Jersey Barnfire Sweet & Spicy Thai Chili Sauce Review

Jersey Barnfire Sweet & Spicy Thai Chili

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=OH9_MR02w9g

I struggled a bit with whether or not to do a written review for this, given the whole "hot sauce only" nature of the blog, buuuuut, even unspecified directly, the intent is clearly a hot sauce. Chili sauces in general are hot sauces and there have been a number that have also utilized pepper sauce. So, a little line-blurring comes with the territory, but things that are overtly not hot sauces, such as mustards and unrelated condiments, unless those are specified as meant by the company to enter the hot sauce space (often without regard to whether they actually belong there), those are excluded.

Anyway, as to this one, Jersey Barnfire is going to wind up on my favorite sauce makers list, if they're not careful and they keep churning out gems like this. Thai Chili sauce and Asian spicy condiments in general were things that were one of the major delights of my chilehead odyssey and it was to my endless delight when I discovered they were also rather readily available in Asian markets, assuming you're in a market large enough for one of those. It seems a lot of Asian restaurants, particularly Thai restaurants, often have a house version of this style of sauce and it is a time-honored and very classic flavoring system, which also extends beyond just Asian food, in terms of flexibility. Indeed, this style of sauce, as I recall, had something to do with Huy Fong and his wonderful variation of sriracha, which one could argue took the world by storm.

For this one, the usual suspects, your vinegar, garlic, ginger, and sugar, are all there, but when we get down to the chilis, here, Jersey Barnfire goes for their own spin, a chilehead take on a classic, if you will. Gone are the crushed red cayenne or Jalapeno peppers, perhaps spiked with Thai chiles, and replacing them are superhots, both Moruga Scorpion and 7-Pot Primos, the latter of which I'm happily seeing show up more and more. That they were able to nail the sauce so closely while using superhots is something of a marvel and they have created a sauce that is a delight. It is more orangey than red, which is a bit of a departure, fitting in nicely with the aforementioned departure, but it definitely fits a pretty specific niche for those chileheads who love this style of sauce, but find nearly all of the other ones available commercially wanting in the heat department.

Speaking of that, Primos tend to be another pepper that build over time and while there is a flash of superhot heat from the Scorpions, as this goes on, it burns to a very nice smolder. This isn't burn your mouth off with heat at the expense of flavor, as the flavor is quite comparable to others of this type, just with a much, much punchier nature. The mouth feel is of particular note as this sauce is quite silky, another part of what is an absolute pleasure. 

Bottom line: This may be an infrequently-used style of sauce for chileheads, but also one that is good to keep on hand and it would have hard to find a more tailored version than this.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 7

Jersey Girl Bee Sweet Hot Sauce Review

Jersey Girl Bee Sweet

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

The majority of hot sauces that feature or include honey in their ingredients (and sometimes in the sauce name) often neatly manage to skirt the appeal of that ingredient by muting it in the overall flavor profile to the point that any other sweetener could have been used. Perhaps that aspect is playing into the rise of so-called hot honeys we've seen over the past year and change, a trend I find a touch on the puzzling side, given how hard of a time honeybees have been having over the past decade or so. Regardless, here we have a sauce where not only is the honey flavor readily available, but it also is made the focus in this rather well-crafted gem. 

I honestly kind of find this sauce fascinating, as there's a respectable amount of heat as well, thanks to an unnamed 7-pepper blend that the website indicates to contain Ghost, Scorpion, Habanero, and something called Cherry B's, which I'm admittedly not familiar with by that name. The red flakes in the sauce also lead me to wonder if they started with a dried pepper blend, especially given that the color is not particularly reminiscent of most hot sauces. The taste is both familiar and unique, with honey and vinegar being the two main elements, but things such as sweet potatoes, lime, and tomatoes listed in the ingredients, but not really showing up in the flavor individually (I suspect the tomato is probably more for color than anything else). The garlic will, from time to time, but not strongly. It is definitely a composite of the various ingredients, with honey being the focal point. 

