Heatonist x Stranger Things Hellfire Club Hot Sauce Review

Heatonist x Stranger Things Hellfire Club

Often crossovers or “collabs” seem to blur the line between an actual intentional product that’s meant to stand on its own in the respective marketplace, perhaps both as collectible and viable product, and that of a strictly collectible novelty type item. I’m genuinely not sure which this is, as I don’t know if people collecting Stranger Things stuff is an actual thing, but there also seems to be enough design and care put into what the product actually is in the bottle that it moves away from being a blatant novelty type item. This was also part of a set with two other sauces (which I have no interest in, as they are both onion sauces), so if forced to choose, I would say it’s more meant to be an actual legitimate sauce.

If so, it is quite a strange one. Starting with mango as the first listed ingredient, but which does not show up particularly in the flavor profile, to Scotch Bonnet, one of the more underrated peppers in my book, possibly because it keeps winding up in sauces like this, which do nothing to showcase the majesty of the pod and are ultimately a bit on the iffy side. Both of those aforementioned flavors are flooded out by mustard, turmeric, and ginger powder, all of which combine to make an odd and bitter-flavored concoction. It is not quite a mustard and here and there bits of sweetness win out, but I’m not sure the ultimate aim here...possibly a Caribbean sauce of some type.

Without having a distinguishable flavor anchor (and I disregard any suggestion from any maker to put it on “any and every thing,” as that type of idea is just total laziness), it’s hard to know where to pair this, as the flavor gives no real indicator. This is not mustardy enough to go on foods where that condiment would normally be used, thanks to the ginger kind of skewing things, but it also is not really ideal for things like chicken tendies. It’s not bad, per se, but perhaps more unfinished than anything else, as you do have to account for the mustard, but it is far enough away from a mustard not to work in those places much, either. I guess you can say it is certainly unique, but I find more and more that is not an especially good attribute for condiments, especially in terms of pairing. Heat-wise, it’s only a Scotch Bonnet, so there won’t be too much challenge here.

Bottom line: All in all, this is kind of a lost sauce, in that it’s quite unclear who and what this is meant for. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 1

Motley Crue The Most Notorious Hot Sauce Review

Motley Crue The Most Notorious Hot Sauce

Vanity products are always kind of fun, but also always, a mixed bag. So, too, with this one, which is collectively the band sauce. Initially part of a 5 sauce set that also featured a nifty box and 4 other sauces for each individual band member, these have since been broken out and sold individually, which is nice, as this was the only one that did not have onions. My suspicion is this is probably something from the CaJohn’s line, as United is having it produced for them. It reminds me of the CaJohn’s NOLA, also reviewed elsewhere here, just nowhere near as black peppery, much more bitter, and notably hotter. For having Habanero as the hottest pepper, this is a fairly punchy sauce, surprisingly so, and it will probably push non-chileheads a bit.

Where this sort of falls down is in the flavor department. This, as mentioned, is a fairly bitter sauce, somewhat unpleasantly so. The addition of lemon extract reads a lot more forward than I wish it did, but unless there is something unlabeled, the culprit is probably the Habanero powder. Habanero is not particularly present as a flavor, which is also kind of odd. There is sometimes a back end note of garlic, but the overall tone is abrasive and unpolished. Perhaps that is intentional.

I find it closest to a Cajun sauce, which is where I’ve been mostly using it, but admittedly, this is more a sauce I’m trying to get through rather than enjoying much. It’s not bad enough to toss, but it also isn’t an experience I readily relish. It is, more or less, my current entry in the Lousiana-style family category, and while certainly far from great, it is mostly fine enough to continue with it, particularly since there is that nice bit of a heat push as well.

As is often the case with many vanity/novelty products, the goal is not necessarily to make a high quality end result, but rather that of marketing and for interested people to collect. Sometimes the product will also be good, but this is definitely one that I think is more to sell the band’s name on the label than anything else.

Bottom line: An ok at best Cajun sauce, albeit a rather bitter and somewhat hotter one.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3

Dawson’s x Iris Lune Eclipse Hot Sauce Review

Dawson’s x Iris Lune Eclipse

This may sound stupid, but every once in a while a sauce comes along that is so fantastic in just one aspect that it “breaks” my rating system. Ironically, this is one of the ways I can tell that it is sound because a sauce like this, that is near transcendent in execution and perhaps even in design, is not a sauce of the year candidate, even though it is probably the best-tasting sauce I will have all year and one which I enjoy immensely. It is because my rating system is incapable of truly encapsulating a sauce like this, is wholly inadequate to the task, that it confirms to me that I can stop debating if I should (or should have, rather, at this point, probably) add another dynamic for rating criteria.

