2025 Q2 Update
04.01.25: Last year for this update, I took a look at statuses of a couple things. One was the remaining Hot Ones season sauces left, which I won’t re-examine until probably the End of the Year Q4 posting, but the other was the sauce companies most represented on this blog (the FOH videos tend to follow this pattern as well, so no need for a separate list). As soon as I finish scheduling out the written reviews for June, I will tie that list to whatever date that is, as I’m a touch tickled by the idea of this “behind the scenes” look, which, admittedly, probably matters to no one beyond me. Also,, I’m not going to post a list on the blog for the holidays covered in the FOH video series. Check the Community section of the channel page for that (links at right).
I may have mentioned this in the past, but my methodology for the FOH videos is to upload the following month on the first day of whatever month. So, for example, today, I uploaded all of the May FOH videos. From there, I usually will wind up bumping videos here and there if something comes along that I want posted sooner, but with fairly rare exceptions, most of the FOH content is filmed in advance, sometimes months ahead. I mention this because doing a little rough calculation in my head, I project the FOH series on YouTube will wind up hitting and possibly going past 1000 videos before the end of 2025. Also, in a sort of odd coincidence, all three of the channels I do content for on YouTube had something go live today, which hasn’t happened in a good 3 years or so...
04.11.25: As I may have noted in these pages, at one time, I was making content for 3 different YT channels. For a good part of the time this blog has been running, it has been one main one I do with and largely at the behest of my son, with first the FOH video series being added in 2019 and then the second additional channel strictly for gaming content in 2020 prior to the pandemic hitting. The gaming channel I rather strongly disliked how I was producing content and it became far more of a grind than it was worth. However, with newer tech and newer methods, I have re-launched it, only this time streaming (on both YT and Twitch). I am not going to promote those here and indeed, this entire entry is unrelated to this blog, for the most part...
I say for the most part, because, though I am loathe to discuss politics generally, in either these pages or in most of the videos across the FOH series and the first YT channel I mentioned, since I’m doing more casual quarterly updates for a while here, at least, I figured I’d put it here, as none of my current creative output is really immune to current events. As Aragorn told Theoden in Lord Of The Rings, and I paraphrase here, politics is coming for everyone, whether you recognize (or desire) it or not. The current self-inflected sucking chest wound of a certain person picking idiotic tariff fights has the capacity to end the first YT channel entirely (or if not, at minimum send it on hiatus) and severely diminish or dampen the other two. As the FOH series is fairly directly related to this blog, that would potentially induce a substantial curbing here as well.
I know in the past, mostly during the Year End Updates, that I thought I would be producing less content, the underlying idea was that it would be by my own volition, my own choice, rather than incomprehensibly stupid and grossly erratic decisions at the highest level. I realize that all things have an ending date and nothing lasts forever, but I suspect all of us would prefer that it be on our own terms when it comes rather than at the behest of the maniacal and generally false rantings of a lunatic. I don’t know what will happen, but if it does turn out that way, it would be a revolting, disgusting, and utterly unnecessary development of the highest order.
04.20.25: I’ve always kind of wondered and never quite got around to doing this, but given my fondness for statistics, I finally decided to attempt calculating a ponder. One US gallon is 128 fluid ounces. A typical bottle of hot sauce is ostensibly 5 fluid ounces, so 26 (technically 25.6, but I’m rounding in the name of ease of conceptualization) of those used in a single year. Even though I do finish out the vast majority of sauces I review, it’s not as straight across as counting how many I reviewed in a given year and extrapolating. There are flasks (or just larger versions of the 5 fl. oz. regular bottle shape), which tend towards 8 or 10 fl. oz. Sometimes I do sets. At times, there are 3 or 4 fl. oz. bottles. The main bottles are not always filled to exactly 5 fl. oz. (I did a breakdown on measuring this, which you can find in the non-food FOH playlist on YT) Sometimes I will have duplicates that I’ve already reviewed, but wish to enjoy again. Now, here’s the fun of math. Assuming we wondered if we were going through an entire 5 gallon bucket of sauce in a year, that would be 128 of the usual 5 fl. oz. bottles. The highest year of posting on this blog, to this point, was 2022, in which I did 95 posts. We eliminate 4 posts for the quarterly updates, one for the post on the Fiery Show in Albequerque I went to that year, one for my favored nation hot sauce makers, and another for a 10th year anniversary post, we arrive at 88. 88 x 5 is 440, which is a fair amount, to be sure, but not even to 4 gallons.
