing that far better than extracts tended to do, and often with considerably more agonizing side effects, but...the flavor is better. My motivation is to get more of the sauces from The Hot Ones show done and this one is not only my first sauce in the 10 spot on the show (except for Season 4, where it was in the 9 spot), it also covers three seasons, which means that I have now completed, at least in written reviews, the first 4 seasons. The show, indeed, is my sole motivator with this sauce, as the aforementioned Wylde sauce really made me question how worthwhile it was to fight a sauce for the sake of merely using it up.

I cut off the black label and extracted my prize, another skull keychain ring (I have many of these), then stared at this miasmic concoction of evil. I shook it, trying to break it inside the walls of its glass prison, but when I opened the cap to take a whiff, it was clear the genie in this bottle was too malevolent for something like mere sloshing to do the trick. I probably should not have shaken it, just instead, let the pockets stay where they were, as the combination of Cayenne and Habanero here is beautiful...for maybe half a second before the cold metallic flavor of the extract kicks in at the same time that it strikes with vicious bite. 

I admit I was somewhat frightened of this sauce for some time, even though I've long been able to handle extracts. I intensely dislike them from a flavor perspective, and here the nice flavor notes that Mr. Lazar has generated are immediately dashed to ruins by the extract. That is by far my biggest problem with this sauce, and which redeemed my earlier impulse to avoid extract sauces. The metallicy nature of this is highly unpleasant and largely unpalatable. It's hot, sure, and instantly, but it's an old hot, though one definitely restricted just to chileheads. The new hots are equally, if not more, both punchy and blazing, and with generally better flavor, to boot. Like nearly every extract sauce I've tried, this one generally ruins everything it touches and it becomes an exercise in testing one's gag reflex to try to ferret out the quite good flavor notes of the aforementioned peppers amid the horrid, though slightly preferable to Beyond Insanity (reviewed elsewhere here) and noxious dominating flavor of the extract.

Bottom line: This is a stunt sauce, something that Blair Lazar seems well aware of, given the label copy. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 6
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 2

Bend Hot Sauce Review

Bend Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ChfSCZ7eSk

This was actually a sauce I noticed on Roger's Facebook feed, probably before whatever changes they made that necessitate me having to go through a number of shenanigans to access it. It seems like what might be a very interesting find, a sort of excellent-tasting "diamond in the rough" everyday sauce, so I had it on my radar for a while. I didn't look closely into it, but it always piques my curiosity when I see a company producing just one main product, as it leads me to believe it must be a really good one. I was unsure if it was (or was intended as) an actual hot sauce, however, and it took me some digging around on the website to sort that out, as the label is not really great at conveying that directly.

With Chipotle, a flavor I don't really seek out (or avoid), given it's typically much lower ranging heat, it can easily and quickly be overpowering. I like smoke in the context of flavors generally, i.e., that of foodie, and I've come to believe the Chipotle is one of the hardest flavors to use and get right. It can be done, Tabasco Chipotle, for instance, or a few barbeque sauces I've made and fewer still I've bought, but I don't find that to be normally the case. Now, this sauce is predicted on that particular ingredient, so I got a bit leery once I had bottle in hand, given that history.

I will start by noting the heavy plastic squeeze bottle it comes in. This is somewhat reminiscent of the honey "cylinder" bottles that one comes across, which does not have a lot of give for squeezing. I find this choice to honestly be a bit on the questionable side and wish they would choose a softer plastic, more akin to either Yellowbird or even the ketchup/mustard bottles we see dotting picnic tables. What is inside is honestly less sauce and more paste, but it is kind of in the weird area where it is not a thick heavy paste that needs to be spooned, but more like an aforementioned mustard, perhaps a dijon, along those lines. 

Flavor-wise, they sort of neatly skirt the smoke-flavor issue by adding sweeteners (here agave works well) and some slight astringency from the vinegar. There are a few other flavors in there, but this reads more like a sweeter, less tongue-dense version of a Chipotle puree. I'm pretty good with that, but that one-note aspect does limit my interest in the sauce to a grilling/barbeque application. Looking through the recipes on the website, it appears that is the most common application and I imagine the nice bit of sugar to allow some solid carmelization would be magical, perhaps alone, but definitely with a quality barbeque sauce. There is, as to be expected, precious little heat here.

