Best Hot Sauce 2019 + Recap

 Best Hot Sauce 2019  + Recap

Now in it’s 8th year for TSAAF and a lot of changes. Yes, definitely started slow, partially because I was having sourcing issues, that is until I discovered my favorite purveyor, Burn Your Tongue, was back in action again, and Roger, the proprietor of that fine company, gave me a shot in the arm and a boot in the ass to get going again. Thanks again for the support, brother! I can’t overstate it enough, as this blog was clearly headed into me finishing up the remaining sauces and then probably into hiatus, without Roger’s boost. It helps to have someone behind you in projects like this, for sure.

I also had occasion to meet Roger in person and it was great to hang out, check out some of his new stuff and talk hot sauces and the hot sauce world at large. We have a few things on the backburner and hopefully, we’ll be able to get some pretty cool stuff in front of you for 2020. He also gave me some goodies, which is the first time (that I recall anyway) I’ve accepted anything spicy for purposes of review. Many of the sauces will be showing up in 2020, but some of the other items have already shown up on the YouTube FOH series. You can find those in the “Everything Else” playlist, available here:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAnn6WnuE_CK6y3X2bCzZTkh3bGUyv8H1

Speaking of playlists, as I first mentioned in the Special Annoucement post a few months ago, I have since added video support on YouTube for some of the sauces, which is in this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAnn6WnuE_CLmTR1bCja2mywi-trXdAJO.

It also bears mentioning that the FOH video series is NOT limited to hot sauces only, as this blog is. Right now, I am posting sauce support videos every Sunday and the additional content as it arises (but mostly Wednesdays). I have gone through a number of subjects not appropriate for the blog, such as snacks, a few head to head battles, including an ongoing nut tournament, a review of all of the hot sauce offerings of the major Mexican fast food chain restaurants in the area (actually, that one is a bit iffy, as it could conceivably fit on the blog and those chains do have some of those sauces on grocer’s shelves now), and intend on going through some of the spicy restaurant menu offerings at some point as well. I’ve tried every single restaurant spicy item, chain or otherwise, I’ve been able to find, both where I am and when traveling, though all of them were prior to me doing the FOH series. A number of them were also prior to me discontinuing eating anything with extract, so not sure how many of those I’m going to re-do on camera. Anything comes out in chains, I’m there, but without exception, everything I’ve had at one of those, ghost pepper, reaper pepper, whatever, has been pretty tame. If there is stuff you want to see, though, let me know.  I’m having a blast filming that and hopefully you will enjoy watching as well.

I’m going to be doing some planning in the near future (right now, I have content filmed and scheduled through January), as many of the sauces on the blog are discontinued or otherwise unavailable, so the percentage of previously sauces that I’m able to do video support on is somewhat limited. I had a similar problem, in fact, when I tried to add pictures to the reviews. I want to get all the remaining SOTY winners and all of the remaining  standby sauces done and up as quickly as possible, though availability on a number of the SOTY entries is proving challenging.

2019 overall was another slow year for both posts and sauces, though slightly more active than 2018, though, as mentioned, nearly solely in back half. Once again, it was late, as in Quarter 4 late, before I got any SOTY contenders, but once I did, there were some solid entries. Before I get to that, though, a bit of housekeeping. I have moved my unopened sauces to a shelf about a yard away from the desk where I’m typing this now, where they are eyeing me and telling me to hurry up and get to them, so hopefully will be able to keep better momentum or at least more consistency. The videos are a blast, though and I love doing them, so that has proven to be great motivation.

 As usual, all sauces can be clicked to from the Table Of Contents page, which, thanks to the FOH video support, I have kept consistently updated throughout the year.

