Uncle Chainsaw A Fuego Hot Sauce Review

Uncle Chainsaw A Fuego 

As a chile and garlic flavored vinegar, this one is pretty nice. The peppers show up a bit on the back end and the garlic has a nice subtlety to it, after you get past the belt of vinegar. This, however, is indicated as a hot sauce, though the website refers to it as a style called chili water. The predominant vinegar is intentional, as is the lack of suspension for the various particles. We are going to be considering and rating it here as a hot sauce, given that is the nomenclature on the bottle, which again has a lot of the heavy metal motifs that are one of my favorite things about this maker. 

One of the facets with this style is its extreme looseness and consistency, which is basically watery. The second is that it is more or less as I described as a chile and garlic flavored vinegar, but perhaps infused would be more accurate than flavored. You will wind up with a big old hit of vinegar, just a solid punchy belt right in the kisser of that pungency. There are shades of fresh garlic as well, though nowhere near as prominent and way in the back of all that is some slight heat and chile flavor. It definitely doesn’t taste bad...once the vinegar wanes a bit. 

For most of us, hot sauces are something we like to pair with various foods, but with this kind of product, it definitely needs to be incorporated as part of something else...unless that astringency slug is what you want. I think it will probably work very nicely in a dressing or for making refrigerator pickles, but that’s not really what I’m after in a hot sauce. If you want something as an ingredient to cook with, buying a hot sauce is a very expensive way of going about it. 

Taking this as a hot sauce, the issue of application is apparent. Trying to pour this frequently sees it running down the threads of the bottle and sometimes into the label. This is absolutely one in strong need of a restrictor cap, but even if it had one, I wouldn’t pair a more or less straight white vinegar with any of the foods I generally eat. I definitely have uses for this kind of thing and will use it, definitely, but as I described in the previous paragraph. 

Bottom line: Not really a hot sauce, much more a chile & garlic vinegar or “chili water” that has the wrong labeling. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 2 

Pepper North Red Serrano & Reaper Hot Sauce Review

Pepper North Red Serrano & Reaper

My first (and prior to this, only) experience with Pepper North was another that arose due to a sauce being on The Hot Ones show. It was called Stargazer and is reviewed elsewhere here. I loved the idea, loved the title, as it hearkens back to a great song on one of the best rock albums ever, from one of my favorite bands, Rainbow, at a time when they were fronted by one of the all-time greats Ronnie James Dio, dearly missed still, and under the helm of the maestro Ritchie Blackmore. The sauce itself, however, did not quite live up to all of that majesty and was ok, but kept surprising me by not ever quite being as good as I thought it was or should be.

I saw this on the shelf of BYT one day, it might have been on clearance, memory no longer serves, but the first two words were Red Serrano, a pepper I have grown quite fond of. I still dislike the green Serranos, which are tragically the ones available most of the time in grocery stores, but the reds are simply phenomenal. If there was a great pepper to pair with the Reapers to sort of modify the flavor favorably, it is probably a Fresno, but if there was a slightly less great, but still entirely wonderful pod, it is definitely the red Serrano. There was some nice maple in there to boot, along with some Chipotle powder to round things out and I missed that the label called it a 9/10 Ultra Hot, so I was somewhat excited to see what the mix was here.

When I opened the bottle, it was blazing Reaper superhot bitter and not much else, which mystified me considerably. It was then that I looked at the label and ingredients and observed what I evidently had not before. So, I socked it away in the fridge door, where it sat for quite a while and I set about experimenting with it. It did nicely in nearly everything I tried it on and as the sauce level in the bottle lowered and I was able to agitate it better, a gorgeous sauce emerged, more in line with the flavor notes I was hoping for. It worked very nicely on nearly everything I put it on, everything from ramen to pizza, from mac & cheese to various meats. I’d even suspect it would do well in both an Asian food and Mexican food setting, making this one of the more flexible sauces I’ve had in a while. 

For all that, there is no getting around the fact that this is very much a superhot sauce and the mighty mighty Reapers are fully activated here. This sauce also does a nice job of building in heat, even though it’s pretty punchy out of the gate. I suspect this will be well beyond where most normies will find enjoyable or probably even tolerable, but I’d anticipate chileheads will find it fairly satisfying, particularly those who are also foodies. It’s good to have a sauce like this around as it packs a quite decent wallop without having to use a whole bunch of it. 

Bottom line: A sauce that bloomed into a surprisingly lovely, impressive sauce, a rare combination of delicious and quite roasty.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 10
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8

2026 Q2 Update

2026 Q2 Update

For as much time and angst as I’ve spent bemoaning the backlog of content, one of the good parts about it, which is why I do always want somewhat of one, is when something happens. It could be vacation, an extended work project, or, much less fortunately, what it was for nearly all of April, some medical-ish stuff. In this case, it was an old root canal that went really, really south and created all sorts of havoc and misery for nearly the entire month of April and extended into May. On the plus token, I only had a single video to film and I’d be set through June as far as the FOH series went and had a good couple week cushion or so on the blog front. Keeping the scheduled stream of content uninterrupted, even if relatively unimportant in le grande scheme of things, turned out to be a nice saving grace.  

Along the way, this quarter also saw the blog hit 700 overall posts. The 700th overall hot sauce review will be at some point, probably fairly early in the quarter, for Q3. Further, it took around 9 months to go from 100K views to 250K, where it was closing in on the 2026 Q1 Update. As I type this now, if we’re not there already, we’re now closing in on 500K. 

Hot Ones Season 30 had the sauces announced on the Ides Of May and it looked to be yet another onion-heavy season. It added a total of exactly one to the upcoming Hot Ones sauce hit list project, which will be detailed a bit more below. Also, it took until about then for me to get the necessary parts and the weather to start to look to be cooperative enough to kick off grill season, which is probably the latest in the year it’s been in recent memory. Sure is a good thing that fucking up the weather patterns won’t have any future repercussions or anything...the delay was fine, though, given how utterly trashed my appetite was from what I mentioned in the preceding section...although, after replacing the heat tent, I now need to once again re-learn the whims and whys of my increasingly questionable grill. 

That aside, for the last 2 years, I’ve been looking specifically at the most represented sauce makers for full reviews in this blog and if you check the Q2 for both 2024 and 2025, you can see the lists there. This will be the third year and once again, there are changes. Let’s start with where we left off last year, as usual these numbers are not reflective of any sub-lines, such as vanity sauces, co-packed sauces, etc. OR of Mini Reviews.

2025 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)

I was not expecting much, if any movement, given what I had planned ahead for the rest of the year, as has been documented a bit in the other Quarterly updates. As has also been documented, I wound up with a lot more flexibility and took a look at a couple of sauce makers I meant to explore more fully. Those were both on my favored nation sauce makers, which was the subject of a different blog post that you can access via the TSAAF SOTY link at the right. The thing here is that if I discover a sauce maker makes a sauce I enjoy, if it is of sufficiently high level, I will be motivated to go through their entire line-up of offerings. This doesn’t necessarily mean I will do that, but the impetus is there. 

