Best Hot Sauce 2022 + Recap

Best Hot Sauce 2022  + Recap

Before we get into the year in review proper, a little light housekeeping. My favorite sauce maker list has been revised (see Sauce Of The Year List link at right). I also added another YouTube FOH video playlist strictly for fast food and other restaurant spicy offerings I’ve done content on (link to that also on the right). YouTube has opened up the community tab, so I can (and do) make posts there. I’m on no other social media, so it makes it nice to be able to have another avenue to communicate. Please feel free to check those out, as I will be using it more in the future, but have already posted to promote the various upcoming themes and “events” for the FOH video series, as well as random commenting and even some pics here and there.

Sticking with YouTube for a moment, for the first theme in 2023, I will be kicking off some FOH YouTube videos more or less with the idea of “road to the Superbowl.” The videos for this will be posted on Saturdays in January and February leading up to the big game day, taking a look at some things (mostly hot wing-oriented) that might be of interest for chileheads or otherwise, and culminating with a very special cooking video the day before the event.

Additionally, starting January 2023, I will be posting a monthly archive sauce on one of the monthly Saturdays until I run out of archive sauces I want to cover. The more recent sauces from the blog will continue to be on Sundays.

I will also be releasing a new type of video, exclusive to the FOH series, that will be launching on Valentine’s Day 2023. Plans, right now, are for that series to be quarterly, but if there’s enough interest, I may expand that to higher frequency. The first video was very intensive in terms of planning and time, but I’m very excited about the series and think it will be a lot of fun.

Once the “road to the Super Bowl” related videos conclude, starting March 1, 2023, I will be making a significant change to the posting of content in the FOH series. I will comment on that more in the Q1 2023 update, but if you’re not subscribed to my YouTube channel (linkys on right) or watching my Community tab there, I invite you to do so, as I will be posting commentary on that update there as well.

Returning to the blog, for this year, by the end of Q2, 2022 was already in the top 3 years as far as posting, by the end of August, it was past everything else, with more sauce reviews alone than any other year had posts total and more than some of the years combined. In fact, August 2022 itself was the highest ever month in terms of post count. In November, it went skating past 400 posts total, to finish with, as of this post, 410 total. I also wound up hitting 300 sauces with full reviews in Q2. There was some internal thought by me that I might wind up closing in on 100 posts for the year, which I never dreamed would happen, as that’s 90+ sauces minimum, which means cycling through an entire bottle of sauce every 3 - 4 days. I don’t use hot sauce every single meal, so that would be flying through it at a pretty crazy level. As nutty as that is to me, it pales a bit when I consider that the FOH video series, in slightly over 3 years, has nearly as many postings as the blog does in slightly over 10 years. 2023, in fact, if it hasn’t already, will see the FOH series overtake TSAAF in terms of postings.

I also finally managed to finally achieved my stated goal from years past of having a FOH support video for every single sauce that got a full review in the blog for this calendar year. My new soft goal is to have no more than a calendar quarter in terms of backlog in the can for the FOH series, in both sauce and non-sauce content...it sounds odd to have a goal being to make less content, but I’ve been trying to dial back for all of this year, with moderate success. As fun as it is for me to make video content, with both an impetus for posting twice weekly, as well as the crazy big backlog, it cuts down on the spontaneity and being able to nimbly react to things like cross promotions in the chilehead food sphere, at least with also keeping consistency intact. I’ll get into this more later, but 2023 is definitely going to be seeing some changes to posting on the FOH side. The blog will continue more or less as it has all along.

I like to take a look back at the year, in terms of my ideas vs. actuality. As it turned out, by the end of Q1 2022 (and this is with me also deliberately trying to slow the pace), I was already producing non-sauce FOH video content well into 2023. I was running at least 2 months ahead for the start of the year, which wound up being closer to 6+ months ahead by the end of Q2. I was producing content way faster than the (self-imposed) demands of posting, which kind of ruins the immediacy a bit, but is kind of sort of a good problem to have, since I could just sprinkle in newer stuff as needed, and do holiday-oriented special postings. So, some of the plans I made in 2021 for 2022 are still there, largely untouched for 2023. Hopefully that will go more smoothly then.

I did, happily, get in a lot more cooking for 2022, which is something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but the running ahead on the non-sauce side was such that I did not post all of the 2021 content in 2022, let alone the 2022 content. The rest of the non-sauce 2021 content will be posted through January 2023, which is a bit too far out. Right now, I still have enough content, at the current rate of posting, to cover roughly half of 2023, both sauce and non-sauce varities.

On the sauce side, I wiped out my entire current backload in September for the tenth anniversary double-Sunday postings I did, took it all the way to zero, and now...am still running way ahead...again. As mentioned, stay tuned to the YouTube Community posts I do, as any announcement to that point will show up there first, probably, and one will be coming at the conclusion of the Super Bowl event-related stuff.

With the data I have from the 3 years and change of the YouTube FOH series, everything, views, watch time, interest, etc., seems largely contingent on the subject of the video. This means a few things. Frequency (and/or day) of posting matters less and there is no indication that I have a lot of viewers tuned in to see what I post next. Further, there does not seem to be a great deal of corresponding pull-through to other videos. I’m still considering what to do with that info, but there will almost certainly be changes in store.

My agonizing over when I would not be able to continue the non-sauce content I’ve been doing  for most of the FOH series has been alleviated. I keep banging on about the non-sauce content, but of the top 10 FOH videos, only two(!) are for hot sauces. So, there is a lot of incentive to keep producing non-sauce content as long as I can. The wave of spicy-oriented food in both 2021 and 2022 struck pretty hard and products are a lot more prodigious than previously. I do expect to be caught up with that in 2023, though, one way or the other, as there are still way more hot sauces than other types of non-sauce stuff that I find interesting enough to film.

I will also be doing mustards again next year (I  have 4 of the entire 6 month grill season already covered, and have 1 of the remaining 2 months ready and waiting), but right now, don’t plan to continue timing the posts around the season for 2024. I may pick up on BBQ sauces then, but we’re still a ways out, obviously. I also have tentative plans for a limited run FOH series that may also launch next year. This is in addition to the quarterly one I mentioned earlier. It is not particularly close to launch, however, and may not happen.

There is also another big, major change for the FOH videos I have currently as a soft goal, but want to move towards as soon as practicable, and about which I will say no more until I get a lot closer...let’s just leave it at keep your eyes on both the quarterly updates here and the YouTube community posts for the channel, as it will definitely need (and get) a lead-in, well before it happens.

I really turned the dial over on sauces from The Hot Ones in 2022 as well, covering a lot more ground than I had anticipated. I also modified the page a bit to make it easier to track my progress through the seasons. I’m definitely in good shape to get much closer to caught up in 2023.

Once again, here is the priority order for the remaining sauces, updated to reflect what’s left:

1) Sauces I’m interested in, that I have not done a written full review on, that I can get locally, via one of the Burn Your Tongue locations or Pirate O’s or Grove.
2) Sauces I’m interested in, that I have not done a written full review on, that I can get reasonably easily online.
3) Sauces I’m interested in, that I have not done a written full review on, that I can only get via The Heatonist.
4) Torchbearer Zombie Apocalypse
5) Sauces I have done a written mini-review on.

Category 4 has been changed to reflect what is left, which is a single sauce. Categories 1 is very low. I think I’ve nearly exhausted those various sources, though sauces on shelves rotate a lot, so I don’t have a fix on the exact number. 2 is also fairly low, given how Heatonist likes to keep things close to the vest, unless I feel like overpaying on Amazon. Heatonist also does a really nice job of not having everything in stock all the time, so I may run them out before sources elsewhere online. That leaves Category 5, which is a low enough priority that I’m still not sure I will be doing it at all. Part of this has to do with the changeover of those sauces from a Mini-Review into a full review, a prospect of which I’m not sure I have interest.   

