Sendy Original Hot Sauce Review

Sendy Original

It’s always a little thrill when I happen to stumble across a sauce when I least expect it. Usually this will be on a grocery store shelf, like it was here, of a store I had not visited at all in this year and just happened to be near and looking for something else entirely. But, as is my wont, I always like to wander the store, see what’s new, what else is there and so on, and always, but always, check the condiment section, generally to see what might be on offer for hot sauce. Most of the time is it the usual mass market stuff that we’re all well familiar with, but lately, one of the local chains has made a push, as they do every few years or so, to getting more regional products on the shelf. Given that Colorado seems to have a significant number of hot sauce companies, it is not surprise that many of them, like this, wind up originating from there.

This is a good example of what I’ve mentioned before, that many hot sauces can benefit tremendously from the addition of tomatoes. Here, we have 4 different pods (and black pepper), namely Serrano, Jalapeno, Habanero, and Cayenne, though that last one doesn’t really show up in the mix too much as the first two do, which carry most of the flavor. This is a very nice, pepper forward flavor, with the tomatos adding a nice density and richness to the flavor. The first ingredient is vinegar and, depending on what I have this on, it sometimes will strike me that I would find it more favorable were that aspect dialed down a bit. It is quite a wonderfully flavorful sauce, however, more than making up for the abject goofiness of the name.

“Sendy,” much like the sauce name in the prior review, is an appeal to pushing it all the way over or full tilt or maximum effort or giving it your all, etc. etc. Unlike the cool callback to Star Trek TOS, however, this one is...ummm...decidedly not that, but is kind of awkwardly silly. I hope they revise the label copy, as this sauce deserves better. 

Given the sort of ubiquitous nature of the flavoring, this is a highly flexible sauce. It is not, however, particularly hot. That would be my second complaint, in addition to the slight over-astringency here and there. There is precious little heat there, for all those 4 pods. There is a hotter version, called Full Send, that I will be absolutely on the hunt for, as it would fix at least one of my issues with the sauce, but perhaps they were going more for general accessibility here.

Bottom line: Kind of a silly name, but don’t be deterred from what is a quite tasty robust and pepper forward sauce, albeit one with little to no heat. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Bohica Ghost Juice Hot Sauce Review Addendum

Bohica Ghost Juice

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USy0kSNZ5HQ 

I can’t say I was especially blown away by the previous entry into these annals from Bohica, that being the Hawaiian Lava (check TOC, if interested), but when I looked at this and saw both Ghosties and cantaloupe, my imagination was immediately engaged. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, given that strawberries, citrus juices, and pineapple were also in the mix, but I was unquestionably intrigued and...sometimes you just know. Like, you crack a bottle and as soon as you open the cap and catch a whiff, you immediately know, either for good or ill, how you will react with the sauce. In this case, it was good, most definitely good.

What we have here is a very nicely balance fruit-based sweet hot, though it is perhaps on the lighter side of sweetness as far as sweet hots go. There is a good mix of the pineapple, citrus, and strawberries, with the cantaloupe providing a nice round foundation. Ghosties are towards the back here, so while there is heat, it is very much to the back. This is unquestionably a quite approachable sauce and I imagine that was what they were going for. For my part, I would have liked heat to be a lot more to the fore, particularly given how much I like Ghosties, but perhaps they can have an alternate version some day.

I like to have, at my disposal, a sort of internal list, where I can point people if they want to try a given style, as both an excellent example of that style, as well as a wonderfully tasting sauce. Given that condiments are food, I find there is nothing so fast as to lead people to the chilehead gateway, as a sauce that provides a sort of smooth and low smolder, combined with a phenomenal flavor, which is perhaps the most apt description of this sauce I can come up with. 

Given the variety of fruits and that it is a tad low on the sweetness scale, this doesn’t work super well on pizza, which I had hopes for, but it does retain a good flexibility for fried foods generally, and lighter meats in particular, though I wouldn’t be afraid to cast it out towards stuff like burgers or other foods. I think it could be particularly wonderful on a salad or perhaps the right kind of sub sandwich. One of the aspects about a great-tasting sauce is that even if it isn’t magnificent in that application, it will generally never be outright bad. 

Bottom line: Hugely impressive flavor profile with this not hugely sweet hot sauce, though a touch light on heat.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

Puckerbutt Peach Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Puckerbutt Peach Habanero

For the review of the Puckerbutt Peach Super Hot Blend (reviewed elsewhere here), the idea struck me that Smokin’ Ed Currie, architect of the sauce, had “forgotten” to add salt to it, essentially making the end result a pepper-flavored vinegar. Perhaps by the time it was discovered, the batch was just bottled, shipped, and sent out anyway, as it was done. I have now observed this phenomenon once again with this sauce, strongly suggesting to me that it weren’t a forgetful error of omission on Ed’s part, but an inaction with direct intention.

I can’t say that I have the time (or interest) to comb through a bunch of Ed Currie interviews, of which there are many, to see if this disdain for salt is real or imagined on my part, nor did a cursory online search reveal much more information than rampant speculation, along with observations from a few other parties matching mine, that this is, in fact, a tendency of Ed’s, at least in regards to Puckerbutt sauces, and is possibly (likely?) related to purported health benefits by the lack of this ingredient. If that rationale is true, this is another point of departure of agreement between himself and I.

In that other review, I went over the basic components, the elements, that I think a condiment needs to be considered a hot sauce. Because that, and now this, are lacking one of those elements, they do not really constitute a hot sauce in my mind, despite the label insisting otherwise. These two are, in fact, more accurately pepper-flavored vinegars. However, as I will approach whatever sauce based on how a maker portrays it, this one, like the other, will be rated as a hot sauce and, also like that other, will suffer slightly for it. 

So, heat-wise, we have a fairly low charge. There are 16 different Habanero varieties, according to the label, and you get a good sense of the flavor there, both the slightly bitter aspect, but also some of the inherent pepper fruitiness. There is obviously a high vinegar charge to it, as well, not to mention a very thin and watery nature, that benefits from repeated agitation. The back end has a subtle fruity sweetness, which brushes towards peach here and there. Once I discovered the lack of salt, I decided to try and “fix” the sauce, with the simple addition of some kosher salt, which not only made the experience better, on the whole, but also brought forth the peach flavor considerably. This is not rating the sauce as-is, however, and the ratings will reflect what is actually in the bottle.

Bottom line: While I think this comes off a bit better than the other “sauce” I mentioned in this review, the lack of salt is a bit detrimental to this overall. It does make a very interestingly sweet-ish pepper-flavored vinegar, but fails as an actual hot sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3

 

Brooklyn Delhi Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Brooklyn Delhi Ghost Pepper

Note: This sauce appears on Season 20 of The Hot Ones.

The last remaining sauce for Season 20 and it was one of those that could go either way. I didn’t expect it to be hot, as it was in the 5 slot and generally anything below 7 isn’t too challenging, but it seemed to be pointed a bit towards Indian flavors. As noted repeatedly in this blog and elsewhere, I am not so much a fan of those generally, but this did feature my favorite superhot, the mighty Ghostie, and was further bolstered by what appeared to be heavy usage of tomatoes, an ingredient that I think is pretty underrated in hot sauces generally.

