San Diego Pepper Co. 805 Heat
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD6LICWk1P0
So, my buddy Roger Damptz over at Burn Your Tongue, has seemingly re-activated his website (http://www.burnyourtongue.com - go check it out and tell him I sent you) and I happened by it the other day. One of the nice things is that he has an Instagram feed on it, which I appreciate as I miss a lot of stuff because I'm not on Facebook or Instagram (and never will be). Anyway, I saw he was having a sale and one of the locations was in the vicinity where I was heading and he likes to pop new stuff on the shelves, so I rolled on by to take a look and pick up a few names from the hit list to tide me over until the next haul. This was not on the list, but it looked interesting.
This particular bottle did something I've never seen, over literally thousands of bottles of hot sauce, in which it seemed like the bottle was sticky. I wasn't sure if it was from a bottle breaking in the case this was with or something, but the placement was a bit off for that (if you've run into this, you'll know what I mean). I got it home and inspected it closer and noticed the shrink was intact. I'd tested to make sure the glass was intact before buying it, which it was. I pulled the shrink and saw the cap seal was also still seeming to be intact. So, somehow, the sauce had seeped past the cap seal, through the bottle threads, and down inside the shrink, which I've never seen before and can only imagine might have happened possibly from the bottle being overfilled in processing. In any case, the sauce didn't seem like it had gone bad or anything, so I put it through testing...
...and testing. Longtime readers will know that apple cider foot vinegar is one of my least favorite ingredients, but it is not generally enough to stop me buying a sauce. Sometimes it will read into the flavor, but as often, it won't, so I tend not to let it deter me, unless there are other ingredients foul to me also in the mix. This one I was very curious about, as I like brown sugar in sauces generally and the addition of mustard sounded intriguing. I will say that the color of the sauce, which is gorgeous, also helped.
It is a medium thick, nicely blended sauce, quite smooth, though honestly just a tough on the grainy side, which is one of those things using brown sugar will sometimes do. It is a very cohesive whole, rather than individual flavors shining through, but with the disparate strong flavors of apple cider vinegar and mustard in there, it is kind of wacky, particularly with the light sweet element. As with other composite type sauces, I find this works better in composite dishes, like soups or chili. If you don't like a sauce, particularly one like this that is so thick it just sits wherever you put it, it makes it hard to use for things like dipping sauces. While I wouldn't say I dislike this sauce, neither do I particularly like it. It's kind of in that weird okayish area where it's not so bad I want to bin it, but it won't generally be my first choice, now that testing has concluded. Heat-wise, it's Habanero, but this is quite low, despite the thermometer scale thing on the label indicating otherwise.
Bottom line: This is a sauce that will be more receptive to those who like the flavor of apple cider vinegar more than I do, which is to say, at all.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 1
Flavor: 4
Flexibility: 4
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4
Overall: 3
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