Volcanic Peppers Sap N' Berry Fire Hot Sauce Review

Volcanic Peppers Sap N' Berry Fire

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmmdXWNTDR8

This is one of the more frustrating sauces I've had in a while. I like Volcanic and think they make cool and unusual sauces, which I applaud. Also, I like a good maple blueberry syrup and feel that frequently they're just not hot enough. This one, while fairly moderate in terms of heat, does bring enough of a punch from the red Habaneros that it vaults ahead of nearly everything else I can remember (I do have an FOH playlist of Hot Honeys and Syrups, if you're interested in seeing which I've done). In fact, if they made one alteration, deleted one ingredient, it would be atop the heap easily...but no, and hence, my frustration. 

There is a stunningly good sauce hidden here and it is marred by the addition of the allspice, a flavor note which shows up, calls my attention to it, and to which I wish was not present. It is an incredible distraction, no matter the application and I've tried many here. The first time I had it was on chicken tendies and I was expecting, you know, that good maple-blueberry-Habanero combination, that tried and true, through and through combination, that wonderful intersection of flavors, but that was definitely not it. In fact, that first taste, I pulled the tendie back after taking a bite and stared at the plate and may or may not have said, "awww, what the Hell."

My impression of it has not really improved much. It ruined this very cool red, white, and blue ice cream sundae I made (with the Char Man Fiyaberry sauce - reviewed elsewhere here), even after I brought in some very nice dark chocolate hot fudge. Mostly I like maple, with blueberry mostly as an accent, for breakfast stuff and depending on what I used it with, there would sometimes be a subtlety of flavor below that of the actual food, so I'd add more and then there would come creeping in the allspice to wreck the party, even when I added in healthy doses of the actual pure maple syrup I keep on hand. I don't quite understand why the allspice is there at all, let alone the quantity it's in, but that is essentially the tale of this sauce. Something that would be quite extraordinary marred by an incidental element. I don't dislike allspice, to be clear, but it has to be in the right application and this, as the man says, ain't it. If not for that element, this is more like an overall 5 or 6, but I'm not rating the sauce I wish I had. Thus, as it is...more's the pity.

Bottom line: If you like allspice more than me, you'll probably like this better, but what could be the best example of the maple-blueberry-Habanero connection is instead overly dominated by the spice factor.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 1

Black-Eyed Susan Death By Chocolate Mild Hot Sauce Review

Black-Eyed Susan Death By Chocolate Mild

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXI68LwT17Y

This is a company (I don't believe I would have chosen that particular name, given the attendant intimations if taken in a literal sense - here they appear to mean a very old nautical melodrama or possibly older slang for pistols or perhaps both) that I remember coming across my attention a while ago and I loved the name of the sauce, loved the logo, but it seemed like it was one of two things, either a mole' type sauce, which I'm not always in the mood to get or a sort of chocolate confection type syrupy sweet sauce, perhaps like a spicy fudge. Now that I've finally gotten my grubby hands on a bottle, I can say it is clearly more the former and also that I'm inordinately glad that I finally did.

What we have here is an amazingly complex flavor, full of spice and fruit and cocoa and Habanero dynamics, all into a very wonderful mix that I quite enjoy...in the right setting. Because it is a mole', it does limit the flexibility a bit, being restricted primarily to Mexican-style foods, where it is absolutely wonderful and a joy. It is also a sauce that I find works a bit better warmer than colder and I think you could absolutely use this as a mole' itself. In fact, if I wasn't having so much fun testing it out on stuff, whereupon I will surely run out before actually trying that, I might be inclined to give it a go in that setting...maybe I'll get another bottle and try that at some future point. 

It's a quite thick sauce, with this being the Mild version (not sure how I got that, to be clear - I thought I ordered or picked out the Hot version), it is very low in heat, but that really allows you to focus into the rich tapestry of flavor. It reminded me at time of a good fruitcake, to the point where I tried it out as close of a setting as I could find to that, but this is definitely into a fairly fixed food arena and desserts are not really among those playing there. I find a lot of people don't quite understand the difference between a mole' and a smother sauce or a hot sauce and getting a bottle of this is a quite good illustrative example, even as it straddles the line between those worlds itself a bit. One of the things it does the best, with the right foods, is to present a contrast to foods, but in a way that creates delicate interplay with flavors, rather than clashing, which is a hard trick to pull off.

Bottom line: Highly enjoyable, wonderfully flavorful, low heat and very unique sauce that is near magic when paired in the right setting.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Angry Goat Dreams Of Calypso Private Reserve Hot Sauce Review

Angry Goat Dreams Of Calypso Private Reserve

Note: This sauce appears on Season 20 of The Hot Ones.

