Da' Bomb Beyond Insanity Hot Sauce Review

Da' Bomb Beyond Insanity Hot Sauce

Note:  This sauce appeared in Seasons 2 - 21 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEFoZEtE0hk

This is another from Spicin' Foods, purveyors of the Pain lines (Pain [X]%, Pain Is Good) as well as various Da Bomb offerings. I don't recall this being the hottest of the Bomb line, but I've scrupulously avoided it, given the heavy dominance of extract, which I do not find to be a pleasant flavor. I have found precious few entries in any of their product line to be worthwhile, across all 3 of the ones I mentioned. The snack foods I've come across have been generally ok, but quite pedestrian. To be frank, I would not be bothering with this either, save for the sustained run it had across the various seasons of The Hot Ones. With this one sauce, I now have coverage in 13 of the 14 Hot Ones seasons, with only the current one (as of this writing) untouched. That is my sole motivation here.

This is not to say I haven't been testing it. Every sauce that comes across I absolutely give a fair shake and benefit of the doubt. This one, initially, I felt might have a good sauce in there trying to come out and maybe, just maybe, it was to try to coax it forth that Sean Evans kept it in the lineup on The Hot Ones, but no. That, I can say rather conclusively, is incorrect (more on this shortly). With the ingredients of Chipotle and Habanero, two sometimes great tastes that go great together, which have conspired to come up with some truly wonderful sauces elsewhere, there was a chance...

The problem here is that the vile taste of extract bitters out everything, leaving a noxious metallicky chemical flavor, which is pretty far from palatable. This is another sauce that ruins everything it touches, including the ingredients. The Chipotle, always an ingredient that must be used judiciously so the smoke doesn't become overwhelming, here is the other taste, though modified to be far more bitter than usual, that battles back and forth with the extract, leaving you the less than wonderful choice of either tasting metal shavings or ashes.  This ruins any food it happens to touch and this has been universal across all of them I've tried it on.

So...why the Sean Evans love? I'm going to play amateur theorist here for a moment, as this mannerism is exactly the sort of thing my best friend in high school used to do (though he would do it with rotgut liquor). The idea here is that you only eat it around other people and it's a weird sort of machismo/hazing thing. As I've mentioned, another friend and I used to keep around Dave's Insanity sauce for a similar purpose, which we would bust out for drunken party dares, etc. I think this is Evans moreso testing/tormenting his guests than because the sauce is great or flavorful or anything, as it is not. It is, indeed, entirely dreadful.

Bottom line: While (obviously) hot, this is also not a sauce that seems particularly meant for eating (se preceding paragraph) and definitely not for enjoying, despite the manufacturer calling it "delicious." I will be eating it two more times, ever, when I film the video and for the Q1 2021 Hot Ones wing homage and then I will be thankfully done. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Lola's Trinidad Scorpion Hot Sauce Review

Lola's Trinidad Scorpion Hot Sauce

I almost think that I might have a mislabeled bottle. The color, the flavor, the mostly absent heat-level, everything is nearly identical to the Original sauce. In fact, I strongly urge you to read that review first, as nearly everything in it applies here. We again have a hugely runny, rather constantly separating sauce, which requires endless agitation and is very garlic-forward, to the point where not much else reads through. Scorpions are one of the more flowery peppers and that flavor is often difficult to disguise. That is not a problem here, as it's mostly impossible to pick out any particular pepper flavor. There is a slight taste shift from the Original, as this one is somewhat more garlicky, but I suspect if you put them side by side, you'd be sorely pressed to correctly identify which was which. 

I did try this on a food I did not try the Original on, which was ramen noodles. Ramen is one of those things I keep at hand if there's not leftovers and I don't feel like cooking anything for lunch. It also tends to be a good way for me to use up stuff like Cajun sauces, which I don't normally use, but in which the greater complexity of ingredients seems to do well. It was tolerable there, but interestingly, it did not read as heat, particularly, but as garlic. Either something weird is going on or I got a mislabeled sauce, but I'm not impressed by this line enough to buy another bottle to try again and find out. Given that this one is not markedly different and is a near-clone of the Original (and I already have a backlog of FOH videos), I'm not going to be doing a video for this, either, but observe that the video for the Original sauce will suffice. Like the Original, it is doubtful I will be finishing this bottle, either.

Bottom line: Having eaten 3 of the 4 variations (Carolina Reaper is still left to do), I will say that if you're a chilehead, this can be safely avoided without missing anything. In terms of flavor, the only one worthwhile so far is the Ghost Pepper and there are a ton of much better Ghost Pepper sauces out there. This one is useful only for those who really like the concentrated garlic or like really garlic forward (and rather non-spicy) "hot" sauces.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 3

Pex Peppers Cosmic Peach Hot Sauce Review

Pex Peppers Cosmic Peach Hot Sauce

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDJDtn0-OWQ

Pex is rapidly becoming one of the more impressive companies out there to me, with their ability to hit the fruit notes of their fruit-bases sauces quite astutely. They also do a very nice job of hitting some of the lesser known superhots and utilizing them exceedingly well. Already impressed with the use of the Fatalii and the 7 Pot Primo in prior sauces I've reviewed, I was excited for this, not so much for the use of orange Habanero, which won't ever ring bells for me, but for the peaches. Like Roger Damptz, who got me revved up for this sauce, I'm a bit on the fairly partial-to-peaches side of things myself.When I saw it had that magical combination of Habanero and honey, my excitement grew. Indeed, I had to kind of hide the bottle. thanks to the color of the sauce, which was so much beckoning peachy goodness, so I could hold off opening it until I cleared more fridge door space...