The suggestions for usage on the website both made me feel a bit dated (I have not, nor will I ever, consume avocado toast, which is a relatively recent "thing") and curious (air-popped popcorn??!!), but the idea of pulled pork or chicken is sound. Indeed, on lighter meats generally, this is quite phenomenal. I also used it to very nice effect on pizza and generally anywhere a bit of a sweet would go well, such as certain Asian foods.. If I do have a complaint, it's that this sauce is way too loose for my liking. It clearly is taking pains to be a hot sauce, rather than a hot honey, but the sauce aspect it has chosen to mimic is the watery nature of Louisiana-style sauces (though this would not be something I would attempt on creamy sauced foods). This works fine for things like pulled pork or chicken, but is rather a nuisance on pizza, for instance, where the sauce has no real chance to either grab or soak in. Having spilled this on my fingers a few times during testing, I can say it is not anywhere near as sticky as one would suspect, given the components, which makes it somewhat of a challenge to use on things like pizza, the toppings of which it struggles a bit to grip (this is also why I don't use Louisiana-style on pizza). It does come with a restrictor cap, but the issue there comes with honey itself, which tends to be somewhat of a more subtle flavor and with a restrictor cap limiting the sauce, this also tends to limit the impact of the sauces flavor, so it's a very fine-lined delicate balancing act between getting enough to enjoy the flavor of this sauce, which is really quite nice, and getting so much that it runs and pools on the plate.

Bottom line: Very pleasant surprise here with a sauce that does a great job of keeping honey as the focal point, while clearly being, albeit a very runny one, a hot sauce at heart. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

Doc's Fusion Fuel Hot Sauce Review

Sauced & Glazed Doc's Fusion Fuel

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZXMqmkyp7k

Sauces like this tend to make me nervous. We have a shiny chrome label and a heavy marketing theme that seems to want to straddle the line as close as possible without getting an actual lawsuit from Universal Pictures over one of their more profitable motion picture franchises. So, we see references to 88 mph, the tag that this sauce was created with 1.21GW of (electrical) power, which is well over a billion watts, and it would need to be a rather large, voluminous kitchen to use that much electricity. The idea of it being fusion fuel I suppose works well enough, as he has a Mr. Fusion on the back of the vehicle to replace a need to chase down lightning bolts, a practice which would be inconsistent at best. There is also the tagline of "Great Scott, it's hot," which is both a direct reference to a phrase from a character in those films played by Christopher Lloyd, and is a statement which is decidedly false. Finally, in addition to all that line-straddling, there is also the flavor of the sauce itself, which hovers perilously close to being a barbeque sauce moreso than a hot sauce.

It is definitely a hot sauce. It does share many ingredients with barbeque sauce and a certain similarity in flavor profile, but the main part that tends to set barbeque sauces apart from hot sauces, even here, is the sugar content. While there is some here, this is not a primarily sweet sauce and tends more, if anything, towards the bitter. The flavor reads much more like a hot sauce, despite a lot of similar ingredients, which makes it a bit on the unfavorable side for the grill. We are dealing with Habaneros, so there isn't a great amount of heat here, though it can build a touch on the back end. The smokiness is a bit on the subtle side when used with food and can get somewhat lost, depending on usage. 

Speaking of that usage, this can fairly readily be used almost exactly as one would a barbeque sauce, so it's great on things like burgers and chicken. As I said, it doesn't have enough sugar content to be my preference on the grill, but you could readily combine it with an actual barbeque sauce to ratchet that up a few notches and have something probably pretty solid. This also is somewhat of a double-edged sword, though, as the sauce works much less well in places where you wouldn't use a barbeque sauce and in those applications, I found this to be a bit jarring. Barbeque sauce is a fairly big, bold, pronounced flavor and for a hot sauce to follow suit, it needs more of a neutral base, such as those foods I mentioned, so as not to compete with the thing you're using it on.

