Pex Peppers Cosmic Peach Hot Sauce Review

Pex Peppers Cosmic Peach Hot Sauce

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJDtn0-OWQ

Pex is rapidly becoming one of the more impressive companies out there to me, with their ability to hit the fruit notes of their fruit-bases sauces quite astutely. They also do a very nice job of hitting some of the lesser known superhots and utilizing them exceedingly well. Already impressed with the use of the Fatalii and the 7 Pot Primo in prior sauces I've reviewed, I was excited for this, not so much for the use of orange Habanero, which won't ever ring bells for me, but for the peaches. Like Roger Damptz, who got me revved up for this sauce, I'm a bit on the fairly partial-to-peaches side of things myself.When I saw it had that magical combination of Habanero and honey, my excitement grew. Indeed, I had to kind of hide the bottle. thanks to the color of the sauce, which was so much beckoning peachy goodness, so I could hold off opening it until I cleared more fridge door space...

Once I got into it, I was initially much less happy. What I found was a sort of sweet-ish orange Habanero flavored, though a highly bitter one, with peach grace notes. I continued on through the neck, increasingly dismayed, I must say. We had some nice heat out of the gate, a rush not unlike the red Habanero El Yucateco, but the taste was not at all what I was expecting or hoping for.

I noticed that it liked to clog near the cap and also noted there were no emulsifiers or suspension agents in the sauce, so I think some major separation happened. After I got through the sauce in the neck of the bottle, I was able to get slammed with a much milder sauce and one far heavier on peach flavoring. Unfortunately, the streaky nature of this sauce persisted, though, with some bites being very peach heavy and other bites being a lot more bitter and Habanero-heavy. I've not been able to find a way to agitate this sufficiently to avoid this tendency, which is kind of a pity. This sauce, accordingly, ranges from one of the better peaches sauces I've had to a mostly just ok sweet-hot somewhat bitter Habanero, all within the same bottle, sometimes even within the same usage.

Heat-wise, this is solid, for a Habanero sauce. I suspect the heat and the frequently arising bitter nature will not appeal to many non-chileheads. Using it on an actual peach dish would probably help, but it also is capable of doing well on any of the lighter meats. Peach is not a flavor I generally find especially broad, so it's a bit limited in the places where it might work well. The sauce, when it is being peach forward, is, however, one of the very few that would work nicely in a dessert application and I have half a mind to try it on some peach cobbler...I may, in fact, even make the peach cobbler with the sauce itself...

Bottom line: While this is not consistently the sauce I built up in my head, I can see what they were going for and the strong potential this sauce has, if they're able to resolve the consistency issue. For chileheads with a peach penchant, this is definitely worth a go.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5