Captain Mowatt’s Jolly Roger Hot Sauce Review

Captain Mowatt’s Jolly Roger

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