Bottom line: Not quite a novelty sauce, but a rather interesting approach to gain attention by the company, which wouldn't matter if the sauce wasn't good This one is...in the right setting.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Murder Hornet Honey Bourbon Hot Sauce Review

Murder Hornet Honey Bourbon

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=PrlF0ChGL3w

I must admit to a certain excitement when I heard about this sauce, but honestly, I'm now thinking I should know better. Not about Murder Hornet, per se, but when I see hard liquor that far forward, so as to be in the sauce's name, I should really turn that excitement down a bit. What it seems like that's going to mean is that I'm going to be in for a raw booze hit. This is certainly not a trashy mess along the lines of what the Swampdragon (reviewed elsewhere here) was; there clearly is an attempt to make a good sauce, but the bourbon is so high forward in things that as soon as I opened the bottle and got the waft of bourbon, a smell of which I am perhaps innately familiar, I knew instantly it was going to be that hit.

It was not for lack of agitation. I shook this sauce repeatedly, but that whole oil and water thing not mixing and all. The bourbon came to the taste fore every time and I got the bite of liquor. Once that dialed down and I could get a taste of the sauce, there is some substance there, but one has to get through the shot of liquor first. I realize it's getting to be a trendy thing, to dump booze in one's hot sauce and apparently call it a day, but there's a reason that flambe' exists and that is to burn off the raw alcohol part of it, leaving the flavor behind. While not as bad as the aforementioned really bad sauce, it is largely unusable to me as an actual sauce, as I dislike the idea of liquor on my food. 

So, I figured I'd take a page from a chef and try to cook off part of it. One of my favorite grilling sauces ever (CaJohn's BICH, also reviewed elsewhere here) has a bourbon component, albeit a well-executed one, and it's grilling season, so I headed out to the grill to bathe some chicken in the sauce. What I found was a much nicer sauce. There was the bourbon tones, with none of that rawness, along with a sweetness from the brown sugar, a nice touch of heat from the Habaneros (this is not a particularly hot sauce), a kiss of garlic, and a vaguely Asian attribute, which is the sesame oil. Everything else, though, was largely lost, in part because subtler flavors like honey and black garlic are going to always really struggle to compete with bourbon. It is strong enough even to override the vinegar and should have been way back in the list of ingredients or reduced down a bit prior to bottling to get some of that aspect out. So, as a grill sauce, it is mostly serviceable. As a hot sauce, not so much.

Bottom line: Another in a line of sauces with liquor as a component, but way too far forward in the flavor profile and rather raw at that. There could be a good sauce here, definitely potential, but execution here leaves a lot to be desired.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Flavor & Fire Black Garlic Mushroom Hot Sauce Review

Flavor & Fire Black Garlic Mushroom

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=BH7V0Xz4IU4

It dawned on me, as I unboxed this bottle, that I had not heard of Flavor & Fire before, but also that they were responsible for the Clamlube and Madstone lines, the former of which I'd heard of for years but never quite gotten around to trying. This was largely because with that name, it struck me as more of a novelty brand. While I will and do partake of those occasionally, as a rule, my interest there is low. Those sauces often turn out to be not the main selling point, with the "cleverly" worded label or often some shot at a political figure or promotion of a state or sports team, to be the main draw. That makes them more in line with collectible memorabilia, which I generally also have exceedingly low interest in. Even after nearly 10 years of this blog and years before that as a chilehead, one can't know everything (although if anyone does, it's probably Roger), but still I kick myself a bit for not being more familiar with this company, who has a veritable cornucopia of products. I'm definitely adding them to the list of companies bearing further future investigation.