So, not knowing what to expect, I pulled the shrink, found that I had a lot less than 5 fluid ounces in the bottle, and that a healthy amount was stuck in the neck. Indeed, this is a very thick sauce and that is something you may wind up frequently contending with. After clearing that, I got to the sauce proper and was nearly instantly blown away. The Indian spices, while definitely present, are fairly mild in the flavor and this is much more a comprehensive sauce, with the tomato base there for everything else to play on top of.

The flavor is both deep and rich and does a spectacular job utilizing the wonderful flavor of the Ghosties. The hand-blend of Indian spices, whatever they are, seem to be the way to go here and I found myself quite enjoying this wonderful concoction. They are very much going for flavor first here and while there is heat, it is a bit on the lower key side of things. That allows the sauce to add an Indian spin to whatever you put it on – I didn’t try it, but suspect it would be very interesting on burgers - and works to great effect subtly sliding you into the flavors of that cuisine style without ever once being overbearing...which is pretty much the perfect way to do it for me.

I would call this more of a gateway to Indian cuisine generally, as tomatoes are used in a number of dishes there and this sauce is a hearty welcome, but approaches it with a smoothness and grace that is an absolute pleasure. I can’t say it would go with everything, but if you’re looking for an introduction, this sauce is the way to go. As mentioned, despite the Ghost being the namesake of the sauce, this is fairly mild and shouldn’t be particularly challenging for anyone.

Bottom line: This is unexpectedly definitely one of the better sauces from the show and a good reminder that rich rewards like this are why we keep an open mind when it comes to food.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Q3 2025 Update

2025 Q3 Update

07.01.25: More FOH conversation...I’ve been kicking around the idea for a while, of posting an entire month of exclusively hot sauce reviews, however, the only month I have left in 2025 is December, which I started scheduling today, and there is other holiday-ish stuff I also want to post up, so that won’t happen this year. I should have a pretty good idea of how far into 2026 I will have non-sauce content once December is finished, but I will say that most of that month will be hot sauce content, in an effort for me to try to get closer to caught up. I’m so far behind currently, that I have also backburnered the Hot Ones project for the most part, going from usually at least 1 show sauce per month to 1 per quarter. I could go to posting an FOH video every single day for an entire month, I suppose, but often views don’t seem to start hitting until days after a video goes live, so that idea seems counter-productive. Last update, I talked about the concept of tracking how much sauce I’ve had in a given year and this particular year, there has been a lot of it, with much of it coming in bottles larger than 5 fl. oz. 

The rough plan for 2026 is to only post up non-sauce content on Wednesdays, so long as I have some to post, which will probably be at least the first quarter, maybe the first two quarters, with hot sauces on both Fridays and Sundays. Once I run out of the non-sauce content, hot sauces will go to Wednesdays also, until I’m closer to being out of backlog, in which case, hot sauces will become Wednesdays and Sundays, with Fridays free for other stuff. By the end of this quarter, I will be very close to 1000 videos in the FOH series posted up and by the end of the year, may catch up and pass the channel I mentioned last update that I do with my son that has been running 3 years longer and has already passed 1000 videos.
 

07.03.25: I decided on another playlist, in yet another attempt to balance them out a bit, and created that today. By the time you read this, it will have been around for basically the entire quarter. This time, the focus is on nuts and nut-related products. I’ve very thoroughly covered a pretty wide gamut of both different nut types, as well as flavor configurations, different pods, etc. When I started FOH content in 2019, I devised a Head To Head series, which was a sort of contest pitting two similar things against each other. For nuts, this morphed into a more  tournament setting with 3 - 6 different kinds of nuts and then would have a holdover winner for the next round. After 9 rounds of that, thanks to some broken ass teeth, I had to call it quits. Eventually I got those fixed, but didn’t return to the Head To Head series to any great extent. While I was doing it, it was a lot of fun and I always wish they would have drawn better. Possibly with a new playlist, they will get some new life. I have done other Head To Head Battles, which can all be seen in their own playlist and continue to do those sporadically, but it is far from a main focus. I try not to create a new list until there are at least 10 videos for it, and for nut-related videos, I have 18 of them to start. I may add another playlist at some point for cooking videos, maybe, and there’s still a lot of stuff in Everything Else, but I don’t see value currently in trying to break it out further. 

07.15.25: Another SOTY candidate today, which makes 4 for the year, and the blog finally ran past 100K views, two months ahead, give or take, of the 13 year anniversary I’ve been doing this, coming in September. Very pleased to see this milestone, as blogs haven’t been a thing for a while and it seems a more global audience. It was never really meant to be much more than a reference point to me that I put up in case other people might be interested or similarly inclined and it’s kind of wild the changes that happened over time with it. This is not really translating over to the FOH series on YouTube, which I find kind of interesting, but I don’t really understand the whims and whys of any of that, so I suppose that will be its own clawing upward. In any case, here’s on to 250K, which is the next milestone...

07.23.25: After repeatedly flirting with the idea of running daily FOH videos, something I’ve never done and don’t really want to do, for February 2026, I did some looking around and found a host of different holidays I hadn’t scheduled anything for to close out the year. The post listing those will go up first of August, though that won’t mean anything to you reading this at the end of the quarter, other than perhaps a reminder that if you are interested in the stuff I do for the FOH series, to also check the Community tab on my YouTube page. I’ve also decided to again cover the 12 Days Of Christmas for this year. I’m not particularly religious, as in not at all, but I like the idea, the concept, of days of extended celebration. Of course, we all know the song and I sometimes wonder if anyone ever did that - I’ve never met anyone who has - and if so, what that might have been like...probably not by posting chilehead-oriented video reviews. I almost, but not quite, have December fully scheduled, but do have at least one video scheduled right now for every month through the rest of 2025. If October wasn’t a theme month, that would be done, as November is, but I’m two sauce videos away from October being done. One of those is just waiting for me to write the review and film the content, once I decide what to use for the application, but the other is not even open yet and probably won’t be filmed at all until after Labor Day. 
 

08.02.25: I have 1 day left of content to film for September, one for October, and have 4 days left in December, which I’m trying to leave open for now, in case I need to bump any of the currently scheduled videos for something more pressing or timely, as in if I do a product that I’d want up while grill season is still ongoing, etc. After doing some quick napkin math, at some point in November, the FOH series will run past 1000 videos and by the end of the year, will be very close to overtaking the other channel I mentioned I do with my son, that is already over 1000. If it doesn’t in December, it will be for sure come January. Meanwhile, the gaming channel I also do content for doesn’t have enough runway to hit 1000 this year, but at the current rate, will do so by the end of quarter 2, if not running past both of the other channels well before the end of 2026. Obviously, this is dependent on a lot of things and right now, we’re seeing another huge censorship space in the entirety of the online space, so with that kind of turbulence, it’s pretty hard to predict for sure what will happen. It is probably too much to hope that people come to their collective senses, as the historical track record of humanity generally is to the contrary.
 

08.09.25: Still have the same amount left to film for September and October, but down to 2 in December now. I will be filming one or both of the earlier months probably around Labor Day weekend, with at least one of those in December being filmed probably before that and the final one for December tentatively planned for filming around Thanksgiving time. I have decided to hold off on scheduling anything for January currently, but probably will start that in October. I will definitely run past 1000 FOH series videos in November. 