I did a more intensive breakdown for the 2022 Q2 Update, and then re-updated the availability section when I went back through and added Season 19, so let’s take a look at some refreshed numbers there, to account for the new season, as well as which sauces are available:

There were 18 seasons the last time I took a look at remaining hot ones sauces. Season 19 was added in the interim and Heatonist also brought back a sauce, which unfinished Season 5. From this point, I think I’m just going to refer to what’s left as far as individual sauces and you can check out the Hot Ones Sauces TOC (link at right) for what’s already been done. I have fully covered 8 seasons of 19.

The seasons with sauces outstanding are as follows:

Season 5 - 1 remaining
Season 6 - 1 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 9 - 3 remaining (2 at hand)
Season 10 - 2 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 11 - 3 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 12 - 4 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 13 - 4 remaining (2 at hand)
Season 14 - 2 remaining (2 at hand)
Season 16 - 1 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 18 - 3 remaining (2 at hand)
Season 19 - 5 remaining (2 at hand)

I should talk about the slots a bit. These are the sauces remaining, by slot position on the show:

#1 - 2 remaining (1 at hand)
#2 - 4 remaining (3 at hand)
#3 - fully covered
#4 - fully covered
#5 - fully covered
#6 - 3 remaining (2 at hand)
#7 - 6 remaining (2 at hand)
#8 - 1 remaining (1 at hand)
#9 - 6 remaining (3 at hand)
#10 - 2 remaining

Rather interesting how that broke out, but to be also expected, as the earlier sauces tend to also be the less expensive and some of the others are frankly wildly out of hand as far as pricing. #8 and #10 being so low is due mainly to repetition on the show with the same sauce filling those respective slots over several seasons.

We will get into the SOTY discussion more, but first, as we usually do, some numbers for the blog stats:

Total posts (including this post): 410
Total views (as of this writing): ~35,150
Total sauces full reviewed: 354
Average rating, all full review sauces: 4.55
Total mini-sauce reviews: 44
Total sauces reviewed, combined: 398
Total full review sauces with FOH video content: 211
Highest viewed review: 1,763 - Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce
Highest viewed article, any type: 1,763 - Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce

This brings us to the SOTY deliberations for this year. Since an overall score of 10 is, by design, virtually impossible for any sauce to achieve, a 9 is usually as high as these go. For a span in there, it wound up being 8s, due to me doing fewer sauces overall, hence the absence of 9s. This year, right out of the gate, it started strong with a couple of 8s, but their hold proved to be short-lived as the eventual winner of this year emerged in April with a strong 9 and became the immediate front runner, a position it never relinquished.

The list of 8s in 2023 was pretty considerable. We had the Tonguespank Rye Whisky Reaper, the Hank’s Heat, the Hank Linger, Burns & McCoy’s Exhorresco, Silk City’s Erotic Fever and their Pull Over, and the Hatari Acid Rain Ghost, all of which would have been duking it out in an otherwise highly competitive year, but its combination of heat and deliciousness, which was both great and unexpected, proved too much to overcome as this year’s winner, the Hellboy Legendary AF sauce from Hellfire cruised to Sauce Of The Year 2022.

Previous TSAAF Sauce Of The Year winners (links to reviews in SOTY Table Of Contents link to the right):

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
2021: Gindo’s Original

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 2022, 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 are 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 videos.

Dat'l Do It Volcanic Eruption Limited Edition Hot Sauce Collection Set Mini-Review

It's that time of year again, yes, a major holiday, but also the time that Dat'l Do It and Wal-Mart get together to whip up some hot sauce collection packs...and when those later go on heavy discount clearance.

Before we get too far into this, the naming convention of this is kind of silly. Volcanic Eruption implies explosive heat and there is precious little heat to be had at all, across this entire set. As last time for one of these, there is a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni3sf8UKNUU). Also, like last time, three of the six sauces I tossed after filming, as they were bad sauces and as we like to say here, life is too short for bad sauces. Specifically, those were the Island Fire (Krakatoa/Indonesia) Jalapeno sauce, the Smolder & Smoke (Mt. Vesuvius/Italy) Smoky Bourbon, and the Green Wasabi (Mt. Fuji/Japan). 

I should speak to the naming convention. We had a regular name, such as Island Fire Jalapeno, then a reference to a volcano, in this case, Krakatoa, then a region, Indonesia. Those appear to just be references for the label as they bear little to no relation to the sauces. The bottles are all of the 3 oz. variety, with a restrictor cap built in and I will say that all of the labels look really nice. Packaging overall is pretty good and I know it's cheesy, but I kind of dig the red foil wrapping paper thing behind the cutout over the volcano to simulate heat.

The other three worth keeping were the Hawaiian Heat (Kilauea/Hawaii) Garlic Herb, the Red Chili (Mt. Raupehu/New Zealand), and the Icelandic Ash (Katla/Iceland), that last one being the only outright good sauce and not only the best overall, but also the hottest. The sauces again were all very vinegar-forward and we had basically variations on two styles - the red Louisiana-style Cayenne-based and a green highly astringent Jalapeno-based. 

Sauce by sauce breakdown looks like this (in order of appearance, as pictured):

Red Chili (Mt. Raupehu/New Zealand) - this was your basic stab at a Louisiana-style sauce, but it was fairly cheap-tasting. It is good enough for me to use entirely, but just barely and mostly because Louisiana-style and Cayenne are among my favorites.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Island Fire Jalapeno (Kratatoa/Indonesia - Probably my least favorite of all the sauces, this one was nearly inedible, given how incredibly sour and astringent it was. Coloration is like split pea soup, which I'm not a fan of, but would drink gallons of instead of using this sauce. Binned directly after filming.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Smolder & Smoke Smoky Bourbon (Mt. Vesuvius/Italy) - this is the sort of trend-jumper hot sauce, trying to capitalize on a trend that I see a lot of people attempting, but which I don't think has really caught on to the extent that people keep trying to make it happen, that being liquor in stuff, hot sauces in this case. Here, this is essentially the first sauce in this list, but we're not using actual liquor but a bourbon flavoring or extract. Like most of that type of thing, there is a flavor artificiality that carries through. This creates an off-flavor that ruins the otherwise ok sauce it's built on and which isn't awful, but I find kind of jarring and unpleasant enough not to warrant further experience.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Hawaiian Heat Garlic Herb (Kilauea/Hawaii) - Another spin on the first sauce, here we have the addition of Habanero, garlic and some additional spice add-ins. None of those really contribute much in the way of flavor, though I suppose this is slightly closer to a Cajun than a Louisiana-style. Despite the Habanero, this is not notably hotter than the first sauce, either. Another solid enough to use.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Green Wasabi (Mt. Fuji/Japan) - built on the back of the overly astringent Island Fire, this one adds in some artificial wasabi flavoring, which comes through rather mildly, but tames the abrasiveness of the former somewhat, making it much less offensive. It does not make it particularly good, however, as that fakeness of flavor is also translated here. Better than the other, but that's not saying much and ultimately not worth the bother.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Icelandic Ash (Katla/Iceland) - easily the hottest of them all and a sauce that is outright good. It also is making me question the label, as this sauce has some actual heat to it, but there is nothing on the label to really indicate why that might be the case. It reads more as a vinegary Mexican-style sauce, somewhat reminiscent of Valentina or others along that line. Heat is still pretty minimal overall, but notably hotter. This is the only one I actually outright liked. As I mentioned in the initial posting, I did wind up trying this on Mexican food. It works abysmally as a tamale sauce, but hot sauces can be kind of hit and miss there. I also had it on a couple of soft tacos and while it was ok, I found it to be slightly more vinegary than my preference.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Bottom line: This set is way better than the Brewer's Six Pack overall, but there is quite a bit less variety than in that other set. Again, here we have two basic sauces and everything is a variation on those, but for a fun little novelty buy, if you get it on clearance, it can be well worth the trip.

