Butterfly Bakery Maple Sparkle Sriracha Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Maple Sparkle Sriracha

One of the nicer things is finding out that a company you deeply admire because of their immense culinary skill is also comprised of really good people doing good things. It just adds a little extra wonderful overtone to supporting them. While I greatly admired Butterfly Bakery before because they make what I feel are pretty consistently delicious sauces, I was not aware of the whole Genersaucity mission they have to give back...until I saw this sauce, a sauce which is to support the Pride Center of Vermont. In these current times we live in, I feel it more important than ever to take a stand and plant your flag in the name of diversity and inclusion, which has been a hallmark of my time and of this blog and of the FOH video series and the very channel itself and I commend Butterfly Bakery for their further monetary support to help foster a sense of belonging.

I’ve said it numerous times, that I’m very very tired of the flavor of sriracha sauce generally, because I had so very much of it in my younger years, but when I saw this sauce and saw what it supported, I instantly wanted in. Happily, what is here does not contain many of the regular sriracha characteristics of which I’m so tired. Instead, what we have here is a sauce that is very forward on the red Jalapenos, all of which is buffered by the grace notes of the garlic scapes and the maple syrup. The label suggests this sauce is intended to go on a wide spectrum of foods and I think, indeed, that the flexibility of this is pretty pronounced, far more than a regular sriracha would be. It is also far more delicious than any of the more perhaps authentic srirachas.

This is a very accessible sauce and it starts by being utterly delicious. I’ve long said that when someone is in the front part of their potential entry into being a chilehead, it helps if the sauces are tasty, as then they will want to use it more. This fulfills this mission quite handily. It reminded me very slightly of the richness of a ketchup, though it is not so sweet as one of those, but even moreso as a very nice cocktail sauce, smoother than those usually are and far tastier as well. I adore this sauce on seafood, but I think it would be equally at home on Asian foods, such as a nice Vietnamese spring roll or banh mi or on a burger, pizza, as well as generally anything fried. It’s one of the facets of great-tasting sauce, which naturally adds to the number of things it will go well with...presuming the food base itself tastes great, of course. Because it is only red Jalapenos, heat, which is typical for sauces of this type, is quite low.

Bottom line: Not very representative of the classic sriracha flavor, but to my mind better, and could serve as a fantastic entry point not only to that, but to hot sauces generally. It is ultimately a fantastic sauce for a wonderful gesture. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Woodstock Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Woodstock Ghost Pepper

This is one of those rare reviews that are a tad difficult to write, so I beg your indulgence if we bounce around a little...or a lot. I will start by saying there is something wrong with this sauce and by that, I don’t mean it has turned or oxidized or anything, but from a flavor perspective, this is the most floral Scorpion tasting “Ghost” anything I’ve ever had. Given that the vaunted Ghosties are my favorite superhot, I’ve also had a lot of them...and plenty of the Scorpions as well, before the flavor wore me down. 

So, when something goes wrong, it’s important to try to trace the understand the issue and trace the origin. I mean, mistakes do happen and it wouldn’t be the first time I got something incorrectly labeled. Here are a few distinct possibilities I consider most likely. The incorrect peppers could have been used for the sauce batch. The correct peppers were used, but the wrong label was put on the bottle. There was cross-pollination at play. I suppose the wrong plants could have been planted and/or labeled prior to harvest as well. In any case, I find it a tad frustrating on a couple of levels. The first one is that I’m largely disinterested in sauces that read that florally and second, whoever else got a bottle similar to mine is going to get an incorrect impression of Ghosties. 

As to the sauce itself, it’s somewhere between being thin and maybe medium thickness and flows very nicely. The color is also nice, the sort of red-orange hue one would want from a Louisiana-style, which is the type this sauce is closest to. It is also a quite punchy sauce, in addition to being overly floral, and I suspect this will be too much for normies. The flavor here is such that I don’t find it overly flexible and used it mainly where I would a Louisiana-style. It is fairly vinegar-forward, but much more pepper forward, just not flavored in a way I find enjoyable...and after fighting it for a month, I finally am tossing in the sponge. I knew it was going to be a problem the second I opened the cap and smelled those floral notes that made me instantly thing of a Scorpion and I wasn’t wrong. If you like the flavor of Scorpions more than I do, you might find it more solid than did I.

