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