Cumulative Breakdown (Entire Set):

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 3

Puckerbutt Honey Bonnet & Honey Half-Note Hot Sauce(s) Review

Puckerbutt Honey Bonnet & Honey Half-Note

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wffZAVFvH4U

I've written quite a bit about how much I love the combination of honey and Habanero, when done right, as well as how find I am for Scotch Bonnets, so a sauce with honey and Scotch Bonnet together was certainly not one that I'd have much resistance to. It also had cinnamon, which I'm not overly fond of, but far back in the ingredients list, so I figured it probably wouldn't show up too prominently. Then I came across this Honey Half-Note, and initially, I was more interested in the knowledge that Smokin' Ed Currie was (is?) a drummer and that half of the proceeds from this sauce were being donated to a musician's cause for kids. As a hack who has one and off tried to make a stab at doing the "make pretty notes" thing myself, I definitely support this. It is a good thing and I back good things when and where I can, especially when someone goes out of their way to make it as easy (and potentially tasty) as this.

Ok, so the idea here is essentially the Honey Bonnet is as the name would lead you to think, essentially Scotch Bonnet mash (I'm guessing) and honey, with little traces here and there of cinnamon. One can get a really solid feel for the flavor of the Bonnets, with the honey not being as noticeable and perhaps more just there to blunt the edges a bit. Cinnamon, as mentioned, is more along the lines of grace notes only. This one does have a pretty nice heat build and probably will be best enjoyed by a chilehead audience.

Honey Half-Note, meanwhile, is supposed to be a tamer version of the Honey Bonnet, with the heat more or less cut in half. I personally found it to be much less than that. In fact, this is almost a different sauce entirely. Indeed, if you put them side by side, the color difference would paint a fairly stark contrast (look for this in the forthcoming video - linked posted at the top of this review when live). The honey, which was moderate to begin with, vanishes almost entirely, along with a lot of the Scotch Bonnet flavor. Cinnamon touches are nearly entirely absent also. It's almost as if the entire sauce were toned down, sort of the effect of putting a muffler (mute) in the end of a trumpet. Vinegar is a lot more forward in this sauce and it tends a bit towards the sour side. While the flavor is dissimilar to the Honey Bonnet and more uniquely its own, it is still quite nice. 

In terms of flexibility, I've found that the more I enjoy a sauce, the more it lends itself to different food types. Even when a sauce doesn't work with a food outright, such as Blair's Pure Death (reviewed elsewhere here), one of my all-time favorites, the sauce will still please my palate enough that I mind less the lack of integration with the flavors of the food. In that respect, it's kind of what we have going on here. With the more astringent nature of the Honey Half-Note, I find that it works better in a setting where I might normally want a Louisiana-style sauce. With the Honey Bonnet, it strikes me as more of a sweet-hot, a style which I find goes with a slightly higher variety of foods. 

Although I think this was meant as two sides of the same coin, these two, despite being related, read more as two distinct sauces. Depending on whether your pleasure is more towards sweet heat or astringency, either one of these will naturally be more resonant. 

Bottom line: The Honey Bonnet does a very nice job of showcasing the venerable Scotch Bonnet's flavor and heat and might be best reserved for chileheads. The Honey Half-Note is a much tamer-flavored and heat-wise version, albeit with a lot more astringency, supporting a very worthy cause. Both are well worth a shot.

Breakdown:

Honey Bonnet

       Heat level: 3
       Flavor: 8
       Flexibility: 7
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Honey Half-Note

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 5
       Flexibility: 5
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Flaming Homer's Carolina Reaper Strawberry Atomic Balsamic Hot Sauce Review

Flaming Homer's Carolina Reaper Strawberry Atomic Balsamic

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=v45HprgtDWM

This is an interesting sauce, in that it comes in a 10 oz bottle that more speaks to me like a jelly. Certainly, wide-mouth bottles are not unknown - the outstanding Tears Of The Sun Private Reserve (reviewed elsewhere here) from High River comes with a similar opening, but this one is also squat. It definitely is pretty far from a jelly, though, as its runniness hearkens back more towards a syrup. Indeed, that is exactly how I took it when I first saw it, yet I was able to find nothing contradicting the idea that it was intended as a hot sauce. It's sort of hanging out there in no man's land, but without it explicitly saying what it is, we'll just roll with it as a hot sauce.

Flaming Homer's seems to be a rather small-scale operation, somewhat active on social media, but I couldn't find an actual website, per se. It appears to be primarily a farmer's market type company, or rather, was until it found its way onto the hallowed BYT shelves. The sauce continues its somewhat unorthodox approach by having literally all of the ingredients (though not the correct order) as the title of the sauce, which is kind of an interesting approach, if a bit of a mouthful.

For most of the life of this blog, dessert hot sauces have been few and far between, but it seems for this year (and a little bit last year as well), I've been doing a lot of them, so perhaps this is another segment of growth. Definitely hot honeys have been making a huge surge of late, so perhaps the idea of sweet hot is latching on with a lot of folks and resonating stronger than some of the more traditional settings. 

That is exactly how I would place this sauce, as less a hot sauce and more a dessert sauce. Certainly, with the Reapers coming to play, there is definitely a little bit of a heat charge to this, but it is overall fairly minimal and I wouldn't expect this to be found challenging by too many. The idea of the current record holder for world's hottest pepper being as ubiquitous as they are was not something I would have predicted, but I'm glad to see it, both as a chilehead and as a foodie. 

Flavor-wise, this, while absolutely delicious, is really not honestly too useful as a hot sauce. This reads to me so much more as strawberry preserves, with light balsamic touches. I'm not a huge fan of balsamic, but here, it is used both wonderfully and effectively. There is not a lot of Reaper flavor and the strawberry is a touch on the lighter side, rather than the concentrated form in preserves, but all three ingredients are definitely and readily noticeable. This is, in and of itself, something of a marvel to pull off as well as this does. Usage is best where one would use strawberry preserves or a strawberry syrup. It would probably also make a nifty salad dressing, if you're into that sort of flavoring in that setting.

Bottom line: Definitely more a spicy dessert sauce than anything else, this could definitely open a lot of people's minds to the wonders of hot peppers.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 10
       Flexibility: 4
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Alice Cooper Poison Hot Sauce Review

Alice Cooper Poison

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3JMfHC5jA

I would be remiss if I didn't note the connection between naming this sauce after a song that "borrowed" an intensely popular guitar introduction section from another song and the ingredients themselves. What this seems an awful lot like is another relabeling, this time with CaJohn's Small Batch Reaper. Admittedly, I have not tried that particular sauce, but the sauce color is very close, if not identical, and the ingredient listing is exactly identical, all the way down to the ordering of elements.

That aside, this is a sauce that I opened over a month ago and is one of those few that it, for whatever reason or other, it takes me a bit to get to. Sometimes it takes me a bit to get a feel for a sauce, but in this case, it was heavily reminiscent of another sauce I did called Uncle Keith's Code Red (reviewed elsewhere here). That one had molasses and this one just lists sugar, but the tone of Reapers and a sweetener, which go quite well together, was immediately familiar. This one definitely is a bit more astringent, with both vinegar and the citrus being more forward.

