2K23 Q3 Update

Q3 2K23

Earlier this month, this blog hit its official 11th anniversary date and tomorrow, the FOH video series will hit its 4th anniversary. In that time, the video series has overtaken the blog in terms of number of overall postings, though the blog is still ahead in terms of overall views. I don’t really have any changes in mind for the blog, and the FOH video series I’ll discuss more in the End Of The Year posting. Blog posting was a touch slower for September, due to me having a lot of open bottles I wanted to clean up, along with considerably less free time, due to the new gig. What’s interesting is that it was by far the biggest month in the history of the blog, larger, in fact, than some entire years. So...welcome, everyone who’s dropping by, and thanks for coming.

As I’ve noted prior, this quarter is the likely end of following grill season with FOH videos of spicy mustards. Part of this is because I’ve covered quite a few over the 3 years I’ve been doing it and I think I’ve nearly exhausted accessible mustards that would fit that criteria...there are still a few more out there, which I will get to as the normal course of things, as mustard is something I generally keep on hand, but not enough for another full grill season. OTOH, I’m about halfway to the number I would need now, so I may do it for one more year, possibly, but as of now, I find the likelihood of that possibility to be pretty low. In any case, I will continue to post photos of my grill work, which can be found in the YouTube Community page for my channel, as well as other stuff more strictly relative to the FOH series.

Season 22 of The Hot Ones also was announced and I updated the blog page for that once it dropped. I also posted the update to the YouTube Community page, but this season definitely has added a few more titles to things, including a new entry from Hot Ones for both the lead AND the final slot...guess it will be a while yet before I get caught up... The #8 slot is still the ghastly Da Bomb Beyond Insanity. I also see another Angry Goat, which I’m pretty excited about, hanging out there in the #2 slot and featuring one of my favorite peppers to boot...that one might just get moved up in the list a bit, depending on what kind of sale they might be bothered to have on Black Friday...

Also, as mentioned on the YouTube Community tab, I have not, as of yet, tried to chase down the Paqui One Chip Challenge for 2023. It was both expensive and not particularly convenient to find, even before the recent controversy, which I also addressed in a separate post in the YouTube Community tab. After doing the challenge for the last 3 consecutive years, it seems there is not much of a clamor for me to make content around it. If there is enough interest, then I will find one, if any are out in the wild, given that Paqui has pulled all of it from retail and Amazon has delisted not only that, but every other similar “challenge-type” chip. If I go to that trouble, I will do a video and post it, but for something that generally tastes awful, it’s hard for me to see an incentive. Again, while I don’t think any of those chips are particularly harmful via people ingesting them normally, I do strongly feel they should be age-gated, for a variety of reasons, some of which I touched on in that YouTube Community post.

In FOH news, and I’ve mentioned at least some of this on the aforementioned Community area of the YouTube page, I will be doing a little something special (starting tomorrow) during the entire month of October. It is more or less as spooky of themed stuff as I can find, including a video for Halloween itself, so hopefully you’ll dig those. In November, we will have a video blowout with daily posting of new videos (all of them related, except for the Sunday that falls in there, which will be a daily double video posting) every day of the Thanksgiving swing, plus Cyber Monday. In December, we will do yet another video blowout, which will be the 12 Days Of Xmas, starting Xmas Day and running into January. To kick off 2023, I did a lot of wing videos in commemoration of the Super Bowl, which will not be recurring in 2024. I don’t really have any major plans at all for 2024 as of yet, except for one very specific video in May, but stay tuned to the YouTube Community section, as I will be updating there sooner (probably) than the quarterly updates here.

Finally starting to wind down the backlog of non-sauce content, which means I should be well caught up by the end of the year. I will get into this more in the Q4 end of year update, but basically I’ve built up fairly well-stocked YouTube FOH Playlists with content (you can click directly to those on the right) and so my urge to produce FOH content at such a voracious rate as the last couple of years is ebbing a bit. I, again, did not get to plans I had made back in 2021. I also have not yet made the major change I had anticipated at the start of the year, but that is still on the agenda for next year...probably. Maybe.

I am caught up on the hot sauce videos, at least for now, and as I mentioned in the YouTube community notes (I post a lot of stuff there as well - check it out if you’re interested), today is the last day I will be doing Saturday postings of hot sauces for the foreseeable future. With the aforementioned new gig, I basically have weekends only to do filming, in addition to having my son, and given that I use natural light for most of the videos, in the coming winter months, I will be having a lot less of that available as well. Of course, those were relatively the conditions I started the FOH video series in, but this time, I have some good padding, and with some of the changes I have in mind, should be plenty good to go. As mentioned, there is a ton of content both on the blog and in the various FOH playlists, including stuff I’ve seen nowhere else, and I’ve tried to make it as easy to access as possible.

