Best Hot Sauce 2017 + Recap

Every once in a while, I think about how long I’ve done this and it sort of seems surreal so much time has passed. This is now the 6^th year I’ve been picking a SOTY and while it’s still slower than I’d like, I think I’m finally settling in to more of a regular order of things. The days of me blazing through sauces hot and heavy are probably realistically over, but my interest in heat remains strong, so there’s no thoughts of abandoning or otherwise stopping the flow here. 2017 was sort of an uneven year for sauces. I had mostly middle of the road ones overall. I also did a lot of catching up on pictures, though at some point, I will probably take another crack at getting it even closer to complete, but that is in no way a priority or urgency.

As usual, all sauces not directly linked here can be clicked to from the Table Of Contents page.

Total posts (including this post): 170
Total views (as of this writing): 10,758
Total single sauce full reviews: 136
Total double sauce full reviews: 2
Total sauces full reviewed: 138
Total mini-sauce reviews: 20
Total sauces reviewed, combined: 158
Total unopened sauces waiting on shelf for review: 5
Total opened sauces waiting for review: 0
Total open bottles in fridge: 8
Door sauces: 6
Back of fridge sauces: 2
 Highest viewed review: 393 - O' Brother Chipotle-Habanero Hot Sauce
Highest viewed article, any type: 393 - O' Brother Chipotle-Habanero Hot Sauce

In relatively related news, since I got it, the sauce I’ve probably used the most is not in the running for SOTY, but deserves an honorable mention anyway and again, this is one that can be obtained at the grocery store. It was one where I never knew I needed a ramen sauce until I did and once I had it, I wondered how I ever lived without it. That sauce is the Private Selection Shichimi Togarishi and it’s probably the sauce I’ve had the single-most greatest amount, though realistically, that’s more related to several dietary changes. I’m still also using the Boar’s Head directly as a pizza sauce, so a fair amount of that as well. Two of the door fridge sauces are actually those two mentioned in this paragraph, so mostly probably I will always have at least 2, though those are really not so good outside of those specific uses for which I keep them.

Speaking of, my current standby sauces, notes in the TOC where I've done a review, are:
*Emeritus Everyday sauce: Trappey's Red Devil
*Emeritus Asian-style sauce: Huy Fong Chili-Garlic Sauce
*Everyday sauce (and current overall favorite): Blair’s Pure Death Sauce
*Grilling sauce: CaJohn's Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero (BICH)
*Ramen/Japanese sauce: Private Selection Shichimi Togarishi
*Pizza sauce (as in used instead of actual pizza sauce): Boar’s Head Jalapeno Pepper Sauce
Mexican-style sauce: Arizona Pepper’s Chipotle Habanero Pepper Sauce
*Asian-style sauce: Zenso Sweet Chili Sauce
*Louisiana-style sauce: Irazu Cayenne
 Sweet-hot sauce: CaJohn's Happy Beaver

*= Not looking for a replacement

 Again, competition this year was rather minimal. With the 5 still waiting on the shelf, I have some strong hopes for 2018, but I’m probably not going on any sauce rampages until I (finally) clear out the unopened ones that have been waiting. I stopped by one of my usual brick & mortar haunts, which was the southern of the 2 (Pirate O’s in Draper – the northern one is Burn Your Tongue in Ogden) and they had nothing new after I did my last clear-out, so next visit will probably be BYT at some point in the New Year.

Anyway, in more or less a runaway, your clear winner this year: Z’s Shield Maiden Hot Sauce. One of the things I like best about a lot of the SOTY is that they choose themselves. Despite some fairly stiff competition from Torchbearer’s The Rapture, which was the main leader for nearly all of this year and a fine, well-made and tasty sauce, despite being far and away the hottest I’ve had in the line-up without aid of extract, the Shield Maiden hit me immediately in a way reminiscent of still one of my all-time favorites, Black’s Pure Death. While it is perhaps not up to that incredible level, I find myself liking it more and more over time and look forward to using it, something true of all other SOTY winners as well. In point of fact, I’ve whipped through a bottle of each of the previous winners this year, something that perhaps contributed to the bit of a struggle to choose this year’s and I will definitely be picking up more Shield Maiden when I come across it again.