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=-271-JV8uyg

It was an interesting experiment, seeing the differences in a sauce line that changing one ingredient made when I went through all of the "Hippo" sauces from Angry Goat earlier this year (reviewed elsewhere here) and now, we turn to the original Dreams Of Calypso (reviewed elsewhere here), one of the sauces I never quite entirely got a handle on, back from a couple of years ago. I wound up using it as a grill sauce, which would prove impossible with this sauce, for reasons we'll explore.

The biggest change to the Hippo line was moving into a superhot, specifically the 7 Pot Primo, which was in the Primo ROCKpotamus sauce, and it was a drastic change. Gone were a lot of the flavor elements, replaced by a very pointed heat rush from the Primos. This is also kind of the case here. Rather than an interplay between the tropical fruits and mustard being more in the fore, both are shoved way back in the profile, with the mustard an aftertaste grace note and the tropical fruit contributing to a much more subtle sweetness. The bitter superhot is immediately front and center and while I think this works a bit better than the ROCKpotamus did, it is certainly as much of a sea change. So, flavor-wise, we have the immediate flavor and heat sensation of the 7 Pot, with a very slight sweetness rounding it out and the slightly mustard notes at the very end. I find this sauce works much better when it can be with a more complex composite food, particularly one with a strong taste, such as a chicken sandwich. I also find this sauce a lot more palatable when warmer, but it's pretty enjoyable, like the predecessor, on any of the lighter colored meats. I played around with it quite a bit, going through most of the other foods I did on the non-Private Reserve version, so also go check that review out for reference.

While it is an interesting question of which pepper I like overall better, the long-favorite Scotch Bonnet or the 7-Pot Primo, which is a superhot I find consistently impressive, without answering that directly, I will say the Scotch Bonnet tastes considerably better. With the 7 Pot, not only can they come screaming out of the gate, as they do here, but there is also a nice build to the pepper. It was in the 7 slot on the show, which would put it, by my usual scaling of halving the position, at around a 3.5, which isn't too far off, but given the build capacity, I gave it the push to a 4, putting it solidly in the territory of being chileheads only. 

Bottom line: Definite upgrade in heat, but I'm not sure I would say the same in flavor. I do think it's an intriguing sauce, just less of one than the regular version, as this moves further into scorcher territory.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Hellfire Full Shred Hot Sauce Review

Hellfire Full Shred

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj9I8k2iZv4

One of the more entertaining things to me in the food world generally (such as the very odd Rap Stars line of snacks) is vanity products. Hot sauce seems to be a riveting magnet for guitarists frequently and here we have a sauce ostensibly "designed" by the mad axeman David Shankle himself...except not, predictably not, not, just like nearly all the other vanity sauces out there. 

In this case, the sauce from the Hellfire lineup that appears to be used is the Gourmet Red (which is reviewed elsewhere here). The sauces are not identical; this one, for instance, is far runnier, much, much looser and closer to a Louisiana-style, though not quite as watery. Flavor-wise, it seems to meld better with the foods when in this form than did the Gourmet Red, with the Cayenne, in particular, seeming to be a bit more forward, but the flavor profile is nearly exact, probably because the same ingredients are shared between them. I didn't check to see if the specific order is identical, since Hellfire likes to create labels that overly challenge my ailing vision and don't update the graphics, even online, but we have the same aspects in flavor.

The other review, which you should read, covers a lot of stuff I've already tested. With this sauce, I've tried using it in place of a Louisiana-style, to slightly better effect, but the conflict of taste is still there. The only food recommend is to use it on a naan pizza. While I don't know what that thing is, exactly, there are a lot of Indian references in the sauce, to the point where if I liked Indian food, this could be a strong winner. As it is, I don't particularly and so it is not. 

Bottom line: A much thinner, and also much harder to find, version of the Hellfire Gourmet Red, though I think this consistency works better overall for the sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 2

Char Man Fiyaberry Hot Sauce Review

Char Man Fiyaberry

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=VtqNGBTa6nM

So let's talk about slick label design, rather than my usual crabbing about it when it's bad. This is a bit more pronounced in the FOH videos, but this is a prime example of what TO do when designing a label. It is very clean, legible, the colors all work together, there is a very smart bit where it uses the gap between label ends, just very, very smart and one of the best hot sauce labels I've ever seen. There is an odd bit of copy about the Norse goddess Freya, which I don't fully understand in how it relates to this sauce, other than she had a fondness for strawberries, but the name itself doesn't really reference anything Nordic. I think they were trying to go for "fireberry" or something along those lines, but "fiya" is not a Norse word. 

As to the sauce, it starts with strawberry preserves, so one would expect it to be on the sweet side, which it is, though that is dialed down considerably by the Scorpions and the red wine vinegar. The Scorpions, in particular, in addition to bringing a blazing heat - this is another chilehead only sauce - also bring with them their customary bitterness and flowery nature, which mars the effect a bit for me. I like the concept here, a very hot strawberry-forward dessert-y sauce, but I think it would have been more successful had another superhot been chosen, such as the Reaper or even the Ghosties. 