Total posts (including this post): 205
Total views (as of this writing): ~18,072
Total single sauce full reviews: 165
Total double sauce full reviews: 2
Total sauces full reviewed: 167
Total mini-sauce reviews: 26
Total sauces reviewed, combined: 193
Total sauces with FOH video content: 15
Total unopened sauces waiting on shelf for review: 14
Total opened sauces waiting for review: 0
Total open sauces waiting for video support: 1
Total open bottles in fridge: 12
Highest viewed review: 868 - O' Brother Chipotle-Habanero Hot Sauce
Highest viewed article, any type: 868 - O' Brother Chipotle-Habanero Hot Sauce

Current standby sauces 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)
*Pizza sauce (as in used instead of actual pizza sauce): Boar’s Head Jalapeno Pepper Sauce
 Mexican-style sauce: ???
*Asian-style sweet sauce: Zenso Sweet Chili Sauce
 *Louisiana-style sauce: Irazu Cayenne
 Sweet-hot sauce: CaJohn's Happy Beaver

 *= Not looking for a replacement

Some changes there. Kroger has 86'ed the delightful Private Selection Shichimi Togarishi, so the Irazu is now doing double-duty there on the ramen. I don’t know that I will get another sauce just for that particular food (as usually happens, I get really, really tired of it). The Shichimi was not useful for anything else, but it was spectacular in that setting. On the Mexican front, I probably should have updated it a year or two ago, when I was first unable to get more of the sauce I had in there, but it was not a priority and I went most of last year without any contenders. I think the Arizona Peppers was something from Target, possibly, and have not been able to find it since. Sloppy, shameful housekeeping on my part. Anyway, finding a good standby sauce there is back on the table for 2020...I had some strong entries this year, but that sauce category seems to be one that I’m particular about, moreso than other sauce types...I am leaning towards the Jersey Barnfire, though...

With precious little competition, and to no surprise for those of you sharp-eyed enough to see the update to the blog TOC earlier today, the SOTY for 2019 is the Torchbearer Ultimate Annihilation sauce. I had a whole video planned out, where I was going to do me a little bit of competition, but the Ultimate Annihilation was a 9 and there was nothing else that high. Probably, longtime readers knew, as soon as I compared it to Blair’s Pure Death, one of my all-time favorite sauces, that it would be a strong contender, if not a lock outright. Torchbearer tends to make excellent sauces and I’m pleased with this entry into the Hall of Flame for 2019. This is truly a worthy and excellent sauce and even though I initially thought First Blood would be in there closer to the end, once I had the Torchbearer, that became the sauce to beat. Congratulations to the Torchbearer Sauces team!

Previous TSAAF Sauce Of The Year winners (links in Table Of Contents page):

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
2017: Z’s Shield Maiden Hot Sauce
2018: Taco Jesus Cayenne Pepper Sauce

There is also my wine about blog, the Happy Sippin’ Companion (HSC), which has now 71 posts, 63 of which are reviews. It has drawn, to date, ~1,300 views in the 5 years it’s been active. It has been put on inactive status as of 2019, with no plans currently to resurrect it. I both got a bit wined out and also seem to be struggling with a greater influx of allergies this year, which has introduced a number of issues with former consumption items that were previously trouble-free, such as wine.

Then we have Yelp. My distribution of ratings and further metrics are available on my Yelp page, which you can click to from my widget.

As mentioned, I’m very excited for 2020. Lots more sauces to try (once I wade through and whittle down the open bottles in the refrigerator door a bit), lots more food adventures to go on with the FOH video series, which has been incredibly liberating and invigorating. We will hit the 200 mark for overall sauces reviewed next year on this blog, a benchmark which I’m very excited about and who knows, maybe even 200 full reviews outright. I’m already done a written review concurrent with an FOH addendum posting (which is my first ever 6 bottle review) and gotten into a lot more hot treats other than just the sauces, so I’m pretty eager to see what 2020 will bring for new experiences on this front. I’m hoping you’ll join me.

As always, I appreciate you dropping by. If there’s any changes to suggest or sauces you’d like to see me get to or any video ideas you may have, please drop me a line in the comment section of any of the reviews or support videos.