Anyway, as always, thanks to everyone who’s dropped by here or checked out the FOH videos and if there’s something you want to see, please drop me a line.

CaJohn's NOLA Hot Sauce Review

CaJohn's NOLA

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iidgVf32fFY

It's been kind of interesting watching the labels shift since John Hard sold this company. In an older version, the positions of several ingredients are different and the Caribe chile, in particular, is listed out. On the bottle I have, it is not. I didn't get to this sauce prior to the sale, so I have no idea if the flavor is different, but I have noticed an appreciable difference in some of the others where I have, which was something I was concerned about once I heard the news. It could be batch differences in some of those, but I will note that formerly CaJohn's flavors were quite consistent.

In this case, we have what I would presume is a sauce celebrating New Orleans, Louisiana, and the attendant culinary flavors. We have the obligatory Cayenne, along with garlic and a host of other spices. There is Habanero, presumably to ramp up the heat, all of which is fine, except there is little to no heat to be found. Instead, we have what amounts to a flavor competition in the sauce between a Cajun style and a lemon & pepper combination. I don't typically find that citric and acetic acid work well in combination and here, they are definitely in opposition, which results in a rather jarring aspect.

When there are two disparate and conflicting tastes, the end result is a narrowing of scope as far as flexibility. Case in point, I've tried this one where I'd be inclined to usually use a Louisiana-style or Cajun and it worked poorly to not at all on a number of those. The place I found this best was with chicken, which is a meat that does nicely with either the aforementioned styles or with lemon. I still can't say I like them both at once together on it, but in that specific application, it is far more workable. Unfortunately, that's about the only food type where I found it workable. 

Bottom line: I kind of wish I could have tried the sauce that won all the awards in 2015, which this label pointedly observes, but what's in the bottle here is one of those rare misses from a consummate hot sauce master. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Mythos Amun-Ra Hot Sauce Review

Mythos Amun-Ra

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2q3oKDHkx8

Here we have a sauce named after the supreme god of the Egyptian set, a mashing of the god of creation and the god of fire or the sun or light, depending on which translation you're reading. A lot of this thematically has found its way into anime, so incorporating it into hot sauces, such as the Halogi sauce line does, albeit with specifically Nordic gods and themes, makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of cool imagery and tie-ins and the symbols work well on their typically slick white labels. 

This sauce also uses the Caribe pepper, which are the pale yellow wax ones that show up every once in a while in the produce section. The heat is not really significant, maybe in the range of a Fresno, or slightly hotter, but they have a nice flavor to them and, though I don't see them often used, could make a very nice supporting flavor element. The main focus of this sauce is ostensibly the mango, all the way down to the color, which is the golden yellow to orange-ish hue of that fruit. Habanero supplies the heat and we've all seen that particular combination repeatedly. There is also the addition of bananas, which don't really show up, thankfully, as a flavor, but seem to contribute to the overall smoothness of this sauce. 

I'm mentioning all the positives up front before I get into the actual flavor, as that is decidedly less positive. The first ingredient here is apple cider vinegar and that creates a huge problem as it is, by far, the most notable taste in the sauce, which is unfortunate. There is probably a pretty great sauce hiding in here, buried underneath all the foot-vinegar taste. There is also lime, which contributes a bit to the sour, which I could probably have lived without, but the main issue is just how vinegar-forward this is. It's not just distracting, but actively overpowering, which is a shame. I really like the texture and color of this sauce quite a bit and when I can get a taste of the sauce when the vinegar isn't overwhelming, there is strong potential here. I wish they would have chosen a less obtrusive vinegar and leaned a bit harder into the mango-Habanero combination. The Habanero doesn't really show up as a flavor and is more just to be the heat, but it's at a pretty low level. I don't see anyone being challenged by this, at least on that level.

Normally, with fruit-based sweet hots, we have an array of things to put them on, but given the flavor profile, this one is pretty restricted for usage for me. Unlike the Thor sauce from them (reviewed elsewhere here), I can't really mask the awful vinegar easily, so it winds up being a chicken strip only sauce, whereas other mango-Habanero sauces (as long as they're sweet - I don't love sour hot sauces particularly) have made it onto pizza and an array of other meats. This is the second underwhelming sauce from this company and it's not necessarily the choice of vinegar as much as how they use it. Other companies have used the same vinegar and it's not show in the flavor at all, which is fine. You should not want the flavor of your hot sauce to be predicated by the choice of vinegar...I wouldn't think, anyway. So, like Rising Smoke before them, Mythos is down to the last chance before I write them off entirely, but it makes me sad, as I really like a lot of what they're doing, thematically, as well as the choice of some of their ingredients, such as the Fresno and Caribe. 