Here is the point it gets tricky. Some of those posts were mini-reviews of packets, which didn’t have a size listing...that I noticed anyway. There were some flasks that year. There was a double review that year. Some of the sauces I only finished partially and some not at all. I had some carryover from the previous year. Some from that year carried over into 2023. If I had to guess, the total would probably be closer to 500, still not quite all the way to 4 gallons, but that is all it could be at most, a guess. Scientifically, even a best guest tends to hold the same value as any other guess and rather than starting a given year with beakers and graduated cylinders, my cursory in a purely academic question begins to wane at this point...
Since I’m not super far into this year, as of this writing, I could do this year, but already there have been a number of 8 fl. oz. and 10 fl. oz., some partial bottles I’ve given away, some I might have tossed (can’t remember now) after the fridge expiration episode in January (see Q1 update) and don’t now remember how much carried over from 2024 and it wouldn’t have been quantified anyway...and yes, I realize this is now the third paragraph concerning a point that is probably moot...buuuuut a not so small part of my mind is thinking this year would have been kind of cool to track as it’s shaping up to be another year of fairly high consumption, almost certainly one of the highest ever. I will very likely hit 100 posts this year, if not 100 sauces reviewed outright.
04.26.25: It dawns on me now that I should have noted that not only am I scheduling the written reviews on this blog, but I’m scheduling those mostly on days when I do not have a FOH series video going live on YouTube. I’m not sure anyone is paying enough attention to notice, but my hope is that on Sundays,Wednesdays, and Fridays, which are generally video days, people who may be inclined towards content from me would head there and then come here the rest of the days for new reviews...or more conveniently just add notifications to their feed, but I don’t have any insight into that.
As of right this very second, I have 916 videos on the channel, of which somewhere in the high 800s are live, with a handful are not related to the FOH series and are mostly de-listed. This leaves 84 videos left to hit 1000. I am posted up through May 2025 currently, which means, with 7 months left, I would need to average 12 videos a month to hit 1000 before the end of the year. My current monthly average, without including the holidays stuff, is 14. Obviously, the holidays stuff will skew the monthly average, but at the current rate, I should rather handily hit 1000 FOH series videos on YouTube this year, which will make this the second channel to hit that number in 2025, a facet which I find slighly stunning (the third channel, which I reactivated this year, is very unlikely to hit that number until next year, assuming I’m able to continue producing content for it). I’m very close to already having either enough videos in the can and/or enough stuff at hand for the content part, so it’s just a matter of using, consuming, reviewing, filming, etc. This will also potentially springboard posts to this blog past 100, but as I consider a year to clear the pipes, so to speak, barring any major influx, which I know, I know, I always say that, but barring any of that, things should calm down more for 2026...maybe. I’ve covered stuff that was really backburnered, so I’m getting to the point where I’m winding down being able to find new non-sauce stuff that I’m interested in covering. Additionally, there is the fact that YouTube itself is becoming increasingly unbearable as a free service. I imagine this is partially to incentivize people to get a subscription so as not to have to endure ads, but I suspect a lot of the viewer base are not so inclined for that and the ad injection is easily the worst it’s even been on the platform.
05.01.25: A thought while I’m uploading the June FOH content...we have had precious little in the way of new spicy stuff drop, either via the snack world or especially in the fast food/restaurant sphere. I kind of felt it was retreating a bit last year, but that definitely seems the case in 2025. I don’t think it’s directly a function of the economy or anything along those lines, but rather the overall cyclical nature of fads and trends. We’ve certainly seen the flow and ebb of chile-related food items in past years...
