2K22 Q1 Update

It took most of the first week of January for me to get the computer issues sorted enough to finish up with 2021, but once I did, January started off with a roar, with a SOTY candidate shortly after I resumed review posting. This is not abnormal, as I usually spend most of December cycling through what open bottles of sauce I have in the fridge door to make way for new ones. This time, due to the computer issue, I had a number of reviews waiting and ready to go, to the point where I wound up shooting a few FOH videos prior to having a written review, which almost never happens and I take great pains to avoid. The furious pace continued and at the end of Q1, I’m already well over 1/3 of the total posts for 2021, which was the highest posting total for the blog ever. So far in 2022, I’ve also done a video segment for every written review, which I’m hoping can continue, though I can’t say they will all be posted in 2022 necessarily.

As mentioned in other updates, I’ve tried to make a very concentrated effort to reduce my backlog down to single digits before re-acquiring more sauces...in my usual big shopping hauls, that is. I’ve still ordered a sauce here or there if I needed to get to free shipping, or picked one up opportunistically on a grocer’s shelves, but the huge hauls I’ve held off on. I still have 3 sauces from 2020 to get to, so I need to keep much tighter reigns on my backlog, I think. With a new location of BYT much closer than before, I may be able to consider cutting out the huge hauls and just do more frequent smaller runs, which would be nice. As it’s looking, given how far ahead I am once again on filmed reviews, I might do a lot more catching up on The Hot Ones sauces than expected.

For non-show sauces, as of now, I have 1 non Hot Ones show Scorpion sauce and 2 non Hot Ones show Reaper sauces remaining and then I’m out of both of those peppers, though I will not be shying away from Reaper sauces in future. Outside of Hot Ones show sauces, the Scorpion peppers I have little interest in further pursuing, unless they happen to be in a sauce with a different featured superhot. There are a number of Hot Ones sauces using one or both of those peppers, though, so I won’t be done with them for a while. I will do a larger breakdown of what is left of The Hot Ones sauces in the Q2 update.

I did post up all of the FOH sauce videos from 2021 and started adding in a lot more cooking segments to some of the stuff from 2022. As to the non-sauce content, I don’t think I will finish out 2021 before Q3, if then. It’s really a lot of fun to shoot all that stuff, but I fear I may have an excessive backlog now. I have enough of that content in the can to take me all the way through Q4.  For all that, this still might be the last year of the non-sauce stuff, as even with the various products coming out the last couple of years, the same problem persists in that eventually I will run out of non-sauce product. If the sauce rate continues, though, I can definitely start replacing the non-sauce stuff with another hot sauce video. I may wind up plumbing through the archives a bit and have the current non-sauce FOH post day just become the archive sauce post day...for as long as that can last.  Regardless, even if the non-sauce content dwindles off, I will continue doing the quarterly Wing Things, as I always look forward to those videos and, despite coming the closest yet in Q1 of this year, I still haven’t had one yet where I’ve liked every sauce.

I do plan on trying to do the entire grill season (April - September) with spicy mustards again (debating another playlist just for this) and, as mentioned, am trying to have some special event postings for various “special” days, with another one coming up tomorrow.  I *think* I have found enough spicy mustards to do 2023 grilling season as well. COVID put the clamps on a lot of the fast food-based videos I had planned, including causing me to miss the Arby’s Diablo Dare thing entirely. While I did want to do that, I suppose it’s probably fine, as I’m really not in need of non-sauce content anyway, as mentioned...at least for now. Also, there is no food that will ever be worth me potentially catching a COVID I can’t throw back.

Season 17 of The Hot Ones came out and I posted it up. I will note that this is another season with a whopping 3 sauces total that do not have onions, one of which I’ve already done. So, another entire season, but one that does not add at all to my backlog for the show. The two sauces for Season 17 I have left are both only available from The Heatonist and are duplicated in other seasons, so it may be a bit before I get to them. The breakdown of the rough running order of priority for the remaining Hot Ones sauces is in the Recap of 2021 post, if interested.

I also did some long-coming clean-up of the TOC pages, including a new one just for Sauce Of The Year winners, as well as posting a work-in-progress list of my favorite hot sauce companies. I’ve also chucked my standby sauce notations, as I don’t really strictly keep those sauces on hand. The blog was ostensibly to build that list, but for some of those entries, it’s been years since I’ve had some of those sauces and I don’t really consume in that manner, keeping specific sauces at hand, save for the Mexican-style sauce. Specific styles, however...yes.

I also added another FOH playlist, just for chips (or crisps, depending on where you’re reading this), as the Everything Else list was getting a bit cluttered. It realistically should probably be one of the smaller lists. I then added yet another, just for the Wing Things. I will probably add the mustard one I mentioned earlier as well, next quarter. Links to all of them, as usual, can be found to the right...

...and earlier in the month, which has its own blog post, I also made it down to Albuquerque for my first ever industry show, the Fiery Foods Show of 2022...which got me to thinking...we’ll see if any of the ideas I have banging around in my skull actually make it out. I also made the trip to Roger’s newest location of the BYT shelves (need to do some road tripping for the other two, definitely have an eye on that for the future), which finally sees him happily coming a lot closer to Salt Lake City, not too far removed from Pirate O’s, though, naturally, with quite a lot more sauces.