I’ve noted this here and there, but we’re definitely off-cycle for the food world offering chilehead stuff, with little to no action at all on the superhot front. We may see something for October, like possibly the return of either Arby’s Diablo Dare or Burger King’s Ghost Whopper - Wendy’s still has the Ghost Chicken and I believe Popeye’s has theirs as well - but it’s been pretty slim pickings this year, with the main bevy of new products utilizing Habanero. If anything, 2025 has been the year of the Habanero, an idea which is reinforced by the last 4 videos I’ve filmed, all of which were over the last 2 days and all stuff new, as far as I can tell, for 2025, featuring that pepper, but even before that, I started to get that impression. It makes a lot of sense. Habanero is nowhere near the ferocity of the superhots, is fairly ubiquitous, and generally tends to be one of the less expensive pods out there with appreciable heat. 

The big question, for me, comes into whether or not the public appetite for chile-related stuff is down naturally and the industry is following suit, or whether the order is reversed and they are actually driving it...or possibly both. I am not alone in this, but views on the FOH series are definitely down. They have always been tied into the product, but for the sake of comparison, my gaming channel, which took a 2+ year hiatus of no new content at all, save for YT Community posts, is outdrawing the FOH series in a 28 day cycle. Now, it is not by a lot (yet) and the circumstances are dissimilar, as the gaming channel is a lot of streaming, as well as being live on Twitch here and there, but I find it kind of interesting. There have been no shortage of other chile-related channels that have expressed their viewership is also down...but then and again, this blog is outdrawing both of my two channels that I just mentioned combined, which makes all of this information much more of a struggle to digest. I probably am missing a lot of contextual data, which would provide some rationale, but on its face, there does seem to be something afoot. 
 

08.13.25: For years, literally over a decade, I held off on the idea of scheduling posts to the blog, preferring to retain some of the more spontaneous nature of posting the commentary on the fly. This didn’t work well for the quarterly updates, such as this one, so I started keeping a running document, where I could just add stuff and then go back and edit and re-work and so on before posting. All well and good, but I held off on pre-writing the reviews all the way up until this year and did that for most of the year, but in August, decided to start using the blog scheduling feature, like I do with the FOH series videos.

Ever come across one of those things where you’re kind of blase’ about giving it a try, but then you do and as it turns out, you find yourself wondering exactly what kind of dumbass you were not to give it a chance and glom onto it earlier? Yeah, that is definitely one of those things for me. Now, to be fair, for most of the blog’s life, I wasn’t doing particularly huge volumes of posts and even more relevant, not very consistent posting, so it may not be necessary long term, but now that I am and as long as I am, definitely going to stick with that format going forward. 
 

08.26.25: It’s pretty wild to me that a couple of things I mentioned earlier in the year, both the idea of consuming a 5 gallon bucket of sauce, as in 640 fluid ounces, or 128 of the regular 5 fluid ounce bottles we normally see, as well as the most represented sauce companies list, have already changed dynamically from when I posted those thoughts earlier. 

To the first point, as it is this year, I have finished a number of both 8 fluid ounce and 10 fluid ounce bottles, as well as several 3 fluid ounce and 4 fluid ounce bottles, in addition to quite a number of the 5 fluid ounce bottles. There have also been a lot of repeats and just in the sauces posted to the blog as I write this, I’m already well, well beyond the halfway point...so, to the interest of probably no one beyond me, I will almost certainly wind up hitting that particular benchmark for 2025.

To the second part, I didn’t really expect a lot of movement to the most represented companies in the blog list, but I should know better by now...that list, posted last quarter, is already out of date and if not, it will assuredly be by the end of the year. 
 

09.01.25: I changed around a lot of stuff with the internet service and uploaded October before the first of the month this time, but spent the weekend sort of pre-planning 2026. As it stands right now, about 2/3 of January is already scheduled out for the FOH series, while the blog is running behind, with about 1/3 of October being scheduled out. What this means, with the FOH series running so far ahead, is that nearly all of the written blog reviews from October and after in 2025 will not have accompanying video content posted until 2026, which seems to me a pretty excessive gap. Reducing that gap will be a focus for 2026...as it has been in previous years also...sigh.  

I have exactly one video left to create for 2025, which will probably be done around Thanksgiving time. I intend on keeping the current posting schedule of Sun-W-F until I am a lot more caught up, which means that schedule will run probably at least the first quarter of 2026. While I still have a fair number of hot sauces on the shelf left to review and film, as far as non-sauce stuff, I have exactly 3 products total left. I’m not really actively looking for stuff, but approaching it far more opportunistically. I will get into that more in the end of the year post. 
 

09.12.25: YouTube is crashing pretty hard right now, almost as much as my editing software (Magix Vegas 22), which seems to be ruined just in time for the newest version to come out for them to sell me. Fuckers. I am strongly considering dropping them entirely, after using that software since 2007, as it is becoming borderline unusable and if I have to get new software anyway, after less than a year and building an entire computer around it, getting pretty close to the point of saying so be it and having done entirely. 

Updated Season 28 of The Hot Ones. Kind of an odd season. It only adds about 4 new sauces to the to-do list, though, which is good, given how hard that project is currently dragging. For the most part, I’m almost through the first 20 seasons entirely. The problem kind of comes in where a lot of the sauces I only like on wings or like just enough to keep around for that and I’m trying really hard to limit how many sauces I have for the Wing Things on hand, so I don’t have like 30 open bottles just for that...I mean that and the backlog things I may have mentioned earlier.
 

09.19.25: In actual blog news, for a change in this lengthy commentary about updates to subjects other than the blog, at the current pace, like the last two years, 2025 is tracking to be around the same post count as the last two years. I don’t know if it will be exactly 84, like the preceding two years were, but at the current rate, will be in that general vicinity. I had thought that it might have been closer to 100, but there were a lot of repeats this year, some archive stuff, in which I film videos for older blog reviews, which are also repeats, I guess, and a number of sauces in larger bottles than normal. Also, this summer, my appetite got clanged pretty hard and without food to accompany it, it’s hard to eat a bunch of sauce. Sauce is probably my main avenue of driving tolerance, so it has ebbed to a lower point than in recent memory. I don’t really have a bunch of challenges in mind to do for winter projects, as I did the last couple of years, so I will probably start ramping it up to the more medium range, where it more typically rests.

Also, to end this off for this quarter, the experimental test kitchen has been running hot again, with some various testing of different items and some expansion into previously (for me) uncharted waters in the kitchen. If you’re interested in that kind of thing, be sure to check the Community page on the YouTube channel, where pics and attendant commentary is posted. 

09.26.25: A little of the old napkin calculation magic and we're completely scheduled through October on the blog side, all the way through January 2026, except for one date I'm holding open in reserve and one video for December that I won't be filming until later, and am now scheduling into February 2026. This means a couple of things, the first being that the FOH series is running an entire quarter (sometimes more) ahead of the blog on the hot sauce side. Second, I also found a few new things I've been meaning to film at some point and ran across them randomly, so figured I may as well pick them up, including an archive sauce, which brings the on-deck total to 5, after being as low as 2 prior to my recent discovery. So, it seems pretty likely the content deluge will continue through Q2 of next year...we'll see before then, I imagine, if something comes up to extend it further. 

