Fuck, he typed as he very professionally began his review.Here's the thing. I really wanted to like this sauce. Everyone who knows me knows I love bourbon. I don't especially love Jim Beam, despite the swimming pool of the shit I've probably drank by now, but if something says "bourbon" on it, it has my attention and immediate interest.
A quick sidetrack -- so the other day, I'm at a place in Salt Lake called Grove Market. They asses boast the largest hot sauce in the city and at well over 200 different bottles, maybe even 300+, they're right on the money there. Nobody else is even close. Like a fucking fool, I went there during a half hour lunch. Figure 7 - 8 minutes to drive there and the rest staring and drooling and dancing around people trying to order lunch sandwiches at this damn deli. I could have spent hours, but instead, I threw down my $5 and took this bottle home, figuring I would go back later (which will be 09.15.12, almost certainly).
I got it back to work (late from lunch) and cracked the bitch open to kick up some 7-11 pizza (best I could do on short notice) and my immediate impression, after taking a slug from the bottle straight (couldn't find a spoon) was that it was a pleasant-tasting sauce. It's a little difficult to place precisely. Initially, I got the chili-powder aspect, reminding me of Pico Pica, then the vinegar hit, so now we have Pico Pica + maybe Tabasco and finally I got the bourbon, albeit very light at that moment, aspect. Hmmmm. As I got further into the sauce, I began to detect more notes and the bourbon flourished more.
On pizza, it kicked all kinds of ass and frankly, this is one of the better sauces I've had on pizza. Clocking in at ~5K SHU, it is around the level of the average jalapeno, nothing special there. The taste...figuring it to be similar to Pico Pica, I slopped it on some Del Taco hardshells and became immediately depressed. Ass city. I put it on some bean burritos from there, to no avail. I got some El Yucateco to bail me out and put the JB away for another day. That day happened a short time later at a chicken strip dinner. I made both these Tyson pre-sauced things that looked like poop logs and some chicken finger appetizers as well. On the fingers, it was aces. On the BBQ strips, however, it was ass personified and I had to call on Texas Pete for a bailout there.
Bottom line: This is overall a pleasant-tasting sauce by itself and as long as you don't have other stronger flavors (hence the success with pizza and chicken fingers), it does quite well. In conjunction with more dominant flavors and the subtleties get masked and you get...vinegar, which creates an ill result. The flexibility of this sauce is lacking, but even if it wasn't, it's not a great sauce, by any means. If you want heat, this is not your sauce, but if you want something that tastes reasonably good on specific foods, you could do worse than to pick up a bottle of this. Even though the cost is higher than more useful sauces, I wouldn't be afraid to pick up a bottle if you like bourbon-sauces and haven't tried this yourself.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 2
Flavor: 6
Flexibility: original 4, update 5
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4
Overall: original 4, update 5
** Update: 09.18.12 **
After further consideration and testing, this stuff is somewhat more flexible than I initially indicated, though not a great deal. I've moved the overall rating up slightly in recognition of that. I still don't believe I would pay $5 for another 5 oz. bottle of it, though...
* Do yourself a favor and go to www.scottrobertsweb.com and check out his Scoville scale. It will prove infinitely useful not only with these (and others) reviews, but in general if you're stepping into this world.
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