Dawson’s seems to really like doing crossover sauces, as they also did one with the Heat Hot Sauce Shop (which I’ve reviewed elsewhere here), and also appear fairly regularly on The Hot Ones show, with entries in 5 seasons as of the time of this writing. While I liked some of their other sauces a good fair bit, it wasn’t really until this sauce that I was blown away by anything from them, but to say blown away is almost an understatement. This is one of the more well-crafted and executed sauces I’ve probably ever had and the design borders on genius. In many ways, this is a foodie’s hot sauce.

I rarely talk about color, unless it is something really striking, either positively or negatively, but I would be remiss not to talk about the color, as the gorgeous and lush nature of the sauce is reflected all the way down to the beautiful pastel yellow hue. It reminds me almost of a nice cream butter or perhaps even a honey butter and I’ve seen very few of those I haven’t liked. This also uses Vietnamese Red Chilis, which I’ve had a lot in pod form from dating a girl from Vietnam years ago, but don’t recall ever seeing in a sauce before. While this does mean generally low heat, they do work exceedingly well in this setting, with the garlic and peach.

Even though peach is the first ingredient, this is not hugely a peach-forward sauce. This is not to say that it doesn’t show up, but is more one of the flavors rather than the star. This is definitely a composite sauce, with the yellow peppers, as well as the aforementioned garlic, playing a substantive role, all on the silky base of the extra virgin olive oil. With fruit-based sweet-hots, which this is, though it is not particularly prominently sweet, I find they often work best when paired with specific foods and this is no exception. There is the additional element of the oil, which adds a richness to this that points it to working best at drier meats where one might want peach, such as chicken. It is actually quite fantastic there. I could also see this doing nicely on pork and if it’s around when grill season hits, will be trying it there as well, though not as a grill sauce, as it is nowhere sweet enough for that. Given its richness, as well as fruit-based sweet hots (which this is, mostly) by nature are lower in this, flexibility is a bit low, but I will say that I didn't dislike it on pizza, though I also would not say that is the right application.

Bottom line: This is a superb, stellar entry and not only the most impressive sauce I’ve had from Dawson’s, but I’d put in the upper 10% of all the sauces on this blog.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

Lola's Family Reserve Hot Sauce Review

Lola’s Family Reserve

After being generally unimpressed with the other 5 sauces I’ve done from this company, I wasn’t really expecting a lot out of this one. I bought it on a whim, same time as I bought the Mango one (reviewed elsewhere here) on vacation in Minnesota last summer, figuring that with the extra expense they put into the packaging (not pictured, but it came in a cardboard box, similar to how Tabasco used to), this might be a better, or at least hotter, sauce.

It turned out to be both better and hotter. If you picture the Valentina Black Label, with a substantial boost of heat, yet sharing some of the flavor characteristics of the Arizona Gunslinger sauces I’ve done (particularly with how overly salty they are), and steered more at being an everyday style sauce, you’ve about got it. This one does seem slightly thinner than the Valentina, but the color and texture are much more in line with that. It doesn’t seem like they were trying to make a Mexican-style sauce so much as an everyday sauce and the results were successful in that regard.

For a good everyday sauce, it needs to basically run the gamut of non-specialized food types (and by my reckoning, Asian foods and desserts would be considered specialized) and at least work acceptably in those scenarios and this one does, up to and including Mexican food. Considering the lineage - there are many references to the Original (also reviewed elsewhere here) on the label - it is small wonder. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as the Tamazula Black Label (yes, also reviewed elsewhere here), which is my current go-to in that regard, but it does work decently. So too on pizza and chicken tendies and on the wide variety of other sundries one might reasonably expect from a good, solid everyday sauce.

In addition to this reading as overly salty (enough to drag down the Flavor rating a bit), it also lists the mighty mighty Reaper as the first ingredient. Also included in the fun are Jalapenos and Habaneros, but it is those two that seem to constitute most of the flavor, with some notable heat, probably right at the line a non-chilehead would consider too much, but with no accompanying Reaper or bitter superhot flavor element, which I admittedly find kind of puzzling. Lime is also listed, but thankfully it does not factor prominently into proceedings here.

