Delaware Sauce Whiskey & Molasses Hot Sauce Review

Delaware Sauce Whiskey & Molasses

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP95ikks2_U

Delaware Sauce is a company that just came across my radar this year, somewhat randomly when I stumbled across it in a store looking for other things. Here, we have a sauce that should taste like a Louisiana-style Cayenne sauce with a whiskey (Eagle Wingz) and the fairly specific taste of molasses. That is, indeed, nearly exactly what we have. I had hoped, when I bought it, for something with a higher sugar content, since I'm more in grilling mode these days and my eyes is now looking for sauces to use during the actual grilling. However, there is insufficient sweetness here for that and interestingly, grilling, more than anything, really brought forward the whiskey notes.

As a Louisiana-style sauce, if one were prone to molasses, it would be probably be better received. I'm fairly neutral about it overall, but don't love the flavor as a standalone. Here, the molasses sort of overrides everything else, including the vinegar, to become the dominant flavor, but not by a great extent. There are whiskey notes drifting around here and there, but they are not prominent. I will note that the sauce works better on red meat, which is a bit unusual for Louisiana-styles. The Cayenne is also a bit lost in the shuffle here, as the molasses and vinegar are the two main dominators. 

This naturally cuts down on the flexibility of this sauce considerably. It struck me as an interesting idea, hence why I picked up a bottle, and there are shades here of the Uncle Keith's Code Red, which also used molasses and which I found rather intriguing, but while that sauce had some complexity here, it is a lot less so. While I like the idea that one can pick out the various notes of the components, though Cayenne and whiskey a bit harder to pull out, I don't find this goes with a lot of things very well. Heat-wise, of course, being predominantly a stepped-on Louisiana-style sauce, there is precious little of it. 

Bottom line: Hitting the liquor in hot sauces trend with a take on the Louisiana-style, this one struggles to complement foods well with its flavor notes, which often skew too heavily in one direction or another, but somewhat rarely a tasty one. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 2