Bottom line: Think of a sweet, smoky, slightly vinegary Chipotle puree that needs to be squeezed out and you've about got it.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3

Torchbearer Headless Horseradish Hot Sauce Review

Torchbearer Headless Horseradish

Note: This sauce appears on Season 10 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbVcR92Bp5Y

Back to back sauces from The Hot Ones, which is the first time that's happened on this blog, if memory serves...

In many ways, this sauce reminds me a lot of the Garlic Reaper (reviewed here elsewhere). There are a number of shared components from the garlic, the canola oil, used here as an emulsifier so they can continue their all-natural sauce status, even down to the usage of mustard. Here, it is a dijon mustard, there a mustard powder. The more obvious difference is the usage of Ghost peppers here vs. the Reaper and the difference is apparent immediately, with a loss of the very bitter aspect of the Garlic Reaper, which allows the mustard and garlic to shine through much better. It is notably less hot as well, of course.

I admittedly had very little interest in this, as I am not really a fan of horseradish and am happy to note that once I got into the bottle, despite horseradish being the first ingredient, I don't get a lot of horseradish flavor in this sauce, for which I am eminently grateful, though part of me is curious how that would go, if it had. Like the Garlic Reaper, this one took me quite some time to get a handle on as well. With the ability of more flavors to shine through, this one works better with chicken. It is frankly a much better, more well-rounded sauce, as far as I'm concerned. A lot of restaurants serve horseradish with prime rib, so I thought steak would be a good direction for this, but I found the results a touch underwhelming. I will say I think it would be marvelous on a cheesesteak sandwich and am sorely tempted, as I write this, to make that the video once I get to filming that. I think you could also do very nicely trying this in a nice creamy Alfredo sauce, which is another idea I'm liking a lot. However, like many of the various Torchbearer entries I've tried, it doesn't seem to have a natural food entry point.

I hesitate to just leave this as Garlic Reaper-Lite or a better version of that sauce, and I don't know which came first, so I may have the order reversed, but this seems like nothing so much as another version of that sauce, or vice versa. These don't strike me as having an identity independent of each other, aside from me liking the Headless Horseradish considerably better. Heat-wise, it is solid, given the presence of the Ghost fairly high in the list, but not overwhelming and, more importantly, it adds rather nicely to, rather than detracts from, both the flavors of the other ingredients and the food.

Bottom line: If you've tried the Garlic Reaper and thought they might be onto something good here, but that sauce wasn't it, this is well worth a go. Very solid garlic sauce, with several grace notes. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Angry Goat Hippy Dippy Green Hot Sauce Review

Angry Goat Pepper Company Hippy Dippy Green Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce appeared on Season 8 of The Hot Ones.

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnhzcW7gik4

If you read through these many blog archive posts (and you should definitely do that), you will find precious few actual green hot sauces. This is mostly as I don't really like green sauces particularly. Sure, I'll order up a Del Taco bean burrito with green sauce here and there or get a carnitas chimi smothered in a nice tomatillo sauce once in a while to change things up a tish, but overall, while I like that flavor when I have it, it's more of a "scratch that itch" and I'm satisfied for a while kind of deal. Also, if I'm being honest here, I don't find green sauces to be a super visually appealing or appetizing color.

This sauce is essentially what I would consider a more or less sweet tomatillo sauce. I see a number of people refer to this style as salsa verde, which is also fine, but I've seen salsa verdes not have tomatillos, which, to me, is the rather obvious differentiator. This one very obviously has tomatillos, no mistaking that mouth feel, so it fits into that category for me. I don't believe I've done another tomatillo sauce on this blog, again, partially because I am not partial to them, but also because they tend not to be very hot and don't quite make it all the way to "hot sauce" for me. 

Part of this, I suspect, is that type of sauce nearly always gets too astringent for me. This is probably due to the tomatillos being fairly close in profile to unripe tomatoes, which I'm similarly not fond of. What this sauce does so brilliantly is to add some very nice sweetening elements, that of kiwi, a fruit both unexpected, but also very consistent in keeping with the coloration and flavor tones of the sauce. Angry Goat was an impressive sauce company for me, as I've felt their other offerings (reviewed elsewhere here) held a lot of potential. With this sauce and the incredible blending, I find them now to be very impressive.

