Big Red's God's Wrath Hot Sauce Review

Big Red's Hot Sauce God's Wrath Ghost Pepper Sauce

Update: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haZFTMFfWS4

I really get a kick out of this company. Their labels are fun, the video clips on Facebook, usually from Tasia (I'm not on, but come across them here and there) are fun. It's just a real cool spirit and vibe and I totally dig it. Now, having said that, I've worked my way through quite a number of their offerings, from the hot sauces (natch) to the mustard, to the nuts (the latter two are available on the FOH video series), and the flavors don't always match up to what I'm hoping, but I appreciate what they're doing nevertheless. 

For this one, we have a very interesting sauce, which has a number of components (Jolokia, Habanero, Cayenne) on the pepper side, along with several dry ingredients, yet the one element that I find the most important here is the tomato paste. This will sound odd, given that it's a hot sauce, but that particular addition is in just the right perfect amount to make this easily one of the most flexible sauces I've had, by anyone. I have tested this on everything I would normally (fried foods, mac & cheese, pizza, etc.), which covers the sweet hot side, everything I'd normally be reaching for a Louisiana-style, and even foods that tend to defy hot sauce, such as Italian foods. It doesn't always work like a champ, but, it does always work, even to a degree on Mexican foods. I used it to spike ketchup, put it on burgers, mixed in with some barbeque sauce, all of them were solid applications.The only category I didn't try (and honestly will not consider attempting) would be Asian dishes. I can't think of too many other sauces where it works that well.

The temptation might be to use it as an everyday sauce, but there are a couple of drawbacks to that. The first is that this is a bit punchy for an everyday sauce. If you wind up oversaucing something, you will notice right away, not so much in the heat, which can build nicely, but won't be too challenging for chileheads (non-chileheads will need to work their way up to this one), but because of the flavor. The use of powdered ingredients can have a tendency to introduce a bitter element, which is what we see here. Indeed, this is a sauce that needs to really be blended and meshed in with something, where it exceeds, to really get the best results. Having this one alone isn't awful or anything, but it is not where the sauce really shines. 

Bottom line: This is probably the best sauce I've had yet from Big Red's, but it isn't quite perfect. If you're on a budget or have space considerations, this is a good one to get, though, as it covers a lot of bases better than nearly any other sauce out there. It is also my first SOTY candidate for 2021.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8

Pex Peppers Lemon Yellow Jacket Hot Sauce Review

Pex Peppers Lemon Yellow Jacket Lemon Fatalii Hot Sauce

Update: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCnC0U_cF-I

Saw this one on sale and picked it up, as lemon is a pretty unusual ingredient to be prominent in flavor profile for a hot sauce. In fact, I can't think of too many others with this kind of focus. It also featured the Fatalii pepper, which is another that I need to spend a bit more time with. Fatalii reminds me somewhat of the Scorpion, only considerably less flowery and a bit more fruity, which nicely pairs with citrus in general, clearly what they were going for with the lemon. 

The flavor is most reminiscent to me of the CaJohn's Dread sauce. It is not a 1:1 dead ringer or anything, but that is by far the closest comparison I can think of...Dread, only a lot less hot. This can get a nice build going, however, as the Fatalii is another of the superhots. Lemon struck me as a very curious choice, as lemon and food tend to go together in a fairly low amount of foods, largely the white meats, such as fish, shellfish, chicken, and pork. Lemon, lemon pepper, lemon and dill, all of those work exceedingly well in that environment, but lemon and red meat, for instance, or lemon and, say, Italian foods are not such a good combination. 

Like Dread, this sauce is somewhat limited in where it finds best use. It took me a very long time to work through and finish out the Dread sauce, being one of those sauces, again something this shares, that is too good to toss, but opportunistically takes a while to find foods where it is a good match. I do find this sauce to be quite enjoyable, though, and I appreciate the degree of experimentalistic courage it takes to take a shot at bottling and putting this out as a product. Part of the problem with Dread, for me, as that although I enjoyed the sauce, there were a lot of other sauces I had open, perpetually, that I preferred. That is fully the case of what I expect here as well.

Consistency-wise, this reminds me more of a lemongrass-type sauce, rather than anything smooth and runny. I don't know what I was expecting, something syrupy or lemon droppy or along those lines, perhaps, but whatever vision it was, this is really its own thing. Another very, very solid entry from Pex Peppers, a company that continues to impress.

Bottom line: A very unique entry into the market, utilizing the seldom-used Fatalii pepper and lemon. This is an excellent sauce to introduce one to the Fataliis and if you're a heavy eater of any of the meats I mentioned, this is definitely worth a go.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Swampdragon Bourbon Hot Sauce Review

Swampdragon Bourbon Hot Sauce

If you are a food reviewer, as I am and have been for well over a decade, and even longer, if you count the informal times, or even if you're just an intrepid food adventurer, as I have always largely been, you will, at some point, experience the sensation of putting something truly awful in your mouth. I have had this happen a number of times and, unless I severely curtail my lust for experimentalism, probably will again a number more before I finally check out. This sauce surely ranks among the worst of anything I've ever put in my mouth. 