Previous TSAAF Sauce Of The Year winners:
2012: CaJohn’s Happy Beaver
2013: Blair’s Pure Death
2014: Born To Hula’s Ghost Of Ancho
2015: Voodoo Chile’s Voo Dew Honey Doo
2016: Pirate O’s Surface Of The Sun Hot Sauce

There is, of course, also my wine about blog, the Happy Sippin’ Companion (HSC), which has now 63 posts, 57 of which are reviews. It has drawn, to date, 1,033 views in the 4 years it’s been active.

Then we have Yelp. My review count is now 1400 reviews and 159 updates, which is a total of 1559 reviews, all in. I was "First To Review" 161 times.  I joined in September 2013, for reference. I also have 796 "Friends" (feel free to add me, if you wish), 37 "Followers" and am up to 18 Lists. My distribution of ratings and further metrics are available on my Yelp page, which you can click to from my widget. As always, I have several on tap that I haven’t gotten around to posting as of yet and in fact, decided to draw the line at 1400 this year. More will be sure to launch in early January, so stay tuned if you like those.

For those of you who made it, I appreciate you dropping by. If there’s any changes to suggest or sauces you’d like to see me get to, please drop me a line in the comment section of any of the reviews.

Tiki Bar Hot Sauce Review

CaJohn's Tiki Bar Hotter Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o3WnzR3MX8

I like to keep a fruit-based sauce or two around, but when I saw papaya in this one, after what turned out to be an ultimately unhappy experience with a prior product, I was a bit leery, but if there's one guy I trust to make a great sauce, it's CaJohn and so I went for it...and was instantly rewarded. Think of this as one of the best teriyaki sauces you've had in your life (in fact, I'm sorely tempted to go to a Hawaiian place and get some musubi to double-check myself) and you'll be about there. The label bills this sauce as the "hotter hot sauce", which makes about zero sense here as there is precious little heat to be had. Also of interest is that the ingredients mentions the word "chile" a couple times, but with no indication of which chile, very unusual for CaJohn's products, which usually are very specific in which pepper is burning you up at the time.

Bottom line: This is not, it should be noted, precisely a teriyaki sauce, but that is definitely the closest thing to it and I would keep a bottle of this around specifically for that purpose. Another very tasty entry from one of the reigning kings of the hot sauce world.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor:7

Overall: 6

Z's Twang Hot Sauce Review

Z's Hot Sauce Twang!

Another entry from Z's, which I'm starting to see in a lot more brick and mortars. I've tried to keep my hot sauce spending exclusive to those locations when possible and I've happily seen all of their inventory increase as far as selection. This one is based on Utah and I believe came largely from farmer's markets and now into retail, so a good building there. Given how excited I was about the Shield Maiden sauce (reviewed elsewhere on this blog), I thought I'd take a shot at their everyday sauce, as I was hoping it was more like a milder version of the awesome Shield Maiden...

 ...and immediately noted that it was going for an earthiness with the apple cider vinegar. I typically dislike that stuff, so it was a good test to see if my typical disdain for that element could be overpowered by the sauce. Initially, I found the sauce pretty enjoyable. Aside from the apple cider vinegar, flavor was excellent, though heat was somewhat minimal. Unfortunately, my propensity is to wind up focusing on the vinegar flavor notes and I found myself enjoying the sauce much less over time.

It is definitely highly flexible, though and this would do well as a table sauce for breakfast, works reasonably well on chicken strips and pizza and is indeed a pretty solid all-around sauce...if only it just used a different vinegar...

Bottom line: I started from mildly liking this sauce to more tolerating it towards the end. While not bad, there are a lot of other sauces I'd rather have.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 9
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Psycho Tropic Hot Sauce Review

Voodoo Chile Psycho Tropic Hot Sauce

Interesting choice to name it after a term used with high specificity in regards to mind-altering drugs, but hyperbole is part of the joy of the hot sauce world and oneupsmanship in general, I suppose. In this case, the name is broken up into the more pedestrian and somewhat generic "psycho" along with "tropic" standing alone, in obvious reference to the preponderance of tropic fruits in this blend. Now, I'm a pretty big fan of this company, their Honey Doo Peppadew sauce won SOTY not so long ago and so anything I see from them, as long as it doesn't contain deal-breaking elements, I'm in to try.