The other reason I think of this more as a tomatillo sauce is all of the normal ingredients for that type of sauce, save green chiles, which here are replaced by both fire-roasted Jalapenos and Serranos, are present here. With those latter two peppers, heat is going to be somewhat on the low side, and indeed, this is not even remotely a blazing sauce. There is a slight spark to it, probably somewhere between a 1 - 2 for me, but the heat is not the point. The beauty here is with that sweetness they added, along with the twin oil agents, this is a much smoother, and far less astringent, sauce. I don't think, however, they were trying necessarily to make an actual tomatillo sauce, per se, but adding that ingredient automatically leans hard to that direction. If there is a slight knock here, the oil is a touch overdone. One of the things I hate about avocados is being left feeling like my mouth is coated in oil and there is some of that aspect here, though to a thankfully lesser extent.

The other reason why I don't use a lot of green sauces in general, and tomatillo fewer still, is that they really only go well with one type of food and that is that which spawned it, Mexican or derivatives thereof (Southwestern, et. al.). This is fine as a dipping sauce or splashing in pizza for a change of pace, but it really shines with things like carnitas and al pastor. It is dazzling on fish tacos as well, but there is definitely a continuity of flavor where it performs best and, good as it is there, I honestly do not eat a lot of that type of food generally. When I do, though, I will happily bust this one out, if it is still around, which is a big if. It is one of those sauces flavorful enough that when I use it, I can use quite a bit of it and not have to worry about overpowering, as the meshing is, as they say, some kind of wonderful.

Bottom line: An excellent entry from a very interesting sauce company. Think of this mainly as a brilliant and outstanding tomatillo sauce and use where you would that for best results.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Silk City Killer Hot Hot Sauce Review

Silk City Killer Hot Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuUvGR3_U-o

It seems like I've been doing a lot of "everyday" sauces, that category of very distinct and separate sauces that all share the same commonality of being flexible enough to use with near-ubiquitousness, hence the use everyday somewhere part of it. This is not intentional, assuredly, and I never quite know what kind of trend a year will take, other than this year, by design, of being more Reaper-heavy than in years past. This one calls back to mind the fairly short-lived trend of the carrot-Habanero sauce, which seemed on the surface to be a very nice blending of things, but was not able to sustain any kind of long-term durability, as a food trend goes. 

What this is, in essence, is a spiked carrot-Habanero sauce, stepped on with the combination of Fatalii and Ghost peppers. My love of the Ghost has been fairly well pronounced throughout this blog and I stop just short of saying it should always be used, but the addition of the Fatalii with the Ghost lends heat, naturally, but also a touch of bitterness. There is also honey and fresh garlic in the mix as well, but both are somewhat lost, honey being a fairly subtle flavor for this, though there are little grace notes of sweetness here and there. Garlic can be pungent, but here it only reads but slightly. There is also roasted red peppers, which I adore entirely, but that flavor, another subtle one, also gets drowned out by the main ingredients. This is rounded out by apple cider (lost) and by cider vinegar, the latter of which adds a bit of pungency to things.

Like everything else from Silk City now, this comes in a handy flask, which I love a lot. Coming off of the Badass Jew sauce (reviewed elsewhere here), I was very predisposed to like this sauce, but it called to mind one of the bigger problems with the carrot-Habanero sauce, namely where to use it. It's fine on fish and chicken fingers and such, but I also inevitably wind up wishing I had something else. I did not particularly care for it on breakfast burritos, which is lately my go-to staple use for everyday-type sauces. Carrots just don't wind up being used as part of dishes a great deal, mostly standing on their own as a side dish, so while using them in a sauce is fine, I don't think it speaks to our overall food vocabulary in the same way or sense that something like tomatoes or, say, roasted red peppers do. This one also strays a bit from those old sauces of yore by stepping on it considerably with the superhots, the presence of which I find a bit puzzling, as the combination seems superfluous. Habanero and Ghost, great combination, but Fatalii...I'm still honestly a bit undecided on that one. 

