2026 Q1 Update

2026 Q1 Update

I think towards the end of 2025 I got into some pretty serious burnout and despite the year starting off very strong with a couple of SOTY candidates and some otherwise great sauces, it didn’t seem like this year was going to be resuming the chilehead streak of some years past. Obviously, the unhealthily deranged state of the world and the propensity of one particular individual to pick global fights with former allies and trade partners definitely was not and is not helping anything. That this person is regrettably occupying the highest office in the country in which I live definitely is contributing to the damage to the overall mental state. Things were continuing to get much, much worse, and seemed perpetually on the verge of flying out of control entirely. Perhaps humanity needs a World War within their lifetimes to shock them out of their stupor, but I’d have been just as happy to not be around for that...I suppose others in the past have held a similar sentiment.

On January 15, First We Feast kicked out the sauce list for Season 29 and I updated that page then, as per usual, as well as posting on YouTube. The season seems a pretty widely varied one, which I appreciate, though it only added another 3 sauces to the hit list. I think I probably need to reconsider the idea of getting repeats on the Quarterly Wing Thing FOH video series (link at right), if I’m going to keep current on that, but I also really wanted to get some new sauces in the mix as well, particularly SOTY candidates, so it’s always a challenge, I suppose.

For National Hot Sauce Day on January 22, a very special collab between myself and Dylan over at Heat Hot Sauce, which was a map of various hot sauce companies in the US and Canada, was posted up over there. This is a project I’ve long wanted to see realized and with Dylan and I both being chileheads and statistics geeks, this proved the perfect combination. The initial launch was with nearly 500 companies in that criteria, with us initially leaving out makers with only a single sauce in their lineup and those companies where the sauces were produced out of the country. It expanded pretty considerably and pretty quickly after that. This will be an ongoing thing and I’m truly excited at seeing it develop. 

I also made a post about all of the Runners-Up for my annual SOTY award, which can be found at the SOTY page (link at right). 

It seemed as if my prediction at the end of 2025 was starting to come true. The scheduling for this blog, which was running about a month ahead by the end of last year, was closer to 2 weeks and I really hadn’t filmed much of the non-sauce content for the FOH series...not a lot of sauce content, either, truth be told, as the FOH series was running an entire quarter ahead by the end of 2025. That was somewhat improved, though, to maybe a couple months and changed, instead of a full quarter, but I did have a lot of sauces on deck, still unopened, and was trying to make a concerted effort to clear out some of the open bottles from 2025 in the fridge door. 

One of the directions I’ve wanted to go for a while was to explore more Gindo’s, and more recently, Butterfly Bakery as well, so this year seemed like a really good time to do that. Thus, the first quarter featured a lot more sauces from both of those companies than normal and yes, this will impact the Q2 post section wherein I go over the most represented sauce companies on this blog. 

It became also exceedingly clear that we are again in a spicy food drought, as far as fast food and commercial snack products go and with the havoc I mentioned earlier, a lot of what I do find is also more expensive than I have interest in shelling out, so if it holds, the FOH series will be moving much more heavily into strictly hot sauce review addendums for contents sooner rather than later. As things stand currently, it will be pretty close through Q3 before I run out entirely of non-sauce FOH content, though, of course, stuff might filter in between then and now.

I also discovered some somber news...I still can’t quite wrap my head around it or being to process, but mid-March I found out that one of the icons of my chilehead development, a gentleman named Jimmy Savas, passed in the later part of 2025. He was the man behind the counter at Grove Market & Deli, which, prior to Roger Damptz and BYT, about the only place to find actual scorching stuff in the Salt Lake valley. Even though my visits there were extremely inconsistent, he always seemed to remember me and had time to chat and as time permitted between his many other customers, we’d catch up. I don’t know why he remembered me, but he always seemed to...perhaps with the incessant conversation about hot sauces and spicy foods generally...or maybe all the people I dragged with me through the years if they were up for a massive lunch. In the winter, I’m not so much for cold deli sandwiches and it had been a bit since I’d dropped in, but my brain is struggling to comprehend that the man, this fixture, this beacon, was gone, and with him, the entire soul of the place...and now, of course, I can’t really bring myself to go back. There is no point. He’s gone and it’s far too late for me to talk with him one last time and say goodbye. I suppose it is some measure of solace that I appreciated my visits and he reciprocated the sentiment, though all of that, at least right now, pales somewhat to the degree that I miss my friend. 