For this one, the main flavors are papaya and guava, which lends the impression of more or less a basic fruity sweetness. If you don't particularly like those flavors and I don't in general, this sauce will fall fairly flat, though it took me a bit longer than usual to decide I ultimately didn't like the flavor much. Like most fruit sauces, this one is far better with fried foods or saltier foods in general and if you do enjoy the flavor, it makes a very solid dipping sauce.

Heat, despite containing the current record holder for SHUs, the Carolina Reapers, is a bit on the lighter side than what I was expecting. There are also Datil Peppers and Scotch Bonnet, which round this out nicely, though the heat is definitely more on the moderate side. I don't find either the Reapers or Datils particularly flavorful but Scotch Bonnet is one of my favorites and I wish it tasted more like those than the others. Heat is probably edging towards too much for most people, but chileheads will not find this much of a challenge, if at all. I do wonder if this has been reformulated, as the ad copy cites sweet onions and I neither taste them nor see them on the ingredient panel of my bottle...

Bottom line: This one will be largely dependent on how much you like the stronger flavors I've mentioned in this review. For me, the taste here is mostly a miss, but consistency is good and the heat is definitely acceptable.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3

Bravado Crimson Special Reserve Hot Sauce Review

Bravado Crimson Special Reserve Hot Sauce

This is a very unassuming bottle and packaging, which makes it all the more stealthy. Make no mistake, though: this one packs a massive heat punch. This is one that is a much stepped on version of the regular Crimson sauce, which is presumably a somewhat tame Arbol chili sauce and ramps it up notably. I have no idea what the regular sauce tastes like and was not able to get any sense of it at all from this as it was full tilt Scorpion peppers.

The slight sweet and fruitiness of them is there in full force...and little else. If you like the taste of that pepper, you'll love this sauce...for me, I'm not what one would call a huge fan of that peppers flavor and like it in much smaller doses, more as an accent than anything else and this is far from that. No idea what the SHU rating is on this, but it is pretty considerable.

Overall, I don't really enjoy the flavor of this. I wish it had a restrictor cap, as I've over-sauced (and somewhat ruined) more than one dish by the runny nature of this sauce. I found it to work best on things with very strong flavors, particularly creamy sauces, where it melded in nicely and did a nice job improving the flavor, but truth be told, I struggled a lot to find a place for this. That it continually separates in the bottle is also kind of a nuisance, but not the end of the world as I habitually shake all sauces prior to using regardless.

Bottom line: I don't know what to make of this or how it would ever fit in my regular stable. I was hoping this would be something other than what it turned out to be, which is more or less a straight across Scorpion sauce.


Breakdown:

            Heat level: 8
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 6

Shield Maiden Hot Sauce Review

Z's Shield Maiden Hot Sauce - [TSAAF Sauce Of The Year 2017]

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGirsZ5LDsA

Another entry from Utah and this one appears to take aim, more or less, at the vaunted territory occupied by the hallowed ground of Blair's Pure Death. While not exactly a 1:1 version, there are many, many similarities, starting with the Habaneros and hitting the Hawaiian salt as well. I don't know how similar the vinegars are, but while Pure Death opts for Jolokias, this one switches gears to incorporate clove honey, carrots, Jalapenos and Cayenne. If forced to choose just one all-time favorite, I'd probably start weeping openly at the difficulty of such a thing, but definitely the Pure Death would be in the running and near the top. This one isn't quite flavor competition for that, but is excellent in its own right.  Even with those additions, it is oddly not hugely sweeter than Pure Death, though somewhat. It is less like the other Habanero-Carrot sauces I've had and this is a good thing. Perhaps it is something in between, as it does not strongly overpower food as Pure Death can sometimes do. Rather, this one plays a lot nicer.

