2K21 Q1 Update

Strap in...it’s going to be another long one...with an FOH announcement (read on)... 

I’ve been planning on keeping it pretty light and easy for most of this new year. I thought I wasn’t really pushing on sauces quite as much so far, mostly because I had a lot left over towards the end of 2020 and I really wanted to try to work through those. Having tons of open bottles floating around, which I ran into a bit prior to the last quarter of 2020, just gets to be a bit much. Despite all of that, my postings are considerably higher than Q1 of last year, which was the 2nd highest year ever, in terms of blog postings. In fact, I have more for 2021 as an entire previous year (2018). 

I happily have a couple of SOTY candidates already, both from the same company, only the third time in the history of the blog that’s ever happened, but I also blew one of my goals from the 2020 Recap post. This is due to the atrocious Swampdragon Bourbon hot sauce, which will not be getting video treatment, then followed by the Lola’s Trinidad Scorpion, which seemed pointless to do given the flavor profile, especially when I already have somewhat of a glut of material. As it stands right now, I have enough sauce videos in the can for all of Quarter 2 (and into Quarter 3), without filming another video. Also, I’m feeling like we’re either in or on the verge of another good wave of spicy foods, perhaps even a renaissance of heat, which should mean no shortage of new products hitting the shelves... 

The blog did hit another milestone, which is that I’ve finally hit 1000 cumulative points, with the Big Red’s 3 Kings review. The total is slightly over that now. Hitting 1K took 221 sauces (and quite a few years). The cumulative average score, as of this writing, for the sauces of the blog is 4.53. As a note, I am going to also observe this is for full reviews only, as I do not assign a numerical rating to mini-review sauces. If I did, with the 36 mini-reviews I’ve done, I conceivably would have hit the 1000 mark sometime last year and it probably would change the average score somewhat. 

I did wander in to the Reaper fray, partially by running myself nearly entirely out of non-Reaper sauces. One of the things I’m not liking much with that particular pepper is that I need to keep tolerance up and/or do some prep prior to consuming. If I forget myself, it is usually pretty quick to remind me in an unpleasant manner. No other pepper, not even extract, does this. I’m still in the midst of the experiment, but if I find this continues to be the case, I do not foresee a regular rotation of Reaper products, as I like to be able to take breaks and use stuff casually which, so far, Reaper products in general seem rather poor-suited towards. 

In the first quarter so far, I’ve posted videos for all of the SOTY winners for the life of the blog, at least those which were still available and not reformulated. I’m really taking a hard look at the backlog for this year, to see which are realistic and worthwhile to pursue. The first method of determining this that I settled on was to look at the most popular sauces, in terms of blog views. 

The Top 5 sauces are:

1) Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet - Video posted
2) O’Brother Chipotle-Habanero - Video posted
3) Sweet Baby Ray’s - Video posted
4) Zatarain’s - Need To Acquire
5) Valentina XXXtra Hot - Video posted
 

While I may generally prefer more boutique and smaller batch sauces, if you take a look at that list, with the possible exception of O’Brothers, all of them are mainstream commercial sauces. I may go further on down in the list, based on views, but there are a couple problems with that. One of those is that if I’m reading a blog, I start with the newest posts and scroll down. I also have three separate pages of Tables Of Content, depending on how one wants them sorted (I may one day created another sorted by style of sauce, another by main pepper used, etc.). I don’t know that any of those pages or the main feed count towards individual page views, so that might not be the best approach. The second is that the dropoff for individual page views is pretty substantial after the Valentina... 

I’m more circling back to ratings being the main guide and really shying away from the idea of doing any more of the zeroes. Life is too short for bad hot sauces and I have a pretty crazy backlog already. This might be one of the bigger changes for 2021 in that I’ve already, as noted, decided not to do video reviews for a couple of sauces I did written reviews for, one because it was so dreadful I absolutely did not want to suffer through it again (Swampdragon Bourbon) and the second because it was not hugely different (Lola’s Trinidad Scorpion) from another variation I’d already posted. 

Now, if this was a profitable endeavor, I still might do them anyway, for the sake of having content, but that is not the case currently. I do need to have stricter evaluation, as I’ve bought sauces from the back catalog of written reviews three separate times without scrutinizing the label and had to pitch them all because I found out that they contained elements unacceptable to me, which means the current sauces are not identical the ones I reviewed initially. I’m still doing this more or less opportunistically, though I’m also going to start eliminating possibilities as far as which have been reformulated or are no longer produced, as I keep finding there are a lot more of those than I expected. 