Sauce Leopard The Assgasher Hot Sauce Review

Sauce Leopard The Assgasher

Ah yes, the famed assgasher, rather than someone savaging rectums like a demented Freddy Krueger, is instead an arm emerging from a bumhole and holding firmly aloft what one must assume is a pretty messy axe. This is in direct reference to the inspiration or, as the label copy calls it, the unholy union betwixt Sauce Leopard and Axeslasher, made in Hell, or perhaps more specifically Denver, CO. Axeslasher is a thrash band who takes heavy influence from the 80s and horror movies of the time. The vocals sound reminiscent of thrash from then, but the downturned instruments sound a lot more like a much faster version of the dearly departed Lair Of The Minotaur. 

Anyway, Sauce Leopard is probably my favorite name for any sauce company and Assgasher is a sauce name that tickled me the second I heard it, so naturally, I put it on the hit list, once I discovered it didn't have onions, and there it sat. It sat and it sat for a really long time, because it was described on the label as a Sriracha hot sauce. I am still quite fatigued of the flavor of srirachas, as I've had so very many of them, so while I very much wanted to try this sauce, the same was decidedly not true of another sriracha. It is my happy duty to then report that this is not at all what I would describe as a sriracha. 

Srirachas tend to have a couple of fairly distinctive characteristics, such as being fairly thick, to the point they need to come in a soft plastic bottle so they can be squirted out to apply to food. The other is density of a fairly specific flavor.  Neither of those things is true for this sauce. What this more reminds me of than anything else is a sort of slightly thicker than normal Cajun style sauce. I was beyond pleased to discover this, of course, even though I did want to use it at least partially as an actual sriracha, ironically enough. One of those was an Asian dish I was cooking and the lack of flavor density kind of worked against things a bit. In using it in an already prepared Asian dish, I found the vinegar a bit too forward, so this works much better in settings where you might reach for a Louisiana-style or Cajun.

What we have here is most of the components of an actual sriracha, but the arrangement and end result is pretty distant. This is a very wonderfully flavored and quite lively sauce, with the fresh garlic, unless I miss my guess, bouncing around and creating a fantastic harmony. I would put this within the top 2 of Cajun style sauces I've ever had, in fact, and I quite what they came up with here. Heat-wise, this is the excellent flavor of Fresno paired with Habanero, so it isn't particularly high. 

Bottom line: If you're a fan of any of the sauce types I mentioned, this should be on your radar, as it is, above all else, a great tasting sauce. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Smokin' Ed's Pineapple Teriyaki (Mild) Hot Sauce Review

Smokin’ Ed’s Pineapple Teriyaki (Mild) 

Another addition to the Smokin’ Ed’s line and this time, we see another take on an Asian flavor style, namely that of teriyaki. I don’t know if there is a difference per se between Teriyaki and Pineapple Teriyaki, though the latter suggests more of a Japanese by way of Hawaii vibe, but this does not seem to be trying to be an actual teriyaki sauce, but more of perhaps a teriyaki-inspired hot sauce. Whereas most teriyaki sauces tend to be heavily soy sauce based and frequently much thicker and dense brown concoctions, this one is a pretty swift turning away from that aesthetic.

This is, instead, a rather lively and vibrant red, with perhaps some slight lean towards brown. The color matches the flavor profile here and the entire result strikes me more as playful, in a very good way. The first few times I had this, until I got enough room in the bottle to properly agitate, this came across as hyper-sweet, almost cloyingly so. I did not find that enjoyable, though my immediate thought was that this was much more towards a sweet ‘n’ sour sauce than teriyaki. 

Once it settled in, I was able to get a lot more of the balance, from the subtle soy sauce flavoring, which here is more of an accent, to the pineapple dancing around with what I believe are red Jalapenos, as is my understanding all of the Smokin’ Ed’s mild sauces use as their pod. I quite like overall where this is going, flavor-wise, but it definitely isn’t really a hot sauce. Heat is low enough that I didn’t find it registering most of the time. While teriyaki itself is good on meats generally, I don’t know that this would transition as well to red meats like steaks. Though the sweetness did taper down as I got further into it, there isn’t quite the umami hit that actual teriyaki sauce has to work with the red meats and the lightness and sweetness of the pineapple doesn’t strike me as a happy union there. 

It is excellent on chicken, of course, but also on Asian foods generally, such as ramen. In many ways, it reminds me almost as much of an Asian-style sweet hot, with perhaps an nod to teriyaki, than to the actual flavoring of teriyaki itself. It’s a pretty neat trick to pull off and while I don’t know what exactly what Ed was going for with this sauce, the end result is pretty wonderful. 

Bottom line: Think of this more as perhaps a sweet & sour sauce by way of teriyaki, just on the really high end of things, and you’ll about have it.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Mexico Lindo Salsa Picante Negra XXXtra Hot Sauce Review

Mexico Lindo Salsa Picante Negra XXXtra Hot 

Here we have another entry, of which there have been quite a few this year, into the Mexican-style category from a sauce company I’ve found overall to be pretty enjoyable and impressive. This time out, they’re answering the question of what if we made a sauce heavy on the umami side and indeed, with msg and what seems a lot like soy sauce, in the mix, there is no shortage of that aspect. That, along with a bit of a lean towards the astringent side, makes for a pretty curious and interesting taste adventure, as this is very much a Mexican style sauce.

I find this sauce fascinating, and overall, really like what they’re doing, as it is fairly unusual, yet still retains a lot of the “classic” characteristics that one might expect from a Mexican-style sauce. There are hints of the warmth and comforting richness that tends to be stock in trade for that style, yet it very clearly is wanting to make its own flavor path and be its own distinctive sauce. In this, it succeeds pretty wildly. It is also a tad thick and sludgy, which can lead to these nifty little umami pockets if it doesn’t spread out on the food, which are their own treat.

It’s a bit amazing to me how they’re able to wander as much as they do, yet retain the core identity and this is definitely one of my more happier finds this year, and is yet another I literally stumbled across on a grocery store shelf. With Chiltepin being the prime heat driver, this is not, despite the suggestion in the sauce’s name and on the label, particularly hot, but it is a fairly nice, low-key and satisfying smolder. I could do with more heat, but that doesn’t seem what they were really going for here. This is very much a Mexican-style sauce, so usage here is definitely better off with that style, or related, of foods and flavors. It would also do pretty well in ramen, I’d imagine, and is flavorful enough that one could definitely have a good time experimenting.

Bottom line: Another hitter from a sauce company that I will always check out to see what new entries they have to offer, an effort which, like it is here, tends to be rewarding.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Dawson's Sweet Pear Chili Hot Sauce Review

Dawson’s Sweet Pear Chili

Don’t often run across pears too much in hot sauce, but I do love me some pears and I was pretty curious how the tap-dancing around what is a generally fairly delicate flavor would go...in a way, I’m saddened that it went the way I was expecting, but the resulting sauce definitely is a nice end result that has some very definite applications where it works well.