Dat’l Do It Brewer’s 6 Pack Limited Edition Hot Sauce(s) Mini-Review

Dat’l Do It Brewer’s 6 Pack Limited Edition Hot Sauce(s)

As mentioned in the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV7NNvkc12s), this blog post is being posted concurrent with the video (as in on the same day, not necessarily to the minute, unless I can time it well enough) support for it. I think in concept this six pack of sauces thing is not a bad idea, but like a lot of concepts, execution does not meet the ideal. This a good case in point. Three of the six sauces I tossed after filming, as they were both bad sauces and not something I was about to eat just for the sake of eating. All of them detracted from the chicken chunk I put them on and were far from great shakes solo. Specifically, those were the “Asian Teriyaki,” the Cayenne, and the Garlic.

The other three were marginally better, but managed to make it into the fridge for potential usage. Those were the Chipotle, Jalapeno and Habanero. Of those, only the Habanero had any heat and it was relatively minuscule, basically a 1 on the scale. The labels are meant to mimic various beers and the sauces themselves are an approximation of various other sauces, which I will get into more soon. They were all very vinegar-forward sauces, very astringent and very watery. None of them had a restrictor cap, but all of them needed one.

In addition to the attempts with chicken strips in the video, I also tested the three remaining on some tacos. Of those, the Jalapeno was ok, but the other two read as far too vinegary to be very enjoyable, particularly the Chipotle. I also used them in a bbq sauce base I was making for bbq pork, which transported a ton of vinegar, but not anywhere near the flavor I was also wanting. I think my best bet is to treat them all like vaguely pepper-flavored vinegar and use accordingly.

Sauce by sauce breakdown looks like this:

Cayenne - this was your basic stab at a Louisiana style sauce, but it was cheap-tasting on a level that makes Crystal look high end. This was one of the poorest overall in terms of flavor.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Garlic - this was the previous sauce, with some sort of garlic concentrate added. Adding a fake garlic taste profile to an already bad-tasting sauce worked about as well as expected.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Asian Teriyaki - the first that I tried and easily one of the most clumsily and ineptly named, with the superfluous and meaningless “Asian” descriptor added to it. Can’t imagine any actual Asian sauce tasting anywhere like this, which is a much more pungent version of the first sauce, with a very slightly stab at teriyaki on the back end. Definitely never had anything remotely like this in any Asian dish or sauce and particularly not in a teriyaki sauce. Borderline offensive and not only to the palate.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Jalapeno - this was one was kind of interesting. Lots of astringency to it, lots of pungency, but also a brightness to it that was somewhat interesting. This is one that is on the knife edge and I believe it is taking a shot towards the Tabasco Jalapeno, but also might along the lines of the Culinary Tours Jalapeno as a green hot sauce. This one might be ultimately also hitting the trash, but I’m intrigued enough to keep it around for now.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 1

Chipotle - rather than being twice as hot as Jalapeno, this one was mostly a flavoring system. Very nice sauce and by far the best tasting of the six, this one tastes like a lower grade version of the Tabasco Chipotle.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3

Habanero - easily the hottest of them all (though that is not saying much), this one is more like a Louisiana style sauce, just using a different pepper rather than the Tabasco Habanero. I don’t personally care for the flavor of Habanero a great deal, so the flavor was not so great to me, but was probably the second best tasting sauce, which speaks to how bad some of the others were.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Bottom line: This is a gift set that it is difficult to see where the appeal might lie. It will not please chileheads or fans of flavor. It is more novelty than anything and does not even remotely live up to the promise of the manufacturer or the idea nor does it represent those styles of sauces or, in a couple cases, even the flavor of the peppers themselves, particularly well. Even for $10, this is ultimately not worth getting.

Cumulative Breakdown (Entire Set):

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

Overall: 1

CaJohn's Dread Hot Sauce Review

CaJohn's The Formidable Dread Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA-GBob1dPg

Caribbean sauces are always kind of fun to me, treading an interesting line between Louisiana-style and a somewhat complex fruit-based sauce. They are almost always hotter than their bayou cousin sauces and inevitably a lot more complicated, much like the rich history of the cuisine there, which tries to utilize nearly everything available (see various Jerked chicken recipes). Often that propensity can pigeon-hole the sauces a bit, as intense heat and varying sweetness won't always work well in the various settings.