In brighter tidings to leave this update off, the blog is closing in on 700 posts, which will probably happen sometime before the next quarterly update, as well as being within striking distance of 250K views. Around 9 months ago, it had hit the 100K mark. I find this both gratifying and perhaps a bit surprising, but I’m absolutely grateful. None of this, of course, would have been possible without the timely intervention of another of my good friends, the absolutely stellar and cherished Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, who came through with a lift when these pages were strongly in danger of cratering into ashes. Once again, I strongly urge you, if you're within 100 miles of any of the locations, to make the pilgrimage to the hallowed shelves of BYT. The locations are quite convenient to access and you can find the exact addresses by checking out BYT on Facebook or Instagram. 

Butterfly Bakery Maple Rum Chipotle Hot Sauce Review

 Butterfly Bakery Maple Rum Chipotle

I am well prepared to say that Claire Georges, mastermind behind Butterfly Bakery (of Vermont) is a certified hot sauce genius, but I fear that might be understating things. I would not wish to limit it solely to the realm of that particular condiment and strongly suspect it might be far more extensive. The dazzling flavor combinations she comes up with, which translate to the liquid ambrosia pouring out of my various bottles, are absolutely truly something to behold and I am so very thankful for the existence of The Hot Ones show, if only for introducing me to these culinary wonders.

For this one, we have a smokiness that again hearkens back to fall smells, the smoke in the air, the crispness biting your cheeks, and perhaps that motif is not too distant as there is a little nip to this sauce as well, in the form of some maple rum, itself backed by a bit more of that wonderful Vermont maple syrup to boot. While this is definitely not a sweet sauce, it is an immensely flavorful one, but the first aroma is that of the smoke and it both takes me back and perhaps even aback a touch as I admire the callback to my favorite time of year and memories past.

Flavor-wise, this is fresh Chipotle with a dash of some astringency and if you ever thought all Chipotles were the same or wondered the difference between canned and more processed Chipotle vs. fresh Chipotle, get you a bottle of this and wonder no more. The fresh Chipotles are front and center, first ingredient out, and there is a slight degree of higher heat than I would normally associated with Chipotle. Not to say this is hot or punishing, just slightly more surprising in the nice element of heat tingles I was not really expecting. 

Like all Butterfly Bakery sauces, this is also intensely flavorful and I found, given the astringent element, that it really shone on fried foods, but also on things like wings. The recommendations are for pizza (too astringent for my tastes there), as well as red meats, perhaps bowing to the smokiness, but I don’t always love astringency with those either. For me, putting it along the lines of where I might reach for a Louisiana-style, just a really emphatically good-tasting one, where was I liked this best, but all that said, it is an immensely fun sauce with which to experiment.

Bottom line: This is both an excellent gateway sauce for early chileheads, as well as for more established chileheads who are like me and foodies first. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

Gindo’s x Deane’s Market & Deli Sun-Dried Tomato Hot Sauce Review

Gindo’s x Deane’s Market & Deli Sun-Dried Tomato

I am not at all familiar with Deane’s Market & Deli, but figured it was probably something in Illinois somewhere and, perhaps predictably, that is exactly what it is. I imagine this is perhaps in proximity to Gindo’s, as it appears to be more or less a local favorite and you know, those are great. I have a few of my own in relative vicinity, one of which has food that has appeared in a video or two and one that was the source for hot sauce in the area for quite some time in the pre-Roger of BYT days. My education did not stop there. In the ingredients is something called a Red Fish Pepper, something I’d never heard of nor seen or even seen used prior to this sauce. It appears to be mainly a red bell variant, but it’s kind of cool that it shows up here. 

For a company that primarily makes fairly boutique, chef-ish, one-off sauces, this is perhaps the creme de la creme of them all. What we have here is a carefully orchestrated sauce that would be and is absolute magic on sandwiches, which is perhaps the thing delis generally are known for best. The secret here is the kalamatas. It is the first flavor you get before the deep richness and impact of the sun-dried tomatoes comes in, itself followed by a lovely back end finish of appreciable, though modest, heat as a finish. This is from the Carolina Reaper powder, and bolstered a bit by the Thai peppers. I’m usually not a fan of powder usage in sauce, as I think it goes wrong way more than it goes right, but here, it is in the hands of a maestro, and it shows. The orchestration is fantastic and something I have seen very few sauces do, dancing across the palate with all the grace of your favorite ballerina.

