Volcanic Peppers Sap N' Berry Fire Hot Sauce Review

Volcanic Peppers Sap N' Berry Fire

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmmdXWNTDR8

This is one of the more frustrating sauces I've had in a while. I like Volcanic and think they make cool and unusual sauces, which I applaud. Also, I like a good maple blueberry syrup and feel that frequently they're just not hot enough. This one, while fairly moderate in terms of heat, does bring enough of a punch from the red Habaneros that it vaults ahead of nearly everything else I can remember (I do have an FOH playlist of Hot Honeys and Syrups, if you're interested in seeing which I've done). In fact, if they made one alteration, deleted one ingredient, it would be atop the heap easily...but no, and hence, my frustration. 

There is a stunningly good sauce hidden here and it is marred by the addition of the allspice, a flavor note which shows up, calls my attention to it, and to which I wish was not present. It is an incredible distraction, no matter the application and I've tried many here. The first time I had it was on chicken tendies and I was expecting, you know, that good maple-blueberry-Habanero combination, that tried and true, through and through combination, that wonderful intersection of flavors, but that was definitely not it. In fact, that first taste, I pulled the tendie back after taking a bite and stared at the plate and may or may not have said, "awww, what the Hell."

My impression of it has not really improved much. It ruined this very cool red, white, and blue ice cream sundae I made (with the Char Man Fiyaberry sauce - reviewed elsewhere here), even after I brought in some very nice dark chocolate hot fudge. Mostly I like maple, with blueberry mostly as an accent, for breakfast stuff and depending on what I used it with, there would sometimes be a subtlety of flavor below that of the actual food, so I'd add more and then there would come creeping in the allspice to wreck the party, even when I added in healthy doses of the actual pure maple syrup I keep on hand. I don't quite understand why the allspice is there at all, let alone the quantity it's in, but that is essentially the tale of this sauce. Something that would be quite extraordinary marred by an incidental element. I don't dislike allspice, to be clear, but it has to be in the right application and this, as the man says, ain't it. If not for that element, this is more like an overall 5 or 6, but I'm not rating the sauce I wish I had. Thus, as it is...more's the pity.

Bottom line: If you like allspice more than me, you'll probably like this better, but what could be the best example of the maple-blueberry-Habanero connection is instead overly dominated by the spice factor.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 1