In that one, I likened it a bit to a bit thicker, hotter, and sweeter Cajun style sauce and that's about where I'd put this also. That sauce took me quite a while to finish and this one is definitely on track to do the same, partially because where it fits best, which is generally the same places you'd use a Louisiana-style sauce, I'd almost rather have something else. It's not to say there's anything wrong with this sauce. Reapers with sweetener is an excellent combination and further emphasizes what a remarkable pepper the Reaper is. I'm inclined to like sweet-hot sauces using superhots, to be clear, but not all peppers lend themselves quite this well. One definitely gets quite a bit of the Reaper taste aspect with this sauce.

Because is so prominent in this sauce, though, it's probably one that chileheads will find more enjoyment with. I suspect fans of the Coop, or just people who recognize the name and are curious, may give this a shot, but they may quickly find this exceeds whatever tolerance their curiousity may have supplied. For me, it's not a sauce I find interesting or hitting the flavor notes I want enough to be a regular user. I generally will remember I have this, bust it out for a bit, use it, enjoy it somewhat, then put it back in the door and forget about it again.

Bottom line: Definitely the better of the two Alice Cooper branded vanity sauces, also the hotter of the two, and it aptly demonstrates both the flavor notes of the Reaper, as well as how nicely it goes with a sweetener.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 3
       Flavor: 6
       Flexibility: 5
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 5

Torchbearer Honey Badger Honey Mustard Hot Sauce Review

Torchbearer Honey Badger Honey Mustard

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

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK4O-LofG4Q

Despite my best efforts, sometimes sauces will sit on my shelf and be neglected for longer than I have in mind (though I'm much better at that now and that number is pretty low). This is one of those, but it's largely because I thought this was more a honey mustard than a hot sauce and during the grilling season campaigns, I usually have several mustards open, taking up precious space in my fridge door. In fact, had this not been on the show, like the Double Take Mustard (reviewed elsewhere here), I would not have done a written review for it at all and just been content with an FOH video.

So, indeed, what we have here is a rather spicy honey mustard. I believe it was in the 7 slot for the season it appeared on the show. The Torchbearer website calls it the hottest mustard you'll ever try, which is probably not far off. I would also add that it's easily my favorite honey mustard, ever. This is a sauce that is definitely a bit on the blazing side, but the flavor is such that it really carries the day and genuinely makes me want to keep going with it. They have definitely found the formula here, apparently one that was long in coming, but well worth the wait. We have the usual honey mustard suspects in here, but additionally, we have Scorpions, the mighty Reaper, and Cayenne, just for color and to round things out a bit. The neat trick here is that this is primarily a lovely honey mustard, hitting all the exact right flavor notes, but one can also get a good feel for the flavor of the peppers. There is certainly a heat component as well, but this is very much a flavor-first type sauce. I'd say this is probably best reserved for chileheads, but with smaller amounts, given that tremendous flavor, it could be a good stepping stone for the curious.

I generally greatly like the Torchbearer stuff (they have a SOTY winner (check list at right) and the company name I think is truly brilliant), but I do have a few minor complaints here, mostly to do with the packaging. I'm not clear precisely on where the 5 oz. comes from with those ubiquitous 5 oz. glass bottles (is it the base only? up to the cap? is there an invisible fill line somewhere in there heretofore previously unknown?), but Torchbearer has a habit of leaving a lot of neck room in the bottles. This may be because they are doing it by weight rather than volume. It may be because their sauces, this included, tend to run on the much thicker and sludgier side and need the space to agitate the sauce, given the lack of preservatives. I don't know, but this sauce is one of the more expensive in their lineup and generally on the show, which makes the loss a bit more acute. This also is a bit prohibitive of keeping it at hand, unless you just wait for sales and stock up...not a bad prospect, all in all. Also, given how thick this sauce is, and this kind of applies to all of their sauces as well, is a glass bottle really the right choice? Iinglehoffer seems to have perfected the squeezable mustard bottle. I don't know if it's a cost thing or something else, but I really wish this came in that packaging.

For this one, while the website suggests things like pretzels and veggie trays, amidst others, I have found that I'm not a fan of those with honey mustard. I think it's best application is with meat, particularly warm meat, so hot dogs, roast beef sandwiches (like Arby's), grilled pork, chicken strips, etc., is the best move here.

Bottom line: Rather punchy, but incredibly delicious honey mustard and practically defies one to restrain from eating a lot of it, perhaps the ultimate chilehead honey mustard. Certainly has my vote.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 4
       Flavor: 10
       Flexibility: 5
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9

Overall: 7

Louisiana Hotter Hot Sauce Review

Louisiana Hotter

Note: Support video available here: https://studio.youtube.com/video/-QZE0oKbzvo/edit?o=U

I have to hand it to the Louisiana brand. They're taking essentially one sauce, a Cayenne-based Louisiana-style, and coming up with quite a few variations on the theme, all of which are solid on the level of the original, but also are different enough in their own right to stand apart. No real surprise that they also came out with a hotter version, along the lines of Texas Pete and Frank's, though in this case, they get major credit from me for eschewing extract and instead just using a hotter pepper. Here, it is the Habanero.

Louisiana-style sauces typically dwell in a fairly low heat range, so using Habanero is a pretty smart move. There is a slight flavor shift, from the normally somewhat salty sauce, to one that has notes of Habanero in there. I don't think Habanero is always a suitable pepper for this kind of sauce, but here it works pretty well, with enough of a shift to let you know it's there, but not so much as to be unpalatable. The heat is also appreciably higher, but still not greatly so overall...think of it more as a 1.5, but not quite enough to get the push all the way to a 2. 

I quite like what they've done here and were it not for the typical excessive saltiness,though I will note that it is somewhat less prominent in this sauce than some of the others from this company, I would probably mark this a big higher. As it is, it's definitely one of my favorite Louisiana-styles, easily in the top 5. I find the heat to be about perfectly where I'd want it for a sauce of this type, though I should also note that one has to have a bit of a care not to add it to things that are already on the salty side, as the tendency will be for that aspect to become a bit prominent to the point to being overly present, if not overpowering.

Bottom line: Another nice variation on the theme of Cayenne-based Louisiana-style hot sauce from one of the older names in the game. If higher heat is your angle with that style, this is well worth a go.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 8
       Flexibility: 7
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Karma Scorpion Disco Hot Sauce Review

Karma Scorpion Disco

Note: This sauce appears on Season 15 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtogwmt1NaM

I will start by noting that this sauce took me rather by surprise. I went in knowing it was probably going to be blazing and indeed, given the 9 slot it had on the show that season, it is unquestionably hot. Rather, I was more concerned on a couple fronts. The first of those was the name Scorpion in its name, which at least strongly implied Scorpion peppers. When I read the ingredient list, I was checking only to confirm the absence of onions and the other peppers didn't really register, which might have alleviated this concern somewhat. The second was Karma itself, who I find a very intriguing sauce maker, but I have not come across anything with them that has resonated me to the point of being wowed. Certainly they make some good sauces, but hadn't hit on anything striking me as great.