This also brings up another sort of issue, for me, anyway, in that if this is not, as I strongly suspect, an actual Ghost pepper sauce, how do I go about rating it? I hemmed and hawed for most of that month I mentioned before finally deciding to judge it based on what was in the glass, but if it is a mislabel, the rating won’t be indicative of the actual Ghost pepper sauce. Then another problem arises in that if I get another bottle and it’s the same thing, that is one more I have to bin...also, maybe that is what they meant. There is a huge potential here, as both this sauce and the Scotch Bonnet from them also (I think they used to be called the Tropical Pepper Company prior to Woodstock) were priced quite nicely, but if it’s not a sauce you find especially palatable, I suppose any price realistically is too high.

Bottom line: A massive disappointment and the first sauce of 2026 that is getting the boot.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Butterfly Bakery Honey Cantaloupe Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Honey Cantaloupe

As soon as I saw the name of this sauce, I was in. I love cantaloupe, especially fully ripened, and it’s an ingredient that I almost never see in hot sauces. Followers of this blog or of the FOH YouTube series (hopefully both) will know by now that I’m ever interested in unusual or exotic ingredients in hot sauces and picking one of my favorites, along with an ingredient more common, but still interesting to me, honey, is almost a surefire way to get my attention. So, it was with high hopes, given that the ace Butterfly Baker sauce makers were at the helm, that I picked this up.

Once I got the bottle, I wasted no time in cracking it open and it was love at first taste. They somehow managed to keep the taste of fresh and ripe cantaloupe, in all of its resplendent glory, along with very nice accents of the salt and vinegar, along with a slight fruitiness and slight backend heat from the red Habs. Honey didn’t play into things too much directly, but was there perhaps more as composite, to reinforce and bolster the cantaloupe, which is the main star. This is probably the best-tasting sauce I will have this year and herein, a bit of my design works to cross purposes a tad.

So, pairing melons to entrees is fairly rare. As part of a fruit tart or dessert, surely, but in terms of an entree...probably as rare of a thing as using those in a hot sauce, which is rare indeed. There are some nice and intriguing suggestions on the bottle, but to be as clear as I can be, I want whatever I use it on to be as unadorned and neutral as possible. For most sauces, I want them to elevate the food and increase my enjoyment of the flavors, but here, I want it to be a vehicle for this utterly delectable sauce and I don’t want flavor cancellation or things getting in the way. So, the various chicken forms, as long as they are not part of something more complex, like a sandwich, all to the good, same with pork chops, but this sauce is so delicious, it seems a shame to me to diminish it in anyway. 

Fruit-based sweet hots are naturally a tad on the less flexible side, moreso when the fruit is a melon. This is by nature, but when the sauce is so delicate and near-flawless in flavor profile that I don’t want to interfere with it in anyway, this also sort of lowers the flexibility, though perhaps a bit artificially. Where I’m going with this is the composite score will take this out of the running for SOTY contention, but it is unquestionably a sauce I love very dearly...and one that makes me, however briefly, reconsider using the 10 scale...

Bottom line: As long as one likes cantaloupe, this sauce is a godsend and a good showcase to show non-chileheads what is possible in the hands of a brilliant and gifted saucemaker.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

Gindo's Strawberry Basil Hot Sauce Review

Gindo's Strawberry Basil

This is one I was admittedly a touch iffy on. Strawberry hot sauces can be one of those a bit difficult to place. I do find them often enjoyable on strawberry green salads, where this one would also be great, I suspect, especially if paired with a strawberry vinaigrette dressing, but if they are very sweet, the tendency is for them to gravitate more to the realm of desserts and I’m not the hugest sweets fan. Usually, if I get a bottle, it will be hanging out in there for a while and it’s kind of like cranberry sauces, in a way, I suppose. Not so much in flavor profile, but more in that I tend to view them in fairly narrow applications.

