Ghost Wolf Pepper Co. Elder’s Revenge Hot Sauce Review

Ghost Wolf Pepper Co. Elder’s Revenge

I was going to start this review by saying that I don’t know what I did to the pupper Elder to make him want revenge, but whatever it was I’m sorry...but that opening seemed sort of frivolous. This company was started due to one of the hardest episodes for anyone to go through and the resulting theme is a rather somber and melancholy one. To wit, this sauce was created to memorialize the sauce maker’s doggo, who evidently suffered from an illness and the loss of a good, close friend, even one covered in furry, perhaps especially one of those, is never going to be an easy thing to take. There is some suggestion that perhaps down the road a fund to support the people going through this and the attendant vet bills and grief counseling and so on may come to be, as well as perhaps a memorializing of other people’s animal friends. The graphics and design seem particularly devoted, perhaps more approaching art than a mere product label. This is the flagship sauce from a company on a mission and it seems like a good one. I encourage interested parties to check their website for more info.  

On the other hand, to the “revenge” part specifically, this is unquestionably a superhot-forward sauce and it is immediately punchy. It is past a 3, but not quite all the way to a 4, so I guess consider it a very strong 3. This is unquestionably chilehead only territory and if you’re not a chilehead, you may as well plan to skip this party and go to another, as if you do come here, you’re probably going to have a pretty bad time...unless you want a bottle for the art and aren't planning on ever opening it. The artwork does feature, or at least strongly reference, one of my very most favorite forms of expression, that of European graveyard sculpture, so this may be the second bottle ever that I’ve kept after finishing the sauce...

We have here the might and fury of 7-Pot Primo mash and then piling on after that, both smoked Scorpion and Ghost pepper powders. This lends even more of the superhot bitter quality to things, which is also generally the first and most forward flavor. On the back end of that, we do have some smokiness, from the powders, along with the flavor of sage, and, depending on what you pair it with, a very nice, albeit somewhat subtle, berry flavor. 

To be frank, this sauce is somewhat difficult to pair, both because of its intensely blazing nature, but also because of those bitter notes and because it doesn’t seem to point itself in any particular direction. This is a sauce I’ve spent a lot of time testing, and will be testing further still, until I either find where it works best or until I run out. It does seem to do very nicely with chicken, particularly roast chicken, but leaning into the sage didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I would try to lean into the berry, but I kind of wonder if Elderberry wasn’t included because of the namesake connection to the mascot of the sauce. Also, the berry is fairly slight in this one. It is far more just blazing superhot bitter than any single other flavor note. 

Bottom line: This is a very punchy sauce, right out of the gate, and is fairly unrelenting, so its use works best perhaps as accent. Given the blazing nature, definitely chilehead only. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3

La Preferida Louisiana Style Hot Sauce Review

La Preferida Louisiana Style

For quite some time, every year, I’ve taken to haunting the Wal-Mart holiday section from Halloween on, looking at what might be coming for a given year’s hot sauce sampler collection. While most of them are very clearly aimed at being novelty sauces and not much more, in essence, buying labels and packaging, in some years, there have been some decent sauces. Many of them are covered in the Mini- Reviews section either way, whether they are or not.

For most of them, it’s just throw any old colored liquid that looks like a hot sauce into a bottle, shrink it, and call it a day, as they’re not trying to sell sauce or tap a new customer base, per se, but are interested in that one sale, in that “customer knows [x] person in relation to them who likes spicy food, so here’s an easy gift,” in short, perhaps pandering to laziness. For those that aren’t that good, they all have a sort of commonality to them, what I refer to as a flavor of “the cheap,” that more high quality sauces don’t have.

The taste here, while recognizably Cayenne-adjacent, is kind of like a less aggressive and worse-tasting version of Crystal. It almost has a staleness to the taste and a bit of a sourness to the vinegar, to a kind of weird point. It was still generally usable, but I started to wonder if it was a bad batch, as it was kind of hard for me to picture this end result being the actual intention. This is just not a very good product overall. While this type of sauce generally doesn’t pack a huge heat punch, this one has basically none. The “bite” is very much only from the astringent vinegar. It is also slightly salty. While the watery consistency is right, the color is much more pointed towards the orange spectrum of things.

Bottom line: While I’m pretty far from impressed with this sauce, it is also not the worst of this type that I’ve tried...though it is definitely near the bottom.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 2

Redacted Wet Work Hot Sauce Review

Redacted Wet Work

I rather enjoyed the other sauce I had from Redacted and their sort of cloak and dagger skullduggery spycraft type motif and themes. Most of their sauces have onions and are thus not something of which I can partake, but this one happily does not...and I’m pleased that it doesn’t because it features Scotch Bonnet, one of my favorites, again paired with Habanero. While I would prefer it just be the Scotch Bonnet, the ultimate conclusion is what matters and here, it is quite tasty.

The sauce leans very heavily into the idea of a pepper forward sweet-hot, using guava and mango to give it a tropical fruity vibe, by way of a slight citrus underdone from the Key lime juice. I’m definitely very happy with what they did on the flavor side, as it goes a long way to advance the pepper flavor foremost, in that sort of sweet setting. The sort of gripe I have about this sauce is that it is overly loose for what I would like. A loose sauce is not the end of the world, but here, it intrudes a bit on flavor concentration and also limits a bit where one can easily use it, as it is quite runny...not quite watery, per se, but not especially distant, either.