So, with those things in place, this sat on my shelf all through the summer and let to me being pleasantly surprised once I did finally open it up. We have, at times, a tale of two sauces. The first time I tried it, I found a strong complexity to it, a good earthiness, and a nice roundness to complement the scorching heat. I couldn't quite put my finger on the flavor, exactly, but what was there was nice. The cane sugar really does a nice job of rounding some of the harsher edges off without being enough to be considered and actual sweet-hot type sauce. Once I got a bit deeper in and the Scorpions started rearing their ugly heads more, that effect was diminished somewhat and the tone became more finding foods that would fit with it nicely. There is a pretty solid gamut there, though...at least more than expected.

As long as you can find something that can tamp down the Scorpion flavor somewhat, you're golden. Thus, fried chicken and pizza and creamy sauces, such as mac & cheese or alfredo, will work pretty well here. Putting it on plain chicken, such roasted chicken, is not always the greatest thing, though, as there is not as much for the sauce to meld with and play off and you get that Scorpion pepper flavor hit. I will also be testing this for the video with some post-Thanksgiving feast leftover foods, whatever is still kicking around, so check back Friday (11/25/22) for that video, if you're interested in how it does there.

The texture here is a bit odd as well, rather grainy somehow, almost as if the cane sugar wasn't quite dissolved all the way, and definitely on the sludgy thick side. It's nowhere near as bad as Burn After Eating, which oftentimes made me think I'd need to physically destroy the bottle to extract the sauce, but it is certainly not a very free-flowing sauce. It doesn't so much stick to things as hold in place, which is fine, given how little of it needs to be used to get both the flavor and heat effect.

As to that heat, we have 2 building peppers, the 7-Pot Primo and the Chocolate Habanero, and two flash heat peppers in the Ghost and Scorpions, and they are a mighty foursome. It starts out quite punchy out of the gate, but the more you eat it, the more it screams right along towards blazing territory, building up to a very nice inferno roar. This is unquestionably, absolutely a chilehead-only sauce. 

Bottom line: I can't quite decide if I like this sauce. It is certainly better than expected, much better, but it's not quite something I'd eat on the regular. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

Pulley's Blazing Peach Hot Sauce Review

Pulley's Blazing Peach 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIr06qx3a_0

I find it fascinating how brains work...or don't work at times. For instance, for quite a while, I seemingly did not make a distinction between this company, from Montana, and Culley's, a perhaps more well-known sauce company originating out of New Zealand. This is the first sauce I've had from either of them and I largely picked this up on a whim during an impromptu tide-me-over bottle grab until I do a larger buy in the near future. The rabbit hole gets a bit deep, as this sauce has inspired me to consider some of the hot sauce producing regions of the US at large and while we all expect the deep southern states, naturally, there are other less expected hotbeds, such as Vermont, Colorado, and Montana, of all places. I keep thinking I should coalesce all of the various company locations (I am aware that the sauces are often produced bulk at places outside of the actual company HQ) on a map of the US and perhaps that is a project I will one day get to...assuming some enterprising person much better at Photoshop than I doesn't beat me to it. 

Anyway, this sauce jumped out at me partially due to the label. I will say that this sauce is a great example of excellent label design. Flaming peach on the front makes perfect sense for a sauce called Blazing Peach, with all the text both large and clear enough to be easily read. As someone with food intolerances, I do truly appreciate this and I wish all hot sauce companies would follow suit.

As to the sauce itself, it's a nice medium thick and very smooth blend primarily of peaches, pineapple, Scotch Bonnets, and Habanero, along with quite an array of sweeteners and spices. It is far less sweet than I would anticipate for a fruit-based sweet hot and I'm not sure I like the idea of leaning into the sour peach sort of flavoring, not the least of which peach can be a somewhat subtle flavor and it can get lost somewhat readily under the mish-mash of other stuff. This is, I think, what happened here with this one. There is a certain peach dynamic, to be sure. It's not absent entirely, but it is heavily eroded and is more tropical peach with various citrus-y notes, along with a vaguely Scotch Bonnet-Habanero flavor. 

The label copy insists this sauce packs a punch, but I find it's considerably less than on the label. They give it a 6; I give it a 2, but it does have a nice enough build that I think it will test many normies. Chileheads won't be challenged by this, but I think it has the potential to be too hot for some of the more just-curious...presuming they are able to get past the sour nature of the sauce. It's not a puckering sort of sour, not bracing or offensive or anything along those lines, just a lot less sweet than a sauce of this type seems to be wanting. I did find it interesting enough to warrant further investigation into Pulley's though and have my eye on some of their other offerings.

Bottom line:  Any fruit-based sweet-hot will have my attention, with some favor for those leading with peach, but the things I wanted/expected to be present are dialed a bit too far down for my suiting here. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Angry Goat Pumpkin & Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Angry Goat Pepper Co. Pumpkin & Habanero

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9TMh6EwXwg

I don't always get to seasonal blends, given how many sauces I usually have on deck at any given time, but I found myself at the hallowed shelves of BYT to get a couple of fill-in sauces, since I had uncharacteristically run a bit low and I need to little tide-me-over before I do another big bulk buy. When I saw this one, given how close we are to Thanksgiving, it was hardly one I could pass by, given both that it's Angry Goat and one of the few sauces they have that's normally named. 

Among other things not becoming of me, I'm neither a coffee person nor a pumpkin spice person, so almost all of that hurrahing and carrying on is lost on me as an audience. I mean, sure, I'll whip through a sixie or two of a pumpkin beer when those roll out, but generally I'm way good to go for another year after that. Same with pumpkin pie, which is where I thought this sauce was probably aiming at. I was eventually right and what I mean by that is that the earlier parts of the bottle, before I'd eaten enough to agitate more properly, was more pumpkin pie by way of apple, which is, itself, an interesting idea.The pumpkin eventually re-emerged, in a very nice manner. 

This sauce utilizes pumpkin puree and there's no mistaking that on a texture end. I quite like what they've done here, but this is both a thicker sauce and one that will immediately separate once out of the bottle. The flavor of pumpkin pie is somewhat toned down here, with the elements of the aforementioned apple and to a much lesser extent, the Habanero. The molasses and Vermont maple play very nice here together, adding a bit of depth and flavor complexity, while not really adding much to the actual flavor. All in all, this is a very intricate and tasty balancing act, though, as a dessert-ish sauce, I find it better reserved for the lighter meats only.

What it is not, however, is particularly hot. Both Habanero and Cayenne mash show up in the ingredient list, but this is an extremely tame sauce and won't be challenging to anyone, I wouldn't think. Very cleverly of them, this makes the perfect accompaniment to both the turkey and pumpkin pie facets of Thanksgiving dinner (despite the very Halloween-y label), but if you're like me and everything winds up melding on the plate anyway, it will also fit in nicely there as well.

Bottom line: Very nice seasonal winner that I'm glad is here now and will remember fondly (though probably won't pick up again until next year) once it's gone. 

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 9
       Flexibility: 5
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Hellfire Ritual & Ritual Habitual Hot Sauce(s) Review

Hellfire Ritual + Hellfire Ritual Habitual

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do_1M2zG2BI

I thought, for the 400th overall post for this blog, that it might be kind of fun to do a double review and it just so happened that I had come across a bit of an oddity that would work well for this. Earlier in the year, while tinkering around on the Hellfire website (I spend a certain amount of time on hot sauce makers' websites, actively looking for more stuff because there will come a day, I know not when, but there will come a day when I finally have exhausted all the sauces I might want to try but haven't done yet), I came across the Ritual sauce. Given the 7-Pot Primos in it and the sort of fruity-ish nature, I was immediately interested and put it on the list. When I got to the BYT shelves, I picked up a bottle, but lo and behold, once I got home, I discovered Ritual Habitual (shades of Jane's Addiction here?) instead. While I dig the masks on the labels, apparently I wasn't paying the strictest of attention when reaching...but then again, at the time, I wasn't aware there were two distinct sauces, either.

