C3 Colorado Red Extreme
Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz at Burn Your Tongue, greatest hot sauce dispensary on the planet. Check him out on Facebook.
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjsTyQRfnAA
I *almost* bought this when I picked up instead the Colorado Red (reviewed elsewhere here) from this same company in the later fall part of 2023. I had them both in my hands, but decided my entry point for a new company should probably be in the sauce that wasn't meant to be a piledriver. I figured it that one was any good, I would pick this one up or, more accurately, I would pick it up anyone once I'd dialed my tolerance up a bit. As it turned out, despite not really loving the other sauce and struggling a bit to find places to use it, I wound up picking this one up despite that less than auspicious showing.
This sauce is an absolute dynamo and couldn't be more different from the other, which is odd, given that this is named as the more "extreme" version of the other. They are factually nearly completely different sauces. While they both utilize a few of the same ingredients, the Fresnos come immediately to mind, this one is like a somewhat less vinegar forward version of a Louisiana-style or Cajun, just a whole lot more punchy and with some very nice grace notes of black pepper kicking around.
This is, however, a definitely blazing sauce, meant strictly for chileheads. It comes with a restrictor cap, which I didn't mind, for reason I'll get into shortly, but even with that, I can't imagine many non-chileheads enjoying this much. The main sort of issue I have with this is in flavor balance. When using black pepper, then also using a chile powder rather than the actual pepper, you run the risk of creating a high prominence of bitter flavor notes, particularly if that pepper happens to be a superhot as it is here. For me, this sauce winds up frequently being overly bitter, which the restrictor cap did a decent enough job of helping me control. What I think I'd like to see here is one of two things: either the addition of a bit of sugar to temper that bitterness or perhaps using pods instead of powder on the Reaper side. I don't think I've run across too many times when I've run across Reaper powder and enjoyed it, though I think the peppers do have a great flavor and have enjoyed many sauces with that component in it. Not so much on the powder side.
I will say also that this is one of the more flexible sauces I've come across. I wound up using this on the obligatory fried foods, and cream dishes, given the resemblance, to me, of the two sauce types I noted above, but additionally, it was quite good on pizza and burgers as well. In a pinch, I think it's probably neutral enough to at least be passable in Asian dishes, but I'd probably draw the line at Mexican food, given that I tend to dislike vinegar-forward sauces in that setting and there's enough here for me to be dissuaded. This was one of the sauces I used to help me build tolerance when I was prepping for some challenges, so there is that aspect as well.
Bottom line: This is a dynamo of a sauce, very aggressively punchy heat, with some excellent flavor notes of Fresno and black pepper. If you're a chilehead who likes Louisiana-style or Cajun sauces but wish they were less vinegary, this is definitely worth a go.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 3
Flavor: 8
Flexibility: 8
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8
Overall: 7
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