As for this sauce, when I first saw the word mushroom on it, the very first thing that came to mind was a brown gravy. Brown gravy, of course, is synonymous with things like poutine, moco loco, accompaniment for roast meats, particularly the darker variants of beef, pot roast, etc. Often garlic will be a part of that, but black garlic, one of the current trendy darling ingredients in the hot sauce world, also shows up, to add a far stronger umami punch to things. Indeed, this is really where this sauce is aimed, more than anything else. This brings us a bit to a discussion of soups, particularly ramen. Normally, this would be where I'd consider something like this best suited, as umami and ramen are a great combination. However, while this sauce is high in umami, it is not high in what I consider one of the main components of a hot sauce, which is actual chile flavor. This is a bit surprising, since the Habanero-Jalapeno puree that makes up the chili component to this is the second ingredient. Additionally, there is tamari and a touch of molasses, to add more richness and depth of flavor, but all of that moves further away from the actual chili flavor

Heat here is not really a consideration, with it listed as mild/medium, a designation I presume intended to try and cover both chileheads and non-chileheads alike. Label is indicating 2 out of 5 for heat, which is definitely far off from what I would consider correct, but the punch is definitely here. It is more of a slower, accumulated burn, as one would expect, but frankly, the read here is more like a spicier steak sauce, if I had to put it in comparison to something, rather than a hot sauce. Shiitake mushrooms are one of my favorites and they're used to great effect here in combination with the Portobello, tempering nicely the flavor of those larger ones that can often be overbearing. This is a very well crafted and frankly delicious sauce, in its somewhat narrow and limited scope, with the darker the meat the better it works. I found it somewhat jarring on chicken and the label itself suggests beef, pork, and veggie dishes as to where it will work best and I quite agree with that.

Bottom line: We don't always see a lot of hot sauces targeted specifically towards beef, so this one stands out in that regard. Thinking of it more as a steak sauce or something that would work well either as or in a brown gravy rather than as what we normally think of as a hot sauce seems more the move here.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 5

Silk City Somewhere In Vermont Hot Sauce Review

Silk City Somewhere In Vermont

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x5v8RNMjWM

Getting close to the end of the complement of Silk City sauces I picked up earlier in the year (I see there are a few new sauces, so may need to re-up soon), with this one being lower on the radar for a couple of reasons. The first is that I couldn't quite determine exactly which peppers are in this "mild" blend, but obvious guesses would be Habanero (given the carrots), Jalapeno, maybe Serrano or Cayenne also. I've had a lot of milder sauces this year, so the other sauces were of greater interest. I do kind of find an ingredient listing with "pepper blend" to be a bit of a cheat, though. Much as I like this company and many of its sauces, I would be remiss not to note that their labels are decided not great in terms of ingredient listings and the website is badly in need of revamping.

As to this, I figured it was another of the Habanero-carrot variants that were all the rage several years ago, but still crop up from time to time. The prevailing thought was that carrots were sweet enough to add that note to the flavoring, beyond complementing the Habanero, but while there may be some residual sweetness to carrots generally, I did not find that to be the case most of the time in the sauces. Root vegetables tends to have a very specific mouth feel, a slight graininess, when used in sauces and this is no exception. The pulpiness here is highly reminiscent of pureed carrot. Wisely, apples were chosen to add some sweetness, but I could have used a bit more of that. There is at least a nod to the Habanero-carrot flavor combination, which is a nice touch, but the head is, as noted, very moderate here and it reinforces the carrot puree idea (this would be outstanding baked into a carrot cake, btw. I'm not a baker and won't be trying this, but any of you who are...).

Back in another life, when I was a juicer (as in making juices with a Juiceman juice-extracting device), carrot and apple were two of the main ingredients in my case (the other being celery), so that combination is certainly a tried and true one. When the sauce kept separating, and the juice moved away from the pulpier material, I was somewhat brought back to that time. This is not a sauce that will hold together, even with endless agitation, so separation is going to be part of the bargain. There is also a very "fresh" feel to this sauce, which is an aspect of these sauces generally. It's a bit hard to call this an actual hot sauce, though, for all that, which is also another part of this year on the blog, coming across things that are really pushing the line of being legitimate hot sauce, but there is both enough pepper flavor and heat to work. That is perhaps another factor leading me to think there are probably Habaneros at work here -- the heat, though never more than low, will build up a bit in time, with the delayed mechanism famous to that pepper.