The first ingredient here is not a pepper, so heat is more on the moderate side for chileheads, though people not in that category could find it somewhat uncomfortable out of the gate. There is a nice build with the Habaneros as well, so this is definitely not for anyone to just grab and run with, unless they're at least somewhat accustomed to the fundamentals of heat. It is very smooth and well-blended and, again like Pure Death, will go with damn near anything you want to put it on. In fact, while I don't particularly hugely enjoy this or Pure Death with Mexican food especially, they will even work there. This is not to say it's bad, just that I enjoy other things more. It even works on Asian foods, which is somewhat of a rarity.

Neither here nor there, but I also get a kick out of the imagery and Viking leanings. This is a fairly strongly resonance to my personal heritage and may not apply to everyone, but it's nice to see my ancestry represented in the hot sauce world.

Bottom line: A very impressive entry from Z's Hot Sauce, excellently flavorful, with a decent but not overpowering amount of heat. While this is not going on my Regulars list, I would happily pick up a bottle anytime. This is also the strongest entry to date for SOTY 2017.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 5
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 10
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 9

General Update Q3 2K17

Added more pics, which brings us all the way up to 92 now, including all the SOTYs, finally. This is out of a possible 135 and I’ve almost run out of room for the ones I can (somewhat) easily get. I will be much more content when I get to 100 pics, since, like most humans, I am obsessed, for whatever reason, with 10s. On the plus, I am nearing 70%, so that is a pretty good jump in a quarter, particularly for something that will never be 100%.

Speaking of hot sauces in general, so far another soft year, but I also managed to get in another round of hauls and saw some good stuff there, including finally updating the Brick & Mortars In Utah post. Another huge diet shift, for me, this time, as I’ve finally thrown in the sponge on trying to finance 3 separate eating styles, something that was never actually desired in the first place, but was more allowed to happen. Bringing us into alignment means I have to put my money where my mouth is and basically stop buying meat during grocery trips and stop eating it as well…at least while home.

We’re only on the front edge of it and the development makes me greatly sad when I sit down to those meals, so I understand how people tend to sometimes not do well on it because a significant part of the expected and anticipated taste is flatly missing. A lot of stuff tastes “wrong” and cooking to recipes that are built around having meat be a component are noticeably worse for it. 

I was also and continue to stay concerned as to what it would do for hot sauce consumption. This late and I still don’t really have a ton of SOTY candidates. Hot sauce tends to work better with meats. It’s not even my opinion; this is fact. So, I’m taking this as a scientific experiment of sorts to see how I can work this in better. If anyone has suggestions, would love to hear them. Now a bit into this, my conclusion is strongly that unless something is fried, a lot of the sauces do not work as strongly as they do with meat. My wife also likes cooking stuff that is…let’s call it eclectic, some of which don’t lend themselves to hot sauces at all. 

Still, at this point, I’m running really low on open sauces in general, so I should have a few more coming up for review in the coming weeks, hopefully a good SOTY candidate.

Private Selection Shichimi Togarishi Hot Sauce Review

Private Selection Shichimi Togarishi Hot Sauce

This is kind of a fun sauce, in a way. Taken by itself, it is reminiscent of a not-as-tasty Pico Pica, but it exists to really serve one purpose. Let's take a quick Japanese lesson before we get to that.

If you've spent any time with my Yelp reviews or happen to know me personally, you know that Asian in general and in particular, Japanese food, plays a pretty substantial role in my diet and I have an inordinate fondness in general for it. So, "Ichimi" is indicative of a single flavor, while "Shichimi" relates to seven flavors. "Togarishi" means basically hot/spicy red pepper. So, the name itself is more or less "Seven Flavors Spicy Red Pepper" hot sauce. Here, they are using Japones peppers for this facet. The shichimi togarishi flavoring style is very common in Japanese cuisine, but it is interesting that Private Selection would attempt to float this sauce, as typically this is seen as a dried spice mix.

