Lola's Family Reserve Hot Sauce Review

Lola’s Family Reserve

After being generally unimpressed with the other 5 sauces I’ve done from this company, I wasn’t really expecting a lot out of this one. I bought it on a whim, same time as I bought the Mango one (reviewed elsewhere here) on vacation in Minnesota last summer, figuring that with the extra expense they put into the packaging (not pictured, but it came in a cardboard box, similar to how Tabasco used to), this might be a better, or at least hotter, sauce.

It turned out to be both better and hotter. If you picture the Valentina Black Label, with a substantial boost of heat, yet sharing some of the flavor characteristics of the Arizona Gunslinger sauces I’ve done (particularly with how overly salty they are), and steered more at being an everyday style sauce, you’ve about got it. This one does seem slightly thinner than the Valentina, but the color and texture are much more in line with that. It doesn’t seem like they were trying to make a Mexican-style sauce so much as an everyday sauce and the results were successful in that regard.

For a good everyday sauce, it needs to basically run the gamut of non-specialized food types (and by my reckoning, Asian foods and desserts would be considered specialized) and at least work acceptably in those scenarios and this one does, up to and including Mexican food. Considering the lineage - there are many references to the Original (also reviewed elsewhere here) on the label - it is small wonder. I wouldn’t say it’s as good as the Tamazula Black Label (yes, also reviewed elsewhere here), which is my current go-to in that regard, but it does work decently. So too on pizza and chicken tendies and on the wide variety of other sundries one might reasonably expect from a good, solid everyday sauce.

In addition to this reading as overly salty (enough to drag down the Flavor rating a bit), it also lists the mighty mighty Reaper as the first ingredient. Also included in the fun are Jalapenos and Habaneros, but it is those two that seem to constitute most of the flavor, with some notable heat, probably right at the line a non-chilehead would consider too much, but with no accompanying Reaper or bitter superhot flavor element, which I admittedly find kind of puzzling. Lime is also listed, but thankfully it does not factor prominently into proceedings here.

Bottom line: This is easily the hottest and best sauce Lola’s has produced and by my accounting, the only one really worth bothering with from them.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 10
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 6

Captain Mowatt's Blue Flame & Fireberry Hot Sauce(s) Review

Captain Mowatt’s Blue Flame
Captain Mowatt’s Fireberry

A new (to me) sauce company hailing from Maine, more or less halfway between Boston and Bangor and damn near to Canada, one could argue, where the sauces all come in generous 8 fl. oz. bottles. I don’t now remember how I stumbled across it, but they had a few sauces that seemed pretty interesting, so I took a shot at ordering some delectables along with those sauces to sample and these are the first two I’ve gotten to. They are not, I should hasten to add, despite both using Red Jalapenos, Cayenne, and Birds Eye as the chiles in the mix, particularly similar sauces, but because I can’t get it out of my head when I see berries, I immediately think of desserts, as I did for both of here.

This was an error on my part. They are not really dessert sauces, not sweet enough, I would say. The Fireberry (raspberry) is slightly sweeter and the Blue Flame (blueberry) somewhat more umami in nature, but neither really lends itself well to desserts per se. Overall, in fact, I found they worked better on as a less sweet dipping sauce for things like jalapeno poppers and in the case of the Blue Flame, as accompaniment to breakfast foods, pairing with maple syrup a bit. I didn’t find them to stray outside of that greatly, but have considerable plans to put these to the fire when grill season rolls back around on things like burgers and chicken, at least for the Fireberry. I suspect at least one will make a pretty interesting grill sauce.

This is not to say I don’t enjoy them. I do think both of them have an excellent flavor, though I do favor the blueberry a bit more. Part of that comes down to the idea that I think blueberry lends itself well to sauces and syrups a bit more readily than does raspberry, which I generally prefer to be raw, from a flavor standpoint. I am having some fun trying these out on different things, but I can’t say that I’ve discovered any particular new and exciting combination...yet, anyway. Heat wise, neither of them is particularly hot, which is to be expected given the peppers involved.

Bottom line: A more savory approach to berry forward fruit-based hot sauces, which I find an interesting approach, but ultimately more middle of the road as a final result for both.

Blue Flame Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 3

Fireberry Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Bohica Hawaiian Lava Hot Sauce Review

Bohica Pepper Hut Hawaiian Lava

I was unfamiliar with the usage of "bohica" and so found a lot of the verbiage on the label kind of strange, but upon finding the sort of vulgar pretext for what seems to be military slang, it seems more fitting. It doesn't really apply to the sauce, but it is less nonsensical now, if that makes sense, and no I'm not describing it here. You can look it up if you don't already know and are interested.

That aside, this is another sauce in which I’m tempted to do a very short review and call this “just another” pineapple-forward fruit-based sweet-hot with one pepper subbed out for another, which is true, but there is an entire litany of ingredients, including three separate fruit juices and a host of spices. While I think that it is mostly the case that this is a fairly uncomplex sauce, in terms of flavor, and a lot of pineapple flavor and pulp doing most of the lifting, there is also a fairly notable pepper presence, probably from the combination of the yellow Bells and the yellow 7-Pot Primos.

I don’t think I’ve had either a yellow 7-Pot Primo or a pineapple sauce with any 7-Pot, at least not in memory if I have, but the main difference here is a slight bitterness whereas the sauces with Scotch Bonnet or Habaneros tend more towards the fruitier side of things. The Reaper sauces have a foot in both worlds and that is mainly how those read out. This one, like many other pineapple sauces that tend to be on the pulpier and pale yellow side, is not anywhere near as sweet as some others I’ve had, which is a bit of a shame, as that is my preference, but it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with some good pineapple puree and pulp in the proceedings, to be sure. It also falls more or less in the middle of the pack in terms of thickness, with a bit of looseness, but no actual separation, happily.

Given the 7-Pot, one might expect this sauce to be a bit on the roaring side, but it is not. Indeed, it is far, far from it, with the sauce overall being rather tame, despite the odd label intimation. This does allow one to get more of a read on the ingredients and try to pick up the grace notes, but by far, the more prominent flavors here are the pineapple and the pepper combination.

Bottom line: I don’t mean to damn it with faint praise, but this is, when all is said and done, a sort of middle of the pack entry into one of the more established sauce types.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5