With that, let’s take a look at the revised numbers for 2026, which are updated with a new total that I added for funsies of the cumulative rating for each maker, given the sauces I’ve reviewed. This data is near-worthless as it is very skewed, given my proclivities and food intolerances, so take it only as a point of interest reflective solely of the data on the blog, itself also highly subjective. I try to be as neutral as possible, but reviews are opinions and all opinions ar e inherently subjective. The cumulative average rating for the blog, as of December 2025, is 4.64, as a point of reference.

Anyway, the format is [Position]. [Sauce Maker] [Number Of Full Reviews On Blog] (Number of Support Videos Available) {Cumulative Average Rating Across All Full Reviews}:

1. CaJohn’s* [21] (19 videos posted) {5.19}
2. Angry Goat [20] (all videos posted) {5.35}
3. Hellfire [15] (12 videos posted) {5.4}
4. Silk City [14] (all videos posted) {5.71}
5 - 6 (tie) Butterfly Bakery [13] (12 videos posted) {6.15}
Gindo’s [13] (all videos posted) {6.84}
7 - 9 (tie) Pex [9] (all videos posted) {4}
Puckerbutt* [9] (all videos posted) {4.44}
Volcanic Peppers [9] (6 videos posted) {5.33}
10 Karma* [8] (all videos posted) {5}

 
*Does not include any sub-lines, such as specific vanity sauces, the Smokin’ Ed, and/or Hot Ones branded sauces.

I was not expecting movement near the top, as Angry Goat was one I made a point to explore and kept tabs on from time to time. CaJohn’s was a larger name during the formative years of this blog, so much of that came from early on, when I was exploring the lineup back when John Hard still owned the company. Today, unfortunately, I feel as if the company has fallen off notably since that time and I don’t know that they’ve introduced any new sauces at all under that nameplate. That top spot is perhaps more inertia than anything. 

I had similarly also explored Silk City, though that company is on my list to return to for some newer stuff at a future point, with the entire line-ups of Hellfire, Karma, Bravado, and Torchbearer being pretty well mined, as far as I was concerned. For Pex, there was a couple of sauces in which I had casual interest, and have a sauce from Puckerbutt at hand, but have not gotten to as of yet. This is all relatively minor movement from what is mostly a point of curiousity list. Volcanic was the only one that had potential to move the needle, but I had (and still have) a pretty solid glut of sauces that are more or less in the Louisiana-style category, so it looked to be a while for those as well. 

Gindo’s, which has the highest composite score by a sizable margin, had been on my list to try and explore in a similar way as I’ve described above for a while. Butterfly was another in that vein in which I was very motivated to dig further into and for both of those, the stars aligned very nicely with some sales in which I was happily able to pick up a slew from each. This has moved the threshold for entry into this into the high single digits rather than the middle single digits as previously, with over half of the makers into double digits. If I had to guess, and as soon as I do, will undoubtedly be proven wrong, but I’d suspect the cap would be at around a couple dozen. 24 sauces from a single brand is quite a lot, I think, given that I am not counting either sub-lines or known relabels. There will probably be a bit more movement for next year as well, as I’ve still got a few Butterfly sauces on tap waiting on the shelf to be opened.

One of the other things I like to do for this mid-year update is to take a look at The Hot Ones project. Let’s turn now to that The Hot Ones sauce coverage project. All of this, as always, is updated on the Hot Ones Sauces page (link at right) as to which sauces are still under consideration and which are not, along with the reasons why not.

The big change here, I guess, is that I finally have, in my grubby mitts, the Torchbearer Zombie Apocalypse sauce, so I guess I will get to that this year, to kind of cement the early seasons. I am now concluded through season 23, barring a single sauce here and there in some of the seasons. By the end of the year, that may wind up being the case through season 25, bringing me ever close to at least closing in on being caught up. This project is still being slow-walked, due to the variety of factors I’ve mentioned in other updates, including the end of the year update from 2025. For now, we continue at the pace of one Hot Ones sauce per quarter, rather than one a month. 

Current to now, the seasons with sauces outstanding are:

Season 3 - 1 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 4 - 1 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 21 - 1 remaining 
Season 23 - 1 remaining 
Season 24 - 2 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 25 - 2 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 26 - 3 remaining 
Season 27 - 6 remaining 
Season 28 - 4 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 29 - 5 remaining
Season 30 - 3 remaining

These are the individual sauces remaining, by slot position on the show:

#1 - 4 remaining
#2 - 2 remaining (1 at hand)
#3 - 3 remaining*            
#4 - 2 remaining 
#5 - 1 remaining 
#6 - fully covered
#7 - 3 remaining (2 at hand)
#8 - fully covered
#9 - 2 remaining (1 at hand)
#10 - 2 remaining

*For one of the #3 slot sauces, it has appeared in other seasons at the #2 position, but they have moved it for Season 30. 

Stanky The Clasico Hot Sauce Review

Stanky The Clasico

I suppose I might be accused of being elitist, perhaps even a bit narrow, in my tastes, to which I would agree to the first characterization and dissent fairly firmly on the second...but there are some areas in which I want something specific and things that fall outside of that, I might find in question. If they fall far outside of it, the odds tend to decrease that I will look on it favorably. Case in point, Mexi-style sauces and astringency. One of the very last things I look for in that style of sauce is pungency. I more want a richness and warmth and a depth of flavor, along with some solid heat, and maybe a tinge of astringency, but not a lot more than that. In this case, there is unfortunately quite a bit more.

I’ve seen this company around for a while and might have gotten them confused with Funky’s and that whole fermented scene, but I vaguely remembered the sauces I looked at from them having onions, so I put them on the backburner for a while...a long while. Eventually, as it turned out, I had some space and figured now might be a good time, despite me finding their name a touch odd - it is a sort of nickname for the last name of the owners, not a reference to something Ike Turner famously told Tina Turner to put on her vocals while in the studio - now being the moment to give them a shot and figured I’d start with the sauce that sounded like sort of a “house” sauce. If companies have one of these, it is often times the most accessible and since this was the introductory sauce from them, I figured it would be a good starting point, despite not really having anything resembling heat in the ingredients.

There are a lot of “from concentrates” and powders here, which gives me a touch of pause whenever I see that, as often that will wind up being reflected in the overall flavor. In this case, there is quite a lot of vinegar and citrus competing for palate space, but I was able to tamp those down here and there, depending on pairing, and then got hit with a fairly abrasive garlic hit. The ingredient list definitely leans pretty strongly into the idea this is meant to be a Mexi-style sauce and given that they’re a Florida company, I assume the inclusion of key lime is meant to be a reference to that, but altogether, it’s just too much and comes across as a bit sour. It is definitely well, well outside of what I want in a Mexi-style sauce, a facet of which is that the sauce needs to be delicious on its own. For me, this one is decidedly not. 