Still, this was Gindo’s we’re talking about here, one of my favorite sauce makers and one who, even if I don’t love the sauce, never really misses. And indeed, this is a very flavorful sauce. I’m a big fan of red Bells and that is the lead-off ingredient here, which bolsters the Habanero nicely, making this a very astute pairing. The strawberry here is back a bit, more of a delayed almost grace note, but a bit more prominent. It is happily that of fresh strawberries, my definite favorite way to have those. Strawberries can be a fairly delicate flavor and heavy processing tends to kill the best parts of the fruit flavor, I find. There is none of that here, which is a testament to the skill of the chef(s) involved. There are a lot of subtleties and the balance allows the various salts and vinegar to come forward a bit in the flavor. This is definitely not a hot sauce closer in line to the strawberry syrups, not even remotely.

This allows it to work especially well with chicken, which the sweeter ones do not particularly. I did try it as a dessert sauce a few times, which led to the near complete cancellation of the strawberry and left me with the flavor of the peppers, the vinegar, and the salts...interesting, but not something I would want to regularly have. Interestingly, the basil doesn’t really show up at all in the flavor here...or at least in the various ways I tried it. Heat-wise, this is only Habanero, so it is quite moderate. 

Bottom line: This is a sauce I view favorably and find a quite flavorful sauce, but not one I can say I love. If you like real strawberry flavor in a hot sauce, but don’t want it on the sweet side, this is definitely worth a go.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Butterfly Bakery Vermont Habs Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Vermont Habs

I went in to this one kind of thinking the sauce would be thicker...I’m not sure why I thought that...the relative density of sauce is not always easily established with an unopened full bottle that has the shrink intact, but sometimes I get these ideas in my mind that become a bit difficult to shake...at least until the bottle is open and once is confronted with the evidence. 

This one is maybe not the thickness I was thinking it would be nor is it quite the watery nature of a Cayenne Lousiana-style, though with the modicum of ingredients: pepper, vinegar, salt, I suppose it is perhaps closest to that in application. There is quite a bit more pulp here, more body, which gives the sauce a very nice mouth feel if/when taken straight. I don’t suppose too many will actually do this, but it is quite nice and you can get a good feel for the subtleties of this sauce, which you will assuredly not get if/when you use it on food. 

This sauce, perhaps more than any other I’ve had in recent memory, puts the often-maligned and ubiquitous Habanero in its best possible setting and light. Here, they are using red Habaneros, definitely the supreme variant of that pod, and one can get a grasp of the fruitness and hint of sweetness from those in full ripeness. They are the first ingredient and front and center and if you are able to find a food pairing that will let this be the dominant flavor, one will be well-rewarded.

What I found was that the flavor would tend to vanish a bit in actual use. Even though there is a healthy vinegar hit up front, it fades quite rapidly, which is not always desirable in the usual suspects for applications of a Louisiana-style sauce. Rather, this sauce tends to meld with whatever you’re using it on, which is highly desirable in other settings. For instance, this is one of the few sauces that I think does an excellent job of stepping on tomato-based Italian sauces without interfering with those distinctive flavors. When it comes to heavier food, though, that same tendency hampers its ability to cut through richness, which is one of the attributes I’m most after, as I quite enjoy balance in dishes. 

This is an utterly delicious sauce, though, another absolute gem from one of the more masterful saucemakers out there, and I had a great deal of fun trying it in almost every setting I could think of, including Mexican, though I’m not really a fan of astringency there.. It is slightly too loose for stuff like pizza, unless you’re really careful, but there is a good amount of flexibility. Heat-wise, since we’re only deal with Habaneros, it is pretty moderate, so it should provide a nice accessibility for most people.

Bottom line: Yet another excellent entry from one of the more impressive sauce-makers out there. Those with an affinity for gourmet flavors in a vinegar forward sauce will find much to love here.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6