Best Hot Sauce 2020 + Recap

Number Nine. Year #9. The ninth year of this blog. For the sauces I had, and for this blog, and the video series, it was a strong year. For almost everything else, it was pretty awful. But you didn’t come here for more of the COVID-19 calamity, I don’t suppose, and I’d rather keep the blog on point, as it has been for all (ok, most) of that time. 

Every year, I like to come around at this time, in usually my lengthiest post of the year, and ruminate a bit. I don’t really do resolutions, but I did want to talk a bit about 2021, which is maybe an unusual way to start a recap of a preceding year, but, given that this one will also include the FOH video series, I hope I can be forgiven for my indulgence. But first...a prelude of sorts to that...also, get a snack and a drink, because this post will be lengthy. 

Before I get into the prelude (you can probably see why this is so long), though, I do want to mention a bit of housekeeping, namely that I have further sorted the FOH videos on YouTube and added a new playlist, this one separating out the Sweet stuff from some of the other snacks (check them all out directly in links to the right). Aside for the sauces, I don’t want to get too many videos piling up in one playlist, so there may be another breakout playlist or two coming in 2021. Speaking of the FOH video series on YouTube... 

When I first started kicking the idea of the video series around, it was because, as I mentioned in the post earlier last year, Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, had graciously offered me some sauces to kickstart the blog again. I struggled with the idea a bit, as I had not previously accepted product and, to a degree in the beginning, specifically avoided that kind of thing...but, it was a very generous offer, at a time when my motivation was floundering, so I ultimately gratefully accepted. Still, it felt kind of unfair to me that he gave me actual products that had value, as in stock on his shelf, in exchange for me grinding out words in a blog that had seen better days in terms of draw, at least partially because of my lackadaisical posting to it. So, I hatched the video idea, given that I’ve been doing YouTube video content for a while now on some other channels. 

 I wanted it to be different, but still support the ideals of the blog. With the video series, I felt I could open up and expand the spicy items I was consuming, but the idea of food challenges has held little appeal to me and I will never be competitive with the myriad of others already out there doing it. So, the video series, in addition to the other parts I mentioned, was also to do another the blog did not, which was to get up content consistently. I had originally just wanted to post a video for one sauce a week, which I felt was a pretty attainable goal. I almost missed that, shortly after I launched, but once I got on track, it was smooth sailing. Things were clicking along in that I was soon running at least 2 months ahead (it’s probably closer to 3+, as I write this), so I was able coast most of the time... 

This enabled me to plan future stuff, to keep the door fridge sauces to a mostly reasonable and manageable level, as well as keeping my tolerance down somewhat. The idea of this blog is to have it accessible to folks beyond just chileheads, so if I let things just fly too much, the sauces don’t read to me at an appropriate or commensurate level. Activity winds up becoming a flurry of sauces, then a pause while I try to finish off some open ones, then repeat and so on. Unlike some of the other reviewers out there, I don’t just do a review and the immediately bin the sauce. If I like it at all, I will generally finish it out. I really struggle with the idea of waste. 

I have a lot of fun with those videos and really enjoy making them, which hopefully comes through, but chasing down different spicy snacks all the time is a lot more work than I expected. I really mainly was thinking of the sauces for the FOH video series, but figured I would try to do double-postings for all of 2020 to build content. This (and being so far ahead - as I type this, January is in the can and I’m actually working on videos that probably won’t be posted until March 2021 or later) enabled me to do really fun things like some holiday posts and special event videos and whatnot. 

The problem now is that I can’t really record a video of me eating Samyang Hot Chicken noodles or any of those other items again. Those are pretty much one and out and there are a lot less different spicy snacks than there are hot sauces out there. With COVID-19, I largely lost my ability to do Head To Head Chicken Sandwich Battles (or any fast food spicy menu items). I can still do the nut battles, until I run out, I suppose, and even those, I’ve run down the gamut pretty well (as I write this, I have two more to do and that’s it). Trying to come up with content, in fact, is how I arrived at those Head To Head Battles to begin with. Same with the quarterly fridge sauce clean-up hot wings videos, which I will say, has done a great job of not overburdening my open fright door sauce shelf. 

Where this leaves me in 2021, I don’t know exactly, though I do have a bit of time with the backlog, probably pretty close through the end of Q2. I might try to go every other week and see how that goes, but I’m running out of road on non-sauce content, unless I want to open it up to the weird spicy challenges...and I may do a few of those, if they sound like they will be interesting taste-wise and not just the “pour a shitload of extract into things” type. If that becomes a thing, I need to develop my prep a bit more. What I have come up with is helpful, but not quite to the level I want it to be at. My focus has really been, for the most part, even with the experimentalism of the FOH video series, on flavor. 

I have a number of other options I’ve had rattling around the old noggin. I could go replace the non-sauce postings with more sauce postings, once I run out of the non-sauce items. I have the canned content now to support that thought, as I write this, but how long would that continue if I was posting double the sauce content would become a pressing question. I could just go to regular sauce posting and then just do the non-sauce products as I come across things, but I dislike doing that somewhat. I do have some series type “event” videos I kind of have in the back of my mind, which would add a video in per month, but I haven’t formulated it concretely enough mentally, in terms of feasability. 

I might add condiments that often run in the gray area, not quite a hot sauce, but a little too spicy to be just “normal,” which is the hot mustards or possibly some of the hotter BBQ sauces, if I can find any. Those don’t really fit into the blog, which is more specifically hot sauces only, but realistically, how many of those can I do as well will be a question. I really enjoy posting stuff I make, from pizza to barbeque to deviled eggs to hot cider. Those are a blast to do, but that’s not really what I do or what the channel is about, besides the occasional times where it fits in with something else I’m doing. 

The final alternative is just to leave it mostly as a blog/hot sauce support structure. If had to guess, once I run down the backlog, it will probably be weekly sauces every Sunday, the quarterly wing showdown, maybe some Head To Head stuff, if things permit, and any other content opportunistically, as if I find a new kind of snack in the grocery store or something OR if someone wants to see something I haven’t done, then I could do something by request, which would add some nice flexibility, possibly. In any case, while I don’t know how this will look just yet (watch this space, or more relevantly, the YouTube space, I guess), I do know that 2021, at this point, anyway, is less likely to see my video posting at the same pace as 2020. 

 In other changes for 2021, I have decided I’m largely tired of Scorpion peppers and will be drifting away from them once I run out the sauces I already have. I was fairly fond of them for some time, but their overly flowery nature I find somewhat grating now, as I mentioned elsewhere, sort of like the over-hoppy nature of IPA beers. I’m kind of kicking around the idea of doing a post on different peppers and my thoughts on them in sauces, but inevitably, I’m going to leave something out, so going to let that idea gel for a bit. 

 I do need to look into the Reapers more and those are factoring fairly highly in my plans for the coming year. The process, in fact, has already started in the later part of 2020. I have not historically had a lot of interaction with them on the sauce side, with nearly all of my dealings coming from them on the snack side, but with Scorpions going by the wayside, it is probably high time I look into those further. My sporadic interaction with them has been a touch challenging for my internal system. It is somewhat similar to how my body would sometimes react with Habaneros, which has been described throughout this blog. The interaction with Reapers is that, only amplified, but there are some differences as well, such a burn all the way to my stomach, which is something more typical for me with extracts. Reaper presence can also induce burning urine, which is the only thing which has ever reacted this way with me. Extract doesn’t do that. That particular burn seems to be quantity based, without regard to whether it is the pods or powder. 

It was quite a surprise the first time that happened, I can assure you, even with my heat tolerance probably overall higher than at any other point in my life, so it will be intriguing to see how/if that changes with Reaper sauces. I spent most of December with various Reaper products and my takeaway is that Reapers are not something that one consumes casually. This is not the case for any of the other peppers. Reapers are fairly easy to overdo and it is pretty far from enjoyable when that happens. Playing with those can very easily whip you into pretty bad cap cramps, even after the mouth heat has dissipated. It is the only thing I’ve found that I can re-activate into cramps, either with activity or with carbonation post ingestion, even literally a few hours afterwards...definitely not something to toy with. 