Well, well, a mystery, then? Sauces get renamed often enough for it not to be exactly common, but enough to have been known to happen, which is what I thought. So, I put back on my detective hat and did some digging. Two different sauces, but were they related, somehow? No idea and I couldn't find anything on the naming convention side of things, so I set them aside for a rainy day. A bit later, rain turned to snow by the time I got to them and it was time to dig deeper. 

Of the two, the Ritual, the lighter colored of the two, which is also the hotter of the two by a notable degree, is meant to be a Caribbean tropical style sauce. The Habitual I would imagine is probably also in that vein and of the laundry list of ingredients, 16 are shared between them. They are, specifically, distilled vinegar, Mandarin oranges, mangoes, papaya, pineapple, peaches, cane sugar, garlic, light brown sugar, Allspice, vanilla extract, cinnamon, aurry powder, ginger, cloves, and cumin. While Habaneros are in both, they appear as a smoked version for the Habitual, along with Chipotles, as well as bourbon. For the Ritual, it's orange Habs, the 7-Pots I mentioned, and Trinidad Scorpions. Both of them are around the same in terms of being medium thickness with various bits and chunks of the ingredients in the mix.

In terms of flavor, the Ritual is also much better than the other. Given this extremely high spice load, neither sauce likes to really play well with other foods, other than the lighter meats, where they both, as might be expected, excel. I'm posting this around Thanksgiving time, so will be putting both to the test with turkey once that time arrives, but they do well on chicken, fish, and pork. I did try them in a few other settings as well and didn't find the experience wholly enjoyable. Heat-wise, the Ritual also does much better with delivering a satisfying burn, definitely want to keep that one just in the hands and mouths of chileheads, while the Habitual, with a sort of slightly sweeter and much smokier Caribbean flavoring, left me a bit confused as to what the sauce was meant to be doing. It was not particularly hot, but I often found the flavor combination to be jarring rather than something I wanted to keep using, which means the Ritual got used a lot more during testing.

Bottom line: Yet another hot sauce naming mystery, though the Ritual is the clear superior sauce of these two and definitely one of the nicer Caribbean flavored sauces I've come across...the Habitual is more an oddity.

Breakdown:

Ritual

       Heat level: 4
       Flavor: 8
       Flexibility: 5
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Ritual Habitual

       Heat level: 2
       Flavor: 4
       Flexibility: 5
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3

Horsetooth Naughty #4 Hot Sauce Review

Horsetooth Naughty #4

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr5ZLVk4rYA

I imagine there's probably a story behind this sauce, coming from yet another sauce company hailing from Colorado. The company itself seems to be named after a mountain range, but if there is a story, it's not where I can find it. The verbiage on the website refers to a pepper you wouldn't bring home to mother, but this has both Scotch Bonnets and Habanero, so I'm not sure which they're meaning. The text goes on to reference the Scotch Bonnet, so I presume that's what they mean. In a literal sense, given that my mother is about as far from a chilehead as one can be, I definitely wouldn't be bring this - or any other pepper with any degree of heat - to her, but when I think of Scotch Bonnets, the lovely flavor rather than any heat is what comes to my mind.

I've mentioned this before, but using mangoes can be a bit of a danger when you're doing a fruit-based sauce, as you can as often get something sour as much as you might that excellent tropical sweetness. That is the case here. This is quite a powerfully sour concoction, to such a degree I would normally not find it especially palatable, but they did an interesting thing here to save it. That is the addition of black pepper, which makes this not only a fascinating sauce, but more of a delectable one. To be sure, the uses of this are fairly limited, as it is overwhelmingly sour, still, so think light meats like fish and chicken and it more or less stops there. It is, however, very nice on those.

There is weirdly a restrictor cap that comes with this, which I suspect is more them trying to push the idea that this sauce is hot (it is decidedly not) than in terms of viscosity, as the sauce is sort of a medium thickness but way too much to easily fit through the hole of a restrictor cap. Possibly they use the same cap for their other sauces and it's all they have, but I wind up removing the cap entirely to use this at all. Heat-wise, this is rather minimal. It's just enough to be called a hot sauce, but not really much more than that.

Bottom line: An interesting flavor dynamic between sour mango and black pepper, with a slightly back end of Scotch Bonnet/Habanero manages to save this sauce, but the novelty is definitely prone to wearing off.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3

El Rey Habanero Hot Sauce Review

El Rey Habanero

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8dBEKWf69A

A while back, my good YouTube buddy Donnie The Chilimancer commented to one of the Mexico Lindo reviews there about an odd bit of timing, also seeing the bottle himself on the shelves just recently of a Mexican supermarket and him not being aware of the brand previously. This, in turn, reminded me that I was about due to one of those myself, having not visited in quite some time, so, with that prompting, headed myself down to go wander the aisles a bit. It was there that I came across this little beauty. It sat patiently waiting for me to finish the other open bottles of Mexican-style sauces ahead of it, but once I finally did, it proved an absolute gem.

What we have here in this little beauty is one of the hotter sauces of that style I've come across on commercial shelves. There is a very nice build to this, which consistently surprises me, yet the flavor was what really impressed me out of the gate. This is a fantastic-tasting sauce, so much so that one cannot help but wind up using enough of it to engender that very nice smoldering build. There is a lot of Habanero flavoring, red, unless I miss my guess, of course, but this sauce also has a bit of an astringency, pungency from the vinegar, along with a good dash of citric acid. Oddly, there are also carrots listed, but they don't show up to any particular degree. An ingredient entry of "spices" rounds things out and makes this equally at home with both red and green sauces, such as you may find on burritos or enchiladas. I prefer this moreso where you wound find the red sauces, things like beef tacos, etc., but it is no slouch dancing with chipotle, chicken, and pork, either.

The consistency is a bit runny and it comes with a restrictor cap built right in to the lid, which is fine. I suspect that is more due to the heat of this, rather than the consistency of the sauce. Flavor-wise, this tastes good enough that there is no real worry to oversaucing, but I think for most people, the attendant heat would be a bit much. This is right at what I would call the dividing line, so a 3 on the heat scale for me. Given that astringent nature, this sauce would also be equally good in cream-heavy dishes, might do ok with instant ramen, but I don't think I would find it enjoyable at all on things like chicken strips or pizza or burgers. It may be more flexible than most Mexican-style sauces, but there still are limits. At right around $3 for a 6.6 oz. bottle, this is also a phenomenal value.

Bottom line: Probably my newest favorite off-the-shelf commercial Mexican-style hot sauce, though I suspect mainly chileheads will find the heat enjoyable, particularly with heavier usage.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 3
       Flavor: 10
       Flexibility: 6
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Silk City Pull Over Hot Sauce Review

Silk City Pull Over

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQzTxKEV2hI

Very curiously named sauce here...I've abbreviated it somewhat, but as it reads on the front and back labels, it's more like: "Tales From Silk City: Pull Over Before This Sauce Blows Your Asshole Out!!!" Certainly a unique name, though if that was the case, I'd probably be looking for sources of food poisoning rather than to a sauce. The name reference here is to a podcast group called the Ski Mask Collective. I do find the front label graphic to be rather entertaining on this as well. Very nice work there.