Berry and meats go together, so this could work on a burger (provided it's tailored for it), chicken tendies it's ok, same with rotisserie chicken, could work on turkey. There is a suggestion for the website to pork, but I found that not to be an especially good combination and much of the success of this will be directly dependent on how  much you like the taste of Scorpions. I find if I can find a way to mask it, by either having it with something like strawberries or on ice cream, it comes across a bit better, but only temporary. The Scorpions here are quite forceful, which is great on the heat side, but a lot less great on the flavor side.

Bottom line: If you're a chilehead who likes Scorpions and sweet-hot dessert sauces, this is worth a go. For me, the results are a bit more mixed and while I could see where they were going, it didn't quite get all the way there for me.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3

Rising Smoke All In Hot Sauce Review

Rising Smoke All In

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhjify3g1cQ

It would be an understatement to say that I've found most of other products I've tried from this company a bit wanting. Many are reviewed here and I was on the verge of not wanting to do another, when I picked this one up, the last one on the list, the last gasp so to speak. I looked at it online, no onions and a couple of smoked peppers, one of the the Reaper no less, so it sounded as though it had potential.

It took me a while to get to this, but I have to say, well I was going to say third time's the charm, but this is my fourth sauce from them, so I will say that I'm glad I didn't give up on them entirely, as this sauce is quite nice. We have the smokiness from smoked Reaper and smoked Habanero, heat from the Reaper and Ghosties, and there is some nice Cayenne and tomato to round out the backend. So we have a sauce that is quite smoky, fairly punchy (chilehead only territory here), a touch on the bitter side, but all comes together in a way that works wonderfully. Given the heat and bitterness level, this can be used sparingly and still impart a wonderful contribution.

The sauce is a bit on the runny side, and has a good amount of chunkiness to it, probably due to the bits of grit permeating the sauce. Definitely this is one you will want to agitate, but since it packs so much flavor, even in small doses, it increases the flexibility considering, even coming across well in things like pizza, where I wouldn't normally consider a Louisiana-style. That style may be where I find its usage closest, but the smokiness brings in a strong call to barbecue sauce. Indeed, I find nearly every barbecue sauce both too tame, as well as far too sweet, and unless I'm grilling with them and want the sugar for carmelization, I wind up having to cut them a bit with Louisiana-style. Here, this sauce actually does a better job. While I don't like it as much on cream dishes or chicken tendies or grilled chicken as I do the Louisiana-style, it does make for a very nice change of pace. 

Bottom line: Definitely an absolute winner from a company on the verge of being written off entirely by me. A bit unique to the market, but one I'm definitely glad I had, though I will note the heat is higher than most normies will find comfortable, if eaten by itself.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

Heat Hot Sauce Shop Roasted Habanero & Garlic Hot Sauce Review

Heat Hot Sauce Shop Roasted Habanero & Garlic

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4JWE5FZ5j4

Earlier in the year, I did the other version, the Limited Edition (https://d-dubtsaaf.blogspot.com/2023/01/heat-hot-sauce-shop-limited-edition.html), which utilized red and orange Habaneros. This one appears to be orange and possibly green, though I'm not certain on the second color. Orange for sure, though, as I found some of the orange skin bit in there. 

I'm almost tempted to just cut and paste the other review, since most of it applies, but I will just settle for linking it above and strongly suggesting you read that first, as it will necessarily bear on this. The main differences between that and this, since the ingredient panels are identical, other than the types of Habanero, are that this is more successful overall, is slightly better at masking the apple cider vinegar, is very slightly less hot, and winds up becoming cloying to me faster than I remember the other sauce being. I would strongly have preferred a bit  less sugar and a white vinegar, but other than that, everything in that other review relative to the sauce applies here.

Bottom line: This puts somewhat of an interesting spin on the roasted Habanero and garlic sauce, but is as equally worthy as the other one and if you don't mind sweet in your Mexican-style sauce, worth a go. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 4

Zia Chile Traders Sauce 25 Hot Sauce Review

Zia Chile Traders Sauce 25

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_YoQx9Bs4w

Another from the current incarnation of John Hard's sauce-making passion, the idea here being a commemoration of John's debut into the fiery food world, at least when the sauce came out last year. This year would mark 26 years, which is a considerable sustained run, especially considering the generally high quality level he's been at for at least as long as I've been aware of him, which was shortly before this blog began, 11 years ago now. 