Another of my goals for 2021 is to try to have a support video posted for every single sauce I do a written review for within the year. The past sauces from earlier years of the blog I still plan to work on and ideally can get at least one of those per month, but they are a bit less of a priority than my last goal, which is to try to clear out my backlog somewhat (I have space for 18 bottles, as long as they are not irregularly sized, in my usual spot where I keep the unopened ones that are waiting - I overran that a few times this year, including as I write this, which I would strongly prefer not to do in future). I also will be having video support for all of the SOTY titles that are still available and not either reformulated or discontinued in 2021, probably by the end of Q1...at least that’s the plan, currently. 

Another of my big goals is to do more networking and outreach within the community, something I’ve largely not bothered with in the past, aside from chit-chatting a bit over email with Scott Roberts, when he was around. This year I’ve connected a bit with Kendall at Tasting The Heat, submitted to be part of the voting body for the Hot Sauce Hall Of Fame, connected a bit with some sauce manufacturers, added in some major Hot Ones sauce breakdowns and homages, as well as connected with some online YouTube reviewers a bit. Of course, my main man Roger Damptz at BYT is always in the mix as well. I’m not, however, on Facebook and will never be. I have little to no interest in social media, aside from what I’m currently doing now (Yelp, YouTube, this blog), so if you enjoy the content here or at FOH, please spread the word. I noticed Vic Clinco (World’s Largest Hot Sauce Collection) has a good community going, but I don’t really have a way to reach him, that I’ve been able to find, as we don’t inhabit the same online spheres, so if there are people reading or watching and enjoying what I do here or at the FOH series, I’d love a little referral to some of those people out there, especially if you’re part of a chilehead community. 

Speaking of The Hot Ones (be sure to check on the quarterly updates, posted at the END of every calendar quarter, which are NOT in the Table Of Contents post, but you can click to by expanding the months on the right), I’m slowly working my way through the sauces on that show. Season One was done as of last Quarter, with more coming in 2021. As noted earlier, those tend to be more expensive options than some of the other sauces. Unless and until this blog and video channel thing becomes lucrative, it makes more sense for me to be driven by what appeals to me, rather than chasing a completist fever dream...I have broken down the numbers for all of the years (also somewhat in a link on the right) and have added a few more for this year, and continue to keep that page current, but again, overall not really a priority at present. Right now, the plan is to try to do at least one of those a quarter, so I have at least one Hot Ones entry in my quarterly wing fridge clean up homage videos. I have in mind a couple more breakout playlists for FOH, including The Hot Ones sauces specifically, but that particular one is not really worthwhile to do...yet. 

2020 overall was the second highest year for posts and the highest year ever for sauces, again, somewhat driven by the FOH series. This is even with a slow down towards the end of the year, partially so I could do some sauce clean-up and save some for January 2021. 2020 has been easily the highest drawing year for blog viewership historically, which was quite pleasing to see. Additionally, in news that will surely be of no interest to anyone other than me, I am now down to 12 sauces (that are still being produced, of course) for which I need pictures. 

Before October was out, I hit 200 full sauce reviews, on my way to 210, a number which is still kind of wild to me, considering where I started the year. 300, even overall, seems a bit unlikely for 2021, but I imagine I will finish fairly close in the overall total. Also, this time out, before I even got to the end of Quarter 3, I had 5 contenders for SOTY. I finished with 6 contenders, which was a different challenge from previous years, but also kind of a good problem to have. The sauce with the most views changed from the prior leader, the O’Brother Chipotle-Habanero, to a new sauce leader this year as well. We will get into the SOTY discussion more, but first, as we usually do, some numbers... 

As usual, all written reviews for sauces can be clicked to from the Table Of Contents page (see link on right): 

Total posts (including this post): 255
Total views (as of this writing): ~24,928
Total sauces full reviewed: 210
Total mini-sauce reviews: 36
Total sauces reviewed, combined: 246
Total full review sauces with FOH video content: 68
Total unopened sauces waiting on shelf for review: 17
Total open sauces waiting for blog review: 1
Total open sauces waiting for video support: 3
Total open bottles in fridge: 10
Highest viewed review: 1,334 - Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce
Highest viewed article, any type: 1,334 - Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet 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)
*Mustard-style sauce: Inner Beauty
*Pizza sauce (as in used instead of actual pizza sauce): Boar’s Head Jalapeno Pepper Sauce Mexican-style sauce: ???
*Louisiana-style sauce: Irazu Cayenne
*Sweet-hot sauce: CaJohn's Happy Beaver
*= Not looking for a replacement 

The more things change...a standby Mexican-style sauce seems to have perpetually eluded me and that remains the case today. I’ve given up on it being a focus, despite being caught up in it once a gain a bit this year towards the end. I have decided to try just blending one, as I had some pretty good entries in that category this year, but nothing that scratched the itch quite right. Of course, there will be a FOH video of that process available also (look for it in early 2021). 

I have also added a new category to my Standby list, to replace some of the departing ones, which is the Inner Beauty, an absolute treasure of a sauce. In fact, I wound up doing a special event for that one, I loved it so much. I ate considerably more of that than any other single sauce. In fact, that is probably my favorite sauce this year and it wasn’t even in contention. I ran down the average rating in last quarter’s update, but it really takes some doing to be in contention for Sauce Of The Year, let alone to win it. I specifically wanted this category to be the creme de la creme of the year and designed the rating system so that no one element could score high enough to tamper with the selection. It has to get fairly high marks in at least 3 of those 4 to be in serious contention. So even Inner Beauty, with it getting a perfect 10 in 2 of the 4 categories wasn’t able to be in consideration. To put it in perspective, even with 210 full review sauces on the blog so far, I still have not hit a total score of 1,000 cumulative, with all the sauce scores combined. The average rating of all those sauces sits just about 4.5 (I’m not going to post a full breakdown of where the sauces fall in this post, as it’s already quite lengthy as-is, but if anyone is interested, drop me a line and I’ll get it Q1 of 2021). 

Most of the SOTY contenders came in sort of early this year, at least comparatively to other years. Those sauces specifically were: Private Selection Calabrian Chile, Arthur Wayne Huckleberry Ghost, Arthur Wayne Limitless, Monroy’s Death By Kraken, Tonguespank Scotch Whiskey Trinidad Scorpion & Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper. Having two sauces from the same manufacturer is pretty rare and had not happened since the first year of the blog. 

We had a very commercial sauce in the Private Selection, a sort of mid-level market penetration with the Mikey V’s, and much smaller scale for the others. I loved them all, but for different reasons. The Calabrian went by far the fastest and was the most universal of all the contenders this year. It was also the least expensive. The Limitless was definitely the hottest. The Death By Kraken sort of became a forgotten sauce and was not able to sustain the kind of appeal it would have needed to actually be the choice. I think I tired of the mango, which is not a flavor I would say I find super beloved. The Tonguespank, sadly no longer produced, was like a fine Manhattan, revealing multiple layers and depths to it. The Mikey V’s was by far the best-tasting, until the very last minute, when the Huckleberry Ghost slid in under the wire. 

We also had some variety of chiles, with various ones being used in the Calabrian, which was decidedly not hot, the Scorpion for both Limitless and the Tonguespank, and Ghost Pepper for the Kraken, Huckleberry Ghost, and Mikey V. entry. Of these, the Limitless and Kraken came courtesy of Roger at Burn Your Tongue. All of them, except for the Tonguespank, which I had well over a year before getting around to trying, were acquired this year. 

While any on this list would rightfully take their place amidst the other great sauces that earned the title, I eliminated the Calabrian almost immediately, due to having stiff competition this year, While it is a legitimately great sauce, particularly for a commercial one, it ultimately just didn’t hit enough buttons. The Kraken, as noted, was one that I tired of, again probably because there were so many other sauces and so much competition as well. The Limitless was one where I enjoyed it a bit less over time because it was fairly easy to oversauce with it, which made it somewhat less usable. 