It is very narrowly - and specifically - meant to complement one style of food, that being Japanese and even more narrowly, to one facet of that, being the unami. Unami is obviously a very potent factor and force in nearly all Japanese cooking, but the choice to make a sauce catering in this manner is both brave and curious.

I will say they hit their mark correctly. This sauce flatly does not work in anything other than Japanese food and tends to conflict to varying degrees if attempted outside of that. If, however, you are a poor college student, say, or otherwise prone to eating ramen noodles or if you're a big fan of Japanese food in general, but want some choice flavoring and modest heat, this is it. This can literally transform the garbage noodles you see on the grocery store shelves from something to get through so you can avoid the distraction of hunger pangs to a meal approaching both satisfying and tasty and that is truly saying something.

Bottom line: For a sauce that is meant to do one thing, it succeeds in that task remarkably well. If you're a big fan of Japanese or even Japanese-style food, this is well worth your attention.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Twisted Peach Carolina Reaper Hot Sauce

Eddie Ojeda's Twisted Peach Carolina Reaper Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h8mXpAKdp4

Another entry from the guitarist of Twisted Sister and this one fares a bit less well, in some respects, than the Apple Serrano entry (review elsewhere on this blog). I think part of this is due to the peach itself, which can frequently be a very subtle flavor, unless stepped on. Unless this was shaken frequently (and I forgot plenty of times), the consistency was simply absent. This means that at times, there was little to no heat and at times, enough to demonstrate clearly why the Carolina Reaper enjoys its current perch atop the heap as the hottest pepper in the world. Many times, there would be a good flavor, but several, I'd have to use progressively more sauce than what I would consider normal, to even find that flavor, then to be hit with what turned out to be a very solid heat. I like the idea behind this sauce and wish it would have come across differently, but consistency in sauces is an oft-overlooked but definitely important factor if not present.

When this sauce is on, it's on, combining a very nice sweetness and lovely peach bouquet and flavor to the hammer contrast of the Carolina Reaper peppers, which admittedly, are rivaling the surprising good taste of former champ Scorpion peppers for me. Jolokias can be hit or miss for me and Habaneros nearly always a miss, but the Scorpions and the Reapers have a flavor profile that I lean much more towards like than dislike. Not to say I love them or would seek them out to eat them raw, necessarily, but I think both have a lot to offer in flavor as well as heat. Here, there was a constant battle between the peach and the Reapers, with neither quite being the dominant flavor and leaving it in a weird sort of middle land, nearly absent of any kind of flavor, other than something vaguely sweet, but mostly muted and minimal, that left me more confused than anything.

Bottom line: This is worth a shot, if you like higher heat fruit sauces. When it is on, it could rival the best of anything out there, but the downside is you have to work for it. Any lapse and this is a sauce you could easily skip. This inconsistency made it challenging to rate, as well.

UPDATE September 2021: Maybe it's the various batches or maybe the formula has been tweaked, but I would put this as probably the best peach hot sauce I've ever had.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8

Noel's Serrano & Mango Hot Sauce Review

Noel's Serrano & Mango Hot Sauce

Amusingly, the label calls this one "All Supernatural", amusing because that is a very curious way of spelling "astringent", which is the dominating characteristic of this sauce. Using mango in a sauce is tough...most of them tend to be of the sour and not particularly ripe variety and the fruit itself is a bit delicate in that you only have a specific grace period. Fall outside of that and it's either overripe or, as is this one, excessively tart. This adds another sin by banking in an overly generous amount of vinegar and there is no hope for it at that point, certainly not anything the relatively weak serrano would be able to stand up to or combat in any way.

I've used this in a variety of settings and it immediately overpowers and distracts from nearly every type of food I tried, which is never a good trend. That it is not particularly good-tasting also creates its own problems, unless you're really really into hyper astringent (think vinegary-sour) tastes, then you may like this better. The heat is very minimal, naturally, given the use of Serranos and this less than stellar combination makes it difficult to see any place for this.

Bottom line: This is a sauce I wound up giving up on and tossing the remainder of the bottle, which is a rarity for me and speaks all it needs to the sauce itself.


