2K23 Q2 Update

This was easily one of the snowiest winters since I’ve lived here, which is fantastic and necessary and I’d take a few more of these. One of the side effects is that it pushed the start of grill season back somewhat. Normally, I target mid-April for this to kick off, with grill season itself generally going April - September, but this year it was into May a bit before I could kick off festivities and the first grill-out happened during a brief lull between storms, as it were...as did the second and the rest throughout May. I’ve decided to start posting some of the pictures of what I grill for 2023, so if you’re interested, check the Community Tab on my YouTube channel.

Even with posting double the FOH sauce videos I normally do in a month, still not quite caught up, so we’ll keep that going. The non-sauce content is a bit more in hand, which is largely due to me specifically trying very hard to clamp down on it a bit, as well as probably being overall just more caught up on the various offerings out there. This year has been a bit slower than last for overall blog posting, partly because I’m trying to finish off bottles and partly because in May, around Memorial Day, another broken tooth and a very sustained headache conspired to nearly wipe my appetite completely. It was the middle of June before that started to come back (still not back entirely as of yet) and obviously food plays a huge part in sauce consumption.

New for this quarter, in case you missed it, is the addition of an FOH Hot Honeys & Syrups playlist, which I made in June. Also towards the end of June, there was a bunch of new fast food menu items in the “spicy” space and I’m trying to keep things nimble enough to post them as they happen, so all of them were up pretty close to when they came out or shortly after, depending on when I heard about them...this also will make for a pretty long stretch of consecutive videos, considering the plans and scheduling I already had for the July 4 holiday.

After researching a bit on posting times for the videos, I’ve concluded that the live times are largely meaningless, as it is nearly always entirely dependent on the subject of the video. Anyway, starting July (tomorrow), I’m going back to the 9 am posting time for all content.

Finally, continuing on that front, in May, we passed 10K views for the YouTube FOH series, so a hearty thanks to everyone who’s dropped by and checked it out. Also in May, the Hot Ones Season 21 sauces dropped. I did a brief write-up on those over in the YouTube Community tab.

As I did last year for the Q2 update, time to take a look once again at the various sauces from The Hot Ones show. Out of 21 seasons, I’ve covered 11 seasons entirely, with most of the remaining ones fairly close. So, well, well over the halfway point. Given that a number of these sauces are only available via Heatonist, I might wait until the Black Friday sale this year to pick up on the ones remaining, not because of any great deals particularly, but because last year they threw in my favorite sauce of this year so far, the special edition Angry Goat, Heatonist #7, and I’m curious to see what they might come up with for this sale...also, I pretty much have to go there anyway, as they are the sole source for some of the remaining sauces, so might as well pack in as much as I can for that buy, which will cover most of the remaining seasons.

Anyway, the numbers...the seasons with sauces outstanding are:

Season 5 - 1 remaining
Season 9 - 2 remaining
Season 10 - 1 remaining
Season 11 - 3 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 12 - 3 remaining
Season 13 - 3 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 18 - 2 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 19 - 3 remaining
Season 20 - 5 remaining
Season 21 - 4 remaining

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

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

It’s been a lot of fun to chase all those around and once I get things more covered, I think I *might* do an ultimate Hot Ones sauce ranking, across all the seasons, for the available slots, maybe a video, maybe a post, not sure it’s even going to happen yet. The middle ones are probably going to be toughest as there are some actual good sauces in there. The #8 slot is going to be a huge problem and the main drawback to this idea, as the main sauce to be in that position is the godawful Da Bomb Beyond Insanity and it’s hard to have a list of quality with anything like that abomination on it.

Angry Goat Cool Hippo & Golden Hippo Hot Sauce(s) Review

Angry Goat "Cool" Hippo
Angry Goat Limited Edition Golden Hippo

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

 After doing a double with the Primo ROCKpotamus and Purple Hippo, also from Angry Goat, and also reviewed here elsewhere, I was so taken with the latter (and also nearing the end of available sauces from Angry Goat I hadn't yet done), that I had to have more, so I hopped on their website to see if there was anything new beyond the Cool Hippo, which I already had plans to get. This was where I discovered the Golden Hippo. As the legend goes, they got a batch of golden prickly pears rather than the usual purple and rather than just using them or returning them or binning them or whatever, they decided once again to fan the spark of creativity into flame and make another variation on the Hippo sauce theme. It is a very limited run and available only on the Angry Goat website (my bottle was close to the halfway point of the 426 total made, bottles which are also autographed by Jason Parker), so if you're interested, I strongly suggest you not wait.

Unlike perhaps musical variations on a theme, what we have here is four distinct Hippo sauces that all stand on their own distinctly, in their own right. You can check out the prior review for the aforementioned sauces in the previous paragraph, but the song remains sort of the same between the Purple and Cool Hippos, with the latter swapping the Habanero of the former with Cayenne. This presents a sort of interesting dynamic between the flavors, wherein there is more a generalized melding of sweetness, a bit more forward on the prickly pear side, but somewhat less robust than the Purple Hippo, and considerably less hot. It is nonetheless quite an enjoyable concoction.

The Golden Hippo takes a number of severe detours from the route and is nearly entirely its own sauce, featuring Scotch Bonnets, along with Datil pepper powder. They are very dedicated to the coloration staying as golden as possible, with a correspondingly fascinating sauce, both somewhat more subtle than either of the sauces from the prior paragraph, but also making the strawberries more accessible as a flavor note. It is also slightly hotter, perhaps very slightly hotter, than the Cool Hippo, but altogether spectacular. The foods they work best with I noted in the prior review, but it is generally meats. 

Bottom line: Another spectacular pair of offerings from one of the most consistently brilliant and innovative saucemakers out there, perhaps a bit more accessible to normies, given the lowered heat of both.

"Cool" Hippo Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9

Overall: 7

Limited Edition Golden Hippo Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

Infinity Sauces Bad News Hot Sauce Review

Infinity Sauces (The Reaper Brings) Bad News

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9E7rNav7pU

I'm not entirely sure what the name of this sauce is or the tiger on the label (which I, for some reason, had in mind as a cheetah prior to looking closer), but the idea here seems to be along the lines of the Ghost Fuck Yourself hot sauce, also from Infinity. This is so much the case that I'm tempted to say one is a clone of the other, though I'm not sure which is which.

In fact, for probably the first time ever on this blog, I'm going to severely shorten this review and just say just go read that review, rather than spend a bunch of words repeating myself, because they have very similar ingredients on the label and the flavor profile is near identical. The obvious difference is that this sauce uses Carolina Reaper as opposed to Ghosties, but that is more or less where the differences end. Applications, coloration, liquidity, all are the same for both sauces. Even in terms of heat, they are more similar than not, with both of them probably overly hot for normies.

Bottom line: A very likable, accessible, though rather runny and not at all the fruit-based sweet-hot one would be led to expect. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7