Really, the main contenders were the Huckleberry Ghost, the Mikey V., and the Tonguespank, which became more clear as time wore on. This is one of the reasons I don’t decide these things until I’m nearly at the end of trying sauces for a given year. I vacillated back and forth for quite some time, as I really enjoyed the combination of Scotch whiskey and Scorpion peppers, oddly, two components I no longer hold the same love and regard for which I formerly did. The Mikey V., as noted, is by far the best Asian-style sweet sauce I’ve ever had and I loved every bite of it. The Huckleberry Ghost was just this tremendously surprising wonderful concoction. It came down to literally the Mikey V. and the Huckleberry Ghost, on account of flavor for both, as they were of similar heat level. 

Now seems like a good spot to announce that, by a hair, and only due to a slightly higher flexibility in that I liked the flavor more and like the sauce itself on more things, the Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper is the 2020 Sauce Of The Year. It’s the best-seller of the company and small wonder why...it’s just a tremendous, tremendous sauce. I loved it from the start and then on every single thing I used it on, which is not something I could say for the other sauces. In the review, I mentioned it was the frontrunner for SOTY, which was a spot it never really fully relinquished. I’ve had a lot of Asian-style sweet sauces, have a very rich history to compare this to, so when I say this is far and away the best, it is comparing it not only against a wide array of sauces, but also decades of usage. That is not something that can be ignored, especially when you’re coming down to such slim criteria to decide an eventual winner. This was the closest deliberation for SOTY I’ve ever had. 

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
2019: Torchbearer Ultimate Annihilation

If you want to read more from me, check out my wine about blog, the Happy Sippin’ Companion (HSC). It has been put on inactive status as of 2019, with no plans to resurrect it, but still remains up for viewing (link also on right). 

I also slug away a bit on Yelp, though, as noted, far, far off the pace for 2020, which you can click to from my widget. My distribution of ratings and further metrics are available on my Yelp profile page. 

As always, I appreciate you dropping by. If there’s any spicy products 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.

Angry Goat Black Bison Hot Sauce Review

Angry Goat Pepper Co. Black Bison Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdJb4bac9DE

This is another of a current crop of sweet-hots using berries as a base, this particular one with the addition of cherries, which have also been used on and off. A berry blend is always kind of an intriguing proposition to me in a hot sauce, as we really don't see a ton of use out there in the commercial world, other than in drinks of pancakes syrups, possibly dipping sauces for a dish that has cheese as a heavy component. It is not really a natural fit to things like chicken strips. While it can be interesting in that application, most of the time, it also makes one wish for something else, even in excellent formulations like the Pex Wildberry Whoop-Ass (also reviewed here). 

We are left with, then, the problem of application. This one has suggestions of pizza (not good), chicken (not good), and ice cream (have yet to find a sauce good on that - vinegar and sweet dairy are non-starters for me). The final application from the label here was beef. I don't tend to eat a lot of beef, as a rule, particularly in 2020, when I have, with a handful of exceptions, stopped eating from restaurants at any level (those were either pre-COVID-19 dispersement or takeaway only). Given the year, this has caused me to work on recreating various foods from different restaurants that I miss, sans sushi, which I don't usually want hot sauce on anyway. 

So, having run this through the gauntlet of everything I could think of from the other berry sauces, including cheese and crackers, and having it fail, I finally turned to re-creating the Arby's Triple Cheese Angus sandwich, which has been discontinued. In this application, I finally got a good sense of the read of this sauce. For most, if not all, of the earlier entries, the sauce read extremely bitter, that same bitter heat that can come from superhots. My suspicion is that it is from the Scorpion powder, as the Habanero and Jolokia can be quite flavorful peppers. It wasn't overly flowery, but I got very little of the actual berries, despite them leading off the sauce ingredient panel. 

It is a fairly hefty sauce, in terms of heat, well beyond what non-chileheads would find enjoyable, so it was not one that I could overuse chasing after elusive flavor notes. Once I had it with some beef, though, it paired exceedingly well and I was able to get some nice notes of cherry and what struck me as a touch of pomegranate. This has a veritable laundry list of ingredients, most of them not reading through in the flavor, such as tequila, blackberry, lime, run under by much stronger flavors. Pepper-wise, the combination of peppers does not come through in flavors, but in both build of heat and duration, which can be quite pleasant, if not over done. If overdone, that aspect will be somewhat amplified and also come with a lingering bitterness and harshness, which is pretty far from pleasant.

Bottom line: There are better berry-flavored sweet-hots out there. This one is among the hotter ones, but while somewhat less than Pex overall, manages to trade in the berry flavor for a bitterness in pushing for heat.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 5
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3

Arthur Wayne Huckleberry Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Arthur Wayne Huckleberry Ghost Hot Sauce

Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsnnn7gQvM4

This little gem is an absolute beauty of a sauce. It strikes me as kind of odd, to call a sauce beautiful, and I don't mean visually, though it does have a very cool sort of purplish coloration, with little bits of pepper. It is more in just how incredibly successful this Arthur Wayne chap was in bringing off the huckleberry flavor which reads in just a stunning way. This is one of the better versions of any berry sauce I've ever had, hot sauce or otherwise. I've had a lot of blueberry hot sauces and this one just runs circles around all of them. Pairing this with the mighty Ghost was a stroke of brilliance, as the excellent flavor of the Ghost lends a touch of bitterness and rounds off the sweetness nicely, creating a wonderful marvel. 

I don't personally like the taste of berry on pizza nor on Mexican food or Asian food, but aside from those, this has worked quite well as a dipping sauce, to a lesser but still solid extent on burgers, but most especially, on sweeter breakfast foods, such as pancakes or waffles. It is not quite sweet enough entirely by itself for my suiting, but dropping in a small amount of pure maple syrup fixes things right up and just really takes the whole endeavor up several notches. It also looks amazing on those breakfast delectables, particularly on sweet crepes. 

Heat-wise, it is listed as 8/10, but I find it considerably tamer than that. Like most label ratings, I'd put the heat at half of what's listed, maybe a bit under that, even. This isn't a sauce to sandblast your mouth out in an unholy inferno of superhot pepper scorching. It is definitely far more flavor forward.

Bottom line: If you want a sweet-hot that features berries rather than a tropical fruit, this is the ticket. Probably the best berry sauce I've ever eaten. Unexpectedly, I now have another SOTY candidate in this.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8

Big Red's Prickly Pear Hot Sauce Review

Big Red's Prickly Pear Sweet & Spicy Hot Sauce

Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQYQ28eBXEk

I have not, if I'm being honest, had a particularly good relationship with the sweet emanations of the prickly pear, or cactus or succulents in general, including agave. I find them frequently to be cloying, and with prickly pear, there seems to be an off-taste, a sort of chemical-y aspect to it, which I find jarring. This has never not been the case, but it has also not prevented me from attempting new concoctions featuring this ingredient. I must be missing something, as often this particular element is listed as a focal point, which I have yet to find appropriate.Then again, I am sort of in the desert, or if not in the desert outright, at least on the edge of it, the fringes, perhaps, and I should probably have a strong familiarity with this type of thing than I do. Perhaps were I to live in the desert proper, it would seem more normal. Alas... 

This entry features a lot of ingredients, which, as I've noted in FOH videos, seems to have somewhat of a commonality with various other products in the line-up. Here, thing like chia seed, don't seem to have a particular impact on things, as this is mostly a very sweet sauce, with the attributes I mentioned. It does have a very nice Habanero element, as well as a nice unami element, but when you get hit with that sweet of the prickly pear. I'm coming to believe that it is a really a love/hate sort of taste element. I like this sauce a lot more when I don't run across it. This requires whatever you're putting this one to really be able to stand up against that sweet and I haven't run across a lot of foods where that has been the case. They call it the "wing sauce," so it definitely will be in one of my quarterly round-ups, but I'm not expecting a lot out of this one. Most things I've tried it with were a one-and-out proposition.

It is not particularly punchy, in terms of heat. The Habanero here is almost used as much for flavor as heat, but heat is very, very moderate. I half wonder how this would do in baking, to replace some of the sugars in various treats, but I don't have other chileheads, or even food adventurers, at hand, especially now, in the age of COVID-19, to try this out with, and I am not a natural baker (more of cook/chef), so that might be a ship that I just let sail.