Like most of the other Dawsons’s, this is sauce is on the thicker sludgier side of things. Again, we have the olive oil, so there is a nice smoothness to it and the Vietnamese chilis, which I also don’t really see used a great deal, impart a pleasant heat without introducing much on the flavor. This is quite a good pairing there, those chilis with the fruit. Where it got a touch out of hand was the garlic, which tends to be a pretty strong flavor and here, it definitely asserted itself, despite being about in the middle of the ingredients. 

This, then, sort of ran roughshod over the pears and we have a fairly light somewhat non-descript fruity sweetness to the sauce. I admit I was hoping for a lot more presence from the pear and the resulting flavor, in conjunction with the garlic, moved this more into complex flavor applications, such as on a fried chicken sandwich, say, rather than just on some chicken tendies. 

I do like the sauce and find it pairs fairly nicely with mayo, where it adds a pretty fascinating dimension to things. I could also see this working extremely well as part of a salad dressing, so definitely there are some applications, but this is a sauce where I think you would need to experiment with it a bit, as it doesn’t seem to readily point at any food in particular. 

Bottom line: Another highly creative and inventive sauce from Dawsons’ and I absolutely applaud the use of infrequently used ingredients...for me this is a sauce more on the way than at its destination, but if the more experimental vibes are up your alley, this is well worth a look.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Zia Chile Traders Whiskey River Frontier Hot Sauce Review

Zia Chile Traders Whiskey River Frontier

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook and Instagram. 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWAYhi0nfwQ

This may be the most referential sauce I’ve ever come across. We will start with a lot of the non sauce elements first, so you can skip this paragraph and the next if you aren’t interested in this part. The first of these is the name itself. “Whiskey River” has been used as a song title, referring, presumably to drowning one’s sorrows in a particular alcohol, as the namesake of a bourbon marketed by the singer who recorded and popularized that song, as a location within a fictional literature series, as a cultural phrase wherein the river eventually leads to Bourbon Falls, as a condiment selection at the Red Robin restaurant chains, as the name itself of a regional restaurant chain owned by a former NASCAR driver, and here and there by various other bars and saloons. Meanwhile, the idea of a “Frontier” sauce is largely meaningless and refers more to theme, as in visual appearances, such as on this label, or the various foods associated with a given area, loosely referenced to what we would consider the “Wild, Wild West.” 

From there, we move to the packaging. I already touched on the label, and I suspect the word “Frontier” was added both to refer to the New Mexican heritage of the peppers in this sauce, and John Hard’s current home, as well as an attempt to differentiate it enough to avoid litigation by others already using the name “Whiskey River.” As to that packaging, it is in a flask and a certain other sauce, from John Hard when he was the saucier at CaJohn’s, rather famously formerly came in a flask and also prominently featured bourbon as one of the ingredients. That sauce being, of course, the Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero, reviewed elsewhere here.

Ok, now, as to this sauce, we definitely have a different lineup of peppers, being varieties of Hatch chiles, as well as Jalapenos. Definitely this drives the heat level down somewhat, but this sauce is clearly aiming to be more of a flavor showcase. It is thick and a tad sludgy, unlike the other sauce, and I think this is less an updating or re-imagining of that other sauce than a hot sauce on the way to being a barbeque sauce. I found the bourbon flavor to be a bit more prominent here, as well as the sauce being sweeter, but also working better as a “straight out the bottle” hot sauce than the other, which I used almost exclusively as a grill sauce. To be sure, this one is much better used as a grill sauce, where it can flash off some of that very forward bourbon and get a nice Maillard effect going, but I don’t mind this as an actual condiment, either. I particularly like that there is a lot more black pepper in the mix here. If I do have a major gripe, it is probably that I wish there was a lot more smokiness here. That was perhaps not what he was going for, but I felt the absence of that to be fairly prominent. 

As far as usage, I think this one is more broad. This will work just fine on grilled meats, pretty much meats in general. How much you like it will depend greatly on how much you can tolerate the bourbon coming to the fore in your sauces, but as long as it has something to counter that and the fairly forceful sweetness of this sauce, it could work on a pretty wide variety of applications. For me, I will stick to using it as a grill sauce, I think, as bourbon when carmelizing with sugars, imparts a pretty wonderful effect and this definitely is a sauce that benefits from both heat and whatever smokiness you can add to it. 

Bottom line: This one is a lot more accessible as a straightforward condiment, both in terms of flavor and in minimal heat. Think of it as bridging the gap between a hot sauce and bbq sauce and you’ve about got it. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Hot Winter Bulgarian Carrot Hot Sauce Review

Hot Winter Bulgarian Carrot

I was not at all familiar with the Bulgarian Carrot pepper prior to coming across this sauce and bought it somewhat on a whim. The only previous sauce I’d ever from them, the Hatch Chile, was a tad on the underwhelming side, but I always get a little excited and my tail starts wagging and my ears prick up when I come across a new pod in a sauce that I haven’t had before, so I drove in full gainer...

...and was rewarded with a pretty fantastic sauce. For some reason, I thought this was a variety of a Habanero, which was borne out by the flavor, but looking into it further, Habanero is in the mix, but it is not a Habanero variant per se. Rather, it is a cross between a Habanero and a different Bulgarian pepper, with the idea being that the pod looks like a baby carrot. There are no actual carrots in this sauce, though the idea that there was initially drew me to it. 

This is not a sauce so much as a mash and is very pepper forward, with peppers being the first ingredient. There are a couple vinegars, rice and cider, which do a nice job of complementing each other and not transmitting any of the stinky foot aspect of the latter vinegar. There is also some sugar, some salt, and some of that good hardneck garlic and the flavor profile, top to bottom, is really quite brilliant.

It is very thick, very clumpy, and does not like to smooth out. There is a lot of rough sort of gritty bits to it as well, all of which sort of make this a bit of a challenge in terms of usage. As far as flavor, this went great with nearly everything, but as far as texture...for me, it works best in a sandwich setting, where you can spread it out or leave it in its own layer (I’d also love to try this as a pizza sauce, just this sauce by itself, to be clear), so things like burgers and chicken sandwiches and sub sandwiches respond very well with this, where it both meshes and retains a bit of its identity as it melds with proceedings. Even though Hot Winter calls this both very hot and their hottest available sauce, I found it rather mild all told and I don’t think it will give too many people much of a challenge.

Bottom line: An absolute ringer, just a dynamite gem of a product, but definitely one that I think is somewhat dependent on its setting.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

 

Ghost Wolf Pepper Co. Elder’s Revenge Hot Sauce Review

Ghost Wolf Pepper Co. Elder’s Revenge

I was going to start this review by saying that I don’t know what I did to the pupper Elder to make him want revenge, but whatever it was I’m sorry...but that opening seemed sort of frivolous. This company was started due to one of the hardest episodes for anyone to go through and the resulting theme is a rather somber and melancholy one. To wit, this sauce was created to memorialize the sauce maker’s doggo, who evidently suffered from an illness and the loss of a good, close friend, even one covered in furry, perhaps especially one of those, is never going to be an easy thing to take. There is some suggestion that perhaps down the road a fund to support the people going through this and the attendant vet bills and grief counseling and so on may come to be, as well as perhaps a memorializing of other people’s animal friends. The graphics and design seem particularly devoted, perhaps more approaching art than a mere product label. This is the flagship sauce from a company on a mission and it seems like a good one. I encourage interested parties to check their website for more info.  

