Irish Spike’s Smoked Ghost Beeer Mustard Hot Sauce Review

Irish Spike’s Spike Of Life Smoked Ghost Beeer Mustard

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6IinjItkI8 

The second of the two Irish Spike sauces, also another that is very kitchen-sink in approach, but this is by far the better of the two. Here we have a very clever use of a beer wort to accompany the mustard, tomato, and the Ghosties, all of which complement each other wonderfully into a sauce that is very much its own distinct thing, but retains enough flexibility, to an extent well beyond what I find most hot sauces that incorporate mustard into the mix normally do.

To be sure, while this is not a mustard calling itself a hot sauce, by any means, it does well with a good portion of the foods where you’d normally want a mustard. It is quite chunky, with bits of minced garlic, among other elements, in the mix, so I don’t see that it would work well in something like a potato salad, for instance, but if you wanted to amp up a brat or a sandwich or especially a burger, this is a quite good choice. I do find the texture a bit off-putting, and so, while I did enjoy it on chicken tendies from a flavor perspective, I did not enjoy the mouth feel of the sauce that directly.

Another minor complaint is that this is in far too thick of a plastic for the bottle. I assume they meant it to be a squeeze bottle, but the plastic is stiff to begin with and not very helped by being refrigerated. There’s a reason that most squeezable bottles are either fairly thin-walled or have a rubberizer component and it is to retain that flex. This has almost none and the mouth is far too thin to pour, so one winds up flipping the cap and trying to shake out however much sauce is desired, which is kind of annoying. It does flow fairly readily, which is good, but this is just the wrong containment choice for this (and probably any) sauce.

Heat-wise, we are basically at Ghosties and they work a charm here. A lot of people have at least a sliver of doubt cross their minds when I tell them I think Ghosties are a fine-flavored chile, even if they are a superhot, and nowhere is this more evident than in a sauce like this, where they are used to fine effect. I think this may challenge some non-chileheads a bit, but it is more than tasty enough to make up for that.

Bottom line: One of the more interesting hot sauces I’ve had from a flavor perspective and quite delicious, even if the mouth feel is a bit dicey for me. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 6