Sea Monster Danger Berry Hot Sauce Review

Sea Monster Danger Berry

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b38tQida6A

I must have looked at this every single time I wandered by the BYT shelves, which has certainly been plenty over the years, and each time I kept passing it up because I was interested in other things or because the main pepper here, Habanero, has been something I've gradually gotten to appreciate. At times, I think I was also afraid it would be like a strawberry syrup and have a lot of very fake strawberry flavor. That flavor is not of interest to me particularly, but having found that I really like the combination of berries and beef, when looking for a fruit-based sweet-hot the other day, and since I could not recall another hot sauce I'd done with strawberries that far forward in the profile, I figured it was finally time.

Calling this a hot sauce is a bit wrong, I think. It certainly does pack a noticeable punch, but it clearly is angling more at being a dessert sauce. Either Habanero powder or extract or both is the heat source here, rather than the peppers themselves, which is kind of a shame. It takes a lot of agitation or you get a blast of unpleasant bitterness along with the heat. As you might expect, this works better if you put it on something with a higher sugar content. So, ice cream, cheesecake, pie, all things where the bitterness is masked and it works wonderfully. On the aforementioned beef, such as burgers, and on chicken strips and Dove chocolate, that masking was not there. 

The strawberry flavor is quite nice, something between Torani and a higher end preserves, with a consistency more towards the former. It does not like to stay suspended, so must be agitated frequently. There is evidently some applesauce component as well, but it does not appear in the flavoring. This is a pretty interesting sauce, the only "hot sauce" in the Sea Monster stable (though there is also a BBQ and wing sauce as well), though, again much more of a dessert sauce than hot sauce. It would be interesting to see them make something more towards an actual hot sauce and just relabel this.

Bottom line: If you're needing something on the much sweeter side for desserts, this is a pretty good bet, though unless you really like strawberries, it is decidedly not great in a lot of other applications, even with plenty of agitation.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 5