On the other hand, to the “revenge” part specifically, this is unquestionably a superhot-forward sauce and it is immediately punchy. It is past a 3, but not quite all the way to a 4, so I guess consider it a very strong 3. This is unquestionably chilehead only territory and if you’re not a chilehead, you may as well plan to skip this party and go to another, as if you do come here, you’re probably going to have a pretty bad time...unless you want a bottle for the art and aren't planning on ever opening it. The artwork does feature, or at least strongly reference, one of my very most favorite forms of expression, that of European graveyard sculpture, so this may be the second bottle ever that I’ve kept after finishing the sauce...

We have here the might and fury of 7-Pot Primo mash and then piling on after that, both smoked Scorpion and Ghost pepper powders. This lends even more of the superhot bitter quality to things, which is also generally the first and most forward flavor. On the back end of that, we do have some smokiness, from the powders, along with the flavor of sage, and, depending on what you pair it with, a very nice, albeit somewhat subtle, berry flavor. 

To be frank, this sauce is somewhat difficult to pair, both because of its intensely blazing nature, but also because of those bitter notes and because it doesn’t seem to point itself in any particular direction. This is a sauce I’ve spent a lot of time testing, and will be testing further still, until I either find where it works best or until I run out. It does seem to do very nicely with chicken, particularly roast chicken, but leaning into the sage didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I would try to lean into the berry, but I kind of wonder if Elderberry wasn’t included because of the namesake connection to the mascot of the sauce. Also, the berry is fairly slight in this one. It is far more just blazing superhot bitter than any single other flavor note. 

Bottom line: This is a very punchy sauce, right out of the gate, and is fairly unrelenting, so its use works best perhaps as accent. Given the blazing nature, definitely chilehead only. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3

La Preferida Louisiana Style Hot Sauce Review

La Preferida Louisiana Style

For quite some time, every year, I’ve taken to haunting the Wal-Mart holiday section from Halloween on, looking at what might be coming for a given year’s hot sauce sampler collection. While most of them are very clearly aimed at being novelty sauces and not much more, in essence, buying labels and packaging, in some years, there have been some decent sauces. Many of them are covered in the Mini- Reviews section either way, whether they are or not.

For most of them, it’s just throw any old colored liquid that looks like a hot sauce into a bottle, shrink it, and call it a day, as they’re not trying to sell sauce or tap a new customer base, per se, but are interested in that one sale, in that “customer knows [x] person in relation to them who likes spicy food, so here’s an easy gift,” in short, perhaps pandering to laziness. For those that aren’t that good, they all have a sort of commonality to them, what I refer to as a flavor of “the cheap,” that more high quality sauces don’t have.

The taste here, while recognizably Cayenne-adjacent, is kind of like a less aggressive and worse-tasting version of Crystal. It almost has a staleness to the taste and a bit of a sourness to the vinegar, to a kind of weird point. It was still generally usable, but I started to wonder if it was a bad batch, as it was kind of hard for me to picture this end result being the actual intention. This is just not a very good product overall. While this type of sauce generally doesn’t pack a huge heat punch, this one has basically none. The “bite” is very much only from the astringent vinegar. It is also slightly salty. While the watery consistency is right, the color is much more pointed towards the orange spectrum of things.

Bottom line: While I’m pretty far from impressed with this sauce, it is also not the worst of this type that I’ve tried...though it is definitely near the bottom.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 2

Redacted Wet Work Hot Sauce Review

Redacted Wet Work

I rather enjoyed the other sauce I had from Redacted and their sort of cloak and dagger skullduggery spycraft type motif and themes. Most of their sauces have onions and are thus not something of which I can partake, but this one happily does not...and I’m pleased that it doesn’t because it features Scotch Bonnet, one of my favorites, again paired with Habanero. While I would prefer it just be the Scotch Bonnet, the ultimate conclusion is what matters and here, it is quite tasty.

The sauce leans very heavily into the idea of a pepper forward sweet-hot, using guava and mango to give it a tropical fruity vibe, by way of a slight citrus underdone from the Key lime juice. I’m definitely very happy with what they did on the flavor side, as it goes a long way to advance the pepper flavor foremost, in that sort of sweet setting. The sort of gripe I have about this sauce is that it is overly loose for what I would like. A loose sauce is not the end of the world, but here, it intrudes a bit on flavor concentration and also limits a bit where one can easily use it, as it is quite runny...not quite watery, per se, but not especially distant, either.

I think with a lot of tweaking, such as reducing it further, maybe dumping the Key lime entirely, and go for some reduction, this would be a pretty fantastic more universal sauce, able to be used fairly ubiquitously. As it is, I find it pretty solid on fried foods, as long as there is enough breading there to absorb the liquid. I would not find this something I would consider using on pizza, for instance, as I don’t want my pizza to be wet, and having the sweet element is already going to kind of point the sauce in fairly specific directions. This one will take a bit of tinkering to find the right setting, but once you do, it is quite nice. Heat-wise, neither Scotch Bonnet nor Habaneros are particularly scorchers and this sauce is definitely more on the tame side.

Bottom line: A quite lovely tasting sauce that is somewhat marred by the consistency. I would still say it is well worth a go, particularly if you’re a fan of either Scotch Bonnets or Habaneros and like them in a fruity setting.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Volcanic Peppers Autumn Blaze Hot Sauce Review

Volcanic Peppers Autumn Blaze

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF6ePibS_CI 

I have had a veritable cornucopia of great sauces this year, with now this making four candidates for Sauce Of The Year. I suppose I should have buried the lede, so to speak, a bit more, I wanted it right up front how fantastic of a sauce this is. The Chipotle used in here is from red Jalapenos and I suspect, unless I badly miss my guess, they are smoked at the hot sauce facility. They possess a character of smokiness that I have never had from commercial Chipotle or sauces with Chipotle before and it is absolutely stunning. 

The rest of the crew, the honey and pumpkin, do a nice job of adding in some depth, but this sauce very wisely chooses those delicious smoked red Jalapenos to be the star of the show, with the other elements tempering the apple cider vinegar a bit. The vinegar does not read as apple cider in the flavor, happily. In many respects, this could very much be one of those sauces that people who don’t like hot sauce or who are just coming into it would enjoy very much. I’ve said before that if you make a sauce taste good enough, which is the overall aim, I imagine, of the so-called “everyday” sauces, flexibility will increase, even if the food doesn’t pair totally well. With this sauce, I have yet to find anything it doesn’t work well with and on. Sure, some things are better than others, but it is as close to universal as I’ve had...and much of that has to do with the spectacular flavor.

The color, the texture, and the smoothness are also pretty good and it’s one of the few sauces where I’m not immediately spinning over in my mind for ways it could be improved. It’s frankly near-perfect as-is and while if I were to tail it very specifically to me, I might add in some fire-roasted red Habaneros to drive the heat up a touch, as this is a fairly tame sauce, that is my only complaint and a very minor one at that. I like some heat to things, but not every sauce I have needs to be face-melting. 

