Pex Peppers Purple Pulsar
Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of
Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over
to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection
available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4PvzjflzTk
Ah, the alliteration. That and the name are of but many reasons to adore this sauce, which also features perhaps my favorite of the superhots, the venerable Ghost pepper. The temptation is to compare this to the Wildberry Whoopass (reviewed elsewhere here), so I will give in and do exactly that. Peppers are different, but the tone, a sweet-hot berry-flavored sauce, is the same. The Wildberry is definitely hotter of the two, but is also sweeter and, if memory serves, uses a different collective of berries. Here, we have just blueberries and strawberries and from which comes a bit of a dilemma. When both of those fruits, particularly the latter, are in full bloom, they can be among the sweetest and most delectable, but when not quite there, such as the strawberries do not seem to be, a bit of sourness is imparted. Here, the blueberries are quite nice, but there is a sour strawberry flavor sort of pervading things, not helped by the usage of Ghost mash and more vinegar, and not offset enough by the honey. The fruit flavors are definitely present and well-represented, but I wish there was more ripening of them.
As noted by the manufacturer, here we do have a sauce that works very well on meats. Blueberry, in particular, as I've noted repeatedly, works well on red meat, though this one is also equally adept at chicken. I find it a bit too sour to extend to pizza or other foods much beyond meats, however, though I should note most of the berry sauces don't really work there, either. I have tried it on desserts, such as pies and ice creams, something I'm wont to do more of these days (no, thank YOU Danger Berry - also reviewed elsewhere here), but, again, the sourness leaves things a bit wanting for me.
Addressing the heat briefly here, Ghost peppers were the hottest superhot in the world for a while and they definitely can bring a punch, along with some excellent flavor, perhaps the reason I prefer them most. This one is rated 8/10 by Pex, which I definitely do not agree with (most of the time, I just halve the rating, sometimes more), as it's punchy out of the gate, but does not really go much beyond a low smolder for me. I would say, however, that non-chileheads will likely find this sauce overly hot to enjoy (which gets us into a discussion of why the rating system is for non-chileheads when they are not the ostensible market for this, but that's a discussion for another time, I suppose).
I've done a few of the Pex sauces and they seem to share a unity in me finding them overall favorable (all of them have FOH videos, which is not always the case for hot sauce makers), but also being a note or two off and away from what I would wish they were. I'll keep giving them a shot, though, as I definitely see the potential.
Bottom line: Solid entry into the sweet-hot berry category, though a touch skewed to the sour strawberry side.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 3
Flavor: 5
Flexibility: 4
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8
Overall: 5
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