Bottom line: A sauce I wanted to like more than I did, it is still quite good-tasting and refreshing, but also a bit too far removed from what I would like to have in a hot sauce.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Hot Ones Constrictor Hot Sauce Review

The Hot Ones Constrictor

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VLkw4I-e24

This is another sauce that was evidently devised from the thoroughly wicked mind of "Smokin'" Ed Currie for The Hot Ones game show and which has never appeared on the actual Hot Ones show. It is also the last of the sauces I got from the 3-pack as a birthday gift in 2020 and also has been sitting in my fridge for the better part of the last 6 weeks or so, which is an unusually long time for me to wait to review something, even during the lulls of earlier years, but definitely in comparison to recently. Partly, this was a result of more battles with my stupid fucking tooth, which very unkindly broke the day before I was set to leave for my Albuquerque trip to the Fiery Show 2022 (notes on that elsewhere in the blog), and which started really giving me fits in May. Anyway, it was only partially fixed in June and by July, was roaring back. I mention all of this mostly because I had to significantly change my diet, which moved it out of the realm of spending time with this or any other sauces on the hotter side, which naturally drove my tolerance way down.

I had most of my thoughts in order prior to those weeks, but wanted to sort of move them past gelling a bit into more of a cement, but after reuniting with the sauce, it's pretty clear that nothing has changed. This sauce is intended as a mouthful of blast furnace and that's more or less what it is. There is some suspicion it's even hotter than the Last Dab Apollo, which is possible, I suppose, but if so, it's not by a great deal. I'd put them more neck and neck, I think. I saw somewhere that it was rated 11/10 as far as heat, which is a bit further than I'd put it, but it's unquestionably hot. That is the entire point, from what I can see.

Aside from some vinegar, it has fresh Reaper pods (the idea is being tendered that there are 36 Reapers per bottle), Reaper powder, and Reaper distillate. The last two are concentrates and I've seen a lot of verbiage that the distillate is closer to a reduction than to an actual extract, which may be the case. However, all of them are forms of concentrate, which means a shift away from flavor and more towards heat. So, I suppose this is meant to be a super stepped-up Reaper sauce. 

I can't speak to it in terms of the flavor of Reapers in comparison to the sauce, as my relationship with Reapers tends to be a bit complicated. There is obviously a lot of Reaper flavor there, unquestionably, but how heavily it is skewed towards the bitter side vs. whatever is normal, I don't know. This sauce gives a smidgeon of the superhot flavor of Reapers, but none of the sweetness I've noted in other sauces shows up, instead it gives way to the bitter nearly immediately in a wave of Reaper fury. That said, I do like the flavor of this sauce somewhat more than I expected, as there is little to no floral notes hanging about. It is not a sauce I use regularly, but it is fairly neutral, which means you could readily add it to dishes, to punch them up, without compromising flavor too much. It is clearly meant as a challenge sauce, though, a heat delivery system and little else. One could, say, since you can control the amount, use this as a stepladder to acquaint yourself with Reaper heat, so as to avoid a full blown panic when you a mouthful of the blazing wrath of that pepper. In fact, one of the better uses I've found for it is to gauge my tolerance (or to build it), but I can't realistically say I would buy a sauce solely for that purpose. Given how expensive this sauce is, that pretty much puts that out of range immediately.

Bottom line: Flavor is largely out the window here in favor of heat and this is easily the hottest sauce I've had in quite some time. Chileheads only and at that, somewhat more experienced ones. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 7
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 5

Angry Goat Pepper Goat Rider Hot Sauce Review

Angry Goat Pepper Co. Goat Rider

Note: This sauce appeared on Season 13 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zug2pTOI0-s

