Karma Funken Hot Hot Sauce Review

Karma Funken Hot

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vta0MXGFISs

Because this is the base for the Karma Scorpion Disco, much of what I said in that review will apply here as well and I have done the rare thing, for this blog, to directly link to it as that review should be read first to get a more rounded and comprehensive view.

For this sauce, it is a fairly thick, somewhat sludgy sauce, both chunky, though somewhat free-flowing. The main flavors are the Chocolate Habaneros and the Brown 7-Pots, which lends a very distinct peppery vibe. Those, along with sugar, are the main flavor components and there are brief flash bits of bittery superhot in amidst what is otherwise a pretty nice melding with the sugar. Things like the lime, garlic, and vinegar, don't really show up distinctly in the flavor profile, though there are little traces here and there. The applications are generally the same between the two sauces, though this sauce doesn't need to have stronger flavors to play off of, whereas that is where the Scorpion Disco does best.

The main differences with the Scorpion Disco come in color, flavor, and heat level. We'll start in order. Color-wise, this one is a deeper, richer brown tone, slightly reminiscent of a mole by way of a chili jam, whereas the Scorpion Disco is much redder. Flavor-wise, gone entirely is the Scorpion, which leaves a very nice composite of flavors without the flowery notes and of course, with the Scorpions and Ghosties gone, the heat level is definitely considerably lower, probably right around half. Given that the heat is from a couple of building peppers, this can take a little bit to get there as well. This sauce is right on the dividing line of where I think chileheads and non-chileheads separate, with this being more on the chilehead side. 

Bottom line: It's no mean trick to make an excellently flavored-sauce, then scale it up, but they did it and with this strong of a base, it probably made the task somewhat easier. Very nice sweet-hot sauce, with a very nice build to the heat. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

Cholula Reserva Tequila & Lime Hot Sauce Review

Cholula Reserva Tequila & Lime

Note: Support video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3R2FHbazeU

The temptation is so strong to say something along the lines of "never been a fan of tequila or lime and then I had the sauce and what the Hell? Now I love both," as I believe there is some sort of meme or something along those lines floating around out there to that effect, but I will refrain. Definitely went through my mind, though. To be clear, I don't dislike lime particularly. It can be used to great effect when done correctly, which is sadly somewhat seldom. The fake lime I like even less and good uses are even more seldom, though I think that might be what's in this. To be sure, the lime is fairly subtle, much more an accent than anything, despite being a part of the name.

Another temptation might be to look at this sauce and figure it as basically Cholula Original, with added elements of the Tequila and Lime, though that would not be a correct assessment. The tequila is very forward here and I admittedly am no connoisseur, but I'm not sure I've had the agave tequila before. Agave is yet another hit and miss ingredient for me, but I may have been doing myself a disservice as I quite like the effect they gathered here with the tequila. That sort of "icky" tequila flavor that the brown stuff tends to have is entirely absent and instead is a very light, effervescent, lively sauce...that bears almost no resemblance at all to the Original.

This is both a good and a gutsy thing. Cholula, despite being perhaps the main Mexican style sauce that comes to mind for folks, doesn't need to step out like this. They could just do endless spinoffs of their outstanding Original sauce and call it a day, but both with this and the Sweet Habanero (reviewed elsewhere here), they instead take steps to be bold and refreshing, coming up with new taste concoctions well removed from the flavor of the Original. I'm quite a fan of the experimental and adventurous and I commend them for this.

As for this, we do have a bit of an alcohol hit (don't usually like booze in sauces, again, because it's rarely done well), but it works very nicely with the peppers, the salt, and a backend hint of the lime. One of the suggestions on the website is to use it in drinks and I think that might be the actual intended usage, as it would work extremely well in a variety of drinks where one might be tempted to add a hot sauce. They also suggested enchiladas, which calls to mind, for me, the idea of cheese and lime, which...ummm...not going to be trying.

When paired with foods, it lets off the gas a bit. It definitely wants to be the star, so if you put it with another food that has its own strong flavoring, it tends to clash. Meanwhile, it does need at least somewhat of a foil to play against or results are similarly diminished, just in different fashion. For me, on seafood and chicken was where it worked best. I might play around with it more on pork, as I think it may work there also, but it definitely is nowhere near accessible enough to function as a table sauce, as the Original also does frequently.

Heat-wise, this is pretty low. Because the alcohol is "live" and there is enough in there to be noticed, since alcohol tags the TRPV1 receptors in the same way as does capcaisin, it can be a bit difficult to place an actual heat level attendant to the peppers. I've decided to call it a 1 and leave it at that, but no one is going to be challenged by this, or any other, in the Cholula lineup.