Bottom line: I’ve had more than a few sauces I’ve liked from Volcanic, but this one is near magical. Everyone should get it, particularly if you’re like me and a foodie first and then a chilehead. This is the 4th Sauce Of The Year candidate for 2025.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8

Paul’s Haba Haba Hot Sauce Review

Paul’s Haba Haba

This is a sauce that seems to have 3 main ingredients, the mango puree, the mustard, and the Habanero mash. There are some additional spices and other modifiers, but those are the mail elements. The overall vibe here is very reminiscent of some of the Caribbean sauces I’ve had, which have similarly incorporated mustards and I find the flavor here to be itself, basically the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

It isn’t like a hot sauce, but nor is it like a mustard. It is quite distinct and seems to want to have a foot in both worlds. This idea I find fine in concept, but in actual application...I think we all have food associations, flavor expectations, and tie certain foods in with certain additions, such as various condiments. For instance, brats will generally go with mustards, as they need something fairly strongly flavored to read, but no so much with hot sauces. Likewise, fried foods would not usually be something one would put a yellow mustard on. To be sure, you could, but that would be unusual.

With this sauce trying to rest between two fairly disparate words, the issue comes in with pairing it with stuff, as it functions like neither of those condiments particularly. I think it works better where you would use a mustard than where you would use a hot sauce, but it is at least functional in both settings. The problem comes in when the sauce is acceptable, but makes you wish you had something else instead, which this one does in nearly every setting I’ve tried it in. The flavor is not bad at all or even close to it, but it is very vigorously on its own terms, which isn’t always what is wanted. Heat-wise, since Habanero is the driver, the level is fairly moderate.

Bottom line: I suspect this would work a lot better with Caribbean foods, which I will be testing at some point. It comes in a healthy 9 fl. oz. bottle, so there is plenty of experimentation to be had...which will probably be needed.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

 

Melinda’s Mexicana Hot Sauce Review

Melinda’s Mexicana

Another new-ish product from Melinda’s, as they continue their expansion, this time sees what I can only describe as more or less a merging of a Habanero taco sauce with a Lousiana-Style Cayenne sauce. I was a bit nervous that it might follow the path of Texas Pete Sabor! (reviewed elsewhere here), but it sticks pretty heavily to the motif, which is essentially a merging of those two sauce styles. 

I’m not certain who this is for, though. The label copy suggests using it on “everything” (because of course they do), in cocktails, and popcorn, of all things. Yes, that is exactly what my popcorn has been lacking, a very loose, nearly watery, more astringent than normal taco sauce...think I’ll just go and take a pass on that idea entirely. It also is much more vinegary than I tend to like my taco sauces or Mexican-style sauces, as I don’t generally find that food so overly rich I need to cut it. 

Where I did find this useful was in a very specific frozen Southwest style quinoa bowl and for frozen foods, this is actually not a bad sauce. I could see it also working pretty wonderfully on breakfast stuff, so long as you want things a bit on the vinegar-side. It would probably also be fine to cook with. As it’s only Habanero as the main heat driver and a bit far back in things to boot, this is not a particularly hot sauce.

Bottom line: I find this sauce a bit puzzling, though the concept fairly well done, for what it seems like they were going with. I don’t have a lot of uses where this would fit, but this might be well worth checking out for those that do. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Spice Trade Outpost Cleric Hot Sauce Review

Spice Trade Outpost Cleric

Note: This sauce was provided by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue for purposes of review. Check him out on Facebook and Instagram. 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2YGtr9SHVY

This enticed me with the lure, the siren song of a class of characters from the fantasy world, perhaps best epitomized by D & D tabletop games and novels and later popularized by various video games. That kind of thing will never not have my rapt and immediate attention, but I was a bit disappointed to find this was the only sauce in the line that did not have onions. 

Still, honey, peach, and Habanero should be a pretty good combination, even if cinnamon was also present. It was very much at the end, where it belongs, so I had hopes it would not play too much into the flavor. It is there mostly as a grace note and doesn’t intrude much, so good there. I did notice that there seemed to be a lot of shifting in the sauce, with the heavier bits all towards the bottom, but I don’t get too concerned with that, as stuff settles quite a bit and it’s standard chilehead practice by now to agitate everything...or at least try to agitate everything, before using. 

Once I got the bottle properly agitated and open, I noticed something that had escaped my attention when picking up the bottle...it was during a haul and as usual, I had several sauces in the basket, but this is a very thin, even watery along the lines of a Louisiana-style Cayenne sauce.  As with other sauces I’ve done over time in this blog, this raised the immediate issue of flexibility being notably altered, as well as flavor density. Using cinnamon already changed that equation, as it also has to be paired, but when a sauce is this runny, it does cut down where, when, and how much can be used. In my estimation, this sauce suffers a bit for this and I would rather it been reduced down somewhat...and also had the cinnamon removed entirely.     

The flavor here is pretty nice, all told, though I found it worked best, on chicken tendies, as it is quite vinegar forward as well. I didn’t mind it on grilled pork chops, but the thinness really worked against it here. The breading of the tendies does a nice job of melding with the sauce and the notes of cinnamon. I kept wishing I could get more of the peaches, but this is more along the lines of vinegar, cinnamon, honey and Habanero, with a very slight grace note here and there of peaches. The thinness definitely does not help here. As it is Habanero for heat, this is a fairly mild sauce, all told. 

Bottom line: A very curious approach to a fruit-based sweet hot that I’m not sure I found overly favorable. I did like it more than not, but the consistency did it no favors.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3

Uncle Chainsaw The Terrifyer Hot Sauce Review

Uncle Chainsaw The Terrifyer

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5VznCikuLc 

Note: I understand this sauce has gone through an evolution of sorts, as sauces sometimes do, and now uses red Jalapenos rather than Fresnos. This review is for the Fresno version.

If Uncle Chainsaw keeps going like this, I’m going to haul off and add them to my favorite saucemakers list. They do a lot of things that speak to me directly, little intangibles, such as their label art being among my favorite of any sauce maker, the overall “heavy metal” vibe, the admonishment to keep refrigerated after opening, the use of bold text to highlight the ingredient list, which come directly after the nutritional facts, a lot of little things that isolated are perhaps less significant, but the devil is in the details, kids, and it all adds up. 

Perhaps my favorite thing is the seeming deliberateness of the ingredient selection. I thought their previous sauce, reviewed elsewhere here, was super impressive and well-thought out and this sauce, despite far fewer ingredients no less so. That sauce utilized Calabrians, one of my favorite peppers, and this one uses Fresnos, yet another of my favorite peppers. That this one is largely, for lack of better description, more of a Lousiana-style in looseness, at least, I was pretty pre-disposed to love it. That doesn’t mean I always will with sauces, of course, but it was pretty nicely teed up. 

I did and do love it, as it turns out. Fresnos can be a bit of a pain to come across, but for all that, I don’t understand why more sauce makers don’t use them. In a lot of ways, they’re kind of the ultimate cheat button to make a sauce nearly instantly taste better. Here, the sauce highlights that pepper. Garlic comes after the Fresnos in the ingredient list and in the flavor, as well, with a very nice grace afternote, unlike some sauces that treat garlic as a hammer with which to pound one’s taste buds. As it is a Fresno, heat is fairly minimal, but this is very much a flavor first mindset from this maker, yet another feather in the cap for them. 