After seeing it on a local grocery store shelf, I picked this up on a whim. They also had rum and tequila and I think possibly vodka also. I'm no stranger to bourbon and keep a bottle at hand at all times (unless I'm making a drink of some kind, I also prefer it neat, in case anyone is wondering) and naturally went with that, but also considered the rum as well. Vodka I could not see it adding much and tequila I'm closer to the point of avoiding, so they were really not a choice. It was one of the more expensive sauces on that shelf, which I found curious. Another point of curiousity was the ingredient label, which was "Aged Red Peppers," which I assume to be Cayenne (or possibly, but less likely, red Jalapeno) and a non-specified bourbon. Hmmmm.

Those of us who toy around even at the periphery of the culinary world are familiar with the practice of cooking with or using alcohol products in marinades and sauces and so on. Generally, enough heat is used to cook out the "boozy" part, leaving the taste profile behind. Getting too heavy-handed with whatever alcohol you're using can rather quickly and easily ruin whatever dish you're making and it tends to be mostly used as accent. Even in the sauces that do have it - a few from CaJohn's come more immediately to mind - it is used in the manner I've described.  In this specific case, the selling point is that rather than taking a harsh vinegar hit, why not use alcohol as preservative instead? What this means is that the booze part is not cooked off and instead, you take an alcohol hit instead of a vinegar hit. 

I was tempted to say that the company appears to be very careful not to indicate which brand of bourbon is being used, which I find somewhat suspicious. I imagine it is something they are buying in large quantities of and are likely worried more about a price point than smoothness, for instance. Certainly, all bourbons are not created equal. After pondering this some, I don't believe that I could take one of my finer bourbons and craft a hot sauce with that as at least a co-equal flavor driver, so it probably doesn't really matter how harsh the actual alcohol hit may be. This is just something that conceptually is a moderately intriguing idea, but in actual practice...

I tried this on quite a number of things. If I happened to have it on something hot enough or if I let it sit long enough to let some of the alcohol evaporate, it was vaguely approaching a Louisiana-style sauce, though one I would call more middle of the road. There is not really any heat here, but that is not really what most Louisiana-style sauces are after. When this sauce was used right out of the bottle, the best I could hope for was the alcohol being a distraction. At worst, it was vile and often disgusting.  

This sauce never wound up either complementing the food or improving it, but rather universally wrecked everything it touched. There's just no escaping that you're taking a booze hit with this rather dreadful concoction and most of the foods I use with hot sauce do not work in that setting. Maybe someone out there likes mac and cheese or pizza or chicken strips with whiskey dumped on it, or someone who dips fish sticks or chicken wings in the glass of booze, but that person is definitely not only not me, but also no one I'm aware that I either know or know of. 

Bottom line: This is a mess, an absolutely noxious, and somewhat ill-conceived, concoction. Best use for this would be as some sort of novelty gag gift. Definitely not usable on food and my bottle has already been binned.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Karma Huhu Diablo Hot Sauce Review

 Karma Huhu Diablo Hot Sauce

NOTE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9S_jpQd34E

This is the hotter version (big brother?) to the Huhu Pina sauce and I was interested to see if a hotter version would address some of what I felt were the inadequacies of that previously mentioned sauce (also reviewed here). It somehow escaped my attention that it utilized the 7 Pot Primo (I now have 2 open sauces with that pepper, for the first time ever), but once I discovered that, I was well-pleased. I'm impressed more and more with that pepper, lately. 

One of the nicest things was that in switching the pepper, a lot of the prominence of the one ingredient that I found to be highly distracting and detracting, the cumin, was reduced significantly. It also wiped out a few of the others as well, leaving ultimately a much cleaner sauce, which is a sweet sauce, with a mild pineapple presence, along with a very nicely blended heat and slight bitterness from the pepper. 7 Pot Primo seems to meld quite nicely in the sauces I've had it in so far and does not share either the flowery aspect of Scorpions or the slightly cloying nature of the Reapers. Now that I'm discovering it more and more, this is one I will be turning to with more frequency.

This one has a solid burn, much like the Wildberry Whoop-Ass from Pex (also reviewed here), and also like that sauce, is somewhat on a delay. You get a nice refreshing burst of heat and then as you continue to consume, you get a greater and greater burn. Quite pleasant and enjoyable, I must say, though this is not going to be anywhere near among the greater sauces I've had, I don't think. 

While the flexibility is increased to the point where this is workable on things like pizza, there is still enough cumin that I'm a bit leery about the odds of me buying more of this. I would not, for instance, use this on chicken strips. I am definitely going to give Karma a closer look, I think. This one was exactly what the Pina should have been, for me, and in a general and broader Mexican food sense, this is a definitely winner, unlike the other which was definitely solid for the al pastor tacos and that was it.

Bottom line: A very fine sauce to kick off the new year and it improved on every single aspect of the Pina. I still go back and forth on whether I will keep it on hand, but absolutely will enjoy the bottle in its entirety.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 6