Hellfire Private Reserve Sauceress
Well, Hellfire has finally managed to go and do it. "Do what?" I can imagine some of you asking. They have finally made a sauce that convinced me to not only eat, but to eat and enjoy hot sauce on ice cream. The concept, I want to say, was either their Blueberry Hell (which did not work, to my mind, for ice cream) or something from High River (which similarly did not work), but definitely this is something Hellfire pushes a lot. You would think the idea is counter-intuitive, given that ice cream, especially the higher fat ones, will do a nice job tamping down blazing heat in the mouth or gut. Ice cream also eliminates a lot of flavor notes, so often you will not get a rewarding experience. However, Hellfire keeps trying, keeps insisting, and here, they finally made it through.
They have really hit on something I think that is pretty unique to them, which is the idea of a dessert sauce and yes, I do mean that you could consider eating just this sauce itself as a dessert. It comes across as somewhat of a salty apple pie filling, despite there being no actual apple in it, which also makes it extremely malleable as far as application, all the way from pork chops to peanut butter to ice cream to a special something you'll see in the video. They also indicate pizza, but, oddly enough, like chicken, I did not find it to be anything I especially wanted to eat again in that setting, probably due to the cinnamon. I also did not find it particularly nice on hamburger, either, but I tried it on quite a few different foods I would not normally use hot sauce at all on. It's fascinating to me that there is a lot of tropical fruit in here and this reads as anything but tropical. So, definitely one of the more flavorful and unique sauces out there from one of the more innovative hot sauce companies.
Heat-wise, this has Fatalii, 7-Pot Primo, and Scotch Bonnet, but despite all of that, is really fairly tame. This is not going to set your mouth on fire, but does have a very nice build and so if you go chasing those flavor notes around, you will be rewarding with a very pleasant mouth burn. It is a rather thick and chunky sauce, but also rather nicely doesn't get caught in the neck. It definitely is probably my favorite sauce that I've had this year, but with the composite score, is not quite enough to get it in SOTY contention in what is another very competitive year.
Bottom line: If you've ever wondered how anyone could ever successfully make a superhot-based hot sauce into an actual dessert sauce, look no further. This is borderline magic and absolutely worth a look.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 3
Flavor: 10
Flexibility: 7
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10
Overall: 8
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