That aside, this bottle, again in a flask (also, again at $10), is the last of the big Silk City buy I did and I think I inadvertently saved the best for last. This is one of the best-tasting sauces I've had all year and right up there with Badass Jew (reviewed elsewhere here) for the tastiest sauce I've had from Silk City. The Badass Jew sauce was in contention for Sauce Of The Year that year and in an ordinary year, this would have been also. Had it been slightly hotter, if would have also been in the mix this year as well. As it is, this is easily the hottest of the Silk City lineup...as of this writing, at least.

What we have here is a start-off with a quad-pepper blend, the Serrano, Jalapeno, Cayenne, and Habanero, which is a very nice base. The remaining ingredients, the apple cider vinegar, the Vermont maple syrup, salt, and even the Carolina Reapers, only accentuate that base. Despite the label verbiage, this is not a particularly blazing sauce. It is hot enough that I'd say it's best reserved only for chileheads, but flavor-wise, it's accessible enough for those curious or who want to take the next step in their heat journey.

It deftly threads the very fine eye hole of the needle between being a fantastic sweet-hot, but not so focused on just that aspect that it impairs the flexibility. This, indeed, is a fantastic everyday sauce, with just a delicate hint of sweetness, which is often quite welcome. The maple is used wonderfully as a sweetener, without adding a lot of that heavy maple flavor, while the pepper blend tastes nothing so much as what it is, a whole made up of the sum of the parts, without any focus on any one individual pepper. There is a touch of bitterness here and there, given the inclusion of the superhot Reapers, but I find that element only enhances the experience rather than detracts.

Bottom line: Another absolutely fantastic sauce from the phenom of Vermont, Jeff Levine, and one that should be on every chilehead's radar. 

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 3
       Flavor: 10
       Flexibility: 10
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8

High River Tears Of The Sun Private Reserve Hot Sauce Review

High River Tears Of The Sun Private Reserve

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

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffzGY0ayapw

Here's a neat trick. We have all of the wonderful flavors and dynamics of the original Tears Of The Sun (reviewed elsewhere here - strongly suggest you read through that and watch through the accompanying video, as much of that applies here also), a taste profile which is kept intact, but then also improved notably. All of the original ingredients are intact, though appear to be slightly re-ordered, but there are a few other additions. Most notable of those is the Peach Ghost Scorpion, which is a hybrid of the two previous world's hottest peppers. I've not had one of these pods, but if the idea here is to bump up the heat of the Ghost, while retaining more of the flavor profile of that rather than the highly floral Scorpions, I'm all for it. Here, there are no floral notes that I can detect. I will also note that rather than increasing the heat, this hybrid seems to have tamped it down, as I've seen it rated at around 750K SHU, well below the 1M+ of the usual Ghosties and Scorpions.

Realistically, despite that pepper being first in the list, there are also papaya, mango, peach, and pineapple flavors all rounding out the tropical fruit vibe, along with orange Habs, so there is little in the way of the somewhat bitter superhot flavor profile that seems endemic with a lot of sauces utilizing those peppers. I personally think the blend here works much better than the original which, while tasty, is a flavor I also get tired of somewhat rapidly. With this sauce, I've had to forcibly stop myself eating it, so as to make sure I had enough for both the FOH video as well as the Q4 2022 Wing Thing. I should note that I have the 8 oz. bottle this sauce originally went to market with, though it has since gone to more usual 5 oz. 

Given the superhots, this is notably hotter than the original, which is a very welcome change...for chileheads. Indeed, one of the aspects I wished most was different with the original was a higher heat impact and here it is, delivered in spades. I would probably put this at mostly a chilehead only sauce, though it is also tasty enough to be tempting to the mere mortals who might wish to test their palates. Like all of the High River stuff, the pricing on this remains one of the best values in the market. In many ways, this rendition is a few steps closer to perfection for this sauce. In fact, this is probably one of my favorite fruit-based sweet hots and is pushing hard at Hellacious (reviewed elsewhere here) as my favorite sauce from High River. Also, one of the better sauces on The Hot Ones show.

Bottom line: The original was one of the most unique flavor entries in the hot sauce world and this one builds on that and pushes it to new heights. Absolute must for chileheads, especially those prone to fruit-based sweet hots.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 3
       Flavor: 9
       Flexibility: 7
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Yampa Valley Purple Blaze Hot Sauce Review

Yampa Valley Sauce Company Purple Blaze

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ziPFcAUdWs

Another sort of random, stumble-upon find, of another sauce company both from Colorado and whom I've never heard of before. I have a bit of a partiality to sweet-hots, particularly fruit-based sweet hots, and when they also feature the darker berries, I'm usually intrigued. Even if the sauces aren't particularly wonderful, and there are definitely times when they are not, such as here, if the blueberry is forceful enough, those sauces can often be resurrected into wonderful breakfast concoctions with just a splash or so of a nice, pure maple syrup.

For this one, it's a rather watery sauce overall, but the flavors of blueberry, black pepper, and the Habanero, are fairly prominent. A lot of the time, the peppers will get lost in the mix, but not here. The down side to this, and to fruit-based sauces generally, is that if the fruit is unripe, you can often get a sour quality to the resulting sauce.This is more or less what we have here, as this is one of the sourer sauces I've come across, unpleasantly so. I suspect this is a function of the fruit being sour to begin with, the lack of additional sugar in the sauce to compensate, and the addition of the vinegar. Frankly, this sauce is not one I will consider using by itself, as that aspect is so dominant. It makes me rather strongly wonder if this batch was tasted prior to bottling, as it's hard for me to imagine this end flavor being intentional.

Fortunately, it can be salvaged neatly with the aforementioned maple syrup (or another liquid sweetener, I'd hazard), and then you get those wonderful flavors coming through without the brutal sour aspect, but by itself, it is rather unpalatable. Of course, as always, the rating below is reflective of the sauce by itself out of the bottle, not after I've fixed it. Heat-wise, the Habanero is perhaps there more as a flavoring element, as this is decidedly a not very hot sauce.

Bottom line: The good news here is that this can be fashioned into a pretty solid sauce with the aforementioned additions, but the down side here is that it has to be, as it is borderline inedible otherwise.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 1

Braswell's Good And Evil Hot Sauce Review

Braswell's Good And Evil

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j6OWahwSuw

This is one of he most inexpensive sauces on the entire blog. A number of times, I get commentary from people who are interested in sauces, but find them to be overly expensive to try on the off-chance that they may like it. If they find it overly hot, for instance, it will probably go to waste whereas something like a less than preferable mac & cheese or ketchup they may just resolve never to buy again and gut through what they have. I've tried to include mass market commercial sauces for this reason, even though they're not strictly either targeting nor satisfying for the chilehead crowd. This particular sauce was on sale for slightly over a dollar.

I've not heard of Braswell's before, but evidently they've been around for quite a number of years and even if I had to pitch the sauce, it's worth a shot for a dollar and change. I very nearly did pitch the sauce and indeed, this is another perpetually on the edge of me tossing it. The neck sauce had discolored notably by the time I opened it (I can't find a expiration date on it, but I've had sauces sometimes for multiple years hanging on a shelf sealed, so not super concerned about that, at least with hot sauces), so I pitched that. The smell of this sauce is ghastly, though. It may be one of the worst smelling sauces I've come across.

When it came to taste, things got a bit confused, though. This has heavy shades of orange and reminds me a bit of fruit cake, but it is rather quickly overtaken by the massive amounts of onion and garlic powder that seem to also be here.That would explain the odor, I suppose, but the flavor itself is not particularly wonderful. It's not quite bad, either, though, it's usage is probably not going to go beyond chicken strips. I find it generally so unappetizing that I've done limited testing on it, but aside from the aforementioned strips, it has notably lowered the flavors of everything else. It both kind of needs to be by itself and have something that can meld with the savory tastes here.

