Bear River Bottling Lightning Hot Buffalo Sauce Review

Bear River Bottling Lightning Hot Buffalo Sauce

UPDATE: Video support now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yfd4lx9lczI

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.

Next, due to some counting errors, this is actually my 200th written sauce overall review. I still have a few miles to go on the full reviews, but this is 200 overall.

Finally, and this is really related to nothing, but if I were this company, I'd move more towards calling the company BRB, as the "Bottling" part of the name almost makes it sound like a microbrewery.

All that out of the way, we can now get into things a bit. Longtime readers know that Cayenne is probably my overall favorite pepper and Louisiana-style one of my favorite sauces, but I almost never buy Buffalo, despite a certain unmistakable resemblance in flavor profiles. The reason for this is that I don't eat hot wings a lot, combined with my preference for wings, when I do have them, with a bit more of a creamy sauce. A lot of the Buffalo sauces are pretty hardcore vinegary, which is useful in a Louisiana-style sauce, but quite a bit less so in a Buffalo sauce.

This particular one leans a bit more into the Louisiana-style territory, but herein a bit of a conundrum. Should I view it as a Louisiana, it is way too busy in the ingredient panel for my suiting. There is not a great degree of heat here, either, but I don't need a ton of heat as much as I want a purity of flavor for the Louisiana-style. So, we'll look at this more as a Buffalo sauce.

Flavor-wise, it's fine. I wouldn't have too many complaints if I came across this in a restaurant. Again, it is a touch more astringent than I normally like, but I assure you, that would not deter me. The bottle is a larger size and it is pours quite well. The blend is such that I can't pick out overall elements particularly well, but there is a unique composite with overtones of garlic, vinegar and what I would characterize as a blend of the peppers, without one taking dominance over another.

Bottom line: This is not, at the end of the day, a sauce I would seek out, nor will I be replacing it. It occupies such a weird middle ground for me that there is not really a place it would fit nicely. If your taste runs more towards the vinegary side of things for wings, this is definitely one well worth a look.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8


Overall: 5