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
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