Bottom line: Another entry from Cholula taking a wild leap into the unknown with a new sauce and this one is unexpectedly brilliant and phenomenal. It definitely is not highly flexible, but what it works on, it opens up a whole new flavor world. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Da Bomb Evolution Hot Sauce Review

Da Bomb Evolution

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mifUWX3Ugtc

It's been no secret, in the annals of this blog, that I'm not much of a fan of the Original Juan/Spicin Foods line-up, which tend to overly rely on extracts for heat, which mars otherwise potentially pretty tasty concoctions (though I did notice the Ghost Pepper sauce from Da Bomb does not contain extract, so I may try that at some point, but it's not especially high on my list). One of the more notorious offenders in the line-up is Da Bomb Beyond Insanity (reviewed elsewhere here), confusingly popularized largely due to the insistence of one Sean Evans to put his guests through one of the more awful-tasting sauces available and possibly the worst on the entire show.

Because of the extract being non-natural, Heatonist declined to carry that fabled sauce in their stores. With the main complaint being the noxious flavor, simply removing the extract and maybe adding in a super hot would seem like an easy fix. This is, actually, how this sauce was initially portrayed, but that's not what they did. No, they took the noxious flavoring of extract and replaced it with the nearly overbearing flowery tones of Scorpions. This reminds me quite a bit of the Hot Ones Eye Of The Scorpion hot sauce (also reviewed elsewhere here), which was so overpowering that I could not bear to keep it around long enough to use the entire bottle. That will actually probably be the case with this one. 

I will stop short of saying it's the same sauce as Eye Of The Scorpion, despite sharing a number of ingredients. This one has a much longer ingredient list panel, with things such as paprika, turmeric, minced garlic, sugar, lemon, mint(?!), and cilantro, all of which get drowned out nearly immediately by the floral notes. If you continue on with this sauce, you can sometimes pick out little hints of garlic, since there is also garlic powder as well, but this is overwhelmingly a very Scorpion pepper flavored sauce. So, it falls down to the equation of how much you like those floral notes. I'm not particularly a fan, so this sauce is a pretty hard miss for me.

To compare further, since Heatonist really wants to pretend this sauce is actually on the show (it's not) and they (a bit deceptively, in my opinion) offer it as a 1:1 for the #8 slot, this is a somewhat hotter sauce than the Beyond Insanity and very much for chileheads only. The main issue with Beyond Insanity is the hideous flavor and not so much the heat. With the extract, it ramps up immediately to the heat level and stays there. This one will keep building and chasing through the floral and bitter superhot notes of a not very good-tasting pepper is not really worth the grace notes of the other ingredients for me. I can't say what it pairs well with, as I strongly find it ruins most food I use it on, by overpowering it, of course, and I always wish I had something else. Good on them for subbing an actual pepper in favor of an extract, but I'm still not convinced this company is interested in making good sauces, but rather to rely on stunt or novelty for their base.

Bottom line: Is this better than Beyond Insanity? Yes, but how much directly depends on how much you like the flavor of Scorpion peppers.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 6
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 2

High Desert Reaper's Fuzzy Navel Hot Sauce Review

High Desert Reaper's Fuzzy Navel

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db9b__rWl5s

Story time, a bit...skip ahead to the third paragraph if you want just the discussion on the sauce and not extraneous elements such as my shopping habits and label design. Ok, for years, like many, many folks first entering the arena of buying hot sauces that are beyond whatever happens to inhabit the shelves of either a grocery store or mass market retailer, I looked at sauces more or less as impulse buys, meaning that I would peruse the labels and whatever grabbed me would be what I'd reach for and start checking it out (I also did this, for a while, with records and CDs) for purchase. However, after having to bin more than a few sauces unopened because they had onions (I formerly had a couple pals who did not have a similar intolerance that would wind up getting those sauces but one I lost track of when my cell crashed and the other has bowed out because he finds it aggravates his stomach too much), which is, at minimum, a waste of money (though this was/is preferable to being sick from ingesting that ingredient). So, I made sure to read the labels before buying, which worked for a while, until my eyesight began to slide a bit with age. Rather than standing in the store with my phone trying to use the onboard camera to blow up the ingredient panel, which only worked some of the time, I started researching hot sauces for a buy list, a list which was safe from that dreaded component, which I would make prior to heading out.