I should speak briefly to the heat, while I'm on the subject. The label both calls the sauce "very, very hot, but not stupid hot," with various words in that phrase capitalized. I don't know what the specific SHU ratings of those descriptions are, but will say that while this is spikier than the more common version of carrot-Habanero tended to be (haven't really seen any for quite some time and pretty sure that short-lived trend is dead, dead), it is not what I would call particularly hot, especially for chileheads. Non-chileheads will certainly notice both the bitterness and a stronger bite than normal, however.

Bottom line: While I've been fond of Silk City hot sauces (though I hate their website), this one is sort of a miss for me, but YMMV if you happen to enjoy carrot-Habanero sauce stylings and just wish they had been hotter. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 5

CaJohn's Reaper Sling Blade Hot Sauce Review

CaJohn's Reaper Sling Blade Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyQzPa5BJ2o

If there is such a thing in the hot sauce industry as a sure thing, it is probably John Hard and his CaJohn's line of sauces. Not to say his track record has been perfect, but if you look through the full list in the Table Of Contents, his sauces are better represented than any other manufacturer, over double the nearest competitor and more than the next two combined. Quite a number of his sauces have been SOTY contenders, with his Happy Beaver (review here elsewhere) winning the first ever of that award. I remember this as being one of the first sauces I saw once the Carolina Reaper really came onto the scene, supplanting the Scorpion, which had itself supplanted the Ghost, which had supplanted the Habanero, which was top of the heap for quite some time prior. Naturally, I was interested, but I was still working my way through various Ghost-based and Scorpion-based concoctions and put it in back of mind. Most of the bottles I saw listed onions, but they were so far down the list, I expected it was probably either dried or powder, but that did put it lower in my interest.

Once I got to the Reaper exploration project of this year (and part of last year), I picked up a bottle and then forgot about it for months. So there it sat, patiently waiting and collecting dust (not a lot, though, rotation is much faster these days) until I moved it into my on-deck queue...and it sat for a few more months. Part of that is that I really want to give other sauce companies a chance. Clearly, CaJohn's is of such caliber, as noted above, that it could literally be in contention every year and I am trying to make an concerted effort to get to the widest array of sauces, peppers, and manufacturers I can.

Anyway, I busted this baby open and was immediately beyond thrilled with the sauce. Here was something that worked as wonderfully on breakfast burritos as it did on pizza and on a very nice shaved pork medley that I've been playing around with, since grill season is over for this year. This very nicely sidesteps the blazing heat of the Reapers by pairing it with the Ghosts, then tempering down the bitterness (which is muted, but still present) by adding in some nice, rich tomato paste, which also lends it an incredible degree of flexibility. I would have preferred just a touch more sweetness to things, but what is here is truly phenomenal, again. I wouldn't say that it's a perfect introduction to Reapers as much as this sauce really exemplifies what that pepper is capable of being. 

Bottom line: John Hard has done it again, to no real surprise. As Nuff on the YouTube Main Event Pong channel (check them out also) noted, and I quote, "that...that is a fuckin' great sauce." Indeed. It is also another SOTY candidate for this year.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8

The Hot Ones Eye Of The Scorpion Hot Sauce Review

The Hot Ones Eye Of The Scorpion Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce appears on Season 14 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRjeNrxfm9k

This, along with a few other Hot Ones sauces, were gifts I received for my birthday and this marks both the first actual Hot Ones sauce I've had, as well as the sauce that now puts me as having done at least one review in every season of the show. Honestly, these are sauces that are both somewhat expensive, comparatively, and also feature a pepper I'm not overly fond of, the Scorpion pepper, so these would have been very definitely more back burner, if left to my own devices to receive. Still, I didn't have a Season 14 entry, so I was glad to have them.

I mentioned the Tabasco Scorpion (reviewed elsewhere here) as a good gateway to the flavor of the actual Scorpion pepper itself and I think that still holds true, as it is tamed down enough to be able to get the gist of the flavor without being overpowered by accompanying heat. This one is like that, though several notches higher. It is borderline more puree than sauce, must be used a lot more judiciously, as it definitely is quite spiky and will start to pack a wallop with continued use. The flavor is overrun fairly quickly by the heat punch. While I am no fan of the very flowery flavor of the Scorpion pepper generally, which shows up in spades here, of course, one of the things I rather dislike about this sauce is the propensity of it to constantly clot the neck of the bottle. This definitely could have done with an emulsifier or possibly more vinegar to thin it out a tish more. The pour of this is chunky and thick as well and one I find a bit on the irritating side to use. 