Breakdown:

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

Overall: 1

Twisted Apple Serrano Hot Sauce Review

Eddie Ojeda's Twisted Apple Serrano Hot Sauce

Right off the bat, I will mention a couple things. The first is that I'm a long-time Twisted Sister fan, Mr. Ojeda being one of the guitar tandem of that long-running act, but I'm not so much a fan of the novelty/vanity branding, having tried a number of products and finding the results less than perhaps glorious. In the hot sauce world, however, the results have tended to be better...not why I bought it but worth noting. I was kind of amused that Dee Snider, who has zero to do with this sauce, was also on the label, though. The second is more on point and that being that "hot" sauce here is kind of a misnomer; there is precious little heat to be had here.

What there is though is flavor and tons of it. If you threw an apple pie filling into a blender and then spiked it with both apple soda and ginger ale, this is about the flavor you would get there, along with some very mild serrano tones. So, if you're thinking this is probably hyper-sweet, you're on the money there. It is, incredibly so, passing cloying along the way. This makes it hard for me to consider it an everyday sauce, but it does make it pair incredibly well with meat. I've tried it with several, including the old standby of chicken strips and it is a joy with all of them, including salmon, which can be hard to fit with a sauce.

Bottom line: If you like very well-crafted, fruity and very sweet sauces, this is right up your alley. While I find it highly enjoyable overall, it doesn't seem to have a natural place in my regular lineup.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Zatarain's Cajun Hot Sauce Review

Zatarain's Cajun Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXYfM7PKung

Zatarain's, the company mostly known for questionable-tasting riffs on various Cajun dishes, has followed up their dried food offering by adding in a substandard sauce that riffs on the Louisiana-style sauces to complement (presumably) the various offerings on grocery store shelves. Obviously, I'm not a fan of their "food", but Louisiana-style sauces are not particularly complex and are a favorite of mine and I had given up on the Sweet Baby Ray's by then and was in need of a replacement. I will nearly always gamble a couple bucks on this type of sauce, as long as it does not contain any of the dealbreakers. It's a weakness of mine, I guess...

As for this one...if you love that canned and bottle garlic, this may be for you. If you love powdered garlic a lot, this may be for you. For me, I definitely have some strong affection for garlic, cooking & eating entire cloves at a time, but I can only tolerate the processed stuff in small doses. Here, they clearly are aiming high with the garlic content, to the point where it rapidly overpowers everything. The pepper mash and vinegar are meant to be the stars of the show and a lot of products makes this same error on this type of sauce. It is, at heart, a more simple sauce and complicating it rarely leads to improved results. Mostly it leads to what this is...the next bottle I'm going to punt on and boot.

Aside from the taste bumble, there is not a great deal of heat. The bottle is pretty large, but that only matters if the sauce is any good, which this is not. I did like the chunks of pepper in there, but they could cut the garlic in half and still be pushing too much. It literally overrides everything else and detracts from the food entirely. There was one or two things that it was passable with, but that's not why I'm buying sauce and definitely not why I'm eating it.

Bottom line: I didn't expect a lot from Zatarain's and this about hit the mark. I might use it if there were nothing else there and the food needed some Louisiana-style sauce love, but would never pay for this again. If you like the processed garlic a lot, you may enjoy this more, but not a good sauce.


Breakdown:

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

Overall: 1

Brick & Mortars In Utah Update

It's been a good, good long time since I did one of these. I got to thinking and went back and checked and the last one I see is April 2015, which is longer even than I was thinking. I recently did a sauce roundup sweep and so with everything fresh (and yes, I bought something at every single stop) in mind, let's get into things. All of these shops, by the by, are reviewed on my Yelp account, which should be attached to this page, on the right, I do believe.