Bottom line: It’s possible I may consider something else from them down the line, but I found this sauce to be quite underwhelming and not something I am going to continue with.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 1 

Splintered Lu'au Pohaku Hot Sauce Review

Splintered Lu’au Pohaku

This is, to my memory, the first time I’ve had the combination of Carolina Reaper and pineapple, but it makes sense. We see a lot of Habanero and pineapple as well as Scotch Bonnets and sometimes we may see a Ghostie floating around, but rarely does this type seem to get too far into the superhots, particularly the upper level. I really liked this idea, given that it was possibly a new spin on pineapple sauces. Pineapple is also one of my favorite fruits, so even discounting the onion powder and garlic powder in the ingredient list, I had high hopes.

Those hopes were temporarily dashed into the rocks when I first opened the bottle at room temperature. The sauce had a foul odor and a fairly unpleasant taste and it seemed directly attributed to those aromatics I mentioned. Sauces of this type almost never have those elements and it’s largely because they’re unnecessary. Here, despite being near the end of the ingredient list, they were quite distracting, to the point I was debating whether or not I was going to do a video. For me not to film a video on a sauce, it has to repel me to the extent that under no circumstances do I ever want to taste it again, even for a video. It’s been a while since that’s happened, so for this to be the case, that’s kind of saying something.

But...as is my wont, I threw it in the fridge to see what it was like chilled. Refrigerating sauces can change the flavor complex, sometimes pretty considerably, so I was hopeful the sauce would be more tolerable colder. It was, almost to the letter, as in I found it tolerable rather than something I disliked, but not much more than that. This was a shame, as clearly pineapple is used in the sauce, as it is quite nicely pulpy and thick. The body of this sauce, in fact, was fantastic. There is a decent pineapple flavor, but despite it being the first ingredient, it is trampled under foot by the aromatics. I also did like the combination of the Reapers and Jalapenos and if those two ingredients I mentioned in the first paragraph were simply absent, this would be a far better sauce.

As it stands, I kind of think this is using the flavors that might be utilized to prepare Kalua pig and tossing them into a sauce, given the Lu’au name for the sauce, but they might have just tried to make a different approach for a very saturated segment of the market. I did find it worked to much varying extents, depending on what it was paired with, so I’m happily more able to come to terms with it, but this is ultimately very against my preferences. Despite the Carolina Reaper, which is paired here with the more flavorful Jalapeno, this is overall a quite mild sauce.

Bottom line: If your tastes for this kind of sauce run to more the semi-sweet and you wouldn’t mind some onion and garlic with your pineapple sauce, this is probably worth a shot.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3 

Butterfly Bakery Maple Chocolate Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Maple Chocolate Ghost

Reviews like this are among the most challenging to write. Like other Vermont sauce makers Angry Goat and Silk City, Butterfly Bakery is in my favored nation sauce maker list (see SOTY list at right for link to that page) and like those other two, they are very intent on experimenting and presenting flavors that are quite unique in the world of hot sauce. However, like both of those other two, in doing so, they have created a sauce that has missed a bit with me and it is this one right here.

I refer to these sauces with the phrase “more interesting than good,” and it’s not necessarily a knock, as those words mean distinctly different things. They are not mutually exclusive attributes, by any means, but at the end of the day, not everything is always going to hit. Here, I should be pre-disposed to love this sauce. It has my favorite superhot, the lovely Ghosties, presented front and center and backed by the usual mash accompaniments, but also by maple syrup and cocoa. It is herein that I think the problem lies for me. When you use the word “chocolate,” it implies certain things. The chocolate we generally know is created by melding a sugar, usually a lot of it, cocoa powder, and cocoa butter (or possibly another fat). This sauce seemingly has 2 of those 3 things and of the 2, neither is in great amount, at least not enough to greatly influence the flavor profile in comparison to the Ghosties. Calling this one Maple Cocoa Ghost would have been more reflective of what’s in the bottle. 

Every superhot, Ghosties included, have a facet of frequently being intensely bitter. Cocoa powder by itself is quite bitter, as any of us who tried it as a child thinking it was Nestle Quik powder can attest. So, we have bitter amplified by bitter, which creates somewhat of a feedback loop. This is also one of the thickest sauces I’ve had from anyone not named Torchbearer and so it tends to come out in dollops and the dollops tend to hold in place, especially if the sauce is cold, which further reinforces that attribute. 

This results in some difficulty in finding where this sauce fits and with what. There are some suggestions on the label, but for me, it didn’t work on ice cream, even a heavily sweet one with chocolate flakes in it. This is definitely a sauce that works best if you spread it out more, to let it meld with whatever you’re attempting to use it on. I found it best paired with aged cheeses, salty meats, and fruity cheeses, like a bluberry Stilton. The label suggests using on beans, which I’m taking as refrieds, and I could see that working better as you would have both heat and potentially stirring into something, as well as adding to a brownie batter batch, but I think it will take more playing. As this is not a particularly pleasant sauce by itself, and the thickness I mentioned means you will likely get pockets of the sauce by itself. With Ghosties this far forward, it is also probably best reserved for chileheads only, as I don’t see normies enjoying this overly. This does, however, represent the attributes of Ghosties well, in that it ratchets immediately to as hot as it will get, which for me was somewhat over a 2, and then camps there. Additionally, this is one of those where a little goes quite a way, so the bottle should last quite a while...

Bottom line: While I appreciate that the Ghosties are this forward, I think for me, the tuning on this one would need to be both a thinner sauce, as well as a much sweeter one. It did inspire quite a bit of curiousity in me, however, and I will continue to play around with it...

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3

Gindo's Nashville Hot Pickle Hot Sauce Review

Gindo’s Nashville Hot Pickle

Note: This is the 700th overall post for this here blog.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qt02EhFr-E 

I’m not really the hugest fan of dill in hot sauces. I definitely like dill as a flavoring and have made many a dill dip and, as a kid, used to chew on the herb raw during the summer months, but I find that I like it only in fairly specific areas. One of the major areas of interest to me with hot sauces is pairing them to foods and when you have a fairly strong herb presence, such as dill, in a hot sauce, that also needs to be paired, in addition to all the other components. So, for all that, traditionally I have found hot sauces using dill to be a bit limited in where I like it. But, like with many other ingredients, put it in the hands of a master and things change. I won’t go so far as to say I’m a believer now, but my eyes are much more open to the light now...

I think in concept that this is a brilliant marriage of flavors. Nashville Hot I’ve had in many ways, or at least in many ways of people calling it that, but heavy Cayenne will generally have my interest and the highly flexible nature of that pepper goes a long way in forgiving tinkering. I should now note that there is no Cayenne, or at least none listed, in this sauce. Also, pickle sauces...so these tie in with my earlier comments on dill and a lot of them seem like nothing more than pureed pickle, to which I always wonder, what’s the point? Why am I buying a liquefied version of that? I can just make that my damn self, but pickle was one of the hotter trends for a while and thanks to places like Popeye’s, I can see more of a value in pickles than previously. Altogether, merging those two flavors, which should be complementary, makes a degree of sense.