As to non-sauce content, as mentioned, I have enough either already recorded or uploaded and scheduled to go thr rest of this year before I have to start scrounging, even with doing some holiday doubling here and there, so that’s a pretty solid cushion. I have started to sprinkle in more mustards into my plans, as I think that’s a pretty natural extension for chileheads. Still going back and forth, but may do the same for BBQ sauce as well. 

Here is the announcement I mentioned earlier. From this point on, any FOH support videos for sauces that appeared on The Hot Ones will be posted Saturdays. They will be in addition to the regular non-sauce videos on Wednesdays and the regular sauce postings on Sundays. I do roughly 1 sauce that appeared on The Hot Ones per quarter now, but thanks to some judicious buying during sales, I have enough of the sauces at hand to double or maybe triple that. 

As things stand right now, back to the backlog discussion for a moment, I’ve uploaded and scheduled through April, but have enough non-sauce content, without filming another second, to take me through 2021, so I’m running way, way ahead. I still have another maybe dozen videos of non-sauce content to film, as well. On the sauce side, I’m running ahead, but not as much, only through August currently. I have around 3 dozen sauces that are in need of reviewing/filming. 

I wound up doing a daily double video posting for Valentine’s Day, and looking over the calendar, it seems that a few more holidays coincide with the normally scheduled Sunday posting of the sauce reviews...I may do a few more of those, sprinkled throughout the year, but the next holiday I have any designs on considering at all is probably July 4. I also completed my Mexi-Style sauce custom blend at 1:1 of the Palotta Hot Fire Habanero and Irazu’s Fire-Roasted Habanero. Video for that is available on the FOH series, though I may continue tinkering with it over the next batch. I've gone through the first batch and am well into the second and I can say unequivocally that it is a fantastically delicious sauce and such is its power, that it goes well on a pretty considerable variety of things, much like Pure Death. If I was reviewing it as an actual manufactured sauce, it would be absolutely be in contention for SOTY and be an instant strong favorite. This addition makes the new Standby list look like this: 

*Emeritus Everyday sauce: Trappey's Red Devil
*Emeritus Asian-style sauce: Huy Fong Chili-Garlic Sauce
*Everyday sauce (and current overall favorite): Blair’s Pure Death Sauce
*Grilling sauce: CaJohn's Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero (BICH)
*Mustard-style sauce: Inner Beauty
*Pizza sauce (as in used instead of actual pizza sauce): Boar’s Head Jalapeno Pepper Sauce
*Mexican-style sauce: Custom Blend of Irazu Fire-Roasted Habanero + Pallotta Hot Fire Habanero
*Louisiana-style sauce: Irazu Cayenne
*Sweet-hot sauce: CaJohn's Happy Beaver

*= Not looking for a replacement

 
To commemorate the new logo of Burn Your Tongue, I also did a new bumper for the sponsored sauces. That is available for the video of the Arthur Wayne Montana Rooster sauce, which also has a new label now (review/video is with the old one), posted at the end of March, just prior to this blog entry. That bumper will also be on anything else sponsored from BYT going forward. 

As to the Hot Ones, I’ve touched every season of that show (except Season 14), so far, and once I cut my on-deck area of sauces waiting to be reviewed down to size a bit, will be looking at trying to add in some more of those. My soft goal for 2021 is to be able to have enough of them posted for a separate FOH playlist, but there’s a lot of miles between here and there. 

Speaking of Season 14 of The Hot Ones, I updated the posted list with those sauces...I note that almost half of the sauces for this season (4 of 10) are Hot Ones branded, which I find kind of curious...those might be the sauces I do last, just depending on what I can find easier elsewhere, such as on Roger’s shelves...7 of 10 of the list for this season I will consider for reviews, videos, etc., but it will be a while...I need to finish out my backlog and the single digit seasons first, of course, and, again, in no great rush, as those sauces tend to be more expensive, as I noted last year. Again, the vast majority of stuff I do on the blog and on the FOH video series (I make no money from either) is stuff I am directly paying for and the more sauces get over the $10 figure, the more demanding I am of them and hesitant to throw in on them, particularly if I’m dubious...at least in the earlier seasons, enough time has passed now that those are less expensive...