It’s hard to imagine a more gourmet sauce than this, particularly representing some of the very best that delis can offer, all in one delectable sauce, and, of course, given my fondness for pickled olives generally, this speaks to me rather directly. Given those olives, however, it does limit flexibility somewhat, but it is a great trade-off to my mind and where it works, it works spectacularly. Obviously, your mileage may vary somewhat dependent on how much you like those, but if it’s anywhere near as much as me, you will have great fun playing around with it in a variety of settings and for me, this is another of those sauces that works exceedingly well with Italian food flavors generally.

Bottom line: Gindo’s has done it again, putting out yet another brilliant sauce that makes me strongly suspect that magic is afoot somewhere over there.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7 

Butterfly Bakery Honey Field Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Honey Field Habanero

I’m tempted to make this a relative rarity for this blog and do a fairly short review, as I don’t really have a lot to say about this sauce. It all comes down really to how much, or if, you like the flavor of orange Habaneros. Are the ones from Honey Field better than the ones I can put my grubby mitts out and grab from the grocery store shelf nearest to me? I’m willing to concede the point and the design of this sauce, with those Habs front and center as the first ingredient, is very much focused on representing that pod...but it is not a pod I view particularly fondly, nor have I ever. I do think this is about as good as a sauce can be where this is the intent and it has a very nice mouth feel, but I don’t love the flavor of orange Habs. 

I do wish I would have thought to hold out some of the Vermont Habs sauce I did earlier in the year to compare and contrast, as both sauces really do well to highlight the differences between the red and orange Habanero, especially in terms of flavor. I don’t dislike the flavor here and will definitely empty out the bottle, probably mostly where I would use a Louisiana-style, as I think it works in those settings best. It does bring a nice warm heat with it, but this is not something to which I’ll be returning. 

Bottom line: This is one of those sauces that just winds up not resonant to my particular palate, but it is otherwise a fine sauce, particularly if one enjoys the flavor of orange Habs.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 6

Merman’s Revenge Cajun Hot Sauce Review

Merman’s Revenge Cajun

This is the second product I’ve from this company, the first a glaze that I did an FOH video on in the late part of last year, but which wasn’t a hot sauce per se and so didn’t show up here. I wasn’t overly fond of that sauce and some of the aspects that stuck out a bit to me also appear here, namely the rather forceful nature of the garlic. I don’t mind garlic and in quite a few settings, like it considerably, but in hot sauces, I prefer it be more accent, something more like another component instead of abrasively aggressive. Unfortunately, it winds up being more the latter here. To wit, there are both garlic bits and granulated garlic in the proceedings. The garlic pieces are reading more as jarlic to me, which probably explains the harsh nature of that component.

Cajun sauces are essentially Lousiana-style Cayenne sauces with extra ingredients and for the base Cayenne sauce here, we have a lot of pepper bits in it. The flavor of that part reminds me a lot more of the vinegary hit of something like Crystal, while the pepper pieces and the garlic impart a grit that sort of makes an unpleasant mouth feel, depending on where you use it. I don’t generally get a lot of Cajun sauces, as I think garlic, while a flavor I’m generally favorable towards, has a lot of potential to be overused in the overall flavor mix. I very definitely do not find the approach here to be particularly enjoyable. 

Both the grit and the overly garlic-forward flavor cut down the flexibility quite a lot for me here. There is plenty of a vinegar charge to cut through the richness of foods and at times, the garlic won’t read too obnoxiously, but one really has to be judicious with applying it, perhaps doubly so since this did not come with a restrictor cap. I presume it doesn’t because of all the bits and pieces in the sauce, but the potential for oversaucing with this loose of a sauce is quite pronounced and for me, this is definitely not something I would like to oversauce with. This style of sauce tends to have fairly low heat and this fits nicely into that motif, though I didn’t find it registered much heat at all, even for the style. It’s not egregious enough that I’m going to bin the sauce, but it is one that I will be using up perhaps somewhat grudgingly.