But, as I said, leave it to Gindo’s to blow my mind, which this sauce instantly did. Analysis is one thing, but having your head exploded via taste buds is always a welcome experience. Here we have perhaps the ultimate version of what this union could be. This is a medium thick, gorgeous-looking sauce, using at least some of the Gindo’s base that shows up in a lot of the limited run sauces. Habanero is as hot as the peppers go, so this has a nice degree of heat, but nothing challenging. I had to check the ingredients to be sure, but there are no pickles here, just an expert use of fresh dill to create one of the more brilliant and comprehensive taste adventures I think I’ve run across in a while. 

It also sort of defies pigeon-holing. I’ve tried it on a lot of things. Some I expected it to be good and it was, but in other arenas, I was less sure and the results were sometimes good and the sometimes clashy with other strong flavors. That is, I suppose, the blessing and curse of dill, but it was absolutely a joy and great fun to experiment. This joins the Deane’s crossover sauce in the list of me wishing I had gotten multiple bottles, but if you can get a hold of this gem and like pickle-flavored products, this is an absolute must.

Bottom line: Another frankly genius and often surprising elixir from one of the greatest talents we have in the hot sauce world.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7 

Buffalo Trace Hot Sauce Review

Buffalo Trace

Yet another stealth B & G Foods sauce, a facet of which I was unaware until after I’d already received and opened the bottle, and another I found on the Amazon because I needed to add a couple of bucks for free freight. This reminds me a lot of the Four Sixes hot sauce I reviewed earlier in the year (check TOC at right), only with the heavy addition, as one might reasonably expect, of bourbon. While I think liquor, booze in general, can work in hot sauces, I find it’s a lot like extract in that most of the time it does not and it’s for a similar reason. Many of the times makers using one of those components gets very heavy-handed with the addition. In the case of this, it smells and tastes considerably of raw bourbon.

This creates a considerable problem for what is ostensibly a Lousiana-style Cayenne style. For other styles, if the liquor comes across as raw and unrefined, an application of heat to cook that off can often save the sauce. I generally will wind up sending them to the grill, particularly if they have enough sugar to help caramelize things. Given the vinegar-forward nature of this style, that is not really an option, as you will lose one of the defining characteristics of the sauce along with it. I do think the idea is potentially workable, but the bourbon needs to be much further back in the flavor mix. I’ve been saying bourbon here because in an oddity, the label says the flavor is “inspired by Buffalo Trace,” and the ingredients list bourbon and not Buffalo Trace specifically. So...why is Buffalo Trace on the label? 

I don’t know, but I can’t imagine it is any more complicated than mere branding. It’s hard to see this sauce winning over any fans, unless there is a market for a collector’s item. This is the kind of sauce you could ostensibly make by taking the aforementioned Four Sixes sauce and dumping some bourbon into it. That might be what they, in fact, did. Certainly the heat levels are similar, specifically not existent in either. 

At times, the Cayenne will try to peek its head out, but rather than being useful in restoring balance to heavier dishes, something the Louisiana-style is quite adept at, this one sort of degrades and diminishes the dishes, largely by wafting the smell of raw bourbon into your face when you bring the sauced food towards your face. It’s not outright horrible, not even the worst sauce I’ve had that has used liquor, but is also definitely not what I want in any sauce. 

Bottom line: Liquor in a sauce can work if handled carefully and gracefully. This one is a good example of when that doesn’t happen. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 1
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 1 

El Yucateco Habanero & Grilled Pineapple Hot Sauce Review

El Yucateco Habanero & Grilled Pineapple

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsPwC4hYm40 

I was pretty amped when El Yucateco came out with some new flavors a while back. I’ve had my fair share, and then some, of their regular ones and anything they do will always be of strong interest. They are frequently the next step in hot sauces for many chileheads when they get tired of the lower heat mass market stuff that tends to popular the market in the Mexican-style. 

I was amped and then I couldn’t get my greedy little grubbins on them without some major ordeals...and I noticed the word “onion” in the ingredients, which always gives me pause. I also had a number of other sauces in that style ahead of it, so I backburnered these until that fabled “someday,” but always intended to get to at least some of them. I don’t recall this one specifically, but when I saw it on the grocery store shelf where I normally shop, I figured I’d pick it up right then before they changed their minds.

As it turned out, I had recently gone through another sauce, which will be coming AFTER this both on the blog and in the video series, because that’s how I’m rolling I guess, and it was a bit more on the savory side. I had a really neat video idea in mind, but it needed the sauce to be somewhat sweeter, which this one kind of is. It definitely calls to mind both churrascos, where they do the grilled pineapple on a trompo, but even more where it might go with an al pastor type setting, or possibly chicken done in that way rather than pork. So, it didn’t quite work as I had in mind with that dish and I’m still searching, but this is overall a quite nice sauce. 

Unusual for sauces with pineapple, the Habaneros come in front of the pineapple and there is a quite forward amount of that flavor as well as some of those al pastor leanings.  Pineapple is present, to be sure, but it is a very different take on the style and probably not meant at all to live in the space where those other more fruit-forward ones we’re more familiar with does. This one does at least have a nicely appreciable degree of heat, but it’s none too much. I don’t mind this, but with the lean away from those others, this also is something I’m not sure is going to work overly great on pizza, though I am willing to try...which I will also do at some point.

Bottom line: Very lovely and intriguing sauce from El Yucateco and a bit of a surprise as well. Definitely think of this one more in that al pastor vein rather than a fruit-based sweet hot, but where it works, it works extremely well. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Mythical Meats Dragon's Breath Hot Sauce Review

Mythical Meats Dragon’s Breath

This will (probably) be the shortest full review on the blog. This is the third (and almost certainly) final of the Mythical Meats hot sauces I do from them, this one another I got from Amazon. Because of that facet, I was not aware the sauces were produced by Torchbearer, which is indicated directly on the label of this one. From the Mythical Meats website, this is a relabel of the Garlic Reaper, which I reviewed here: https://d-dubtsaaf.blogspot.com/2021/05/torchbearer-garlic-reaper-hot-sauce.html

Unlike the other two, which were slightly different from what I remembered of their Torchbearer counterparts, probably due to a batch variation, this one is exactly how I remembered the Garlic Reaper and any commentary I might make has been already covered in that review, which I will not repeat.

Bottom line: This is a relabel of the Torchbearer Garlic Reaper. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 3 

Kinder's Creamy Louisiana Hot Sauce Review

Kinder’s Creamy Louisiana

Here we have a bit of an anomaly, a strange sort of entry. It is very clearly labeled as a hot sauce, although I believe it has since been rebranded as a “Wing & Dip” sauce, which is probably more realistic. I find this functions barely as a hot sauce and if they simply marketed this erroneously, it does got a long way towards explaining things...at least some things. The label, throwing the convention of treating liquids with a volumetric nomenclature, instead goes for weight. Additionally, there is the inclusion of both Vitamin E and Green Tea Extract, both ingredients going beyond my understanding of why they’re there. 

