Volcanic Peppers Cranky Cranberry Hot Sauce Review

Volcanic Peppers Cranky Cranberry Cherry Bomb Pepper Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jLQr0hcnss

So, here it is, my 500th overall post on this blog and I think it's fitting that not only is this one of the most delicious sauces I've had, but also far and away my favorite this year (yes, I know it's early), easily the best hot sauce with cranberry in it I've ever had, but also one that speaks very directly to my particular taste favorites. I love cranberry, the whole one, out of the can, with just the cranberries and sugar and that's it. I don't need orange and other junk polluting the flavor, but this sauce represents the ultimate of what tinkering with cranberries (even though I don't think they need tinkering) could achieve, even though they're not going for a cranberry sauce per se.

Here we have the delicious Cherry Bomb peppers. I love Cherry peppers. Both of those are some of my favorite pods (there are actually quite a lot...if I ever figure out the tier list thing, I will definitely do an FOH video with pods) and here they're used to great effect with the cranberries. Red Habaneros are here for heat, but it is pretty moderate. Red Anaheims also show up and this is a good demonstration of what can often be the fruitiness of red peppers. The brilliance of this sauce is the restraint of whoever came up with it to allow it to showcase those things and allow it to unfold, rather than polluting it with a bunch of other ingredients. Rather brilliantly executed, though I do kind of thing the xanthan gum probably could have been skipped. 

Because cranberries figures into things, I think this naturally limits a bit where the sauce is going to work. Cranberries and turkey is a pairing we all know and (probably) love, but it works as well with chicken and I suspect would work well with other fowl also. It is not an aggressively cranberry-forward sauce, which is good as the quinine can turn things overly bitter if not used delicately, but there is enough that I wouldn't expect it to work on pork or ham or beef and probably not really on fish, either. Now, having said all of that, I won't be able to find out because this is one of the fastest sauces I've whipped through. As of this writing, I literally opened the bottle yesterday and had to make it a point to film today (FOH video won't be posted until March 2023, though), so as to have enough left. The bottle is nearly empty, which I guess rather amply demonstrates just how much I love this sauce.

Bottom line: There are things that speak directly to one and then there is stuff like this, that shouts. Just an absolutely fantastic sauce, deftly combining cranberries and one of the best-tasting pepper pods out there.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6