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