Kinder’s is a pretty huge name in the seasoning trade, with a fairly large and wide variety of rubs and dry mixes centered more or less around meat. They have some frozen food products as well and I imagine this is part of a larger brand extension. I’ve seen many of their BBQ products and found them generally favorable, if slightly overpriced to my mind. They also have many wing sauces, but the hot sauces are new. I want to say they had some beef jerky out at one time or maybe snack sticks, but I may have just dreamed that. I try to get to the bigger names when they come out with new hot sauces and while I don’t know if Kinder’s is national or not, they do seem very present. I went in thinking that the hot sauce would be more along the lines of the other stuff I’ve had from them that I’ve mentioned above. 

The big issue here, beyond just being in a plastic bottle with slightly overly thick and rigid walls, is the off-flavor to this. I can’t put my finger on precisely what it is, but something is very off, some odd note that I find overwhelmingly distracting. It is less so when used with meat, which is why changing this to a “Wing & Dip” sauce is more reasonable, particularly if you are pairing it with a nice bleu cheese dressing, but trying to use it as an actual Lousiana-style hot sauce proved to be a mistake, as it generally fouled and degraded whatever I was putting it on. It is both somewhat harshly abrasive, as well as having those very funky flavor notes that struck me as somewhat artificial in tone. It could have been the plastic leaching or whatever they were using for the Vitamin E or the Green Tea Extract or possibly the modified dextrose or soybean oil, all ingredients I don’t generally run across in hot sauce, but I’m not familiar enough with those flavor profiles to definitively pick it out. Perhaps it’s some combination. Whatever the case, I found it rather unpalatable for the most part. It’s not all the way to inedible, but the usages are very, very narrow. Heat-wise, consistent with the style which name it uses, there is next to no heat.

Bottom line: I’ve had a lot of Louisiana-style sauces, as it is one of my favorite styles. I’ve had a lot of wing sauces as well, some of which appear in FOH videos. I truly do not know quite what they were attempting with this, as it fails as a hot sauce, while also not being especially creamy. The overall effect is just kind of bizarre and confusing.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0 

Captain Mowatt’s Jolly Roger Hot Sauce Review

Captain Mowatt’s Jolly Roger

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

The very last of the Captain Mowatt’s I got last year and possibly my favorite of the bunch, though the Canceaux Turbeaux was also excellent (reviews can be found in the TOC > link at right). It is at least the minimum of that very worthy and delectable blend. This is definitely the hottest of the bunch, with Habaneros and Ghosties holding court. I found this to have a nice degree of build, though I don’t think this will be overly challenging. It can get up there a bit, though nowhere near to the exaggeration suggested on the label, so it might be nice for normies who are ready to push the envelope a bit but not ready to go all the way to full chilehead. Chileheads will not find this particularly challenging. It is happily missing any of the bitter superhot notes.

There are quite a lot of things going on here. We have some playful fruitiness here and there from the Habs, along with a quite lovely umami punch from the seaweed, the salt, and possibly some of the other spices at hand, but the first flavor is a very nice tang from the cider vinegar. Here, though there is a touch of the foot smell from that vinegar at times, the effect as far as flavor is a lot towards tang than vinegar punch and this is one of the rare times that I think that particular vinegar works well in the blend. 

Indeed, we have here an exceedingly well-done sauce, provided you want the tang, as at home in a ramen soup as it is on fried foods or generally anywhere you might normally use a Lousiana-style sauce. It definitely is more than that, though, and this sauce is quite a bit more flexible than that style usually is. I found it very nice on a fairly wide variety of things and for quite a while, was flying through the bottle. Given that it is an 8 fl. oz. bottle, that is probably saying something. It may not have the depth and richness or accessibility of the aforementioned Canceaux Turbeaux, but I found it worked pretty well on seafood also.

Bottom line: As long as you want both a nice degree of heat and tang, this is a quite worthy blend, and well worth a look. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Stuzzi Hot Sauce Review

Stuzzi

Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0psv0RkV2I

There is a YouTuber named Barrel Shape that I’ve been bouncing back and forth with a bit and I mention this because it is via one of his videos that this sauce came across my attention. I’d never heard of it before, but Italian food and drink holds a pretty strong appeal to me and so I was immediately interested, particularly since the sauce sounded right up my alley. Not only did it seem more in line with a Louisiana-style, one of my favorites, but it also had a couple of peppers I didn’t run across much, namely the Italian Cayenne and the Campanian. Mostly we hear about the wondrous Calabrian, which I do greatly love, but I’m always interested in trying out pods I haven’t run across before. Also, the claim is that the sauce is loved by wolves, which the more literal part of my brain was intensely curious about from a testing perspective...

I wasn’t able to find out about the validity of the wolf thing, but as for the Campanian peppers, at least in how they are represented here, I did find them to be nice, but not to the level of my beloved Calabrians. This sauce also has the pods in both a fresh and powdered form and I’m always a bit leery of this, as drying out pods tends to have side effects. Here is no exception and I found a slight bitterness to it. This isn’t really of major concern, however, as I only really noticed it when I was eating the sauce solo, which is pretty infrequent. 

This is a highly accessible, intensely flavorful, and quite flexible sauce. Even though it is a touch vinegar forward, it is not bracing and all the flavors meld together nicely, which helps it complement whatever you care to use it on. It is not hot, which is to be expected, given the peppers, but I could see this being a great gateway sauce. I tried it on a fairly wide variety of foods and while it definitely worked better moreso on some than others, I didn’t find a single food it didn’t work with. 

The glass bottle this comes in is quite unique and seems a bit artsy to me, another facet I quite enjoy. The packaging all around is quite excellent and I’m thrilled to report that the sauce is no less so. It could be a lovely elegant gift to the discriminating chili-curious around the holidays, I’d say. If there is a bit of a caveat for me, it is that all that attractive packaging does modify the value proposition a bit. I got my bottle, which is 3.4 fl. oz. for around $10, which is both a tad steep for the quantity as well as that style of sauce generally. I don’t usually dock for this too much in the reviews, but when you’re paying extra for stuff that will likely hit the recycling and/or trash bin, it does bear some noting.

Bottom line: Absolutely recommend this sauce for those who value flavor first and especially for the chile-curious out there...just don’t expect any heat particularly.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 9
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 7

Butterfly Bakery Duchess Mystery Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Duchess Mystery Pepper

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHMrBgm8j5c 

Here, we have a sort of “flying under the radar” type sauce, cloaked in a very nondescript and unassuming label, yet within that bottle is a sauce of pure wonder. As legend has it, there was a mystery patch growing within a field of Ghosties at the fabled Duchess Farms. It was not exactly a Ghostie, exhibiting what the label calls “juicy sweetness.” For me, once I learned of it, I was immediately interested and once I opened it and tried it, it immediately, out of the gate, scratched a number of itches all at once, appealing to my sense as a foodie, chilehead, and former homebrewer all at once. 

