Char Man Fiyaberry Hot Sauce Review

Char Man Fiyaberry

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=VtqNGBTa6nM

So let's talk about slick label design, rather than my usual crabbing about it when it's bad. This is a bit more pronounced in the FOH videos, but this is a prime example of what TO do when designing a label. It is very clean, legible, the colors all work together, there is a very smart bit where it uses the gap between label ends, just very, very smart and one of the best hot sauce labels I've ever seen. There is an odd bit of copy about the Norse goddess Freya, which I don't fully understand in how it relates to this sauce, other than she had a fondness for strawberries, but the name itself doesn't really reference anything Nordic. I think they were trying to go for "fireberry" or something along those lines, but "fiya" is not a Norse word. 

As to the sauce, it starts with strawberry preserves, so one would expect it to be on the sweet side, which it is, though that is dialed down considerably by the Scorpions and the red wine vinegar. The Scorpions, in particular, in addition to bringing a blazing heat - this is another chilehead only sauce - also bring with them their customary bitterness and flowery nature, which mars the effect a bit for me. I like the concept here, a very hot strawberry-forward dessert-y sauce, but I think it would have been more successful had another superhot been chosen, such as the Reaper or even the Ghosties. 

Berry and meats go together, so this could work on a burger (provided it's tailored for it), chicken tendies it's ok, same with rotisserie chicken, could work on turkey. There is a suggestion for the website to pork, but I found that not to be an especially good combination and much of the success of this will be directly dependent on how  much you like the taste of Scorpions. I find if I can find a way to mask it, by either having it with something like strawberries or on ice cream, it comes across a bit better, but only temporary. The Scorpions here are quite forceful, which is great on the heat side, but a lot less great on the flavor side.

Bottom line: If you're a chilehead who likes Scorpions and sweet-hot dessert sauces, this is worth a go. For me, the results are a bit more mixed and while I could see where they were going, it didn't quite get all the way there for me.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3