Bottom line: Habanero-mango is a fairly well established combination, but here, for a sauce that does so much right, it comes down to how much you personally like the taste of apple cider vinegar.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Puckerbutt Bad Apple Hot Sauce Review

Puckerbutt Bad Apple

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TRTR0wodMQ

Dessert hot sauces I'm finding one of the more entertaining trends in the space and the re-gearing shift towards actually making things to accommodate that setting, rather than simply labeling any fruit-based sweet hot that happens along as a dessert sauce, is a definitely positive. It is somewhat of an intricate balance, as make it too hot and it deviated pretty wildly from a sort of dessert setting, but to call it hot sauce implies a certain level of heat. So, cue the mighty Reaper, with its inherent bit of sweetness, and the mastermind behind it himself, to come up with one of the better entries in those lines. 

Possibly, he didn't mean this as strictly a dessert sauce. Starting with applesauce and then adding the pineapple and then both pineapple and apple juice suggests to me that setting, but it is also loose enough that it could easily be added to a drink. I don't necessarily find the idea of slugging hot pepper-laced liquid overly appealing, but here, given the fresh ginger adding a nice bit of lightness to things, I could see it working quite well. Overall, this is a wonderous sauce in terms of flavor, very vibrant and delicious, so anywhere you could see a use for apples, such as chicken or pork, this will work exceedingly well. I haven't tried it there, but I think this could be quite interesting added to a salad. It's not quite sweet enough to grill with and I have some reservations about adding it to ice cream, but coverage is still pretty pronounced for this kind of a sauce.

The inherent drawback with that kind of sauce is the applications are a bit on the narrow side and the setting will matter pretty greatly. Definitely, this is not something you could add ubiquitously and with wild abandon. The liquidy nature will create problems for a sandwich, for instance, and it would probably work as well on pizza as actual applesauce, which is to say not at all. Sticking within the framework of the design, though, will yield a truly fantastic experience. Even though this uses the Reaper, heat here is fairly moderate. There is a bit of a blazing burst, which rather quickly tapers off, rather a pleasant surprises, perhaps a bit like a firecracker going off, but just enough to contribute to the overall satisfaction.

Bottom line: Definitely another very solid entry to the lineup from Puckerbutt and one of the better dessert sauces out there. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

Merf's Angry Elk Hot Sauce Review

Merf's Angry Elk

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=r9zIhhTQY1I

Every once in a while, a sauce comes along that takes a bit for me to grasp onto and for this one, I'm nearly at the end of the bottle and I still don't know that I quite have a handle on it. This is another of the newer sauces to the Merf's lineup, as I understand it, and it is a very unique entry. Here, we have both beer and monkfruit, combining with some fire-roasted red peppers, some guajillo, a whole lot of garlic, and some chipotle in there for good measure, all combining to make one of the more intriguing, but also somewhat puzzling sauces I've come across.

It is thick, quite thick, and it tends to clump. The texture and the color is somewhat reminiscent of a mole' but the somewhat garlic-forward nature of this, in conjunction with those other things, creates an effect that is sort of like cold pockets of garlic, which is...curious. When this sauce is warmed up a bit, hopefully by whatever food it's put on, things improve, but this renders this not so great for things like a dipping sauce for chicken strips, say. The first thing I tried it on was pizza, as I was bandying about for a good pizza sauce and opened three or four others at the same time (yes, reviews for those will be forthcoming). I found it rather a delight on pizza, but to be honest, somewhat of a disappointment on nearly everything else I tried it on. On burgers and tacos, it was solid, but might not be my first choice and I don't think it worked particularly well where it had a blander base, such as on the aforementioned chicken. 

The fire-roasted peppers and the guajillo/chipotle combination should make this more of a Mexican-style sauce, but the conjunction with the larger chunks of garlic, which should also work well in that setting, at least as a flavor, sort of plays against it. The Angry Elk lager beer and monkfruit may be coming into play here, but this is definitely more of a cumulative effect sauce and trying to parse individual elements, aside from the stronger tastes, comparatively, of the garlic and fire-roasted elements, is a bit pointless. It is a quite well-blended sauce in terms of the elements melding together to a cohesive whole, albeit one with a fairly narrow application range. Given the peppers, the heat here is pretty nominal.  

Bottom line: A very interesting low-heat creation that wound up with me using up most of the bottle trying to chase down where it worked best, which was pizza and other complex type foods, such as hamburgers.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 7
       Flexibility: 3
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4