This was fairly unusual. Generally sauces will appeal more strongly to one aspect over the other and it is usually to my foodie side and absolutely, this is as intentional as I can make it on my part, but I’m always interested in new varietals and different pods. Not only is the sauce here delicious, with one of the more pleasing mouth feels I can remember, smooth and silky, with a fantastic body, it also really embraces and examines the pod itself, supported by one two other ingredients, that of the vinegar and salt. 

I mentioned homebrewer earlier and here’s why. Different yeasts will naturally yield differing grace notes during the fermentation process to the end result. Anchor Steam Beer, for instance, is derived from using a lager yeast, which generally wants stable chilled temperatures, and putting that at a higher “room” temperature, which yields the fruity notes that beer is known for. That aspect was immediately familiar to me with this sauce. The tones are delicate and lilting, dancing around the sort of Ghostie flavor, and complimenting the superhot bitter notes. 

I don’t think this would really qualify as a superhot, and I found the sauce here to be fairly tame. I can’t really say to try this if you’re interested in a superhot flavor without the accompanying heat, as this is really representative of itself and is very much its own thing, it’s beautiful gorgeous self. If you’re interested in the chiles from a pod perspective, you will get a lot of mileage out of this, as well as if you just want a really great sauce. Functionally, it fits more into the category, for me, where a Louisiana-style might normally dwell, but here, I have a bit of a dilemma. I definitely want to enjoy those grace notes and savor them, which cuts out most of the foods I would normally use with a Louisiana-style Cayenne...but that is me personally. The value for that aspect below is reflective of how well it would work there. 

Bottom line: This is one of the more fascinating sauces I’ve had in a while and one of the very few that I’m enormously grateful to have been able to try, perhaps the ultimate reward for being a food explorer and having an open mind, and yes, another itch scratch by this absolute gem.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Sauced & Glazed Marty's Fusion Fuel Hot Sauce Review

Sauced & Glazed Marty's Fusion Fuel 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLR2PmuEcpU 

In August of 2022, I reviewed Doc’s Fusion Fuel (link in TOC at upper right), which is the flagship sauce. I found it seeming to want to straddle the line between a hot sauce and a barbecue sauce, which is fine. I didn’t find it particularly hot, so the intent of this sauce, which wants to be a milder version of that, I find kind of baffling. Since it has directly invoked the comparison, I think we’ll roll with that for a bit. In fact, I wasn’t overly interested in this sauce at all after reading through the ingredient list, but I figured since I did the Doc’s, I may as well do this as companion piece. I will say now that my recommendation is strongly towards the Doc’s, which at least makes a flavorful pass at what it’s attempting. 

To the comparison, both have the annoying foil labels that like to bounce whatever light source you’re trying to use to read it. This one makes a mention of giving it to kids and the website calls it “family-friendly,” which is one of the more nonsensical things I think I’ve seen for a product purporting to be a hot sauce. So, the intent here is a sort of “my first hot sauce” vibe? I will take them at their word and assume this is what they meant by putting out a milder version of an already mild product.

I’m all for accessibility and gateways for the chile-curious, as I have repeatedly noted, but we have a few problems with the approach here. If you lower the heat of something that already has fairly low heat, you’re left with no heat, which is what we have here. Chipotle is the only heat source and it is the third ingredient, so what heat is there will be and is minimal. The ingredient panels are the same between sauces, save for Doc’s Fusion Fuel having red Habaneros as the heat driver, again in the 3rd spot, with the addition of smoke flavor. Of the two, Doc’s reads as more notably smoky as well.

It’s nice they’re trying to make a product for children interested in chiles, I guess, but to my mind, the best gateway sauces are the ones that are flavorful and taste great. While Doc’s was a definitely push towards a barbecue sauce, as noted, this one seems to move from that nearly entirely. What is left is a sort of rough very tomatoey, slightly bitter, and noticeably unrefined collection of the various powders as notes on that platform, an approach I find baffling. I’m not sure what happened here, exactly, but what is here I don’t find works as either a hot sauce or a barbecue sauce. It is probably closest to the latter of those, but not a very good version there, either. This is not to say it is a bad or unpalatable sauce, but more a confusing and overall somewhat mediocre one. It is not one I find especially enjoyable and will probably be binning. 

Bottom line:  I might be wrong about who this is for and it’s perhaps more meant as a novelty companion piece for fans of the Back To The Future movie franchise and not intended to be consumed. I found it remarkably underwhelming and an unnecessary alteration to the Doc’s.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 2 

Mikey V's Pineapple Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Mikey V’s Pineapple Habanero

I like pineapple a great deal, and hot sauce, of course, and pairing pineapple with Habanero was a very big deal in the hot sauce world for quite a while. It seems less so now, especially once mango and Habanero sort of came into the fold, but I’ve had a lot of both styles. For a while, before things started to drift more towards mango Habanero, I had the idle thought that I might just wind up covering every single pineapple Habanero sauce that was around, sans onions, naturally. Sweet hots and fruit-based sweet hots, where these sauces usually reside, are among my favorite styles, so I consider myself well-versed enough in these to sort of have internal sub-categories of the style. This particular one fits more into the “pineapple juice” area. 

While it is clearly fruit-based, I can’t say it’s a sweet hot, though. This one reads a lot more as salty pineapple, which reminds me a bit of the churrascarias that put a rock salt water spray on the pineapple and roast them on a spit, twirling on a trompo. I don’t think that’s exactly what the intent was here, though...I’m not sure quite what the intent was, but there are quite a few ingredients that don’t really show up in the flavor, which is vinegar, pineapple, salt, with the vinegar making things more tangy than a blast, and a slightly bitter note here and there from the Habs. I quite like this flavor, but I have a bit of a problem with this sauce.

One of my favorite places to put the tropical fruit-based sweet hots is on pizza and I’m always happy when I’m able to do that. With the more watery and loose sauces, such as this one, that is right off the table, as the sauce will just run and sog out the crust, if you’re not exceedingly careful. Another issue with the sort of “pineapple juice”sub-category I think this falls into is that you tend to lose concentration of flavor. Sure, this can mean saucing more, but what happens when a sponge is saturated and you try to pour more water on it? I think this sauce would be dramatically improved by being a good two to three times thicker, go for a nice medium body to it. As it is now, it probably should have come with a restrictor cap. 

The best places I found this are generally with meats where you’d want pineapple, so things like chicken and pork, grilled pineapple slabs, or mixed drinks. For the foods where you’re not so worried about the sauce pooling and puddling, this can make a welcome addition, though I found the flavor frequently got lost in things like breading of tendies, for instance. It is a touch on the hotter side than these kinds of sauces, specifically the ones more like juice, tend to be, but I’d say more like 1 - 1.5, rather than racing towards a two. It is a quite nice, pleasant heat.

