Volcanic Peppers Red Reaper Mango Hot Sauce Review

Volcanic Peppers Red Reaper Mango

For a while into the bottle, I thought this sauce may have been misnamed. Despite mango being in the name, it was overshadowed by the forceful burning nature of the much more prominent mighty mighty Reapers in it. This definitely has a strong element of the superhot bitter, which is perhaps not helped by the addition of Thai peppers, which I like a lot, but which can be a bit on the bitter side by themselves, and Chia seed. It also has cardamom, which I didn’t notice until just prior to writing this review, and which I find kind of an odd coincidence, given the preceding review.

I think more than anything, this is mostly a sort of non-distinct fruity slightly sweet Reaper sauce. It is a very nice medium thickness and is pretty smooth. It definitely is a very superhot forward sauce, as noted, and given both the Reapers and Ghosties (along with Habanero, to round out the quad of peppers), this is very much a chilehead only sauce. Indeed, it takes a certain degree of tolerance to be able to pick out some of the more subtle flavor notes, particularly on the back end, which does also include very slight passes at mango, without being able to tolerance the immediate blast of the Reapers. Given that Reapers and Habanero are both building peppers as well, this can get to a pretty nice little blaze, though I found heat to be mostly concentrated on my tongue.

It is not a “normal” fruit-based sweet hot, which is both good and bad. Given that it’s sticky, it does hold to food pretty well and the slightly ambiguous flavor nature lends itself well to burgers, as well as chicken. It does need a fairly strong flavor accompaniment for best results, however, as it does tend towards bitterness fairly readily. That sort of non-distinctness in flavor profile also lends it well to things like pizza also, though I did find, given a bit of flavor cancellation, that the sweetness in conjunction with mac and cheese was not desirable. It is pretty fun to play around with, though, and one of the nice things about running this hot, as well as the aforementioned consistency and stickiness, is that a little will go a long way.

Bottom line: Volcanic always tends to have a pretty interesting approach to sauces and this is no exception, though, again, it does take a certain tolerance to Reapers, both in heat and superhot bitterness, for this sauce to be fully enjoyable.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5