Bravado Passion Fruit Manuka Honey
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7L-1LiE6Rqg
I'm not sure if I should have known better or not...see, here's the thing. For someone who doesn't like sour sauces, such as yours truly, I feel like I've run across a stupidly large amount of them lately. For this, though...ok, so most of the stuff I've had from Bravado not on The Hot Ones show has been mostly to my disliking, to the point where I stopped buying anything from them and had no plans for that to ever change. Then the show came along and when I decided to start covering the sauces on it, I grudgingly bought the Ghost Pepper Blueberry again and to my stunned shock and surprise, it was not only not awful on wings, it was quite good there.
And then, to prove, it wasn't an anomaly, the Aka Miso and Black Garlic Carolina Reaper from Bravado were also pretty solid, so I thought, ok, these guys have earned another chance, which is where this sauce comes in. I didn't set out to buy an expensive (saffron is an ingredient in this sauce, hence the cost) sour hot sauce, but that's what I got. Indeed, I was thinking it would be another tropical fruit sweet-hot, given the honey...except it's Manuka honey, which I apparently have not had before. I've done a lot of research trying to figure out where this sauce went so wrong and apparently Manuka is not an especially sweet honey, which would probably have been a good thing for me to know before shelling out the coins, plunking them on the counter and getting a bottle of this.
So, there is this very weird chemical-y taste to this, somewhat reminiscent of when beer batches get infected, if anyone out there has ever experienced this. It's almost a sort of medical flavor, reminiscent a bit of Band-Aids and a hospital and maybe some lilting notes of iodine, if not. That's not quite what we have here, but it's a very prominent aspect. I'm not familiar with champagne vinegar, also used here, so maybe it's that, but maybe it's also the honey. Either way, that off-note dominates the sauce, along with a pervasive sourness almost certainly from the lemon and vinegar from the Ghost mash.
Even after using half of the bottle, I've not only not found a place where this works well (maybe in a tea it could work, if you're into that sort of thing?) but it took that long to get a note of the passion fruit, albeit a backend one, and that's the first ingredient. Needless to say, there is not much Ghost flavor here, either. It is mostly that amalgamation of sour and off-flavor, so no honey flavor or what I would recognize as a honey flavor and none of the citrus notes, either. If saffron is in there, and I don't doubt it is, it's not pulling in very well, either, but saffron itself is somewhat of a subtle flavor, so not super surprised.
I don't think the sauce has turned or gone bad, but that this is what it's supposed to be, which is wholly incompatible with my palate. I did think it had turned when I first tasted this sauce, far too thick to agitate, literally at all, but the more I kept trying to dig into it, the more I revulsed at using it, so, despite a solid punch of heat from the Ghost peppers, this one is heading for the bin as soon as I shoot the video for it.
Bottom line: This is a sauce that has really raised a lot more questions for me than anything else, but as a hot sauce, it's hard to imagine more of a miss, though I will say the heat level has a notable charge.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 2
Flavor: 0
Flexibility: 0
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0
Overall: 0
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