Pepper Palace Black Rose Hot Sauce Review

Pepper Palace Black Rose Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2CNmvwZPRE

It took over a year, but I finally got around to the last of the Pepper Palace buy of 2020, the 6th sauce of 6. The rest are reviewed elsewhere in this blog, and a pattern has definitely emerged, at least in terms of flavor. I've mentioned it in the other reviews, but there is an aspect of certain sauces, where they have a coarseness, a lack of refinement, what I call a cheapness of flavor. All of the entries from Pepper Palace had them, though the effect of that varied from one sauce to another. Of those 6, I'd put this one probably 2nd, but that's not really saying much. 2 of them were nearly entirely inedible and did not make it to the videos. Of the other 3 that did, I only finished the bottle of one, which was the unfortunately named Uff-Da (as noted, reviewed elsewhere here). I briefly considered that as one I might consider buying it again, but testing it next to better-flavored sauces disabused me of that notion. 

For this one, it seems meant more as an everyday sauce. Jalapeno, Habanero and Cayenne are all present, though this reads more on the side of Cayenne than the others. There is a plethora of other stuff as well, including garlic, ginger, and sugar, which don't really assert themselves, but the latter of which lends there sort of an oddness to the flavor. A sweetener is not of objection; I love me a good, solid sweet-hot, but whatever sugar they chose isn't working as well here as honey probably would have, especially given the presence of Habanero. This leads to one of the issues with this sauce in that oversaucing will lead to an overpowering of whatever you're putting it on and very diminished returns. As an everyday style, though, if used judiciously, anywhere that might take a bit of sweetness works reasonably well with this.

Heat-wise, it's very moderate, as in little there at all, which was probably a given, considering that nothing too scorching is here and the ones that are seem meant more as flavoring agents than for reasons of picante. 

Bottom line: This is not only the last of the sauces I got from Pepper Palace, but probably the last I will ever get from them. As I've said before, life is too short for bad sauces.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 4