I don't know what to make of this label, either. It has pirates on it and the word "Jalapeno" over the "Good" side and "Habanero" over the "Evil" side. Both the peppers are in caps, as are those two adjectives, but the peppers are using an unevenly aligned font, which looks kind of cartoonish. That is on my bottle (see pictured). On the website, it is just "GOOD and EVIL." Habanero powder and Cayenne powder, the two elements supposedly "bringing the heat" are the two very last ingredients in this, so heat is rather minimal. 

Bottom line: Somewhat of a mess of a sauce that seems firmly intent on testing my slogan about life being too short for bad sauces. It's not quite enough bad to trigger it, but it's not particularly good either.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Angry Goat Hot Cock Hot Sauce Review

Angry Goat Pepper Co. Hot Cock

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN1EcqAifXY

Well, can't get too far into this without mentioning the fun name..."cock sauce" is, of course, how sriracha was referred to colloquially for quite some time, referring to the rooster adorning the various bottles and this one indeed does have a rooster on the label as well. We shall take their meaning to be that and only that. Ahem. *cough*

Anyway, that aside, we continue to see the usage of animals on the labels and perhaps as inspiration, to a degree, for the various sauces, for the most part. Not all of their sauces do that, of course, but quite a few follow that motif. This is part of their "Forbidden Series," which I've been able to find little to no other information on, other than that another sauce called "Sweaty Beaver" is also a part of it. Perhaps this is meant to reference their more risque-named offerings.

In any case, what we have here seems a fascinating idea, namely, to take every single superhot variation you can find, in the color yellow, add in some yellow bells also, and run with it. This works wildly well, to be frank, on a number of levels. There are also peaches and some agave, to sweeten the deal a (very slight) bit, but generally, the flavor here is superhot, with the trademark bitterness along with the greater complexities of the Scotch Bonnet and Habanero. There are 7-Pots first, followed by the other two, then the Lemon Drop peppers as well as yellow Ghosties. The flavor of yellow bells is nice to really round things out and it gives it a somewhat nondescript general "chile pepper" flavor, though leaning more so towards the superhots.None of the peppers really asserts itself over another in terms of flavor. It is, in a lot of ways, a sauce without a distinctive flavor identity. 

This gives it a large degree of flexibility, though I frequently found myself wishing it was sweeter. Because there are no emulsifiers, this is another one that needs fairly regular and vigorous agitation or you can get radically different heat and flavor profiles with various usages. It's nice to be able to pick out peaches here and there, but it winds up being somewhat hit or miss. It's a medium thick sauce, with a lot of chunks, most of which wind up being grit from either the skin or the seeds, which I frankly would have preferred to be without. 

Like most of the rest of the Angry Goat sauces, I also find this one to be rather inventive, which is something I'm always happy to see. The label, as with many of their other ones, is also kind of bad. One part of note is that it rates heat here as 11/10, which is definitely not where I would put it. Initially, there is a lot of the flavor notes of superhots, but as with most 7-Pot Primo sauces, this one starts low and builds. Again, like some of those other 7-Pot sauces, this can get a lot of superhot intensity going, but even at its peak, it won't challenge too many chileheads. That intensity, though, and the levels with continued usage makes this one better reserved strictly for chileheads. I can't imagine too many normies digging this one.

Bottom line: Another excellent entry from one of my favorite sauce companies, with another unique and novel approach to an end product. If you're looking for a far more pepper forward superhot sauce, this is well worth a go.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 7

Louisiana Double Barrel Hot Sauce Review

Louisiana Double Barrel

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRWfMUt8evQ

The regular Louisiana hot sauce is more or less a pretty average, run of the mill, Louisiana-style Cayenne-based hot sauce. It's not one of the better ones, for me, and more one I'd look to using in a pinch, but it's not bad, either. It's just kind of there, treading along in the middle. It's the kind of sauce you'd say, "it's fine," about and leave it at that. Generally, you get a lot of it for not a whole bunch of money and while it's not great, you could definitely do a lot worse.

Here, we see them jumping on the liquor in hot sauce trend, which I've not found a lot of examples of that I think are exactly wonderful. So, not content to just ferment the mash in bourbon barrels, they also throw in some bourbon as well. It doesn't really read like that, though. You can definitely get the sense that there is some hard liquor flavored presence, but it doesn't really overshadow the sauce. It adds a slight new dimension, but not really enough to make an impression one way or the other. The larger issue for me is that this variation is notably far saltier than the regular stuff, which I find kind of unpleasant. It won't prevent me from using it or anything, just a bit of nuisance. 

There's no change to the cost for this "bold" new direction of theirs, just I suppose if you want to have a slight flavor variation to your Louisiana-style sauce. It is also a bit thicker than normal and noticeably thicker than most other Louisiana-style, which I'd guess is some reduction, possibly due to trying to cook any residual alcohol off. That may also be why the salt is heightened somewhat. Given that Cayenne is the main pepper driver, heat here is fairly minimal.

Bottom line: A long-established hot sauce company takes a stab at jumping on the trend of liquor, resulting in a sauce that, like all their others, is...fine.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Jersey Barnfire Strawberry Scorpion Hot Sauce Review

Jersey Barnfire Strawberry Scorpion

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlKHg7t9VWA

We're back again with another dessert sauce, after quite some time of me observing that they're fairly rare, at least by my accounting, and we're back again with another strawberry sauce (I did the Sea Monster Danger Berry earlier in the year here on this very blog, as well as including it in a July 4 special FOH video posting). Strawberry, berries in general, seem to work really well with hot peppers, and I think it's partly because strawberries are almost never sufficiently sweet on their own in sauces and baked goodies. So, naturally, we see the addition of sugar, just to get to the appropriate strawberry impact, which very nicely pairs with peppers, in particular superhots. 

I suppose it's natural to compare this to the Danger Berry and there are a few differences. The flavor profile of both is mainly the same, sort of that strawberry punch you might get from a high quality syrup or possibly a nice salad dressing utilizing it, but here, we have Scorpions instead of Habanero powder, as was used in the Danger Berry. This works out much better, as a lot of the bitterness of the concentrated form is absent. Indeed, even much of the floral nature of the Scorpions is significantly muted. Heat is definitely a lot more prominent here, given the Scorpions, and the coloration is radically different. This one is a bit more milky and less vibrant, whereas the Danger Berry is highly reminiscent of something like Torani. 

It's hard to say which is sweeter, given how pronounced the bitterness in the Danger Berry becomes the more you use it, whereas this one, regardless of how heavy your pour hand, that never really comes into play, though it will definitely start to pack much more of a heat wallop. Indeed, this one is probably over the dividing line of what non-chileheads will find enjoyable. I'd put it at slightly over a 3, for me, but not quite all the way to a 4...I may experiment further to see how much more it will build, though, and will update as necessary. 

This sauce is by far the better-tasting of the two, even if the coloration is a bit off-putting, and it's one of those sauces that I tried to find more things to use it on. They mention salads and strawberries work well in those. It's a bit too cold for me to really consider salads right now, but if I was inclined or picked one of those up from Wendy's, I could definitely see the appeal. It's ok on chicken strips, but I'm not a fan enough of strawberries really enough for that. On grilled pork, it's fantastic and berry hot sauce, in general, I find an absolute treat on burgers. Where this really shines, though, of course, is desserts, and it's one of the few, for me, anyway, sauces that works exceedingly well on ice cream. 

Bottom line: Another excellent entry from Jersey Barnfire, a company that, aside from one slight misstep, continues to impress.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7