Crystal Extra Hot Hot Sauce Review

Crystal Extra Hot Hot Sauce

Note: Sipport video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVfu1VV9_pw

For all of my lofty commentary about sauces and my admittedly elitist taste commensurate to that, if there is one sauce I've seen on people's tables more than any other, trotted out for all manner of foods, it is probably Crystal. I presume this to be due to cost, as it is invariably towards the least expensive of options. The flavor I would compare to being akin to a hammer, as it tends not to have any subtlety but is a very forceful and aggressive hit of harsh white vinegar, with a slight back end of cayenne. Nothing wrong with that, it knows what it is and that's really all it wants to be.

For me, though, it was nothing too much more than an "in a pinch" sauce, where I would use it if it was at hand, judiciously, mind you, and there was nothing better. Due to them molding the restrictor opening into the actual glass of the bottle, though, this resulted in numerous oversaucings. That same effect is here with this, but this particular Crystal has been stepped on with the addition of extract, following the leads of Frank's and Texas Pete, both national at the same level, both the same category of sauce, and both also reviewed elsewhere here. Given that flavor has not even been exactly great for Crystal, I thought they would probably fare the best as they had a lot less room to fall than the other two and that was how it shook out, more or less. All of them definitely have a higher heat punch than their regular entries into the market, but of those, Texas Pete fared by far the worst, with Frank's as it normally is, more or less in the middle, and this one being the least changed from its regular version.

There is no pretense here. This is a straightforward, watery, Louisiana-style sauce, that hits like a wrecking ball with a vinegar hit, followed by a passing reference to cayenne, and here, with a back chaser of extract, which somewhat competes with the vinegar for presence. It's not as if this is scorching or anything. Of those 3, none of them have really an accelerated degree of heat, even with the extract, but it definitely provides the hot kick that regular Crystal doesn't particularly have, though it is in the same heavy-handed, clumsy manner as the regular Crystal approaches food.

Bottom line: Hotter than regular Crystal, but extract never improves the flavor, including here. It does worsen it less than the other two mentioned above, though, so that's...something?

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 3