Flaming Homer's Carolina Reaper Strawberry Atomic Balsamic Hot Sauce Review

Flaming Homer's Carolina Reaper Strawberry Atomic Balsamic

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=v45HprgtDWM

This is an interesting sauce, in that it comes in a 10 oz bottle that more speaks to me like a jelly. Certainly, wide-mouth bottles are not unknown - the outstanding Tears Of The Sun Private Reserve (reviewed elsewhere here) from High River comes with a similar opening, but this one is also squat. It definitely is pretty far from a jelly, though, as its runniness hearkens back more towards a syrup. Indeed, that is exactly how I took it when I first saw it, yet I was able to find nothing contradicting the idea that it was intended as a hot sauce. It's sort of hanging out there in no man's land, but without it explicitly saying what it is, we'll just roll with it as a hot sauce.

Flaming Homer's seems to be a rather small-scale operation, somewhat active on social media, but I couldn't find an actual website, per se. It appears to be primarily a farmer's market type company, or rather, was until it found its way onto the hallowed BYT shelves. The sauce continues its somewhat unorthodox approach by having literally all of the ingredients (though not the correct order) as the title of the sauce, which is kind of an interesting approach, if a bit of a mouthful.

For most of the life of this blog, dessert hot sauces have been few and far between, but it seems for this year (and a little bit last year as well), I've been doing a lot of them, so perhaps this is another segment of growth. Definitely hot honeys have been making a huge surge of late, so perhaps the idea of sweet hot is latching on with a lot of folks and resonating stronger than some of the more traditional settings. 

That is exactly how I would place this sauce, as less a hot sauce and more a dessert sauce. Certainly, with the Reapers coming to play, there is definitely a little bit of a heat charge to this, but it is overall fairly minimal and I wouldn't expect this to be found challenging by too many. The idea of the current record holder for world's hottest pepper being as ubiquitous as they are was not something I would have predicted, but I'm glad to see it, both as a chilehead and as a foodie. 

Flavor-wise, this, while absolutely delicious, is really not honestly too useful as a hot sauce. This reads to me so much more as strawberry preserves, with light balsamic touches. I'm not a huge fan of balsamic, but here, it is used both wonderfully and effectively. There is not a lot of Reaper flavor and the strawberry is a touch on the lighter side, rather than the concentrated form in preserves, but all three ingredients are definitely and readily noticeable. This is, in and of itself, something of a marvel to pull off as well as this does. Usage is best where one would use strawberry preserves or a strawberry syrup. It would probably also make a nifty salad dressing, if you're into that sort of flavoring in that setting.

Bottom line: Definitely more a spicy dessert sauce than anything else, this could definitely open a lot of people's minds to the wonders of hot peppers.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 10
       Flexibility: 4
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5