Bottom line: If you’re a fan of fairly prominent and forceful garlic notes in your low-to-no heat vinegar-based hot sauces and don’t mind some grit, this is probably well worth a look. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 2

Gindo's Mild Roasted Red Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Gindo’s Mild Roasted Red Pepper

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFkTRz8Onqk 

This is a bit of an unusual selection, in that I wouldn’t generally pick something that is intentionally low heat. A couple of things strike me, one which was a factor in me getting the sauce in the first place and the second something that came about later after consideration of me contemplating something on the label. The first of those was that Habanero was listed in the ingredients, so I thought there might be perhaps a modicum of heat. To that end, there is not. There is no heat really to speak of at all in this sauce, but that ties in to what was on the label. It is intentionally a mild sauce and there is mention that it is a perfect sauce for beginners new to the chilehead world. I definitely would not disagree with that, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good thing. 

I write these reviews and make these videos and cast them out in the world on their own, without ever knowing who may be reading or viewing and perhaps, if all the stars align, may be inspired by something they read or see, some neuron, the right neuron, fires and things click over for them. I have tried to not get into gatekeeping territory and it’s been very important to me for a very long time to be as inclusive as possible and it struck me that people who may be in the beginning of their chilehead journey are not especially represented here. The blog has generally been more reflective of where I see myself, which is far more intermediate to upper end of heat chilehead, but that was its design. While this doesn’t mean there will be more milder sauces that I intentionally pick (and I have backed off of my earlier impulses over time), I do think it doesn’t hurt anything to have sauces like show up from time to time. All of us start from zero and have different beginnings, different origin stories on our path into the chilehead journey.

Anyway, as to the sauce, roasted red peppers was one of my happiest food discoveries, perhaps ever. I should back up. Fried red peppers was a world-altering event for me, but those I found a tad hard to come by, but it was that which set me on the discovery to roasted red peppers, which were far more readily available. I loved those quite a lot, but also discovered that at times, they would come out of the jar a bit slimy. This sauce is basically like a fresh and vibrant roasted red pepper, in its very best form, made into a sauce, with that same freshness and vibrancy. It is that flavor, tinged with salt and vinegar, which constitutes nearly all of the flavor and it is pretty wonderful...provided you like roasted red peppers, of course. This would be brilliant on a sandwich or pizza or any other place you might use the roasted red peppers and the sauce is both so flavorful and mild, that you will not be punished for oversaucing. 

Bottom line: Definitely a potential gateway sauce, as those have to taste great, though I think this serves more as just an excellent version of roasted red pepper more, given the lack of heat.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9

Overall: 6

Butterfly Bakery Chipotle Squash Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Chipotle Squash

If one wanted a sauce that was strongly reminiscent of fall and a warm, comforting hug in a bottle, one would be hard pressed to find one more apropos than this. Once again, Butterfly Bakery comes forth with a work of genius, pairing roasted butternut squash, one of my very favorite fall foods and one that never fails me to drag me back to those chilly and biting nights that heralded both the end of summer and that the harvest was well and truly at hand. Fall has been my favorite time of the year for a very long time and things like that I suspect constitute a significant part of that formation. Add to that the smell of smoke in the air, as people fired up their furnaces or had bonfires, perhaps a last ceremonial hurrah before the bite of winter ended outdoor activities of that nature for another year.

The squash, of course, you could make into nice soup or add to casseroles or perhaps into a sauce for a nice macaroni dish and it’s one of those ingredients that if I ever see it used in a hot sauce, I’m immediately interested, instantly curious to see what they did with it. It is a tad unusual, but here, it is used to glorious effect, along with the pairing of some lovely tomatoes, to add a nice richness and depth, and, of course, the fresh Chipotles that are part of the proceedings. The first ingredient to all of this, it should be noted, is red Serranos, which I’m beginning to think more and more are underrated as a sauce ingredient. 

This sauce has a slight bit of grit from the seeds, but a nice amount of heft to it, creating a quite solid mouth feel. It is also very tame as far as heat, and they laid back a bit on the smoke, so one can use quite a lot of this sauce when experimenting and it is a very good sauce to do that with. The adage that if you make a good enough tasting sauce, the flexibility will be built in still holds true and I think you could have yourself a lovely time just playing around with different food pairings and this sauce, naturally going through all the suggestions on the label, of course. They are once again on the mark here with a truly unique and delicious sauce. 

Bottom line: A very accessible sauce that speaks to me on a number of levels, but with the low heat level, this is one probably more appealing to foodie first chileheads.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7