As to the sauce, we have pretty low heat, with the main peppers being red Jalapeno and red Hatch Chile. They also make a note this sauce represents things to come, which is interesting. This is a pretty heavily-leaning sauce towards Asian flavors, such as soy sauce, but also infused with perhaps some of John's more favorite recent ingredients of bourbon and black garlic. The end result is pretty interesting, but like both the BICH sauces (reviewed elsewhere here) under the CaJohn's line, I find it works much better either warmed up or especially grilled. When cold, I find the bourbon notes to be a bit overly prominent, which changes somewhat with the temperature of this sauce. And, of course, bourbon when grilled to the point of carmelization, leaves some rather intricate and flavorful notes. 

While I have tried this in other settings, Asian-type dishes seem to be where this shines the best, particularly on pork, though it also does nicely on chicken. I've used it both in rice and noodle dishes and once it's warm, it imparts a quite lovely flavor through the sweet soy and heavily umami notes of the garlic. This is not intended to be a blazing sauce and the peppers make a pretty flawless accompaniment. I'd be curious to see how this would be if the Jalapenos were subbed out in favor of Fresnos and would abandon the apple cider vinegar in favor of rice vinegar, to more lean into the Asian side of things, and probably drastically reduce the bourbon, but that might be more personal preference. 

I usually remark negatively when a sauce tends to position itself in a fairly narrow food range, but I don't mind if it is well done and this, like many other sauces John is responsible for creating, is very well done. Do I think it's a sauce so great it lives up to the 25 years in the making? Not more than any other sauce he put out in 2022, which could make the same claim. While I think it's a good, lively, dynamic sauce, I don't find it mind-blowing to the extent expected from all that verbiage. It definitely is a welcome entry into the Asian-style sauce list, however.

If you're not familiar with the Zia Chile Traders, in which John Hard puts the Hatch chile through its paces, definitely take a look. He's doing, as is expected, a lot of pretty innovative and intriguing stuff. You can get bottles of your own of much of the lineup by clicking to the BYT site by clicking on the logo on the main page of this blog (to the right). 

Bottom line: A wonderfully, often complex, sauce that changes a bit depending on the temperature you experience it at. While I find it best as a grill sauce, it can also work quite well in various Asian dishes, once it has warmed up to temperature a bit.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 8
       Flexibility: 2
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Puckerbutt Chocolate Plague Hot Sauce Review

Puckerbutt Chocolate Plague

Note: This sauce appeared on Season 9 of The Hot Ones. 

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=GlvUHY7XdRk

...and lo, verily, did he doth spake that there be a pestilence upon them-

Ah, you're here. Given that's now spooky season, Halloween, at all, just doing a bit of practice, which brings us to the sauce for this review. This one features the Chocolate Bhutlah, which I almost never come across in sauces and what is a cross between the vaunted Ghostie (bhut jolokia) and the Douglah, itself another pepper I almost never come across in sauces. The heat is said to rival that of the mighty Reaper and unquestionably, it's a superhot and the heat immediate, the proverbial mouthful of blast furnace. At the heat level here, though I think there are hotter sauces in the 9 slot, this is very clearly a sauce for chileheads only.

There is a bit of a problem abound, though, and for someone who doesn't generally like sour hot sauces, which is well-documented in these very annals, I sure seem to be running across a lot of them this year. This sauce is easily one of the most sour of them all. Now, perhaps due to my unfamiliarity with the pepper, I have trouble determining if this is normal for the pepper or intentional, but the ingredients are mainly pepper mash and pepper powder, so I'm presuming that this is a good indication of the pepper itself. When I can get those moments where it reads as less sour, I do find the flavor of this pepper favorable, but those moments are somewhat scant and scarce. Most of what I've read on the pepper seems to indicate something closer to the Ghosties, but, again, I don't come across it enough to be familiar enough to hazard speculation.

Certainly, given how much I love Louisiana-style hot sauce, again well documented in these annals, I'm quite familiar with the astringent flavor of a vinegar forward hot sauce, but this is beyond that. This is actively sour, which is a flavor note I find myself less and less interested in as a grow older, a facet which would surely surprise younger me, who formerly stuffed my pants pockets with unripe green plums and actively sought to find the most sour things I could come across. The problem then comes in as to application, because pairing an intensely blazing and highly sour sauce to foods can be challenging, especially when it often leads to diminishing returns. It seemed acceptable on chicken, if used somewhat sparingly, so as to offset that sour note, but honestly, that's just using it for the sake of using. At this point, we're down to the FOH Wing Thing for Q4 2023 and if it doesn't work a lot better there, this probably is going to be binned.

Bottom line: Maybe it's the bottle or maybe it's the pepper itself, but either way, while this is most certainly scorching, it is also one of the sourest sauces I've had...if you're a chilehead and that's your bag, definitely worth looking into this. 

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 5
       Flavor: 2
       Flexibility: 2
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 3