Stacked Sweet Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Stacked Sweet Habanero

This will be a bit of an unusual review. So...here we have a mystery, but I don't mean the sauce itself. Skip ahead to the fourth paragraph if you're not interested in the mystery. I'm not making any claims here, but rather pointing out some...oddities, I guess, if you will, in the story behind the company. Stacked, as a hot sauce brand, started off life under a different name, which was Crippling Hot Sauce. The idea behind that was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the handicapped dynamic, with the owner having cerebral palsy. The marketing, and possibly the products, but for me, much more the marketing, was so successful that this very quickly grew into a multi-million dollar company and scaled up from a home kitchen to a commercial one...kind of. The sauce is produced by a company by the name of Supreme Cuisine, which is a co-packing company. The name change from Crippling to Stacked came about due to "customer confusion." Customers were allegedly fearful of the sauce crippling them by consuming it, which I cannot imagine as possibly true, for a variety of reasons. Stacked is probably a better trade name overall, whatever the rationale. A multi-million dollar company is a success by any measure, particularly in the hot sauce world, and the name change to "Stacked," while ostensibly meant to having odds stacked against one, also carries a lot of other connotations, a number of them in direct contravention to the previous name. Curious, but it gets curiouser...

The origin stories floating around are also inconsistent. I have seen it in the following context: In a high school business class, which is the part that is the same in all the versions, we have a teacher who told the company owner he could not do this hot sauce idea at all. We have the same teacher who told him the idea was great but his business plan was unrealistic. We have a business class where the class told him the idea was unrealistic after he pitched it to them, and the aforementioned business teacher helped him put together the structure to launch it. The implication seems to be that he received these comments because he was disabled and the negative feedback put a chip on his shoulder and pushed him to make the company a reality. The story is as front and center as the sauces and has been since I've been aware of the company, which I came across on Amazon a couple years ago. It took some digging but I was curious to see if, in all the news stories with the company owner, this teacher was ever asked about their side or had a formal response. This proved difficult. It was not particularly publicized, but in one of the interviews with the owner, I found a reference to the name of the teacher, yet when I tried to find this teacher, given that the teacher is used in the marketing extensively, i.e. "buy my sauce so my teacher can see they were wrong," etc., I was not able to verify this person exists, or existed, at all. 

When I first came across this company on Amazon, the first thing that struck me was the marketing and there is a lot of it. Both Crippling and now Stacked were very slick and dynamic in presentation, with a lot of emphasis on the presentation and the story. Observing this sort of thing always raises my suspicions. It is a facet of my personality that I am always leery if I get the impression that a company is trying to sell me on the story more than on their products. Further, if you take a look around at the hot sauce world and the companies, which I obviously spend a lot of time doing, you notice an immediate disparity. None of this means anything by itself, however, the idea of "buy my sauces to show my teacher they were wrong about this thing I'm saying they said this one time" is not a pitch that I will ever find resonant. I found the vibe to be very marketing heavy and information light overall. I may be in the minority on this, but for me, it ultimately comes down to the products, in this case, the sauces. Looking at the ingredient list of all of them, they struck me a lot like the various sauces that roll around every holiday season on the Wal-Mart shelves in sampler bottles, a number of which I've taken a look at here. This is not to say or even suggest that they are those things, but were reminiscent.

All that aside, with the rebranding, the usual 5 fl. oz. bottles were booted in favor of slightly larger flasks. That's fine, I like flasks generally. I think they add a nice vibe to things. The names of the sauces were altered, and possibly the formulations as well. As usual, I once again needed some monies so I could have the free shippings on Amazon and this was on sale, so it seemed a good time to try it out.

Up front, I will say that I was hoping it would be much sweeter than it was. This is, indeed, not at all a sweet sauce, so I find the name a touch confusing. Yes, chiles are a fruit and carrots can impart a degree of sweetness, and there may be a slight degree of that fruitiness here and there in grace notes, but overall, this is a very Habanero and vinegar-forward sauce. I liken this much more to a Louisiana-style or Cajun, though this is notably thicker. The carrots here appear to be included to give this sauce more body and the mouth feel is pretty good overall. This is perhaps its best characteristic to my mind. It is close to medium thick and very smooth, though I did find it additionally a touch abrasive and somewhat unrefined. The ingredient listing lists as red Habaneros backed by red Bells, but this struck me much more as other sauces using orange Habaneros, which could just come down to crop yield variations. 

I think ultimately this is going to come down to how much you like the flavor of Habaneros, since that, along with the vinegar, made up for me by far the majority of the flavor profile. While I do prefer red Habaneros, I didn't find this overly enjoyable, perhaps more in the "solid" range of things. Heat-wise, it is also fairly moderate, perhaps a bit more than most of the other sauces in the aforementioned styles, but nothing too many chileheads will find challenging and probably not a lot of normies, either. Because of the overall harsh nature of the sauce and me not particularly enjoying the flavor, I found this best used on things like dishes with creamy sauces, where it was fine. Where I might use those other sauces on perhaps fried chicken or breakfast foods or elsewhere, this is not one I would care to use in those applications, other than maybe in a pinch. At the end of the day, I've certainly had a lot worse, but I've definitely had a lot better as well and this one is just kind of middle-of-the-road for me, ultimately.

Bottom line: This is an acceptable sauce that I will finish out, but not one I am inclined to repeat.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3