In Season 14, it was the #9 slotted sauce, so it definitely is meant to be a scorcher, with both the Scorpion peppers and then Scorpion pepper powder as well, just to kind of confirm things. I wouldn't call it breathtaking heat or anything, at least not for chileheads, but this will probably be somewhat punishing for non-chileheads and unless they really like the flowery flavor aspect, might serve to put them off hot sauce entirely. I still haven't really found an application where I'm fond of that Scorpion pepper flavor, but it seems to work reasonably acceptably on chicken strips. It doesn't really lend itself to me wanting to try it in various other settings.

Bottom line: If you're a chilehead AND a fan of the flowery aspects of the Scorpion pepper (or are trying to do your own Hot Ones run), this is a sauce well worth trying. If you are not, those, YMMV.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 6
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 3

2K21 Q3 Update

 2K21 Q3 Update

Note: This is being posted earlier than usual (these typically come at the last day of the quarter), but due to an ongoing family emergency that is very time and attention intensive, I won’t be able to post at the usual time, so I’m coming in a few days ahead. I will say that this situation makes being as far ahead as I usually am on the videos very handy, as I can schedule those and they can proceed uninterrupted.

So, here we are, finally, Post 300 for the blog (300 full review sauces is still some distance away, probably next year). Another diet change, in the midst of a major life change (not related to the diet change or the noted emergency, but preceding the emergency and not yet concluded), and I’m trying to find more opportunities to fit hot sauce into my diet, which has once again been revamped to accommodate some fitness goals I’m working on. I’m below the 20 sauce threshold for my backlog, even though I wound up getting some for my birthday, so I’ll be looking to head up to Rog’s and load up again in the very near future. I have also added a playlist on the FOH series for the Inferno Candy Company products, since I have done so many of them. Additionally, all content filmed in 2020 is finally posted. It will probably be pretty deep into 2022 before I’m caught up with this year, at least on the non-sauce content. I have also gotten within one letter of completing the alphabet of reviewed sauces...just need to find a manufacturer that starts with the letter “U”...

I might count up just how many Carolina Reaper products I did at the end of this year (and I’m seriously thinking of going through everything in my backlog just to get it all done before then), but I can say that I kind of can’t wait until my existing backlog (maybe a third of what I have left sauce-wise) of stuff with that pepper is over. It truly is on another level compared to other peppers and even extract, an aspect which I both find interesting and somewhat annoying. It also tends to hit a lot harder in the receptors in the back of my mouth, which is rather irritating. Flavor-wise, I’d put it above the Scorpions and probably the Fatalii, but definitely below Jolokias and the 7-Pot Primos, the last of which I am happily running across more and more.

I have filmed entirely all of the non-sauce content I had, which puts me into 2022 somewhere. It is so weird seeing a tower of various packaged food staged for review in my office now being entirely absent. I’m still trying to sort out how I want to approach the coming year in terms of posting. Sauces will still be continuing as now, with posting on Sundays and any sauces from Hot Ones (starting to make a solid dent in that list) on Fridays. The quarterly Wing Things will also continue. I’ve done a lot of stuff with the Inferno Candy Company, but do not have anything on deck from them. They are always kicking new stuff out, though, and I have yet to see the Paqui One Chip Challenge for 2021, actually, I have seen signs for it, but have not come across the actual product yet, so it may be a bit later into next year before this problem really comes to the fore.  

It will be, again, another issue, though, as if I go every other week, I probably am closing in on all of next year, however, with products like these particularly, there is also a timeliness issue and I’m not sure how much I want to be posting content that is 6+ months old. I might just keep it the way it is now through the first 2 quarters and then shift after that...depends on how many more products I’m able to come across. Again, though, 2021 is the year of the chile in many respects, so there is a lot more stuff than anticipated, but still not quite enough to keep me comfortable. I am thinking about resurrecting my spicy chicken sandwich battle thing for another round, but really going back and forth on that with the Delta surge. I’m still debating some challenges and/or possibly exploring fresh pods, but those are definitely way down on my list of interest. Of course, I’m always open to suggestions as well.