Bottom line: While I think this is overall a solid sauce, particularly in the flavor direction, the consistency definitely works against it. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Black-Eyed Susan Death By Chocolate (Hot) Hot Sauce Review

Black-Eyed Susan Death By Chocolate Hot

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two and a half years since I did the Mild version of this, review available here: https://d-dubtsaaf.blogspot.com/2023/10/black-eyed-susan-death-by-chocolate.html, but it was worth the wait...way, way worth the wait. This is an extremely well-done sauce, very excellently delivered, and quite unlike anything else out there...just like the aforementioned Mild version. In fact, I’m tempted to just say to read that other review, because everything else applies, with the main difference being this one has a more satisfying heat. This one hovers more between a 1 and a 2, while the other was perhaps even under a 1 slightly, but both are utterly delicious. This also, incidentally, makes their ratings identical.

If I had to pick between the two, it would be this one, on account of that nicer heat level, but I also like the flavor of this slightly better. The more food adventurer you have in your blood, the more you will appreciate this, as there’s a lot going on and it’s a great deal to fun to play with some of the more meat-forward Mexican-style dishes that might bear some mole’ influence, like carne asada, carnitas, and Al Pastor. The sauce is a bit sweeter than most of the mole sauces I’ve encountered, but I found it a wonderful addition generally where I tried it. 

Bottom line: Picking up directly from the Milder version (again, read that review, as nearly all of it applies), this is, for me, the more preferable version of a thoroughly unique sauce, featuring one of the lesser used and undersung pods out there, the venerable Chocolate Habanero.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6 

Seed Ranch Smoky Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Seed Ranch Smoky Ghost

I had noticed this brand on various grocery shelves here and there for a while, but the flavors always seemed a bit tame, so I thought it was maybe a boutique brand that was geared more towards intriguing flavor combinations, but not necessarily a heat that I would find satisfying. I gave them no more thought until I saw them on the hallowed shelves of BYT and noticed some other flavors that sounded intriguing. This was the one I picked up as introduction to the company, given that the ingredients up front were Ghosties, Chipotle, dates, and, inexplicably, cumin, but naturally I disregarded that last one.

After getting into it a bit, I think this sauce may be another that is somewhat miscategorized. For me, this is much more in line with what I recognize as a steak sauce than a hot sauce. It is fairly astringent, but like most steak sauces, the various ingredients are part of one unifying whole, an amalgamation of flavors rather than one individual component, other than maybe the black pepper. Interestingly, in both smell and aftertaste, that is the one ingredient that tended to read the strongest and hang in there the most, but it is not an especially black peppery sauce. 

What I was most excited for was the idea of having something smoky and perhaps leaning into the dates, which is a fruit I quite love, and with Ghosties in the name, I expected some degree of heat as well. Heat is here, but quite minimal. This is not going to be challenging for anyone in that respect, I wouldn’t think. The dates appear to be here more as part of the texture and body of the overall composite, rather than an individual flavor note. I was able to detect some grace notes of carrots here and there as well, which was interesting. Of note, apple is also in the mix here as well, but I think it’s more like the date, providing body to the whole. To be sure, this is not a particular sweet sauce, either.

I tried it in the usual places, but it didn’t work the way I was hoping, until it tripped over in my brain that I was applying it to the wrong foods. Once I switched over, things fell more into place. I thought the sauce was nice and the flavor pleasant, but it also seems to me “wrong,” for lack of better word, unless it is on something like a burger or maybe some pork, generally the same sorts of food where you might reach for a steak sauce. There it is excellent and unless they were to reformulate it and lean much more heavily into the things I mentioned in the first paragraph, which are also on the label, I think they’d be better off calling it a steak sauce instead of hot sauce.

Bottom line: Very intriguing introduction to this company, with a blend of ingredients that are somewhat unusual to behold for a hot sauce. If you stick to where you’d normally use a steak sauce, this delivers a quite lovely element to things.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

The General's Berry Breach Hot Sauce Review

The General’s Berry Breach

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

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

I have a stance about fruit-based sauces and it is that I think they should always lean towards the sweeter side of things. Now, admittedly, this is my direct preference and does not preclude me trying and sometimes enjoying sauces that don’t fit into this characteristic exactly, but that is what a not inconsiderable part of me wants when I see fruit as an ingredient in a sauce. For this, I was very interested to see what the result would be with their first fruit-based sauce, given this company’s very distinctive approach to the other sauces. 

The General’s sauces all tend to have a fairly notable characteristic in the flavor note that I’m fairly sure is due to the fermentation and how much mash is going into the respective bottles. This sauce joins the others in that and like most of the others, is relatively few ingredients. We have blueberries, Habanero mash, vinegar, honey, and salt. The honey is an interesting addition, given that it is far too subtle of a flavor to be there as a tasting note and instead winds up as sweetener. Most of the flavor here is Habanero, with a salted blueberry side note. There is a degree of bitterness here from the Habs as well that I could have lived without, even with the honey probably at least tempering that somewhat. This is definitely far from a sweet sauce, however. As far as heat, what is there is mostly immediately, but with Habaneros comes a slight build as well, which this does. I would call it a nice warmth, but not particularly challenging.

As with many other sauces that skew away from sweetness, I think it works against the sauce here and it would have been better served to lean a lot harder into the sweet side. I know, I know military-theme, tough guys, rah rah and all that, but that’s marketing and irrelevant to what’s actually inside the glass. I think had they skipped the honey and instead used pure maple syrup and also more of it, the result would have been a lot closer to my happy zone. I definitely enjoy what is here, which works nicely on both chicken and especially red meat, but making it sweeter would not have detracted from those and would have also positioned it nicely against the other sauces in the line-up. It also would have opened up things for dessert, which I assume even military rah rah tough guys also enjoy from time to time. 

Bottom line: The first foray from The General’s into a fruit-based sauce was as interesting as I was expecting. While solid, it ultimately does not quite hit the spot I was hoping.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Butterfly Bakery Mustard Cranberry Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Mustard Cranberry

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM18-lxagUQ 

This is a fascinating sauce and one of the few that comes to mind which places the Ghosties front and center from a flavor perspective. Most of the time, when sauces use this ingredient, it is more as accent, if used for flavor, but generally, the idea is that it will provide some superhot heat. Here, it delivers both heat and flavor, which is enhanced considerably by the lovely Carmen peppers also in the mix. To be sure, while the heat is not quite what I would call chilehead only, there is little question a superhot is in the mix and I suspect it make take normies unaware, if they are not prepared somewhat for it.

So we already have that profile, which gets us some pod fruitiness, along with some bitter superhot notes, and then in comes the mustard and cranberry. Mustard and the quinine of cranberry tend to be fairly forceful notes, with the latter of the two borderline unpalatable in its raw form. There is quite a bit of bitterness to be had with those as well, so I was greatly curious of the direction this sauce would take. It is one of the more intriguing combinations I’ve had, in that you have the pod flavors, as noted, then grace notes of the mustard and a not-exactly-but-close sort of berry quality from the cranberries. Altogether, it sort of defies categorization.

