Louisiana Double Barrel Hot Sauce Review

Louisiana Double Barrel

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRWfMUt8evQ

The regular Louisiana hot sauce is more or less a pretty average, run of the mill, Louisiana-style Cayenne-based hot sauce. It's not one of the better ones, for me, and more one I'd look to using in a pinch, but it's not bad, either. It's just kind of there, treading along in the middle. It's the kind of sauce you'd say, "it's fine," about and leave it at that. Generally, you get a lot of it for not a whole bunch of money and while it's not great, you could definitely do a lot worse.

Here, we see them jumping on the liquor in hot sauce trend, which I've not found a lot of examples of that I think are exactly wonderful. So, not content to just ferment the mash in bourbon barrels, they also throw in some bourbon as well. It doesn't really read like that, though. You can definitely get the sense that there is some hard liquor flavored presence, but it doesn't really overshadow the sauce. It adds a slight new dimension, but not really enough to make an impression one way or the other. The larger issue for me is that this variation is notably far saltier than the regular stuff, which I find kind of unpleasant. It won't prevent me from using it or anything, just a bit of nuisance. 

There's no change to the cost for this "bold" new direction of theirs, just I suppose if you want to have a slight flavor variation to your Louisiana-style sauce. It is also a bit thicker than normal and noticeably thicker than most other Louisiana-style, which I'd guess is some reduction, possibly due to trying to cook any residual alcohol off. That may also be why the salt is heightened somewhat. Given that Cayenne is the main pepper driver, heat here is fairly minimal.

Bottom line: A long-established hot sauce company takes a stab at jumping on the trend of liquor, resulting in a sauce that, like all their others, is...fine.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4