This sauce has opened up a whole host of tangents, many of them unrelated to the sauce itself. For instance, once again it brings up exactly how a given sauce is making it onto the show. Obviously, at some point, the Heatonist web store came into the picture (around Season 4 or 5, if I had to guess) and we started to see a lot less of the mass market sauces and a lot more of the sauces they could work into (at minimum) short term selling arrangement, but how were they chosen. Sean Evans has hinted at this from time to time, saying there is some sort of tasting party with himself and the show producers, but how does a company get into that ring in the first place. Are they invited and they just send what they want? Are they building sauces specifically for the show or are they using the show to launch upcoming sauces? Is there a pay to play thing at work here, beyond the Heatonist exclusivity arrangement? It's not the first time I've wondered this and part of it is because I have come across some truly dreadful sauces by pulling from the show sauce list. I've encountered some wonderful ones also, to be fair, and once I'm fully caught up, I will do a breakdown of how the sauces (and Seasons) shook out, respectively, but it sometimes defies belief that certain sauces are either chosen or put forward as wing sauces.

That's not the case specifically with this one, as I write this (check out the 2022 Q3 Wing Thing FOH video (end of September 2022) for the answer to that), but this is a sauce that makes me wonder if I will ever come across a hot sauce company wherein everything they produced I either love or like strongly. While Angry Goat is definitely one of my favorite sauce companies and I do enjoy their experimentation, this is proof-positive that even great companies are not immune from making a bad sauce...or a horrible one, in this case. I'm not as disappointed as I feel I should be, because that is the nature of experimentation, but I am still somewhat surprised this made it to bottling. 

I suppose I should start here with the label, which is the most confusingly mess of a miasma to ever assault my eyes. The website says it is for the open road, by which I assume they mean to reference the motorcycle, but am now considering they possibly meant to pour the sauce directly onto the asphalt. The font and shadowing make most of it into a wretched blur and the red/white/blue color scheme with the title is confusing. There is also an American flag on the back and a headband on the goat, so maybe they're going for an Easy Rider vibe, but no, the wheels themselves are actually fire, which would be a reference to Marvel's Ghost Rider, except goat, but also there's Ghost peppers in here, so maybe still Ghost? Eh, whatever.

If there is one vinegar I dislike more than balsamic it is apple cider, the flavor of which I am convinced no one actually likes, but producers made some fiendishly clever advertising to make people think they should drink it like a normal beverage. This sauce has both vinegars in it, which makes a sort of unholy worst of both worlds situation. There are also two sugars in here, in the molasses and maple syrup, but neither is a challenge for the vinegar concoction, which is by far the dominant flavor. This is a pity as Cayenne and Ghost are an outstanding flavor combination, and adding smoked paprika to that should have been the chef's kiss. Instead, it is mostly lost here to the nonsense astringent forces at play. When I can get some of the rare not overpowering vinegary bites, the loveliness of the pepper flavor combination I mentioned is near-magical, but it is so few and far between that it may as well not exist. 

Heat-wise, it is very mild. The website gives it a 5, which caused me to burst into laughter when I saw it. It's doubtful the heat level here will be particularly challenging to anyone, chilehead or not. This was in the 4 slot in Season 13, which now makes me wonder if Season 13 was a relatively tame one, aside from the ringer sauces towards the end. 

Bottom line: If you like balsamic and/or apple cider vinegars a lot, what is wrong with you, but also you will probably like this sauce more than I did, as that is the majority of it. I'd put the flavor profile somewhere between vile and barely palatable and unless it is surprisingly good on wings, this will be binned after the conclusion of the aforementioned 2022 Q3 Wing Thing FOH video.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Alice Cooper Nightmare Hot Sauce Review

Alice Cooper Welcome To My Nightmare

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNuV1za4Oeo

Vanity sauces are always kind of an interesting idea to me, vanity products in general, I guess I should say. Sometimes they turn out to be excellent, such as the Iron Maiden beers or the Eddie Ojeda sauces and sometimes it's clearly more marketing than anything else. Here, I vaguely remember seeing these as something that was designed and listed under the CaJohn's name, but the press release from Alice Cooper himself right around Halloween 2020 and most of the other listings since looks a lot like the intention is to make this an actual Alice Cooper nameplate product separate from the other company entirely. The idea that Cooper took time out to devise and craft not only one sauce but an entire line of them is a bit much, though. 