I will be frank here. The enjoyment of this sauce rather greatly depends on where you put it. I don’t find it an overly flexible sauce, as there are definitely some strong flavors going on here. Pairing notes suggest German food, which I think is definitely the good call. Some nice smoked ham, some outstanding cervelat, maybe some brats are all on the money. Rye bread is also a suggestion and I do think sandwiches are one of the places it excels. If you happen to be making a sandwich where you would want both mayo and mustard, for instance, making up a spicy mayo with this and using that as a sandwich spread, especially if you’re pairing it with a nice creamy cheese, like a high quality Havarti, is going to put this is fantastic territory. In terms of pairing, just think of a food where you’d want a fairly strong mustard to go and you’d about have it. 

Bottom line: One of the more unique sauces (I can think of nothing quite like it) out there, but a bit narrow in terms of application scope. While the heat level isn’t overbearing, some familiarity with the bite of Ghosties would definitely be in order before stepping in.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Lauren Urban Farms Pink Panther Hot Sauce Review

Lauren Urban Farms Pink Panther

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D75p9xglVqI 

The naming convention of this sauce I find a little curious. There is no connection with the motion picture franchise, nor to Peter Sellers, nor to Henry Mancini, not even to the animated series from United Artists. The color of this sauce is decidedly not pink. Panthers were not a part of the creation of this sauce, which is understandable, given that they don’t actually exist and the word itself translates to leopard and/or jaguars. There is a genus of panthera, but that doesn’t refer to any specific big cat...all very curious indeed.

It is here that I will do that rare thing and directly refer you to the sauce makers website, where we can see pictures of this saucing, utilizing some nifty peppers, in creation and can at least understand the pink part of things. There are a couple of pods here that I don’t think I’ve ever run across before, certainly not in a sauce. They are the purple heirloom Bells, which I may have had in the past in another setting, though I don’t recall specifically now, and the buena mulata pepper, which is an offshoot of the Cayenne. The name is kind of fascinating as it refers in direct translation to a “good,” which is the buena part, though in this context it appears to often mean merry as well, female person of mixed African and European heritage, the “mulata” part. How this got applied to an ornamental pepper pod seems like it would be a fascinating story.

In any case, as far as its usage in a sauce, I found it to be very curious. There are definitely shades of Cayenne, but almost more like Cayenne-lite or maybe a more tamed version of Cayenne. It seems closest to a Lousiana-style or Cajun, given how extremely loose and watery the sauce itself is and this is another that probably needed to come with a restrictor cap. There were a lot of subtleties that were strongly reminiscent of home-canned pickles and the juice thereof, but not overtly...just subtly. I find the flavor here to be fascinating and somewhat light and delicate on the palate. Regrettably, in my experience, it also meant that it would wind up getting lost with various foods and after flavor cancellation, I’d be left with a vaguely peppery vinegar aspect. This is a shame, as the sauce is quite lovely in tone, but also means pairing must needs be judicious. There more you can get out of its way and let it shine, the better, so think some nice roast chicken, but I do believe it will also be exquisite in some vinaigrettes and dressings as well. 

Bottom line: I love coming across new pods and quite enjoyed my experience with this. It perhaps resembles most a Lousiana-style Cayenne or Cajun sauce, though a far more delicate one.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Savir Foods Churro Ancho Dessert Hot Sauce Review

Savir Foods Churro Ancho

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

Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRIWsYDAx7M

This is a sauce I was not expecting to like and wasn’t aware it existed until very recently. I’d seen other Savir Foods hot sauces here and there, but I noted their lineup seemed a bit light and a lot of them had onions, which was kind of the end of things...or so I thought. I really like this idea of dessert sauces, which is a relatively new kind of thing or direction, if you like, for the hot sauce world. Certainly, I have covered a few others on this blog, but most hot sauces are not really intended for that and usage there winds up being more incidental than anything else. 

The main reason I didn’t expect to like this was the idea of the cinnamon. I’m not a huge fan of that and a little goes a long, long way for me. I’m not a fan of cinnamon things, particularly, and find that cinnamon gets used as a hammer too frequently for my taste. I don’t keep any cinnamon powders or sticks at all at hand and if I come across them in a recipe, will usually just delete that part. When checking this one out, I noted it also had Ghosties, Cayenne, and dates, the last of which is fairly unusual for sauces, though I’ve run into it twice already this year (the other one being the Seed Ranch Smoky Ghost hot sauce, which may or may not be posted by the time you read this - check TOC at right). This is not a particularly hot sauce, though, just has a nice comforting bit of warmth in the velvety mouth feel it delivers. 

This sauce uses the dates better. The label describes the cinnamon as a warm cinnamon and I have no idea what that means, but it does seem gentler than in other things I’ve had it in. I think the cinnamon is used very nicely here and it melds with the the sugar and fruit and the avocado oil and possibly the nutritional yeast in a very lovely and smooth way. I found this, to my great surprise, quite enjoyable and tried it on a number of pastries. I also tried it on ice cream, which was a bust, but if you stick to using it anywhere you might normally use or want cinnamon, this should work the trick quite nicely indeed. Obviously, this precludes savory foods, but by calling this as a dessert hot sauce out of the gate, a reduced flexibility comes more or less built in.

Bottom line: This is an amazingly lovely dessert sauce, in addition to being one of the happier surprises I’ve come across in recent memory. If you like or love cinnamon, you will probably get more out of this sauce, but I did find it astonishingly pleasant.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Monoloco Matasanos Hot Sauce Review

Monoloco Matasanos

Note: This sauce appears on Season 23 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nFpzH0lw2M 

It’s hard to think of a flavor profile that would be more contrary to my palate, excluding things that actively make me physically ill, like onions. As I’ve noted, I’m not generally a fan of Indian flavorings or food, and the more forceful those particular spice blends tend to be in things, the less I find it palatable. Here, it is quite prominent and it is backed by one of the more bitter aspects I’ve run across in a sauce. This could be the superhot bitter of the Reapers, but I strongly suspect it might also be at least partly due to a mix of dry spices at play. Whatever the cause, I find great difficulty in locating enjoyment when using it.

It is immediately blazing, quite beyond what any non-chilehead will likely find either tolerable or enjoyable, so definite chilehead only territory. It was in the 9 slot on the show, which is sometimes meaningful and sometimes not, but here it is pretty reflective of the punchiness this sauce delivers. Heat-wise I found it rather pleasant, but accompanied by that bitter, that bit of enjoyment dissipated almost immediately. I half wonder if them using oil, which should create a smoothing effect, might be interfering with the integration of the dried spices somewhat, but in any case, there is a slight graininess to the sauce as well, which further doesn’t help matters. 

Where I think this would be in best use would be to add it to a sauce in the Indian style of food. I think it would work exceedingly well there blending in with the other spices and with its quite hot nature, one would not need to use a great amount of it. Obviously, that is very much not my thing, so I’m not the one to try this out, but for other chileheads who may like Indian cuisine more than me, I think they could find much to enjoy here and presumably, that would also temper the highly bitter nature of this sauce.

Bottom line: This is the second sauce from Monoloco that is very much not for me. While I found it slightly more enjoyable than the XXX (reviewed elsewhere here), it is going to be getting gone as soon as I film the Q2 2026 Wing Thing.  

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 1