As to The Hot Ones, the Season 16 lineup is out, which I have updated. Once again, the wisdom of me doing that wretched Da Bomb sauce is vindicated, as I already have an entry in this season, just by doing that singular review and video. As to the rest of it, because I just shot a video for a Yellowbird sauce and referenced Sean Evans heavily in it, namely that he is a big fan, but also no sauce from them had ever appeared on the show, naturally, he has an entry for this season. Go figure. That specific sauce, and a few others, I won’t be partaking in, thanks to onions. Overall, half of the sauces from Season 16 I won’t be doing, and all of them for that reason. Other than that, though, I think the sauces for this upcoming season are definitely intriguing.

One thing I will note is that playing with superhots in 100 degree heat is an interesting experience and makes the internal burn kind of different. With the associated decrease in appetite, it also raises the bar on hot sauces or even spicy foods in general for me to be interested in them, which is something I’ve really only noticed this year and probably both because it’s so stupid hot, but also because I’m doing a lot of non-sauce content as well (and also have my video hood on, which, even though it’s sheer and very loose, somehow seems to increase the sensation considerably). That said (or typed), if I ever do decide to toy around with fresh pods, definitely will be no sooner than possibly winter.

I noticed something interesting in that the Top 5 sauces, in terms of overall views, has shifted somewhat, with Zatarain’s moving down and Schlotzsky’s moving up. The obvious problem with that is to do an FOH video for that, I’d need to acquire another bottle of the sauce, which I would not mind at all, to be honest, buuuuut, there are zero Schlotzsky’s anywhere in the state any longer (the franchise evidently took a pounding during 2020) and the nearest location is 400+ miles away. The sauce is, naturally, only available in-store, buuuut (again), the vicinity of this family emergency actually has one location (and the other is on the way to the vicinity), so I may actually be able to get this done, which would be a bright spot in an otherwise awful mess.

A future hot sauce road trip might also be something I consider doing, like Kendall over at Tasting The Heat (go check him out, he’s great) is kind of doing, bringing in a camera and showing off some different hot sauce places. I note now that the route I more normally take will bring me right to Volcanic Peppers in Nebraska or thereabouts as well as another one called Halogi on the edge of South Dakota, so there might be something to this idea. Road construction and the pandemic are precluding it currently, but perhaps someday... I count myself very fortunate in having nearby perhaps the greatest hot sauce store in Roger Dodger’s Burn Your Tongue Emporium, and of course, both Pirate O’s and Grove Market as solid backstops as well.

Also have added another SOTY candidate, which makes 5 as of now, and a very, very difficult decision will have to be made towards the end of the year, if this holds. It is both a good and somewhat agonizing problem to have, but definitely preferable to wondering for most of the year if there would be a contender at all...

Yellowbird Blue Agave Sriracha Hot Sauce Review

Yellowbird Blue Agave Sriracha Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpO0FU8dqqQ

Ahhh, Yellowbird, those of the squeeze bottles so much admired by Sean Evans of The Hot Ones, a company that is overly fond of onions, but who has been on my radar for some time. With this, their pass at sriracha, a sauce that does not contain onions generally, they finally leave off of that, both allowing me to add in a sauce company starting with "Y" and getting that much closer to completing the alphabet and to finally sample some of their wares.

For those of who have been around Asian culture to any extent, or even without that, eaten in a significant number of Asian restaurants, the ubiquitous sauce, the large squeeze bottle with the green cap, is the Huy Fong version of this sauce. It is a very good sauce, reminiscent at once of a chili-garlic sauce, just more refined, in terms of milling and smoothness, and with a slightly higher garlic kick. This one models that existing monolith pretty well. I am no fan of agave, but the sauce here overall tempers down the garlic hit somewhat, and also adds in a bit of citrus fruitiness. This is a very acceptable entry into this style of sauce, unlike the previous sauce in the blog timeline that uses the sriracha name incorrectly.

There is next to no heat in any of the srirachas, this one included. While its veer from the "classic" Huy Fong taste is moderate, it is enough that I would probably not favor this over that one, but then again, I've eaten so much of this, given my various relationships with different Asian women, that I don't either buy or particularly ever eat this style of sauce much anymore. 