Bottom line: If you like prickly pear, that particular kind of sweet, as well as sweet-hot sauces, this is well worth your while. Heat is pretty far from overbearing, and this might serve well as an introductory sauce.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3

Pepper Nectar Original Hot Sauce Review

Pepper Nectar Original

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJdc5ctKqbc

I will start off by saying that I find the combination of Habanero and honey to be near magical, and to express my shock every time I encounter it that more hot sauce makers are not utilizing it more. One of my SOTY winners (Z's Shield Maiden), in fact, utilized this very combination to great effect. This sauce initially reminded me of that one a bit but the more I got into it, the more they separated a bit. 

While neither has a great degree of heat, this one is quite a bit more blended and a lot less loose. I find the consistency quite a lot better with this one (and also like the label better, for what that's worth). Ingredient-wise, there's a pretty significant departure as this one is more of an Asian chili-garlic sauce, like Huy Fong or one of those, that comes with the larger green screw-top lids and that you generally see in Chinese restaurants. It is not exactly like that, though, as those sauces do not tend to use Habaneros. It is most reminiscent of that sauce, though, if you blended it much better than those usually are, into the consistency of a sauce, rather than leaving it somewhat chunky, and put garlic way, way ahead of the pepper. And also added honey, of course. This one additionally has carrot, though that doesn't really read particularly here.

When I initially opened the bottle, there was some separation and I really really liked the sauce in the neck and put it on everything I could think of...I thought for a moment that I would be looking at another SOTY contender, but alas...as I got down to the point where I could finally agitate it, though, I liked it a lot less and it stopped working entirely on some foods. The reason for this is that the garlic is way too prominent for me here. Still, one of the great points about this sauce is how well it works on Asian food, which is, for me, one of the more difficult foods to sauce with the majority of hot sauces I have. It is actually quite flexible and does well with meats and on pizzas (though I like other ones better), as well.

Bottom line: This is a very well-done sauce and anyone who likes garlic-forward sweet hots, particularly canting a bit towards the Asian side, would do well to check this one out.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

TRUFF (Red) Hotter Hot Sauce Review

 Truff Hotter Blend Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgkSRVyai6M

I should start with the obvious, I suppose, and that is that TRUFF is marketing genius. It is never in question what you might be getting. The website is slick, with lots of eye-catching visuals, including very well-done video content. It looks more like that of a diamond importer than sauce purveyor. Indeed, that is probably intention, given the heaviness of the glass, the different shape of the bottle, and the actual diamond cut of the plastic cap. This is all very well coordinated and nicely done. They are clearly trying to leave no doubt as to the impression of something high end, which naturally extends to the price. This is one of the more expensive hot sauces you can find anywhere. There are other sauces in the line-up, including a white truffle, an Arrabbiata pasta sauce (which makes more sense to me), and a regular hot sauce

It contains black truffle, which is an expensive food item, at least partially expensive because of the rarity. Indeed, I often suspect that rich people like certain foods because of that attribute more than anything else, that exclusivity, rather than because they actually like something or because it takes better than something else. In the hot sauce world, we have a sort of pause, while people try to figure out what is going to replace the Reaper as Guinness holder for SHU, so that's some leaning into alternate ingredients, which is why stuff like black garlic is also making its way into the mix. In the case of black truffle, I think this is an exceedingly odd thing to put into a hot sauce conceptually. I've had black truffle numerous times and it really seems like one of those ingredients that's its own thing. I never had something with that in it and wished it also had heat, so this is a really curious choice. It has always, in fact, been one of those things that I can take or leave. I enjoy it when I have it, but have not and will not go out of my way for it. 

In this case, I find that overusing the sauce leads to unpleasant results. With black truffle, a little goes a very long way and they're using black truffle, olive oil infused with black truffle, and black truffle powder, so you can easily have a much stronger concentration than might be suitable. There are emulsifiers in this, so it does stay pretty uniform and consistent, with the consistency more like a commercial maple syrup, maybe slightly faster. I'm not exactly sure how you'd agitate this easily, though...it tends to stick to the sides readily and it's somewhat difficult to tell what's going on within the bottle, due to how the label is positioned. My guess is that this packaging makes it easy to waste sauce, which seems like a really weird thing for the company to do, other than it, like the oversaucing, make one need to acquire it sooner, if one was so inclined.

One of the reasons that black truffle is not something especially sought after by me is that I find it easily overpowers things. If you like the flavor, that's great, but if you're like me and somewhat ambivalent, this can lead to some regret. It won't be that way on the heat regard, as this is very moderate in the piquancy department, and the heat is sort of a general chili, without regard to any specific pepper. The heavy earthiness of this (cumin also shows up) is not always what I'm wanting. The flexibility of this is somewhat wanting, as well, kind of like that of the black garlic, which really kind of needs some sort of umami element. Here, this sauce needs a richness of flavor to complement or it will tend to be overpowering, particularly with how hard it can be to control the flow.

Bottom line: If you're a black truffle fan or just black truffle curious, this is worth a spin. I understand they have smaller bottles, so that may make more sense. Just remember that a little bit goes a long way...

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Karma Huhu Pina Hot Sauce Review

Karma Huhu Pina Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMuxyoE3IrY

When I did some compilations in Q3 of 2020, as a point of curiousity, I went through to see which letters of the alphabet had been covered through the years. As mentioned in the Q3 2020 Update post, I found I had not reviewed any sauces with the letters "K," "U," "X," and "Y". This was already on my list, thanks to some fairly glowing praise on Roger's Facebook page feed, wherein I drop from time to time. 

It is another in a very long line of Pineapple-Habanero, a category that is so saturated that folks are resorting to doing things like adding ginger and/or lime to differentiate themselves. This one adds both of those, adds a Korean pepper and stuff like agave and marjoram as well as a host of other ingredients, including cumin. As cumin is another of those flavorings I'm trying to move away from, this was not an especially welcome development, but once I understood the intent of the sauce, it made more sense. 

This is apparently intended for that narrowest of narrow craft categories, not merely a Pineapple-Habanero, but specifically for one dish, that being al pastor tacos. Now, this is a bit of a problem for me, since I do not own a trompo and this is not a time when I find myself having much trust in any restaurants. There are only a select few who I think do a good job with this, as it is, and none of them are particularly close to me. Still, I try to test things as thoroughly as possible and this was no exception, so I used it in every place where I would normally use a Pineapple-Habanero, so things like chicken strips, pizza, etc. Cumin I did not find to be a very welcome addition to any of those and it is somewhat of a challenge to figure out where this sauce should fit, as the one food dish it appears to be meant for, al pastor tacos, it is doubtful I will have in 2020. I dislike sweet sauces generally with Mexican dishes, so I didn't find it enjoyable there, either. Once the video posts, you can see my attempt to build something along the lines of the dish this sauce is wanting.

Heat -wise, this is very moderate, bordering on non-existent. The consistency is somewhere between the Inferno Farms Pineapple XXXpress and one of the thicker sauces, right about the middle between them. There are a lot of good bits of pineapple and pepper in there, which I do like.

Bottom line: Designing a sauce for one specific food is an interesting idea, but one that seems inherently limited. If this sauce did not have cumin, I would find it far more enjoyable, but as it is, I find that ingredient bottlenecks applications. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

 

Legal Hot Sauce (Hot) Review

Legal Hot Sauce Hot Hot Heat

Legal in Brazilian, which is where this sauce hails, means a positive emphatic (as well as lawful), along the lines of cool or awesome. This sauce company has chosen their name somewhat poorly, as the name on the bottle is literally how it reads, similar to Pallotta Hot. Companies need not put the adjective "hot" in their name if they're making hot sauce...it just gets into the awkward hour.

That aside, I had not ever come across the Malagueta pepper before and it's pretty rare that happens these days, so I got excited. Getting into this sauce was a whole lot less pleasant, though. The overall flavor reminds me a lot of Tabasco crossed by way of a Scorpion, in that it has that Tabasco bit of sweetness (possibly the sweetness is the addition of carrots, I should note) and flavor, but also has a very strong flowery and bitter aspect to it, somewhat similar to the Scorpions. It is ultimately not something I find particularly palatable, but it was definitely interesting to try.