Indeed, the line, with monikers borrowed from various Cooper songs, seem to share profiles with a number of other CaJohn's sauce. This one, for instance, seems a lot like the CaJohn's Serrano Lime (or possibly the Small Batch Serrano) sauce. A lot of the verbiage I've seen from Cooper speaks a bit of ret-conning things to make it seems like he had a more active hand in it, and while I'm sure he was on hand for sampling, imagining Cooper slaving away over a stove is a few bridges too far for me.

I usually don't spend a lot of time with Serranos in sauces, but enjoy the pods quite a lot. One of the major problems I tend to have with green sauces is they are nearly always, invariably, excessively astringent for me and this one is no exception. That aspect tends to intrude on the chile flavor that never seems to be quite prominent enough and here, this comes off as more sour than anything else. The formulation may have changed somewhat (I've seen different listings, which is something I find really annoying and have seen somewhat more frequently than I'd like from various manufacturers), as mine lists a Serrano mash as the start, then more vinegar, then lime juice, then chili powder, rather than the other two peppers I've seen in other ingredient listings online. With all of that, it's not super surprising how this sauce reads. It's a bit of a shame, as it really dilutes the utility of this.

Serranos are not typically particular hot and this sauce isn't really, either. It does have a bit of a punch, but more in the line of just enough to let you know it's meant to be a hot sauce. The problem with that astringency is this is a sauce, with the garlic, chili powder, and cumin, that is clearly angling itself at the Mexican style cuisine. However, with its heavy doses of garlic, it rather constrains what it will meld with. On tacos, for instance, even chicken tacos, the sourness is overpowering. I'd much rather have the chile flavor be more prominent as Serranos are a pretty good tasting pepper. This does a lot better when it's the main flavor and can just serve to flavor what's there, so things like carnitas and lighter meats solo, it does mostly ok. 

Bottom line: I realize the Cooper team wanted to use his more famous song titles (and lyrics), but the Nightmare here is a bit more of the flavor profile side than on anything else. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Mexico Lindo Chiltepin Hot Sauce Review

Mexico Lindo Chiltepin

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROdkxyauv4o

Much like the XXXtra Hot Habanero from this company (reviewed elsewhere here), this is another outstanding value in terms of cost to value. Chiltepin, along with Pequin, are a couple of my favorite peppers, in terms of flavor, and I'm always thrilled to see when they come along in a sauce. Here, we have what is essentially a mash of the Chiltepins, along with enough other seasons to point this pretty firmly as a Mexican-style sauce. More specifically, it's hard approaching what I'd consider a taco sauce, albeit one of the more delicious ones I can think of at that. This wouldn't be too far out of place at any of your favorite fast food haunts and indeed, while Mexico Lindo doesn't have an ubiquitous nature of say something like a Tapatio, the presence is more along the lines of El Yucateco in that you have to do a bit of searching, but will be rewarded.

This is a very smooth sauce and is quite flavorful, a hallmark of that particular pepper, despite being somewhat light on ingredients. Then again, this is ample demonstration that sometimes, a really good-tasting pepper is all you really need. Heat-wise, Chiltepins are fairly low on the scale of things and this isn't going to burn anyone's face off or present much of a real challenge to anyone. There is enough there to give a little bit of a "just enough to let you know it's there" sort of bump, along with a very slight build, but should fit in well for those who naturally reach for the hotter packets at the aforementioned fast food taco places. It is a slight bit on the vinegar side, however, it fits in well with any of the Mexican-style dishes readily, and is flavorful enough to go beyond that into realms such as more creamy dishes, like mac & cheese. I don't know that I'd love it too extensively elsewhere - I don't see it as being something I'd want on chicken strips or pizza or burgers, but it does extend a bit beyond just Mexican-style dishes, again, another strong nod to the flexibility of the pepper.

Bottom line: Another great entry into a very crowded market by Mexico Lindo and which is prompting me to get the other two sauces I'd done previously to re-consider those as well. This is about as sure of a thing as sauces can be, given the target cuisine it's pointed towards. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6