Butterfly Bakery Heatonist No. 3 Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Heatonist No. 3 Pink Peppercorn Gin

No matter how many sauces I try and review and sample and so on, I’m always up for being blown away. This one, with its synthesis of high culinary prowess, merges my love for being a food adventurer and foodie (no surprise it’s a spinoff from a bakery, which might wind up on my bucket list for visiting someday) with just a brilliant flash of skill with hot sauce in the flavors of this sauce.

So long as there is a Hot Ones show and sauces exclusive to Heatonist and so long as I keep going with my Hot Ones project, link at right, there will be a need to maintain a wish list there, which also helps me keep track of sauces I still need to cover. There is also this Heatonist numbered series, whereon various sauce makers create something in commemoration of Heatonist and maybe their tasting room, which I envision sort of like a wine-tasting thing. No idea if that is true or not, but if it is, smart idea. Anyway, since those are also exclusive to Heatonist, and since some sauce makers I’ve been impressed with have some entries there, those are also on my wish list.

So, last year, they had a site-wide sale, along with getting free freight at a certain point, and those are always good opportunities to stock up when you’re covering a wide and varied selection of sauces, such as yours truly does, but once I got it in hand, I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the applications and was not familar with Butterfly Bakery at the time, so I sat it on the shelf for later...and then proceeded to forget for a few months. Once I did have my first BB experience earlier this year, I dug it back out and moved it forward in the on-deck circle.

Not really knowing what to expect, I was initially taken aback by the sort of bright, lively and effervescent nature of this, with the gin coming to the fore, followed by a rich and lovely Serrano and Habanero base. From there, it seemed like there were a lot of umami notes, presumably from the pink peppercorn, with garlic notable, but not very forward or overpowering. There is also horseradish, but I didn’t really get a lot of that in the flavor. This is really a pretty spectacular explosion of flavors, with a lot of delicate balances and hints in there that emerge, depending on where you use it. For me, it was definitely with lighter meats and I liked this enough that I wanted to put it in a setting where it could have its head and be the sort of “star,” so I’d say less rich foods generally will work best here. It would probably also be very nice in drinks, with the cucumber and lime adding a bit of a refreshing aspect. Given the peppers, this is not especially challenging, but it is clearly not intending to be face-melting, but more a “foodie’s” sauce. The more I use it, the more I appreciate it and this is truly a special sauce.

Bottom line: Yet another mind-blowing concoction from the increasingly impressive Butterfly Bakery...the more heavily you’re into the “foodie” side of things, the more you’ll appreciate it.

 Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7