I saw High Desert on the hallowed shelves of Roger's more than a few times, knew they were somewhat local (Arizona, but it's at least regional...the states touch, after all), but the label design is such that all of them looked identical to one another, with the only differentiation being the sauce name on the banner towards the bottom of the bottle. At times, I couldn't quite make out the ingredients entirely, but it seemed that I saw onions a few times too many and backburnered the company to research at some later point. Then, as usual with me, I got excited by other stuff and forgot about returning to that burner entirely. So, this is the long and short of why I'm overdue to the party for this company.

With this my first introduction to their sauces, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. There seemed a bit of chunkiness to the sauce and I could see through the glass of the bottle, quite a few black specks. This could be ground black pepper, I guessed, though that did not appear on the ingredient label. A mystery abounded and once I finally cracked this open, expecting somewhat of the usual peach forward fruit-based sweet-hot style sauce I've had a number of times on this blog (see TOC for more of those), I was quite shocked at the actual flavor profile. It was so profound, in fact, that I hopped online to try to get more information.

The black flecks, as it were, came from the fire-roasted yellow bell peppers (and maybe carrots, hard to tell from the wording), which were leading the charge on the ingredient panel, and which contributed to a very vegetable-forward and utterly delicious end result. The sauce name is somewhat of a misnomer. While there are peaches in this, they appear only as slight grace notes, shouted down by the much more fervent choir of the aforementioned vegetables, the Reapers, and the orange zest also in this. They do contribute a general sweetness, along with the agave, but are not at all prominent. The fuzzy navel drink is equal parts peach schnapps and orange juice and if you're expecting that flavor combination here, with a side of burning Reaper, which you might from the name, you'd be sorely mistaken.

This is quite a unique and dare I say, innovative, flavor for a sauce and it's one that I've quite enjoyed trying to plumb the depths of on different foods. It works extremely well with most meats, but because it is a composite of many different flavors to create a somewhat unified whole, I don't find it meshes well with food generally. The more this sauce can be the star, the better, and when certain flavors are nullified, it gets into diminishing flavor returns a bit, on the sauce side, anyway. 

The company calls the heat level the "mild-ish side of hot" and I think that's about right. It will definitely push non-chileheads and comes on with an intense blast endemic of the Reapers, but it peaks at a fairly low level. It's encased in such a tasty sauce that those who are inclined to become future chileheads may wind up happily continuing on because of the flavor notes and thus find themselves also enmeshed with the burn...and who knows, perhaps may even seek more, bigger and brighter. 

Bottom line: Utterly fantastic sauce, with an outstanding lightness, yet containing a fairly complex flavor. I can think of no other sauce quite like it and this is definitely one which I have no reservation calling a must.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

13 Stars Nuclear Option Hot Sauce Review

13 Stars Nuclear Option

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=EPvEstxiYAs

This is, I believe, the very first sauce I've had from a company where the name started with a number rather than a letter and the first (and maybe only) from this company. I say only not because of a bad experience with this sauce, quite the contrary, but because the other ones I looked at all had onions in them, which is a disqualifier. This company is another in the sort of veteran-owned and supporting (though this one includes first responders also) "patriotic," for lack of better term, companies in the spicy food space, with the name referring, unless I miss my guess, to the original colonies that formed the USA. 

That aside, what we have here is an interesting approach to superhots. Both the Ghost and Reaper appear, but the main flavors are the Habanero and red bell peppers, along with a bit of astringency from the vinegar. That it is the first ingredient, but doesn't interfere with the other flavors reading through, which is a neat bit of sauce sorcery. The bitterness of the superhots, along with some very nice heat, certainly enough to put it in a chilehead-only category, come roaring in hard on the heels, but definitely this showcases that Habaneros can be used to good and tasty effect...at least in the right hands.

This is an interesting consistency in that it seems fairly watery, but there's enough pulp in there to stick reasonably well. It's almost an odd occupation of territory both of sauces like Blair's Pure Death (reviewed elsewhere here) and a Louisiana-style sauce, but is somewhat more flexible than the latter category, while the color and some of the ingredients remind me of the former.Flavor-wise, though, it is unlike either. 

For me, the runniness and the superhot bitter effect is enough that it cuts down somewhat on flexibility, but even if oversaucing and getting a mouthful of heat more than anticipated or desired, it is flavorful enough that it doesn't diminish to the point of something not being edible. It does nicely with heavier cream or cheese-based sauce, excels on nearly any meat you can throw at it, but trips up a bit in places where it needs to blend in. It is pretty adept at meshing with flavors, when it has room to do it, but it generally needs to be a food that can accommodate a looser sauce.

Bottom line: All in all, this is a very solid sauce, chileheads only heat level, and with a couple of minor tweaks, could definitely wind up being one of the better entries from any company in this space.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7