05.16.25: Update for the Hot Ones list page with Season 27 announced yesterday, which I missed because First We Feast chose a kind of odd format to do it in. This season has 6 sauces for me to get to, 4 of which are entirely new to me, so I’ve updated that part of my coming list, which will be posted at the end of the year. This looks like somewhat less of an onion- heavy season, which is always good, but also it looks like one of the milder seasons I’ve yet seen, with only the very later sauces seeming to have any appreciable heat at all. Naturally, at some point, I’ll be testing that as I get to those sauces as I continue on with the project.
05.23.25: Today, I finished scheduling the last remaining written review I had for June and as mentioned previously, here is the list section for most represented sauce companies, with a few caveats:
Last year the list looked like this, in the following format:
Rank #, Sauce Maker, [# of written full reviews] (FOH YT videos posted currently)
1. CaJohn’s* [21] (19 videos posted)
2. Angry Goat [19] (all videos posted)
3. Hellfire [15] (12 videos posted)
4. Silk City [14] (all videos posted)
5. Pex [8] (7 videos posted)
6 - 9 (tie) Bravado [7] (4 videos posted)
Karma* [7] (all videos posted)
Puckerbutt* [7] (all videos posted)
Torchbearer [7] (5 videos posted)
* = number is not reflective of any sub-lines, such as vanity sauces, co-packed sauces, etc. OR of Mini Reviews
This year’s numbers:
1. CaJohn’s* [21] (19 videos posted)
2. Angry Goat [20] (all videos posted)
3. Hellfire [15] (12 videos posted)
4. Silk City [14] (all videos posted)
5 - 7 (tie) Karma* [8] (all videos posted)
Pex [8] (all videos posted)
Puckerbutt* [8] (all videos posted)
8-10 (tie) Bravado [7] (5 videos posted)
Torchbearer [7] (5 videos posted)
Volcanic Peppers [7] (6 videos posted)
Some of you may have noticed I did the numbering wrong last year, wherein the list was meant to go 10, but only 9 actual companies appeared...or possibly not, since no one corrected me on it. I would make the correction now, but I no longer have the data set from that long ago where I originally compiled things. I will note that there are currently 4 or 5 names where I have done 6 sauces for this year, so I’d imagine the list would have been a lot larger had 6 been the next highest total then.
Anyway, for this year, no change to the first 4 positions and it likely won’t be anytime in the near future, so I may not be repeating this next year (I once did a breakdown by alphabetical letter representation, but that was prior to my TOC changes - link at right)...unless I get a wild hair and decide to try to rank them by most represented pepper, which would be interesting, but is pretty unlikely to be something I attempt. I do still have one sauce to go for Puckerbutt (if I counted the Smokin’ Ed’s subline, they’d be higher, but they seem to me (for now, anyway) to exist as different entities), which will put it in to the top 5 at #5 by themselves, but I probably won’t get to that until much later in the year. I have nothing else planned for any of the other makers, with the possible exceptions of HAB, Jersey Barnfire, Silk City and Volcanic. At this point, I have generally exhausted most of the lineups of the other companies.
The more interesting thing to me, is that if I had included the Hot Ones branded sauces, this list would have looked somewhat different. If I treated the Hot Ones branded line as a separate entity, they would have fallen into the tie at 5 at [8] (all vidoes posted). I did not include them because it is fairly well-known that Hot Ones does not make any of their sauces directly, which is also why I didn’t include any of the vanity stuff from CaJohn’s formerly and why Pepper Palace at [6] (4 videos posted) is similarly not included. This is not to say that all of these makers are producing their own sauces as I have no direct insight into that, but I’m going off of branding and implication that these companies are producing their own product or are at least heavily invested in guidance thereof, as in coming up with recipes, formulations, etc.
