Lilly Lager Hot Sauce
Another of the novelty sauce buys and I didn't notice until after I'd opened it that the sauce was calling itself sriracha. I had gotten it primarily because it used Cayenne as the pepper, which was what I was after. I'm not generally a fan of booze in foods, as I consider them to be two entirely unrelated realms, but had also never really had a sauce that utilized beer (at least not that I could recall at the time) and suspected I may hate it a bit less than the hard liquor sauce, given that I do, despite not being generally a fan of booze in foods, use beer here and there in cooking, particularly Germanic foods.
Before I get into the sauce, I am going to, again, register a complaint here publicly about the idea of using the word sriracha, which describes a very specific style of sauce, inappropriately. Sriracha may be considered a generic term by the Office of Copyrights, which is fine, but devaluation of words is something I have huge struggles with. Sriracha is not, among other things, a tropical fruit-based sauce, as another manufacturer alleged on label copy. Here, I think this gets closer to the line of what it could be (though definitely not what it is) by having a similar ingredient profile, less the addition of beer, but I don't find this to be an acceptable sriracha entry, given how loose and runny this sauce is. Consistency definitely matters with certain sauce types, Louisiana-style being perhaps the foremost example. There is also a discussion of which peppers can conceivably constitute an actual sriracha (again, a parallel with Louisiana-style), however, I don't find the idea valid that sriracha can only be red jalapeno.
So, for me, this is closer, but definitely not quite all the way there to an actual sriracha. As to the sauce, it is quite loose, to the point it comes with a restrictor cap, so me thinking it was either a stab at a Louisiana-style or Cajun style is perhaps more understandable. There are not stabilizers in the sauce, so it separates constantly, including during use, which is quite an annoying aspects of the sauce. Given that is is Cayenne-based, there is not a great deal of heat here. The overriding presence of the beer flavor is perhaps the most notable features of this sauce and again points to the novelty nature of the sauce, wherein I'm not necessarily convinced those manufacturers are trying to make good sauces, so much as passable ones. What should be, at most, an accent flavor, tends to interfere with any actual sauce flavor notions the sauce may have and consequently significantly challenges the variety of usage this sauce might otherwise expect to have. I should stress the sauce is not offensive, per se, but strikes some very odd notes that lean towards being unpleasant, but are generally off-putting enough not to want to use this. In the end, I'm not quite entirely sure I will be finishing this bottle.
Bottom line: Pin-up girl on the somewhat haphazard label, booze in the product, clearly a novelty item and somewhat sloppy in terms of being an actual viable hot sauce.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 1
Flavor: 4
Flexibility: 3
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2
Overall: 2
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