Silk City Pull Over Hot Sauce Review

Silk City Pull Over

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQzTxKEV2hI

Very curiously named sauce here...I've abbreviated it somewhat, but as it reads on the front and back labels, it's more like: "Tales From Silk City: Pull Over Before This Sauce Blows Your Asshole Out!!!" Certainly a unique name, though if that was the case, I'd probably be looking for sources of food poisoning rather than to a sauce. The name reference here is to a podcast group called the Ski Mask Collective. I do find the front label graphic to be rather entertaining on this as well. Very nice work there.

That aside, this bottle, again in a flask (also, again at $10), is the last of the big Silk City buy I did and I think I inadvertently saved the best for last. This is one of the best-tasting sauces I've had all year and right up there with Badass Jew (reviewed elsewhere here) for the tastiest sauce I've had from Silk City. The Badass Jew sauce was in contention for Sauce Of The Year that year and in an ordinary year, this would have been also. Had it been slightly hotter, if would have also been in the mix this year as well. As it is, this is easily the hottest of the Silk City lineup...as of this writing, at least.

What we have here is a start-off with a quad-pepper blend, the Serrano, Jalapeno, Cayenne, and Habanero, which is a very nice base. The remaining ingredients, the apple cider vinegar, the Vermont maple syrup, salt, and even the Carolina Reapers, only accentuate that base. Despite the label verbiage, this is not a particularly blazing sauce. It is hot enough that I'd say it's best reserved only for chileheads, but flavor-wise, it's accessible enough for those curious or who want to take the next step in their heat journey.

It deftly threads the very fine eye hole of the needle between being a fantastic sweet-hot, but not so focused on just that aspect that it impairs the flexibility. This, indeed, is a fantastic everyday sauce, with just a delicate hint of sweetness, which is often quite welcome. The maple is used wonderfully as a sweetener, without adding a lot of that heavy maple flavor, while the pepper blend tastes nothing so much as what it is, a whole made up of the sum of the parts, without any focus on any one individual pepper. There is a touch of bitterness here and there, given the inclusion of the superhot Reapers, but I find that element only enhances the experience rather than detracts.

Bottom line: Another absolutely fantastic sauce from the phenom of Vermont, Jeff Levine, and one that should be on every chilehead's radar. 

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 3
       Flavor: 10
       Flexibility: 10
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8