Given how heavily vinegary it is, this is probably something that makes a lot more sense in the context of where you would use a Louisiana-style sauce. It is also approximately that consistency, though not quite as water, but comes with a restrictor cap, which is definitely necessary. The flavor profile is very strong though, also reminiscent of Tabasco, and it's also similar to Tabasco in that it comes across as a love/hate sort of proposition. As I don't like Tabasco particularly and grow less fond of Scorpions lately, this is not one that I find especially enjoyable. One of the things I really dislike, though, is that there seems to be a sort of alcohol flavor to it, which I find quite puzzling and jarring. I'm not quite clear if this harshness is part of the intent or not, but it is highly detracting. Oversaucing becomes an immediate problem as this sauce can definitely wreck things. Heat-wise, the sauce is pretty moderate, hotter than the Tabasco and Lousiana-style sauces generally, but not anything approaching blazing. 

Bottom line: I always enjoy experiencing new (to me) peppers for the first time and this was no exception, but I definitely will not be using the entire bottle. Indeed, this one is going to be binned and is on the fence for me keeping it around long enough to film a video for it.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Mountain Man Fire-Roasted Habanero Hot Sauce

Mountain Man Fire-Roasted Habanero Hot Sauce

Update: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLY5_GablGw

This chasing around for a Standby Mexican-style sauce can easily get out of hand with me, which is why I was happy during those times when I had a viable candidate. Somehow, I wound up back in it, again, this year and was poking around online trying to find fire-roasted Habanero, since I think I've settle on wanting that more than wanting a smoky flavor. The plan right now is to blend a couple of sauces together and the candidates I have in mind I still need to gather, but that project I plan to start maybe later this month or December...once I can get up to BYT again to collect the necessary goodies. At the time, I had that tentative plan, but also came across this when searching for fire-roasted Habanero as a hot sauce ingredient.

I had never heard of this sauce company, which comes from the mountains of...Florida. Ahem. It did not look to be an especially complex sauce and that is one of the attributes of the Irazu Fire-Roasted Habanero sauce (reviewed here elsewhere), so I thought I would give it a go, both because I had never heard of the sauce company and to just make sure I canvassed the choices a bit more thoroughly prior to moving forward with the blending process. 

The initial flavor here is the nice fire-roasted Habanero blasted with a not very palatable vinegar. It is not listed as such, label cites red wine vinegar specifically, but it reminds me a lot of an apple cider vinegar, which I dislike as a main or even strong flavor note. This is, by far the biggest weakness of this sauce, which is otherwise fine. So, we have both a bad vinegar and far too much of it, which is pretty odd for most Mexican-style sauces. If you can get past that, and you will need to find foods that are relatively strong in flavor profile (which most Mexicanesque foods are, I would suggest), this does have a very lovely heat to it, though pretty far from blazing and the fire-roasted notes are excellent. 

Bottom line: The vinegar is a shame, but otherwise this is an entry into both the fire-roasted and Mexican-style categories well worth checking out.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 5

Brick & Mortars In Utah Update

It's been a good, good long time, all the way since July 2017,  since I did one of these. I really meant to get to this sooner and in fact, for a while, I was kicking around the idea of doing this yearly (feel free to click through the timeline for some of the earlier episodes). We have seen a pretty dramatic influx of spiciness to foods in 2020 (some of these I’ve done videos for in the YouTube FOH series), with a good percentage of the local grocers (Harmons, Fresh Market, Smith’s, etc.), expanding their selections notably. They still are a pretty far cry from any of the places on this list more dedicated to that specific product line, but it is nice to see the industry getting out there.

In the age of COVID-19, with businesses related to food dropping off right and left, I was a bit worried for all of these places and checked in with all of them at least once in 2020. The list is alphabetic and I will say there is a reason to go to all of them that are along the I-15 corridor, as they all have different strengths, some of those not really related to hot sauces specifically. As usual, all of them are also reviewed on my Yelp page, though I have not updated them all specifically to 2020.

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

700+ sauces. I might not need to add anything else to this, actually. This selection is intense and covers every spectrum of hot sauce you might think of, including some mustards and syrups. If you combined ALL of the shelf offerings of everyone else on this list, you’d probably break the century mark, maybe all the way to 150, but not much more. All of them. Combined. Roger, in addition to being the ambassador to spiciness, particularly with his support of the chilehead community, is also an all-around good guy and if you happen to catch him there, you’ll be treated to a great conversation about peppers, the industry, and exactly which sauce you should be taking with you, and maybe even a discount.

Grove Market - Salt Lake City, UT

This is what it sounds like, a small market servicing a deli counter that makes some of the tastiest sandwiches known to man. Everything there is in service to that, from the fresh desserts to the substantial drink selection to the snacks and so on. There is one neck-high shelving unit that is dedicated to the sauces, but in that area is probably a good 50 or 60 different types, some of which I’ve seen nowhere else. Selection here is a pretty far cry from BYT, but still enough for 2nd.

Pepper Palace - Park City, UT

Hot on the heels of that, though, is Pepper Palace. This is dedicated to the Pepper Palace line, aside from some of the extraneous stuff they lifted from Pirate O’s, such as dried insects. This place has t-shirts and other novelty junk, some meat snacks, some BBQ sauces, some wing sauces, some salsas, a lot of dried stuff, rubs, etc, some pickled stuff. In fact, most of the floor and shelf space is dedicated to things other than hot sauces. For those sauces, which I did not pick up, as I was not in serious need and literally nothing enticed me, even after a good half hour of time spent checking out the wares, there is a lot of duplication, which suggested that there are, despite 40 - 50 labeled sauces, maybe half that number of actual sauces. It also suggests a base, which always strikes me as kind of a dangerous proposition. I have heard rumblings that they like to pick off other sauces, reverse engineer them and release as their own, but I cannot verify. I didn’t see a ton of things that struck me as exact copies, but more than a few things that seemed more intended as analogues to other sauces. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I hate Park City (it is about the same distance from me as Pirate O’s and I’ve been to Pepper Palace exactly once ever), this is pretty low on my list of things to get to, though I did find enough stuff that I’m vaguely interested in that I might try some of it in 2021, if I ever managed to free up shelf space.

Pirate O's - Draper, UT

More of a Euro/quasi-Scandinavian import store than anything else, though they extend the range a bit more each time I come in. The owner seems somewhat of a chilehead, and is also another good guy that I’ve enjoyed chatting with about sauces, but a couple of shelving units along the back wall means he’s deferring to other stuff that probably sells better and is more profitable, though selection has been better this year than at other times in the past. Even still, this one has a single digit (probably a low single digit) percentage of the available retail space dedicated to hot sauces and spicy stuff overall, but there are some gems here that I also don’t seem to run across anywhere else. This is well worth keeping tabs on, but moreso for the FOH series rather than the blog these days. I’d put this one closer to a tie with Grove, just depending on my mood on a given day, but will also not that I have a soft spot for it, as it gamely tried to provide when BYT was on hiatus. I enjoy the visits here a lot, just something warm and comfortable about it, that so-called je ne sais quoi.

And...so...we conclude another breakdown. All of them along the I-15 corridor are definitely worth a visit, but as a finale to this, in my end ringing endorsement, I again note that I have ceased buying sauces online entirely, in favor of brick-and-mortars, and that is largely due to BYT, which remains my overall favorite.

Inferno Farms Pineapple XXXpress Hot Sauce Review

 Inferno Farms Pineapple XXXpress Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com. .

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DruWglcisdo

It is worth noting that Inferno Farms is the company of Greg Foster, current reigning Carolina Reaper pepper eating champ. One might be tempted to think that his sauce lineup will be molten lava at every turn, particularly with the XXX (though I suppose that could be taken in a different and likely non-applicable way also) branding on this sauce, but indeed, no. He is a chef and as such, thankfully puts flavor first. To be sure, he has some hotter varieties as you go up the ladder, but not everything is meant to scorch your face off.

