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