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