Burn Your Tongue - Quilted Bear - Newgate Mall, Ogden, UT

I debated with myself for a while...do I pick the perennial baddie of Grove Market or my newer favorite of Pirate O's, but the re-design of this place and the dedication to heat won the day. This section has tripled its previous space inside the store and there is now more hot sauce and hot snack goodness there than ever before, all the way down to powdered mixes. I am a big admirer of dedication and BYT is clearly dedicated, offering maybe not quite as much shelf space overall as Pirate O's, though more than Grove, but definitely more variety than either of the other places. This is on regular rotation and consistently has new and exciting stuff, as well as keeping a good amount of solid ringers. I don't know that any sauce-only or hot food-only brick and mortar realistically has a shot in a state where the citizens tend to favor bland above all else, but if there is one that has a chance of making it that way, it is this one. He also travels a lot and does tasting and farmer's markets and so on, so if you're only going to hit one on this list, make it this...well worth the drive.

Grove Market - Salt Lake City, UT

The sauce selection, sorely in need of revamping, has been largely re-tooled. There's still a lot there I don't like and would never consider buying, but interestingly, this place is veering away somewhat from the super-hots, as in the extract absurdly hot ones. There is little space, but it is definitely maximized, with a pronounced selection for the available space, which was gratifying to see. This used to be the only game not only in town but anywhere around, so it was refreshing to see them make those kinds of changes. Truth be told, I don't lean on this one anymore for hot sauces, but they also make one of the tastiest and still best sandwiches known to man and have an awesome and somewhat dizzying amount of snacks and drinks. It is a long-favorite and so much so that I don't even mind (much) the atrocious parking and the narrow, borderline claustrophobic aisles. I have never once stepped into this store and stepped out without buying something, which speaks volumes.

Pirate O's - Draper, UT

More of a Euro/quasi-Scandinavian import store than anything else, this is the definition of hodge podge shop. They were formerly reliable with sauces, but have seem to have set their sights squarely and somewhat only at the novelty sauces. Tons of shelf space was there, but much of it was empty, which makes me wonder if they're between shipments or if something else is going on. There is still enough other stuff to make any visit worthwhile (where else can you find candy-coated insects, if you want that, I guess and their soda selection is dazzling), but they have drifted pretty far away from being reliable on the sauce side of things.

And that's it...some of the Kroger outlets are carrying the Private Selection line of house sauces, some of the Fresh Markets and Harmon's will have a good-for-a-grocery-store selection, but none are up to the level of these 3, who still stand alone, atop the heap and in the order listed above. All of them are definitely worth a visit, but as a final note to this, I've spent more in my last trip to BYT than the other 2 combined over the last 2 years...in fact, in my final ringing endorsement, I will further note that I have ceased buying sauces online entirely, in favor of brick-and-mortars and that is largely due to BYT.

General Update Q2 2K17

I know this has been a long time coming and I’m probably late to this particular party, but I’m wondering if all the super hot sauce craze has been kind of a fad that is starting to taper. A lot of this is because of what is going on with perhaps the most prolific and well-known of the hot sauce bloggers and the guy who inadvertently got me interested in doing this via inspiration, Scott Roberts. His output has been declining for some time and it seemed he had lot the spirit to continue promoting the agenda of heat and while I probably am only now just catching up, admittedly, apparently he has gone all churchy. I have always said a price can’t be put on happiness and if this is what is making him happy, more power to him and go have fun, but that is a major voice being removed from the spicy side of things. 

I will not ever replace Scott Roberts and am not sure anyone realistically can. I think he definitely hit his stride at the right time, when there was some crazy groundswell momentum and his approach was smart to the point of brilliance, particularly with his chart. I thought he had a great premise with trying to crown king of kings of all the hot sauces and tried to help as I could, but alas, it didn’t quite shake out. All of that stuff (minus the tournament, which lives on now only in memory) will remain, from my understanding, but updates will be even more sporadic, at best, again, from what I’m gathering. Rather than say it’s a shame, I celebrate the other times and triumphs and wish him nothing but the best. 

I have refrained from any escalation into snack foods or BBQ sauces or spicy dry rubs or candies or any of that, partly because so many of them violate one of my 2 main rules (no onions, no extracts) and also because I set this up to be a hot sauce blog. Because there is no trying to outdo myself, there is no pressure to chase after hot sauce gatherings (though I would like to hit at least one someday) or create video channels or anything else that takes the fun and joy out of what has been a very pleasurable experience thus far. I also do want to note that there is still much popularization of "hot" stuff in fast food chain menus and on grocery store shelves, but it is of a much more pedestrian and "tame" variety. I think there is definitely a public interest in spice, just to a fairly limited extent.