Bottom line: This is easily the hottest and best sauce Lola’s has produced and by my accounting, the only one really worth bothering with from them.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 10
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 6

Captain Mowatt's Blue Flame & Fireberry Hot Sauce(s) Review

Captain Mowatt’s Blue Flame
Captain Mowatt’s Fireberry

A new (to me) sauce company hailing from Maine, more or less halfway between Boston and Bangor and damn near to Canada, one could argue, where the sauces all come in generous 8 fl. oz. bottles. I don’t now remember how I stumbled across it, but they had a few sauces that seemed pretty interesting, so I took a shot at ordering some delectables along with those sauces to sample and these are the first two I’ve gotten to. They are not, I should hasten to add, despite both using Red Jalapenos, Cayenne, and Birds Eye as the chiles in the mix, particularly similar sauces, but because I can’t get it out of my head when I see berries, I immediately think of desserts, as I did for both of here.

This was an error on my part. They are not really dessert sauces, not sweet enough, I would say. The Fireberry (raspberry) is slightly sweeter and the Blue Flame (blueberry) somewhat more umami in nature, but neither really lends itself well to desserts per se. Overall, in fact, I found they worked better on as a less sweet dipping sauce for things like jalapeno poppers and in the case of the Blue Flame, as accompaniment to breakfast foods, pairing with maple syrup a bit. I didn’t find them to stray outside of that greatly, but have considerable plans to put these to the fire when grill season rolls back around on things like burgers and chicken, at least for the Fireberry. I suspect at least one will make a pretty interesting grill sauce.

This is not to say I don’t enjoy them. I do think both of them have an excellent flavor, though I do favor the blueberry a bit more. Part of that comes down to the idea that I think blueberry lends itself well to sauces and syrups a bit more readily than does raspberry, which I generally prefer to be raw, from a flavor standpoint. I am having some fun trying these out on different things, but I can’t say that I’ve discovered any particular new and exciting combination...yet, anyway. Heat wise, neither of them is particularly hot, which is to be expected given the peppers involved.

Bottom line: A more savory approach to berry forward fruit-based hot sauces, which I find an interesting approach, but ultimately more middle of the road as a final result for both.

Blue Flame Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 3

Fireberry Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Bohica Hawaiian Lava Hot Sauce Review

Bohica Pepper Hut Hawaiian Lava

I was unfamiliar with the usage of "bohica" and so found a lot of the verbiage on the label kind of strange, but upon finding the sort of vulgar pretext for what seems to be military slang, it seems more fitting. It doesn't really apply to the sauce, but it is less nonsensical now, if that makes sense, and no I'm not describing it here. You can look it up if you don't already know and are interested.

That aside, this is another sauce in which I’m tempted to do a very short review and call this “just another” pineapple-forward fruit-based sweet-hot with one pepper subbed out for another, which is true, but there is an entire litany of ingredients, including three separate fruit juices and a host of spices. While I think that it is mostly the case that this is a fairly uncomplex sauce, in terms of flavor, and a lot of pineapple flavor and pulp doing most of the lifting, there is also a fairly notable pepper presence, probably from the combination of the yellow Bells and the yellow 7-Pot Primos.

I don’t think I’ve had either a yellow 7-Pot Primo or a pineapple sauce with any 7-Pot, at least not in memory if I have, but the main difference here is a slight bitterness whereas the sauces with Scotch Bonnet or Habaneros tend more towards the fruitier side of things. The Reaper sauces have a foot in both worlds and that is mainly how those read out. This one, like many other pineapple sauces that tend to be on the pulpier and pale yellow side, is not anywhere near as sweet as some others I’ve had, which is a bit of a shame, as that is my preference, but it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with some good pineapple puree and pulp in the proceedings, to be sure. It also falls more or less in the middle of the pack in terms of thickness, with a bit of looseness, but no actual separation, happily.

Given the 7-Pot, one might expect this sauce to be a bit on the roaring side, but it is not. Indeed, it is far, far from it, with the sauce overall being rather tame, despite the odd label intimation. This does allow one to get more of a read on the ingredients and try to pick up the grace notes, but by far, the more prominent flavors here are the pineapple and the pepper combination.