With this, another name in the longish list of pineapple Habanero (yes, I realize it is actually a Scotch Bonnet pepper, but those two are cousins and the usage here is that where you'd normally see the Habanero) sauces, there are some notable differences. It is not thick and gloppy, as sauces of that type tend to be. This one is rather thin and runny, along the lines of a Louisiana-style, but not quite that watery. Definitely will need a lot of agitation and if not, you can get flavor pockets. To those pockets, we have ginger (awesome) and lime (much less awesome). Those two notes seem to clash quite a bit and when it is heavier on the ginger side, the taste is both fresh and unique and something I want a lot more of. When I start hitting the lime notes, I begin to wish that was either cut down dramatically or, preferably, cut out entirely. 

While citrus and hot sauce is not an especially awesome combination for me, aside from maybe some orange notes here and there, I think it also makes the sauce a lot less useful. For instance, the gloppy Pineapple Habanero sauces are pretty damn wonderful on pizza, in addition to the usual chicken places. I've used it on burgers as well, as noted in one of the FOH videos. When you throw a citrus element into it, though, it's pretty much chicken and fried fish, maybe something along the lines of an accent for fish tacos. 

Heat-wise, this is pretty tame. It's runny enough to drink and if you liked lime notes, you could probably do that. I think this would also, come to think of it, work pretty nicely in a frozen mixed drink, either a margarita or pina colada or lime daquiri, something along those lines. To be clear, the dominant taste is definitely the pineapple, but it is also moderate enough to allow a lot of those grace notes to creep in, which can dramatically alter the utility. I get that you have to be different to stand out in an already saturated area, such as the fruit-based sauces, particularly pineapple Habanero, but this has taken one step too many for me.

Bottom line: This sauce is on the right track, but still in need of a bit more modification. Definitely worth a visit if you're a fan of pineapple Habanero sauces.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Hooter's Hot Sauce Review

The Original Hooter's Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSfsW6OlvfM

I picked this up on a whim. Hooter's is not exactly known for its kitchen prowess, but rather the gigantic...ummm...owl eyes of the various female wait staff and hosts. When I go to restaurants, I tend to go specifically for the food, so, given that the food here tends to be underwhelming at best, I have not really frequented this chain, having visited maybe half a dozen times combined ever. I honestly didn't recall the sauce specifically, but presumed it to be some sort of wing sauce, so probably pointed at a buffalo sauce, with at least a passing nod to a Louisiana-style. It sat on my shelf for quite a while until I picked it up, hoping more more of a pure Cayenne sauce. What it is comes fairly distant from that, though.

What we're really looking at here is a red Jalapeno sauce. In my haste, I think I pegged the pepper on the front as a Cayenne, but I think it is a Jalapeno. Jalapenos in sauces can be of use. It is a very flavorful pepper, but for me, like most other peppers of low heat, you need a lot of it. Where the pepper has, as its strong suit, great flavor, such as Bells or Jalapenos, you really need more of the actual pepper. Cooking it and distilling it into a sauce tends to rob Jalapenos of a good portion of their strength and you're left with this, which is sort of a vague stab at a hot sauce. This is not always the case, mind you. Boar's Head does a great job using this same pepper, but they're going for more of a pepper sauce, instead of a general hot sauce, which appears to be the intent here.

This sauce tastes cheap to me. Cheap sauce is not always bad. Crystal and Cheap Thrills come to mind as two lower-priced entries that are very serviceable, but this one actively tastes cheap, as in low quality. It kind of reminds me of the Trappey Bull sauce that someone threw a handful of sugar at and it's exactly as good as that sounds. This is not to say inedible, such as others this year have been for me, but it has to be used very carefully, not because of any heat level, but because of the tendency to foul things it's on, if oversaucing happens. This is not bad, to the point where I will refuse to do a video of it, but I will neither buy it again nor likely finish the bottle. I've found uses of it where it performed acceptably on food to be very minimal.

Bottom line: If you're a fan of this chain, and more specifically, this particular sauce, here you go. Everyone not fitting into that category can keep on moving.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Big Red's Smokey Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Big Red's Smokey Habanero Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzqXF6Re2P8

This is a relatively new company to me and it's clear that they definitely like to have fun with the labels. This is the first of the sauces I've tried and, as mentioned, since I somehow got on the old chasing-down-a-standby-Mexican-style-sauce trail again, this one moved to the front of the line. I've said it elsewhere, but I now have a much better idea what I actually want out of this kind of sauce. I've settled down onto the idea of Habanero, as I don't think most of the other peppers would be fitting (ghost also would be fine, but not enough people use it in this style), but with a strong preference towards either fire-roasted or smoked. In this case, we have the addition of a Chipotle powder and smoke flavor, the latter of which is fairly novel to me in this setting. 

I was pretty curious to see how this would work, once I discovered this, but the results are...curious. What we have here is a sauce somewhat reminiscent of a taco sauce, along with a strong Habanero undercurrent. There is quite a number of ingredients in this sauce and some of them seem to be there in appearance only, such as the flecks of cilantro. This has a solid bit of heat, though it's definitely on the lower side of the scale. There is also the presence of Cayenne here also, which I encounter pretty rarely in a Mexican style sauce. The end result, though, is a bit confusing to me, as there are a number of competing flavors. The overall subtlety of this sauce enables different elements to shine through, but it did not ever quite make it to a cohesive whole for me. 

The subtlety is also somewhat of a problem, actually, as it makes this sauce much less universal on foods, even if restricted to Mexican-style foods. If you don't have somewhat of a heavy pour, the presence may show up in a slight heat increase and little else, but too heavy and those grace notes amplify depending on what you put it on and may show up enough to introduce diminishing returns. This aspect makes it a bit of a frustrating sauce to use. In addition to missing the mark on the flavor I'm after, it also dials down the universality, at least in regards to Mexican foods, my ideal standby sauce would have.

Bottom line: Definitely one of the more interesting takes on a Mexican-style sauce I've had, but one that is both a bit too busy and subtle and not particularly resonant with my palate. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

CaJohn's Black Garlic Ghost Hot Sauce Review

 CaJohn's Black Garlic Ghost Hot Sauce

Update: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYcD7_jIUpw

To a degree, I did not understand the draw of black garlic and why it would be of interest, let alone of use, in a hot sauce. While this did not sell me on the usage in a hot sauce, exactly, I do now more fully understand the appeal of black garlic and the relation to umami. 

Despite doing the Chipotle variation of the CaJohn's Black Garlic sauces earlier in the year, that sauce was, for me, just kind of there, somewhat confusing but best thought of as basically a sweet soy sauce, with not a lot of flavor. This one, on the other hand, is considerably both more flavorful and more punchy and is highly enjoyable. 

I used it in most of the same places I used the other and this is literally worlds better. That it is that radically different is somewhat surprising to me, aside from the idea that chipotle being such a strong flavor, my presumption is that it was used more sparingly so as not to overpower the more delicate flavor notes. Here, with ghost pepper not being a particularly strong flavor, more is able to be used and so not only is there a strong heat presence, but the melding of the Jolokias with those other umami flavors of soy sauce and black garlic helps them to shine all the more. This, unlike the other, is also quite a bit more flexible, equally at home being a curious dipping sauce, to working spectacularly on grilled or roasted meats. 

As to heat, the ghost is tempered somewhat, showing off its more flavorful side and while this is notably hotter than the other, it is pretty far from where I think it would give anyone much trouble, chilehead or not. It is just a very nice, all-around sauce, though heavily pointed at the Asian side, naturally, that does a lot towards answering what all the hype about black garlic is.

Bottom line: This is a very good introduction to the glories of black garlic and I'm simultaneously pleased and saddened I didn't try this first...this may, in fact, be a sauce I consider keeping on hand in future.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 6

Arthur Wayne Montana Rooster Hot Sauce Review

Arthur Wayne Montana Rooster Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq5nUuMH3Q4

Note: I have been reliably informed by the aforementioned Roger that the label for this bottle may be changing, so possibly this is the old label. A number of other labels throughout this blog are possibly similarly changed...my suggestion is to look on the respective web sites of the various sauces and see what the current look is.