I think with a lot of tweaking, such as reducing it further, maybe dumping the Key lime entirely, and go for some reduction, this would be a pretty fantastic more universal sauce, able to be used fairly ubiquitously. As it is, I find it pretty solid on fried foods, as long as there is enough breading there to absorb the liquid. I would not find this something I would consider using on pizza, for instance, as I don’t want my pizza to be wet, and having the sweet element is already going to kind of point the sauce in fairly specific directions. This one will take a bit of tinkering to find the right setting, but once you do, it is quite nice. Heat-wise, neither Scotch Bonnet nor Habaneros are particularly scorchers and this sauce is definitely more on the tame side.

Bottom line: A quite lovely tasting sauce that is somewhat marred by the consistency. I would still say it is well worth a go, particularly if you’re a fan of either Scotch Bonnets or Habaneros and like them in a fruity setting.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Volcanic Peppers Autumn Blaze Hot Sauce Review

Volcanic Peppers Autumn Blaze

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF6ePibS_CI 

I have had a veritable cornucopia of great sauces this year, with now this making four candidates for Sauce Of The Year. I suppose I should have buried the lede, so to speak, a bit more, I wanted it right up front how fantastic of a sauce this is. The Chipotle used in here is from red Jalapenos and I suspect, unless I badly miss my guess, they are smoked at the hot sauce facility. They possess a character of smokiness that I have never had from commercial Chipotle or sauces with Chipotle before and it is absolutely stunning. 

The rest of the crew, the honey and pumpkin, do a nice job of adding in some depth, but this sauce very wisely chooses those delicious smoked red Jalapenos to be the star of the show, with the other elements tempering the apple cider vinegar a bit. The vinegar does not read as apple cider in the flavor, happily. In many respects, this could very much be one of those sauces that people who don’t like hot sauce or who are just coming into it would enjoy very much. I’ve said before that if you make a sauce taste good enough, which is the overall aim, I imagine, of the so-called “everyday” sauces, flexibility will increase, even if the food doesn’t pair totally well. With this sauce, I have yet to find anything it doesn’t work well with and on. Sure, some things are better than others, but it is as close to universal as I’ve had...and much of that has to do with the spectacular flavor.

The color, the texture, and the smoothness are also pretty good and it’s one of the few sauces where I’m not immediately spinning over in my mind for ways it could be improved. It’s frankly near-perfect as-is and while if I were to tail it very specifically to me, I might add in some fire-roasted red Habaneros to drive the heat up a touch, as this is a fairly tame sauce, that is my only complaint and a very minor one at that. I like some heat to things, but not every sauce I have needs to be face-melting. 

Bottom line: I’ve had more than a few sauces I’ve liked from Volcanic, but this one is near magical. Everyone should get it, particularly if you’re like me and a foodie first and then a chilehead. This is the 4th Sauce Of The Year candidate for 2025.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8

Paul’s Haba Haba Hot Sauce Review

Paul’s Haba Haba

This is a sauce that seems to have 3 main ingredients, the mango puree, the mustard, and the Habanero mash. There are some additional spices and other modifiers, but those are the mail elements. The overall vibe here is very reminiscent of some of the Caribbean sauces I’ve had, which have similarly incorporated mustards and I find the flavor here to be itself, basically the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

It isn’t like a hot sauce, but nor is it like a mustard. It is quite distinct and seems to want to have a foot in both worlds. This idea I find fine in concept, but in actual application...I think we all have food associations, flavor expectations, and tie certain foods in with certain additions, such as various condiments. For instance, brats will generally go with mustards, as they need something fairly strongly flavored to read, but no so much with hot sauces. Likewise, fried foods would not usually be something one would put a yellow mustard on. To be sure, you could, but that would be unusual.

With this sauce trying to rest between two fairly disparate words, the issue comes in with pairing it with stuff, as it functions like neither of those condiments particularly. I think it works better where you would use a mustard than where you would use a hot sauce, but it is at least functional in both settings. The problem comes in when the sauce is acceptable, but makes you wish you had something else instead, which this one does in nearly every setting I’ve tried it in. The flavor is not bad at all or even close to it, but it is very vigorously on its own terms, which isn’t always what is wanted. Heat-wise, since Habanero is the driver, the level is fairly moderate.

Bottom line: I suspect this would work a lot better with Caribbean foods, which I will be testing at some point. It comes in a healthy 9 fl. oz. bottle, so there is plenty of experimentation to be had...which will probably be needed.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

 

Melinda’s Mexicana Hot Sauce Review

Melinda’s Mexicana

Another new-ish product from Melinda’s, as they continue their expansion, this time sees what I can only describe as more or less a merging of a Habanero taco sauce with a Lousiana-Style Cayenne sauce. I was a bit nervous that it might follow the path of Texas Pete Sabor! (reviewed elsewhere here), but it sticks pretty heavily to the motif, which is essentially a merging of those two sauce styles. 

I’m not certain who this is for, though. The label copy suggests using it on “everything” (because of course they do), in cocktails, and popcorn, of all things. Yes, that is exactly what my popcorn has been lacking, a very loose, nearly watery, more astringent than normal taco sauce...think I’ll just go and take a pass on that idea entirely. It also is much more vinegary than I tend to like my taco sauces or Mexican-style sauces, as I don’t generally find that food so overly rich I need to cut it. 

Where I did find this useful was in a very specific frozen Southwest style quinoa bowl and for frozen foods, this is actually not a bad sauce. I could see it also working pretty wonderfully on breakfast stuff, so long as you want things a bit on the vinegar-side. It would probably also be fine to cook with. As it’s only Habanero as the main heat driver and a bit far back in things to boot, this is not a particularly hot sauce.

Bottom line: I find this sauce a bit puzzling, though the concept fairly well done, for what it seems like they were going with. I don’t have a lot of uses where this would fit, but this might be well worth checking out for those that do. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4