Bottom line: This is a very solid, very capable rendition of a very specific style of sauce. To my taste, I wouldn't say it's better, but perhaps almost as good.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Lilly Lager Hot Sauce Review

Lilly Lager Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24D90s2P_u4

Another of the novelty sauce buys and I didn't notice until after I'd opened it that the sauce was calling itself sriracha. I had gotten it primarily because it used Cayenne as the pepper, which was what I was after. I'm not generally a fan of booze in foods, as I consider them to be two entirely unrelated realms, but had also never really had a sauce that utilized beer (at least not that I could recall at the time) and suspected I may hate it a bit less than the hard liquor sauce, given that I do, despite not being generally a fan of booze in foods, use beer here and there in cooking, particularly Germanic foods.

Before I get into the sauce, I am going to, again, register a complaint here publicly about the idea of using the word sriracha, which describes a very specific style of sauce, inappropriately. Sriracha may be considered a generic term by the Office of Copyrights, which is fine, but devaluation of words is something I have huge struggles with. Sriracha is not, among other things, a tropical fruit-based sauce, as another manufacturer alleged on label copy. Here, I think this gets closer to the line of what it could be (though definitely not what it is) by having a similar ingredient profile, less the addition of beer, but I don't find this to be an acceptable sriracha entry, given how loose and runny this sauce is. Consistency definitely matters with certain sauce types, Louisiana-style being perhaps the foremost example. There is also a discussion of which peppers can conceivably constitute an actual sriracha (again, a parallel with Louisiana-style), however, I don't find the idea valid that sriracha can only be red jalapeno.

So, for me, this is closer, but definitely not quite all the way there to an actual sriracha. As to the sauce, it is quite loose, to the point it comes with a restrictor cap, so me thinking it was either a stab at a Louisiana-style or Cajun style is perhaps more understandable. There are not stabilizers in the sauce, so it separates constantly, including during use, which is quite an annoying aspects of the sauce. Given that is is Cayenne-based, there is not a great deal of heat here. The overriding presence of the beer flavor is perhaps the most notable features of this sauce and again points to the novelty nature of the sauce, wherein I'm not necessarily convinced those manufacturers are trying to make good sauces, so much as passable ones. What should be, at most, an accent flavor, tends to interfere with any actual sauce flavor notions the sauce may have and consequently significantly challenges the variety of usage this sauce might otherwise expect to have. I should stress the sauce is not offensive, per se, but strikes some very odd notes that lean towards being unpleasant, but are generally off-putting enough not to want to use this. In the end, I'm not quite entirely sure I will be finishing this bottle.

Bottom line: Pin-up girl on the somewhat haphazard label, booze in the product, clearly a novelty item and somewhat sloppy in terms of being an actual viable hot sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 2

Firelli Hot Sauce Review

Firelli Italian Hot Sauce 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpI5iVdjy64

Sauces like this are really why I keep on trolling the various supermarket aisles, as you never quite know what will show up. This one is direct from Italy, the famous Parma, specifically, and utilizes the great Calabrian pepper, which, if you watch the Food Network at all, know is one of the darling trendy peppers in that sphere. I don't run across it in sauces, aside from that Private Selection sauce (reviewed elsewhere here) which used it extensively and quite effectively, to the point where that sauce was in contention for Sauce Of The Year.

This one is not quite of that caliber. Labeling is kind of interesting, with porcini mushroom, of all things, making an appearance. It is a very smooth sauce, very vibrant and lively, nice and rich, with some herby notes that keep reading through. One of those reads through the strongest and it is somewhat of a confusing flavor, that of dill. I know people have utilized dill in other sauces, but this one is ostensibly geared towards Italian food, with special emphasis on pizza, which I don't think I've ever seen dill used with. This aspect sort of waxes and wanes, depending on the other flavors. Indeed, this sauce is one of the more reactive with what you use it on, with the taste profile changing dramatically depending on what else is there. 