Right, now on to the show...as those of you following along in 2020 already know, an Arthur Wayne sauce called Limitless (check TOC for review) is hovering about in my SOTY consideration list. I did find it a bit piquant for daily usage, however, and was really interested in the sauce it was based on, which is this. Had the heat been taken down a few notches, we could be looking at a battle between sauces from the same company, which is pretty rare. The last time it happened, if memory serves, it was back between a couple of CaJohn's entries. 

Sad to say, this will not be the case here. This sauce does not retain any of the smoothness of the other sauce and has almost no heat at all. There are spiky chunks of pepper bits, which is a touch on the annoying side, when I hit them and this is a far looser sauce, much closer to the runniness of a Louisiana-style. It is possible this is just a batch issue with the bottle I got, which can happen with smaller sauce companies, but I'm far from convinced that is what is at play here.

 I also have some related problems with the naming convention here. Sriracha refers to a pretty specific - and well established - style of sauce. Calling this a spin on sriracha is frankly just misnaming the sauce. If you're going to take a sriracha and spike it with fruit, fine, I guess, but it still has to be mainly a sriracha. This one reads more like a vinegary pineapple sauce and indeed, we have the fairly standard combination of pineapple and Habanero here.

Had the approach here been to take a swing at the sweet-hot and just call it sriracha-inspired, fine, but if you set up expectations, particularly for a well-known and beloved sauce, and then get nowhere near it...it is going to raise some questions. The taste here varies a bit, but never too far from vinegar and pineapple. I don't dislike it and it is mild enough you can use a lot of it. Flexibility is fairly strong, going well on nearly everything, other than Mexican food, where I found it somewhat clashy.

Bottom line: Do not consider this a sriracha-style sauce, regardless of the label. Think of it as another sweet-hot, another entry into the halls of Habanero-pineapple, albeit a runny version, and go accordingly.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Seafire Classic Habanero Hot Sauce Review

 Seafire Classic Habanero Hot Sauce

Tell me have you ever just taken a spoonful of that concentrated, minced garlic, from Christopher Ranch or someone else and just eaten it right from the jar? Don't get the jars? Ok, have you ever then gotten one of the squeeze bottles or tubes and just blasted it right into your open mouth? No? If you did, did you enjoy it? No? If yes, you may enjoy this sauce. It might stop with you, though.

This is, ostensibly, a "classic" Habanero sauce in the sense that it has Habanero, carrots and some of the other sweet component goodies that other Habanero sauces have had. The twist, as it were, is that this contains, from the website, "an insane amount of garlic." How you should read this is as a garlic puree with slightly sweet and citrusy grace notes. If you did either of those things I mentioned in the first part, you already got the gist of this sauce. If not, if you are not insane enough to do such a thing, it is as close to the experience of trying this sauce as one can imagine, without actually also trying the sauce.

I like garlic. At times, I might even feel an affection for it bordering on love. I've had - and made - my share of garlic burgers, of heavy garlic spaghetti sauce or pizza sauce, even went so far as to roasting entire bulbs in a pie tine with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, then just eating the cloves as a light snack. I did that for a while, in fact, but I've never liked the heavily processed concentratedd kind. This resembles the version I like least and, since there will not be a video accompaniment to this sauce, here is basically how that went:

I started with a breakfast bowl. I sniffed the bottle and nearly gave up right then and there, but went on and managed to coax a bit of this thick, sludgy stuff out. It wrecked everything it touched, nearly to the point of inducing gagging. It was basically straight concentrated processed garlic. So...I poured out a bit of what was in the neck, figuring I hadn't agitated it enough. I then shook it up really well and put it back in the fridge. I tried again with chicken strips and the same result, except I could detect a slight bit of carrot underlying it, as well as a slight sweetness. 

I did not give up there, though, it was pretty clear then, given how I do the video addendums for the sauces, I would, in no way consider do it with this sauce. Rather, I tried to use it how I would use the actual concentrate, which is in various dishes, chilis, etc. It worked well there, equally as well as normal garlic puree would work, though none of the heat one might anticipate from a Habanero nor the sweetness nor the carrot tinge managed to make it through. So, it's fine being cooked into stuff, like the regular concentrate, which is how I will use the rest of it, but this labels itself as a sauce, but the rating reflects the sauce criteria, since the blog is for sauces.

Bottom line: This is a garlic puree masquerading as a sauce, albeit a slightly more expensive way to obtain a puree. Using it as you would those others is fine. Using it as a sauce will produce awful results.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

2K20 Q3 Update

  2K20 Q3 Update

After the last update was posted, it came to my attention that Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, the hot sauce and all things spicy Ambassador of the West, was celebrating 11 years in business as of July 2020. So, a hearty congratulations from TSAAF and FOH, and here’s to many, many more. Roger and BYT have also had a couple of nice write-ups, both in Utah’s own Catalyst paper, as well as on crafthotsauce.com. If you use Facebook, definitely check out his page on Facebook for links to that and a bevy of other good stuff, including posts on some of the 700+ (!) sauces he has on the shelf. I believe he has also been working up a new website, as well, which you can check out at https: //burnyourtonguehotsauces. business.site/ (remove spaces). I am not going to link to Facebook, as they have decided to move to an insultingly stupid format, which I refuse to support, but if you still use it, you can just search from there.

Season 13 of The Hot Ones went up and I’ve posted that as well...yet another season I cannot do 100% and I’m a few more sauces behind now. I will note that by doing 2 particular sauces, it will catch me up on a number of seasons and I have both of those at hand, so I anticipate that gap between how many I’ve done that were on the show and how many left to lessen somewhat, at least in terms of overall seasonal coverage in 2021.

Also found a pretty cool blog by another chilehead named Kendall. I really dig it a lot and it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen, rivaling Scott’s back in his heyday. It’s called “Tasting The Heat.” Check it out at tastingtheheat dot com. He’s a pretty awesome guy, so major shout out to him, and he has wisely pictures of the ingredient panel for the sauces, something I wish I’d thought of when I started doing pictures (but will not be adding now).

I should observe another milestone, actually 4 milestones. The first two are in regards to the FOH YouTube video series. As of August 2020, the FOH series has reached 100 video entries, and I’ve added video support for a sauce in every year of TSAAF’s existence, including 2012, a “year” which had only 4 months. The total FOH content, as of this video, is 112, and 55 of those are in support of full review for sauces. The second milestone is that as of October 1, 2020, the FOH series will be reaching its first anniversary.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the video series, please do. I have a lot of fun making those, which extend beyond the blog’s intentional focus only on hot sauces, to include other spicy foods, along with various applications of sauce usage and testing, which doesn’t get covered here. Links to the various playlists are in the widgets to the right, as well as in the various reviews themselves, and in the TOCs.

While I’m at it, I should mention that I also doubled my sauces at once (in 2019 I did 6 sauces), in a single mini-review*, but also made it a 2-part video, also the first for that, wherein I went through all the sauces that are in the Book of Pleasure & Pain Hot Sauce Challenge, though inadvertently. For this, I did12 sauces at once, *though 2 had already been previously reviewed. It did help me to test out my preparation a bit (maybe I will work my way to actual heat challenges, if I can get it tuned enough - if so, those will be for the FOH series only), though it was also a lot more challenging than I was expecting when I first thought up the idea. It is the 2nd dual posting between FOH and TSAAF. I also managed to throw in another double review on the blog to boot, though the video for that will be in Q4 sometime, due to the lag right now between the blog and the FOH video series.

Talked about the total posts to the blog for 2020 in the last update a bit and how it relates to previous years. So far, I’ve posted 33 total, which puts it higher than every year but 2013 (52). I also posted (repeatedly) in every month of this year, which has not happened since 2015 and only for 3 of the 8 years this blog has been running. This year will make 4, if I keep that streak running. I don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t.

I should also speak to the 3rd milestone, which is not here as of yet, but is coming soon. That is 200 full sauce reviews on this blog. I’ve already reviewed well over 200 sauces overall and probably tried well over a thousand spicy food things, and I know I said I didn’t think I was going to hit 200 full sauce reviews this year, but now I’m beginning to think I might be surprised if I don’t. I am, as of this writing, at the 196 mark and there is still a goodly amount of time to go in the year. I don’t believe, however, that I will cover that particular milestone with a separate post, as I did with the first 100. These quarterly updates are very extensive as-is.