The one minor issue I have here is with the looseness. As I’ve noted many times, sauce consistency can and will dramatically influence flexibility. The more runny a sauce is, the more that needs to be taken into consideration in terms of application. So, while I think a much thicker version of this would be borderline heaven on pizza, for instance, it is much too watery to work there. The purity of this sauce also means it will need to be agitated frequently. Think of it very much in terms of where you might use a Louisiana-style.

Bottom line: In a lot of ways, this is a celebration of the Fresno, where even the fruity nature of the pepper while shine though here and there, all in a quite wonderful and delicious setting.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

Hot Line Pineapple Paradise Hot Sauce Review

Hot Line Pineapple Paradise

I think of a lot of things when I consider the term “paradise.” A lot of people think of tropical beaches on distant islands, perhaps, places which I immediately think will be hot, sweltering, overly humid pseudo-swamps, but I presume they are meaning more of that idea that was heavily popularized in the 80s, thanks to stuff like the Magnum P.I. tv show and the Hawaiian Tourism Board. 

Point being that usually paradise is used to denote something really good and enjoyable and I’d imagine that was their other motivation for choosing this...while there are certainly tropical fruits in this, or at least one in particular, that being pineapple, I can’t say that the secondary definition I just mentioned would apply much here. I’ve mentioned it numerous times before in other reviews, but this is a very well-represented segment of the market, both the fruit-based sweet hots and in particular the tropical fruit-based sweet hots, many of which I’ve covered (see TOC at right). 

I’ve mentioned the two main approaches I think a hot sauce company can take if they decide to enter into that segment (see other reviews for those), but there is also a third, which is one this one does, and that is to put out what amounts to basically just another entry, kind of making a sauce just to have one, I suppose, as in we also have one of those, so to speak. 

While I love the name “Hot Line” and appreciate the use of a flask, that is where my admiration sort of ends. The consistency and color resemble applesauce a bit, which I find off-putting to a degree. Flavor-wise, this is very, very apple cider vinegar forward. If there is a taste, beyond onion-derivative, of course, that I wish not to find in a sauce, it is definitely that overused, overhyped, and generally disgustingly-flavored vinegar and it is unfortunately here in abundance. I get it, people buy the hype that it’s supposed healthy (a claim wholly unbacked by evidence) and people actually drink the shit, but I find it vile. Some sauces do a great job of having it not be prominent or, even more rarely, use it effectively, but I can’t say that is the case here. This does depend a bit on what you use it on, though, as I did have it on a few things where it was more a garlicky pineapple sort of vibe and the vinegar did not come overly to the fore.

This does become a problem in usage. With fruit-based sweet hots, you need to pair the fruit to whatever you’re using the sauce on. Depending on the fruit, this will inherently limit flexibility. When you have an external element in the sauce this prominent, you also need to pair the food with that as well. So, if you happen to like, say, pineapple on pizza, as I do, this is not a candidate for that, as the last thing I would want sullying up a nice good pie is the flavor or odor of stinky-foot vinegar. Heat-wise, it’s very modest, as it’s only Habanero and pretty far back in the mix.

Bottom line: For me, this sauce is not particularly representative of the segment it’s trying to enter, let alone a good example of it. If you somehow like apple cider vinegar, you may like it more.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 2

Infinity Sauces Barrel Aged Limited Edition Hot Sauce Review

Infinity Sauces Barrel Aged Limited Edition

This is one of those sauces that only comes around once in a while, the sort of special sauce that you try to make sure the food matches that quality of the sauce, so as not to waste any of it on inferior food items. This was limited to 350 bottles, to celebrate the 9th anniversary of the Heat Hot Sauce Shop, and I’m not sure how they could possibly recreate it exactly, given that there was a barrel that had whiskey in it for 4 years, then stout in it for another year, then the hot sauce itself for another year after that. 

My interest initially stemmed from the peaches, as I can just never seem to have enough fruit-based sweet hots, but the peaches, despite being one of the early ingredients in the list, don’t really show up much here as a main flavor component.  Same with the Habaneros, which impart a nice, soft heat to things. This is much more a composite sauce, with everything melding into a whole much greater than the sum of its parts, into a wonderful unity of deliciousness, with the myriad grace notes one might expect from the barrel treatment, along with the mustard and spices harmonizing well together. This is truly a beautiful, brilliant sauce, and I don’t mean so much the color, which is a very pleasant brown, but what this sauce emerged from its wooden chrysalis as.

It is very unique and I can’t think of anything quite like it, but it also has that intangible “it” quality to things, which comes along very rarely in ones lifetime at all, let alone in a condiment, but as it’s one of those “know it when you see it...or taste it, in this case” things, it is immediately set apart. When those things comes along, I feel one must take care to make sure they are enjoying it as much as they can, for when it’s gone, it will be nothing more than memories (and a blog entry and forthcoming video, at least for this one), which goes back to my earlier point. 

The flavor borders on indescribable, but peaches and mustard may not be what comes immediately to mind, in terms of pairing, and to be sure, this is more of a whole grain/stone ground mustard, I suspect, but here they mesh with the Habaneros and vinegar and whatever spices were cleverly chosen. This result, accordingly to the label, surpassed Infinity’s wildest expectations and I don’t doubt it. This is peak form, as far as flavor (it is slightly more watery than I would like) for this kind of process, storing a couple different boozes, followed up by a hot sauce, in a barrel. It won’t go with everything, so judiciousness in pairing is necessary, but the process of finding where it belong (start with fried foods) and the resulting elevation is a joy.

Bottom line: This kind of sauce comes the closest to transcending my rating system, as it kind of defies categorization. If you care at all about hot sauce, this is truly one for the ages and a must.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Hot N' Saucy Beets N' Fresno Hot Sauce Review

Hot N' Saucy Beet N' Fresno

This is pretty close to what I had in mind when I initially picked up a hot sauce with beets as an ingredient. Beets are very forward in the mix, though oddly, they can run into pretty substantial flavor cancellation in the one area I really wanted this sauce for...namely, salads, and by that, I mean the green ones with lettuce and so on, not the mayo ones. I have a hard time with salads and if it doesn’t have eggs or beets, I struggle with being interested. I think beets generally are pretty undersung and the idea of using them in a hot sauce tickled me.

So, when I saw this on vaca, with its lovely fluorescent pink label, despite not being especially impressed by the other sauce I’d had from them, the one from the Hot Ones with Pepperoncini (see playlist at right), I didn’t hesitate at all. Not only did this feature one of my favorite pods, the Fresno, it additionally had beets first and seemed pretty straightforward with relatively few ingredients.

Indeed, this is almost a beet puree in terms of texture (so make sure to agitate thoroughly) and, perhaps to a degree, color, and everywhere that beets could go and would be good, so too for this sauce. I particularly enjoyed it on fried foods and, to a degree, on the salads, but I tried multiple salads with multiple dressings and oddly, only on the Caesar did the beets read through to any degree. Fortunately, the Fresnos did a very nice job, as they always do, on the flavor end...although, as they are also the only heat driver, this is a fairly tame sauce. Still, this bottle was the sauce I emptied by far the fastest this year and I definitely will be picking up more. 

Bottom line: If you are a beet enjoyer, you will find much to love about this sauce, as I did, but if you don’t, you can probably safely skip this one. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6