Heat-wise, like the Calabrian pepper itself, it is minimal. I'm tempted to give it a zero, but there is enough there, just enough, to let you know it is meant to be a hot sauce. I think, given the shape of the bottle and the cap, that they are really taking a swing at the gourmet market here. It will probably fit in nicely there, but as a hot sauce, I think it somewhat misses the boat. A gourmet sauce, yes, but not so much a hot sauce, in that much more focus is devoted to flavor complements and contrasts than on anything resembling heat. 

Bottom line: Well worth a pick-up, as anything with Calabrian peppers works nicely with Italian foods and there are never enough sauces that function well in that setting, but this is perhaps the epitome of a YMMV sauce and I don't find it especially resonant.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Pepper Palace Uff-Da Hot Sauce Review

Pepper Palace Uff-Da Scandinavian Gold Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2rfTpiLIIg

Note: This will be a lengthy blog entry, as there are a number of things attendant to this sauce I feel need some discussion. If you are not interested in those things and want to skip right to the actual review of the sauce, skip the next two paragraphs.

Note: The phrase "uff da," Norwegian in origin (with possibly some Danish usage as well, from what I understand, though I have yet to hear any Danish person I know actually use it), is something you may hear around either Norwegians or persons of Norwegian descent, particularly if you are in the upper Midwest, where in various locales, it is ubiquitous. Pronunciation phonetically in normal usage would be something like "ooffda," with the double o sound not being drawn out but fast like the "ew" part of the word few. If it is an especially grievous event, the oo may be drawn out longer, but that is somewhat unusual and emphasis tends to be on the "da" part. I have heard certain Norse-descended persons Americanize the phrase slightly with a "wh" sound in front, which comes across as "whooffda." It carries  a meaning very similar to the Yiddish expression "oy vey," which is of grief or dismay. "Oy vey" itself means more or less "oh, woe." 

Note: This is second Pepper Palace sauce I've gotten with some very questionable naming strategies. The earlier one, the Asian-oriented, Wok Dis Wei, I addressed somewhat in the review, but here, this reference to ethnicity refers rather directly to my own ancestry. So, this name..."uff da," as mentioned above, is not a phrase even remotely denoting something positive. So, using that doesn't really make sense. The label also has a Viking figure on the front, which is fine, but then it goes on to include "Scandinavian Gold," which really makes no sense with that already dubious name, given that Scandinavia tends to include Iceland, Finland, and Sweden, zero of which use the phrase "uff da." I will also observe that pepper plants are tropical and there is no region of Scandinavia which would fit that description. Habaneros and Cayennes would only thrive there in a well-protected area, same with the black pepper plants. I really find this sort of appropriation frustrating and truly wish they would stop. Here, it is quite literally a historical call to nothing. Culturally, Norwegians do tend to make heavy use of black pepper (you could even say that was my own gateway into being a chilehead), but this is not meant to be a black pepper sauce. 

I have understood this was the first Pepper Palace sauce and from which they built the empire they now enjoy across various states. As far as the sauces I got last year go (this is #5 of 6), it is far and away the best of the lot, but that is not really saying much. It is a fairly pedestrian sauce overall. I do rather enjoy the prominence of black pepper. Habanero and Cayenne I think can go together, but this sauce seeks to try to balance them instead of leaning heavily to one or the other, which is the wrong way to go. Black pepper is definitely must more to the fore than either of those, though.

I'm not sure which vinegar this uses, I'm guessing apple cider, as there is somewhat of an off-taste to this, which oddly only becomes apparent when the sauce is chilled. Warm, it is very pepper forward and much more enjoyable. It is something thin, but smooth. It's right on the border of being appropriate for a restrictor cap, but this does not come with one, so careful with the pour. It is not particularly hot, but definitely it overpowering foods is not an especially enjoyable thing to experience.

I guess the big question here is if the sauce is worth getting. I will probably run out the bottle, but the sticker on it reads nearly $13 (not what I paid for it), and you can get much better sauces for that same money or less. The bigger problem is that it doesn't fit in anywhere especially. I got it hoping to use it as a Louisiana-style, but it doesn't hit enough of the right notes there. It's probably worth trying, if you haven't had one of their sauces and are curious and can also get a discount, but not one to go out of your way to get.

Bottom line: Very okay-ish sauce overally, which makes it easily the best of the 5 I've tried so far from this company.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4