Indeed, that is the case here. It works well with lighter meats, but creates some dilemmas elsewhere, often to the detriment of whatever it's being used on. The lines become a lot more topsy-turvy. For most foods, when we use hot sauce, we want flavor amplified. This sauce likes to run it through a kaleidoscope lens and then set everything on fire. With the ample Moruga Scorpions playing havoc, this is also not a sauce to be taken lightly. I wound up with the full brunt of it trying to chase the complexities of the flavor profile. We have vanilla and lime and rum and a host of other Caribbean (and maybe pirate) staples and I caught fleeting glimpses of the flavor, but never all at once, thanks to the steady flavor profile of the peppers, and ate quite a bit of sauce trying. This is initially a bit low key, but the build gets nice fairly rapidly and I'd put it at a solid 6, maybe edging up a bit towards a 7 at full burn. The label lists it for experienced chileheads and in terms of heat, I'd agree, but also finding those subtle nuances of flavor. Most people would be distracted by the heat, I think.

Bottom line: This is a sauce that I find more of a special occasion sauce. Like the vast majority of CaJohn's sauces, this is extremely well-done, but its distinctness removes it from a lot of foods or even everyday use as a table sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 7
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 6

Danny Cash Ghost (Dirt) Rider Hot Sauce Review

Danny Cash's Ghost Rider Jolokia Ghost Chile Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video available here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpwfGISWh3E

This is one that's been hanging around the on deck shelf a while, a good long while, long enough that the sauce has gotten a label refresh and name change to "Dirt Rider," prompted, no doubt, by an objection from someone at Marvel over the usage of flamey motorcycles along with the name usage of "Ghost Rider." Dirt Rider also seems to have a couple of variations, as a sauce, so this won't strictly cover that side of things, although one of these is an item for item duplication of this Ghost Rider sauce.

That fun aside, this is rated at 18/10 on the bottle, which is overstating it a bit more than a tad and is also pegged as extremely hot. Any of the peppers that formerly held the Guinness SHU record provide ample snort and the Jolokias that make up this sauce leave little doubt of that. Still, this sauce is also a strong indicator that the vaunted Ghost peppers can also be flavorful. This is quite a good tasting sauce, by itself and when it can be left to shine as a composite sauce. Let me expand on that a bit.

Some sauces, such as the Louisiana style, are very aggressive in their vinegar-forwardness and so they do a good job of standing up when used with food. The vinegar will temper over-rich cream sauces nicely, while hopefully some nice heat comes behind to kick the food enjoyment. You get some blend, but the sauce is mostly still detectable...in the right amounts. This facet can turn against you and overpower (and potentially wreck) the food. Other sauces will want to blend in much more considerably, notably the Mexican style sauces, changing the composite flavor less notably, but driving the heat up somewhat. For this one, it's one of the few where the sauce by itself is pretty tasty and works well with things like chicken strips or pizza, which tend not to detract from the sauce during the initial bite, rather mixing in the mouth during chewing, but mixed into things, such as macaroni and cheese, the vinegar vanishes, along with most of the pepper subtleties, leaving a very solid heat, but also a lot of the bitterness that seems to accompany most of the superhots. This obviously renders its usefulness down somewhat.

I had hopes of using it in place of a Louisiana-style, given that it comes with a pretty nifty restrictor cap, but this one is much more finicky than I had initially realized. It definitely is one that does well, perhaps great, even, on the "right" foods or setting, but get it away from that and you wind up wishing you had something else.

Bottom line: The sauce by itself is another well-blended Cash *ahem* marvel, but in practical use, it has fairly narrow applications (though it does outstanding with those) and outside of those, tends towards bitter. It also does pack a solid wallop, so probably best reserved for chileheads.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 7
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 7