As to TSAAF, with a flurry of activity towards the end of May and another larger shopping trip in June, which was ultimately disappointing in that I only found 1 new sauce, but also useful in that I was able to obtain several pictures to catch up on my backlog a bit, a project I’ve been long meaning to resume, I’ve finally got a little bit of action on this blog. I also have a hopefully more fulfilling trip on the near horizon, which I’m hoping gets me into both some new sauces and more pictures, but I’m running pretty close to being caught up on the more easily obtainable ones. 

I’m eyeing another job shift in the near future as well, which I’m hopeful will lend me more time to potentially partake of some spicy goodness. My tolerance has definitely waned a bit more than I would like and I’ve had that on the back burner to get back into it again. I’m a bit tired of mining grocery shelves and look forward to finding some new and exciting stuff. I don’t know that I will get to the level where I need to bomb internet sites again, as there are two very solid brick-and-mortars that I dearly love in reasonable enough proximity to skip that, but that was certainly an enjoyable experience. 

Waxing on more philosophically, we, all of us who are alive, have to deal with lifestyle shifts. My wine blog, for instance, will be almost certainly running its course once I finish the backlog of stuff I have written but not posted because my wife has decided to stop fighting her body, which has long had a low tolerance for beer and that has lately been further extended into wine as well. My interest in sitting around slugging down a bottle of wine solo is fairly low, so developing the blog further seems unlikely at best. It has its own strange and slightly twisting tale, which will be appearing in those pages at some future point. 

When I joined Yelp, I posted an obscene number of reviews in the less than 4 years I’ve been on there…that has tapered off lately and it is not anything I spend a ton of time thinking about now, but I’ve got a backlog there of about 20 pages of reviews, as of this writing, still to post up. Part of this is because of time and partly because one can get tired of anything, including chasing the new and exotic. With as many sauces tried and reviewed, when you hit on some great ones, you want those around, but there is only so much sauce one can reasonably eat and only so much money one can reasonably spend on those. Every sauce I’ve tried and loved and bought again pushes newer stuff that much further back, so unless and until this somehow winds up being a paying gig (I’m not looking for this, as has been pretty well documented during the course of this blog) and someone wants to make it a point to finance my time and sauce habit, there necessarily will be sacrifices to be made.

Which brings us full circle. Even if someone does want that, does the current climate make that a smart investment? Is the hot sauce clamor still on or has it be commercialized and homogenized to the point where there is no room for smaller sauces and companies to get traction? Are people still looking around for a community or is it more to see who has the most absurd and stupidest YouTube video? I have yet to see any food-related show be exclusively devoted to hot challenges, which kind of tells me the thought behind that potential demographic, but I’m also surprised, because that seems like a really good idea. Still, most of the food challenge shows are with “normal” stuff, just often in gross quantities, so the viewers in the audience can at least relate. Most people are still pretty scared of heat…

Anyway, no idea what exactly lies on the road ahead, but I’m still eyeing 200…and finishing – to the extent possible – that picture project…I think a few of the titles I don’t have are from now-defunct sauce makers or the makers are still around, but the sauces are not. Several are challenging because the sauces were so bad, I would never consider buying them again. 

As of now, there are 130 full sauce reviews and depending on if you count the 20 mini-reviews, I don’t, particularly, 150 is probably a much more sane and realistic goal for the year…of those 130 full reviews, 77 have photos, which I think is pretty good, considering…I didn’t start photos at all until I hit 100 reviews in October of 2015 and largely forgot about it for a bit, so almost 60%, particularly when there are a few novelty sauces kicking around in there that I will be hard-pressed to ever get pics of is a number I’m pretty happy with.

As I leave off here, in another couple of months, this blog will be turning 5 years old, something that still strikes me as incredible…thank you to everyone who’s stopped by or told a friend.