Bottom line: I don’t mean to damn it with faint praise, but this is, when all is said and done, a sort of middle of the pack entry into one of the more established sauce types.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Black-Eyed Susan Cannonball Crush Hot Sauce Review

Black-Eyed Susan Captain Clyde’s Cannonball Crush

Rather lengthy title for this one, which I find a touch curious, as, nautical/pirate theme aside, I’m not sure what the actual cannonball is. I’d imagine it’s the garlic, which is by far the most forward and dominant flavor here, although the label text alludes to “citrus,” of which there is only orange and only from a juice concentrate and only really present in grace notes that show up here and there. The avocado oil also adds a lot of smoothness and silkiness to things, a bit reminiscent, even to the color, of some of the Torchbearer stuff. It is definitely not as generally chunky and clotty as those products tend to be, though.

This one does glide pretty considerably, in a sort of medium thick way. The oil also helps to suspend things a bit, though agitation certainly doesn’t hurt anything. It also doesn’t really change things a whole bunch, though. The Ghosties are here mainly to provide heat, though I can’t say it is quite a lot of it. This is a relatively tame sauces as far as that goes.

This sauce is really dependent on how much you like garlic and how much what you want to use it on will accommodate an influx of a fairly rich very garlic-forward sauce. I think it would be interesting to mix into a pesto or another sauce where you might want a bit of both a heat and garlic punch and once it warms up, I plan to tinker with it on the grill towards some garlic burgers. It does work very nicely in a garlic bread application, though admittedly that is a pretty simple application that has a very low bar to succeed. I did try it on tendies and it’s just too much of a garlic punch for me there. You could potentially use it to flavor some nuts and then bake them a bit in the oven or possibly try to carmelize these on some chicken wings, where the garlic really comes to life with the Maillard effect. I do like the flavor overall but I find this one somewhat hard to use out of the bottle.

Bottom line: This is much less a hot sauce and much more a straightforward creamy garlic sauce, with occasional slight citrus notes. 

 Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3

Angry Goat Aurora Berryalis Hot Sauce Review

Angry Goat Aurora Berryalis

I had finished up all of the entire Angry Goat lineup, at least of sauces I wanted to do, i.e. those without onions, some time ago and then noticed this gem popped up last year. I loved the label and it is probably one of my favorites from them, though most of them I view pretty favorably. Since Angry Goat is a sauce company I admire quite a bit (see the list of my favorite sauce companies in the SOTY list - link at right), so, after first checking the ingredient list, I put it on my list to get acquire ASAP. It took a while longer than expected, but I finally got my grubby little mitts on it. Once I did, I wasted no time in cracking it open and diving in.

Douglah peppers, as a superhot, are one that I have decided mixed feelings about. I have had them in places where I thought the flavor worked, but for the most part, they come across as way too sour for me to enjoy much. I figured if they were going to be in the optimal setting, it would probably be in those steely Angry Goat hands. I generally find most berry sauces to be intriguing, but berry sauces in general tend to be a bit on the lower flexibility side. Where they work, such as on red meat and pork, they work spectacularly well and decidedly less well elsewhere.

This one I put through its paces, with a bevy of tastes covering nearly everything I could think of, from the Arby’s Poppers (not sweet enough for that), to ice cream and desserts (way not sweet enough for that), to tendies and burgers and roast beef sandwiches and so on. The smell was very much superhot and the combination of Douglah with Ghosties was kind of a smart one, as in taking a questionably flavored chile and pairing it with the glory of Ghosties. There was also some tempering here with the berries, though I think they do get lost a bit, and maple syrup and black garlic powder, to dial down the sourness a bit, but there was still, for me, ultimately just a touch too much of it. There are a lot of interesting grace notes to be had and this is absolutely one that benefits from frequent agitation.

Douglahs are unquestionably superhots. Ghost peppers are unquestionably superhots. There has been a lot of discussion that the chocolate versions of chiles generally are the hottest varietals. I don’t know if that is true or not, as I’m not a pod guy, per se, but this sauce is absolutely chilehead only territory. It smells of superhot and tastes mainly of superhot and it’s hard to imagine normies enjoying this much.

Bottom line: One of the more blazing entries from Angry Goat, that both earns the bear on the label and delivers yet another quite intriguing flavor prospect, albeit a very chile forward one.

 Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Maritime Madness Newfoundland Screech Hot Sauce Review

Maritime Madness Newfoundland Screech

Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J8_QG5du6g

Very interestingly named sauce, with wording that apparently has a variety of meanings and subtexts, though in this case, I think it refers more specifically to the brand of rum used in the sauce. This is one where the intent is to sort of straddle the line between a BBQ sauce (which Maritime Madness also has as a separate and distinct line from the hot sauces) and a hot sauce, which it rather deftly does. Therein, though, is a bit of a challenge.

I’ve spoken before about sauces becoming food-locked and in an effort to gain traction in two different worlds, say mustards and hot sauces or, in this case, BBQ sauces and hot sauces, it tends to diminish the overall flexibility of the sauces, in that you have to pair to multiple styles of condiment and usually fairly distinctive and often times quite forward flavor profile, whereas if you stick to just one, it reduces the things to pair with just down to overall flavor profile. While I suppose someone might add a BBQ sauce to Alfredo, for instance, it probably won’t be an especially happy flavor union.

So, with this one, the flavor sort of reminds me of a couple things. There used to be a BBQ sauce called Open Pit (no idea if it’s still around) that was fairly popular in the Midwest when I was a kid. I find this a bit reminiscent of both that and the Arby-Q sauce, which I’ve never quite understood what they were trying to do there, although it is better than either of those. It is perhaps closest to the Arby-Q sauce, just a much better version of it and not dreadful tasting, like I find that sauce to be. If you lean more into the BBQ side, this is where this sauce tends to do best, though I find the flavor to be overall somewhat subtle, with the garlic and rum showing up here and there, but frequently also with flavor cancellation, depending on where you use it. Heat-wise, this is Habanero & Cayenne, so it’s not particularly punchy. In fact, the heat sort of comes on a bit slowly and tamely and I doubt too many will find it to be particularly challenging.

Bottom line: A very likable sauce that manages to pull off the nifty trick of having a foot in both the BBQ and hot sauce worlds, respectively, though it tends a bit towards the latter.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Backdraft Fire Sauce Hot Sauce Review

Backdraft Fire Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YACP2DZoo7g

From one “kitchen sink” sauce, we follow immediately up with another, though this one is definitely less “kitchen sink” and more just overly busy. It very clearly is more a sweet mustard than any other thing, albeit one with a hodge-podge of what I’d say are excessive stray elements. One of those is the Peruvian seasoning, which contributes a dry-herby sort of feel to things that I could very much do without. I also kind of question the thought of sweetening mustard with both cane sugar and molasses, but that part is less egregious.

The main flavor components here are: mustard, Worcestershire sauce, molasses, and there is also red Habanero pepper mash as well, to sort of give it a slight modicum of heat, along with some cane sugar. The label itself is pretty silly, ranging from suggested use of “EVERYTHING” to calling it a “Fireman’s worst nightmare” and then saying it is dedicated to firefighters...taken literally, which I will now do, is the idea that it is bottled-up bad dreams dedicated to firefighters? Also, calling this “fire” sauce instead of hot sauce is kind of silly and meaningless. This is not to say that hot sauce has intrinsic meaning, since hot usually denotes temperature and you could have literally anything bottled be a “hot” sauce...or cold sauce. Colloquially, the condiment we all know as hot sauce is a reference to capsaicin and moving to “fire” sauce should denote a potentially higher degree of that.

Here, it is does not. We’re dealing with red Habanero, somewhat down in the ingredient list, and heat is quite moderate. It is not appreciable particularly in the flavor. Since this really wants to be considered a hot sauce rather than a mustard, it will be judged in that way. The flavor is quite busy, with a term I like to use called severalmany things going on at once. This sauce would have benefitted tremendously from being stripped back somewhat and simplified and it kind of feels like someone just kept adding stuff until they got to a desired end, rather than pulling back and starting over. It works reasonably well on most meats, excepting, oddly enough, sausages, and it’s a bit too cold (and eggs too expensive at present) for me to try it in either egg salad or potato salad or deviled eggs, but I tend not to love sweet mustards there and definitely prefer uncomplicated flavors towards part of a cohesive whole, rather than a bunch of random notes like this one delivers.

Bottom line: I’m almost tempted to call it a novelty sauce, but I don’t think that’s the intent. Considering it a more or less overly busy sweet mustard is the good move here. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3