The final milestone, which did get accomplished in Q3 with the arrival of the review of both Blair’s Original Death Sauce and the Pain Is Good #218 Louisiana sauce, is that Season One of The Hot Ones now has a review for all of the sauces I am doing and is thus complete. It will be the only season I am looking (or likely) to complete this year.

For Q3, I did a lot of blog maintenance, this past little while, after the last update, fixing some html errors I missed, as well as finally creating a database, so I can more appropriately check on how many reviews I’ve done in a much easier manner than previously, which always had the possibility of me missing something. I have added a few more photos for the full reviews and believe I’m now at less than 20 sauces needing pictures, which is slightly over the 10% mark of total sauces in the full review list. I also needed to teach myself a new way of doing the blog, thanks to Google electing to change how the blog operates. Thankfully, I don’t do anything overly demanding, in a technical sense.

I guess since I’m on the numbers, as I alluded to last update, I may as well start going  through some of them. The average score, across all sauces, is about midway between 4 and 5. This is also, incidentally, skewed higher, as I usually buy sauces I believe I will enjoy. The list currently sits at 13 sauces with an overall score of 0, 14 sauces at 1, 13 sauces at 2, 22 sauces at 3, 26 sauces at 4, 28 sauces at 5, 31 sauces at 6, 26 sauces at 7, 16 sauces at 8, 7 sauces at 9 and NO sauces at 10. This is by design, as I structured the rating system so that no one element would be able to dominate the ratings, and also, to a degree, some of the criteria are in opposition to each other. This means that the odds of having a perfect 10 across the board are exceedingly unlikely.  I have also done video support for at least one sauce of every score level that has sauces in it.

Of the alphabet, all letters are represented, except for K, U, X, Y. I’m going to loosely keep an eye out for sauces/sauce makers starting with those letters, though the only one I’m really surprised about is the “K”. I do have one of those “K” sauces sitting on deck and plan on getting to it before the end of the year, though. As to the rest, I can’t find any makers for either the “U” or “X”, so those look to be waiting a while longer... The best represented letter is “C”, with 20 entries, being carried on the back of the best represented sauce company, CaJohn’s, both on the blog with 12 and on the FOH video series with 5.

Continuing on, as mentioned, I have 196 full reviews on the blog. Of those, at least 24 (I have not gone through every title quite yet) are either discontinued entirely OR have been reformulated and do not match the sauce I reviewed any longer. 55 of them already have videos. Looking over the back catalog, I’m thinking that I probably will go to a ratings cut-off.  There is little point in me going through and buying a bunch of sauces that are rated at 0 - 2, as I will be keeping some of them just long enough to shoot the video, thereby ruining whatever food I put it on, and only to be binned immediately at the conclusion of recording. This range may also be increased to 0 - 3. On that low rating side, there are 21 sauces without video support, only one of which, Zatarain’s, which was a 1, I will consider doing, and that only because I hear fairly regular whining about the actual review.

That is a definite exception, though. This year, for instance, I had the Grace Scotch Bonnet sauce at hand and wound up tossing it entirely and not even filming a video at all. I do have limits. If manufacturers or whoever want to offer up some of those sauces for that purpose, I’ll accept them and at least consider shooting a video, but I don’t see any wisdom in spending my money to do that again, unless this becomes something more than a fun, casual hobby.

So, between the discontinued, the low rated, and the ones already done, I have a playground of around a hundred sauces or so that I could conceivably obtain for the purposes of FOH. I still need to check into availability of a lot of them, but I’ve already identified 15 that will be more of a priority. My suspicion is that once those are concluded, the higher rated ones will be more of a priority, though that will probably take realistically beyond 2021.

On the brighter side, for this year, I have 5 SOTY contenders right now (Private Selection Calabrian, Arthur Wayne Limitless, Monroy’s Death By Kraken, Tonguespank Scotch Whiskey Trinidad Scorpion & Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper, if you haven’t read them yet and are interested in checking them out), which is a great relief to me, as the last few years it has been nearly right down to the wire. Of those, Calabrian works well with the widest variety of things and was eaten the fastest, Limitless packed the biggest wallop, and the Sweet Ghost Pepper is, by far, the best-tasting).

Speaking of SOTYs, here is the current breakdown: There have been 8, as I write this, in the history of this blog. Of those 8, 3 are discontinued. Of the 5 remaining, 3 have had videos done. Of the 2 remaining, 1 of them I’m going to try to get to this year, but it may not make it (Happy Beaver). The other one I bought with the intention of doing a video, only to find it has been reformulated. That is the Born To Hula Ghost Of Ancho. As that sauce is based on the Habanero Ancho from them, and which has evidently also been reformulated, the result is a sauce that would be pushing to break a 5 and nowhere near any SOTY criteria for me. They took what was a delectable sauce and utterly ruined it, to the point where it is very nearly an unpalatable abomination. If you’re interested in the exact mechanism, it appears they scrambled the ingredients order (amplifying the astringency notably with the lime) and moved from onion powder to actual onions. So, needless to say, I will not be doing a video of that, as it is no longer the same sauce, nor will I be consuming it again, beyond what I tried before I noticed that awful change. I have noticed this with some of the other sauces in the backlog, so I now will need to directly review everything, as in at least 2 different online sources for the ingredient list OR bottle in hand,  for any of the past sauces, a prospect which pleases me about as much as you might expect. Cumulatively, of the 8 SOTYs for this blog, 4 are no longer available, either at all, or in their reviewed form.

As always, if you have any suggestions on anything you could care to see in the world of spicy foods, drop me a line and I’ll definitely try to get to it.

Pain Is Good Batch #218 Louisiana Hot Sauce Review

 Pain Is Good Batch #218 Louisiana Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce appears on Seasons One and Two of The Hot Ones.

NOTE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnOaSUtrAN0

I had a lot of reservations about this sauce and passed it up, literally for years, because I disliked the Cayenne version from this company (which also makes the Pain percentage line and the Da' Bomb line) so intensely. Indeed, I have liked literally nothing they've produced thus far, so to say this wasn't even on my radar at all would be a gross understatement. Of course, then cue Roger at BYT for the rejuvenation of this blog last year, in the course of which, I came across The Hot Ones. I had not heard of it before that, but once I did, given the prominence of it in the industry, it made sense to take a look at the various sauces appearing that I had not done, one of which was this one.

Like the Cayenne sauce, this one has no idea what it actually wants to be. Calling it Louisiana-style is ridiculous and flatly false. If it came from the state, I could maybe give this a pass, but the company is out of Kansas. If they called it Cajun, they might be closer, as that style allows for a lot more elements than just Cayenne, salt, and vinegar, but this one is chock full of a lot of stuff that you would more normally expect to find in a barbeque sauce. This one is hotter than nearly every barbeque sauce I've had and I don't think there is quite enough sugar content in there for it to be a proper grilling sauce, but the smokiness and the tomato elements leads one there readily.

I am going to attempt to grill with it before the season closes down for the year, but have not as of this writing (the results will be in the video support, when that goes up), and instead have tried to use it as I do both Cajun and actual Louisiana-style. It works pretty well as a dipping sauce, acceptably in ramen, but the overall resemblance always harkens back to a poorly made, though somewhat hot, barbeque sauce. I do like that they used the Habanero mainly for heat and not flavor. The Cayenne is definitely the dominant pepper flavor, but spends a lot of time trying to fend off all the other competing flavors. I would anticipate it will probably work well as a wing sauce, but grilling could go either way, honestly.

As to heat, I would put this one slightly above a 3, but not enough to give it the push to 4. It definitely is enough to give non-chileheads pause, though no chileheads will be challenged by this. 

Bottom line: A very odd sauce, with a somewhat confusing taste profile, that bears little to no resemblance to the type of sauce indicated on the label. This is one that I'm not upset I bought, though it was mostly due to The Hot Ones inclusion, but would also have been ok with not ever having. Also, I will not be replacing once the bottle is done.

Breakdown:

Heat level: 3
Flavor: 6
Flexibility: 5
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 5