06.01.25: Uploading the month of July on the FOH side today and have to restrain myself from also doing a rough schedule for November...[Ed note: I failed at this pretty considerably.] October is still not quite complete, as I’m hoping to do something to celebrate Halloween...for as much of the the entire month as possible, as usual, but I haven’t opened a new sauce since May 11 and have filmed and scheduled the written reviews for everything I had open in preparation for a little vacation, which will be starting tomorrow. I hope to find a couple things while I’m out and hopefully also film a video on the road, which I meant to do since the Fiery Show of 2022 where I forgot my fucking gear, which I then also forgot last year as well, but it’s all packed and ready to go now. It will be more of a throwback to the old style before I added all the fire and stuff, so editing it when I get back will be kind of interesting. Also will have to deal with questionable light, but am going to bring one of the many temp lights I have and try to use that...we’ll see, I guess.
It’s kind of nice to not have to worry about content while I’m away, but when I get back, since I’m finishing up a lot of bottles of sauce in the run-up, I’m going to be opening a slew more when I return. Not counting the ones I keep separate for the Wing Things, I have 8 open bottles total, which is a pretty low amount for me, but most of them are sort of specifically directed, as in 3 are Louisiana styles, 2 are Asiany, 1 is Mexican style (and also reviewed previously that is, for lack of better term, one of my “regulars”). Half of them are nearly gone. Most of the time, I keep a lot more non-specific sauces open at once, given that is how my consumption generally goes. Also, when I get back, I will begin the process of re-entering the work force after a very nice palate refreshing bit of time away wherein the gaming streaming thing has kicked off a fresh new wave of creativity. Depending on how that goes, it may slow things down a bit, but basically all of Q3 is scheduled right now, as far as FOH content and I have enough written reviews banked at least through June...not counting the many bottles I anticipate opening upon my return. In fact, I may dial the Hot Ones project way down to accommodate all the other sauces.
06.13.25: Back from vaca and tolerance is pretty low...usually I taper in the summer and particularly during vacation, to give myself a little break and not have to worry about managing bottles and so on during travel, but it’s a bit lower than I usually run it...now that I’m back, though, I imagine it will return to normal shortly. I left with a laundry list of crap to try and locate and was successful on exactly one of those things. A couple were kind of long shots to find out in the wild and plans changed for another, but I did come across some unexpected finds, one of which will be posted by the time you read this and the others will be coming in July. It was kind of interesting filming on the road...that was one of the bigger question marks going into the vacation, but all in all, it seemed to come out acceptably. Lighting is always the main issue with those, unless I want to drag along my gear, which I don’t, but I lucked out a bit on this one. Also, going back to just onboard camera audio I didn’t love, so I may take the mic next time, but all told, I’m glad I took the camera and did it. I will also note that the last previous fast food/restaurant anything video I did prior to this was in early April for the McDonald’s Nether Flame sauce, which didn’t seem specifically oriented towards chileheads. The last entry in that category which was came during March at Firehouse, which is kind of bolstering my point that the chile food fad in that world of the last couple years is fading pretty hard this year. I will note, however, that I have seen a lot of new entries generally utilizing Habanero, so perhaps that is the new (though old) favored nation as far as trends go...which would be kind of wild, if so...
06.15.24: Been kicking around new playlists for a bit, which is mostly mining the Everything Else Spicy playlist every time it gets too close to 100 videos, and created one for Spicy Pickled Stuff today, with the link for that, as always, at the right. I did have someone ask for my cooking videos, which I’ve also been considering a while, but that is not going to be a fast prospect, so that may be a bit down the road yet.
06.24.25: Did some quick math in my head and I already have enough videos filmed and ready to run past 1000 FOH videos now...also, November is nearly entirely scheduled, also now...finally, in an odd bit to sort of wrap up this very random musing, one of my camera SD cards completely disintegrated, as in fell apart from the physical wear of being removed and shoved back into the camera and then into the SD reader on the computer (it was used to record probably over 2000 videos). I took it out prior tto filming, as the camera was throwing an error and it fell apart in my hands. Never seen that happen before, and I was scrambling after trying to find another that would work in the camera, but that it was one of those things too wacky to actually be mad about...until I discovered that all of the backups I had were of insufficient write speed to keep up with the camera recording...fun!