Once I got into it, I was initially much less happy. What I found was a sort of sweet-ish orange Habanero flavored, though a highly bitter one, with peach grace notes. I continued on through the neck, increasingly dismayed, I must say. We had some nice heat out of the gate, a rush not unlike the red Habanero El Yucateco, but the taste was not at all what I was expecting or hoping for.

I noticed that it liked to clog near the cap and also noted there were no emulsifiers or suspension agents in the sauce, so I think some major separation happened. After I got through the sauce in the neck of the bottle, I was able to get slammed with a much milder sauce and one far heavier on peach flavoring. Unfortunately, the streaky nature of this sauce persisted, though, with some bites being very peach heavy and other bites being a lot more bitter and Habanero-heavy. I've not been able to find a way to agitate this sufficiently to avoid this tendency, which is kind of a pity. This sauce, accordingly, ranges from one of the better peaches sauces I've had to a mostly just ok sweet-hot somewhat bitter Habanero, all within the same bottle, sometimes even within the same usage.

Heat-wise, this is solid, for a Habanero sauce. I suspect the heat and the frequently arising bitter nature will not appeal to many non-chileheads. Using it on an actual peach dish would probably help, but it also is capable of doing well on any of the lighter meats. Peach is not a flavor I generally find especially broad, so it's a bit limited in the places where it might work well. The sauce, when it is being peach forward, is, however, one of the very few that would work nicely in a dessert application and I have half a mind to try it on some peach cobbler...I may, in fact, even make the peach cobbler with the sauce itself...

Bottom line: While this is not consistently the sauce I built up in my head, I can see what they were going for and the strong potential this sauce has, if they're able to resolve the consistency issue. For chileheads with a peach penchant, this is definitely worth a go.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 5

Big Red's God's Wrath Hot Sauce Review

Big Red's Hot Sauce God's Wrath Ghost Pepper Sauce

Update: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haZFTMFfWS4

I really get a kick out of this company. Their labels are fun, the video clips on Facebook, usually from Tasia (I'm not on, but come across them here and there) are fun. It's just a real cool spirit and vibe and I totally dig it. Now, having said that, I've worked my way through quite a number of their offerings, from the hot sauces (natch) to the mustard, to the nuts (the latter two are available on the FOH video series), and the flavors don't always match up to what I'm hoping, but I appreciate what they're doing nevertheless. 

For this one, we have a very interesting sauce, which has a number of components (Jolokia, Habanero, Cayenne) on the pepper side, along with several dry ingredients, yet the one element that I find the most important here is the tomato paste. This will sound odd, given that it's a hot sauce, but that particular addition is in just the right perfect amount to make this easily one of the most flexible sauces I've had, by anyone. I have tested this on everything I would normally (fried foods, mac & cheese, pizza, etc.), which covers the sweet hot side, everything I'd normally be reaching for a Louisiana-style, and even foods that tend to defy hot sauce, such as Italian foods. It doesn't always work like a champ, but, it does always work, even to a degree on Mexican foods. I used it to spike ketchup, put it on burgers, mixed in with some barbeque sauce, all of them were solid applications.The only category I didn't try (and honestly will not consider attempting) would be Asian dishes. I can't think of too many other sauces where it works that well.

The temptation might be to use it as an everyday sauce, but there are a couple of drawbacks to that. The first is that this is a bit punchy for an everyday sauce. If you wind up oversaucing something, you will notice right away, not so much in the heat, which can build nicely, but won't be too challenging for chileheads (non-chileheads will need to work their way up to this one), but because of the flavor. The use of powdered ingredients can have a tendency to introduce a bitter element, which is what we see here. Indeed, this is a sauce that needs to really be blended and meshed in with something, where it exceeds, to really get the best results. Having this one alone isn't awful or anything, but it is not where the sauce really shines. 

Bottom line: This is probably the best sauce I've had yet from Big Red's, but it isn't quite perfect. If you're on a budget or have space considerations, this is a good one to get, though, as it covers a lot of bases better than nearly any other sauce out there. It is also my first SOTY candidate for 2021.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 10
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8

Pex Peppers Lemon Yellow Jacket Hot Sauce Review

Pex Peppers Lemon Yellow Jacket Lemon Fatalii Hot Sauce

Update: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCnC0U_cF-I

Saw this one on sale and picked it up, as lemon is a pretty unusual ingredient to be prominent in flavor profile for a hot sauce. In fact, I can't think of too many others with this kind of focus. It also featured the Fatalii pepper, which is another that I need to spend a bit more time with. Fatalii reminds me somewhat of the Scorpion, only considerably less flowery and a bit more fruity, which nicely pairs with citrus in general, clearly what they were going for with the lemon. 

The flavor is most reminiscent to me of the CaJohn's Dread sauce. It is not a 1:1 dead ringer or anything, but that is by far the closest comparison I can think of...Dread, only a lot less hot. This can get a nice build going, however, as the Fatalii is another of the superhots. Lemon struck me as a very curious choice, as lemon and food tend to go together in a fairly low amount of foods, largely the white meats, such as fish, shellfish, chicken, and pork. Lemon, lemon pepper, lemon and dill, all of those work exceedingly well in that environment, but lemon and red meat, for instance, or lemon and, say, Italian foods are not such a good combination. 

Like Dread, this sauce is somewhat limited in where it finds best use. It took me a very long time to work through and finish out the Dread sauce, being one of those sauces, again something this shares, that is too good to toss, but opportunistically takes a while to find foods where it is a good match. I do find this sauce to be quite enjoyable, though, and I appreciate the degree of experimentalistic courage it takes to take a shot at bottling and putting this out as a product. Part of the problem with Dread, for me, as that although I enjoyed the sauce, there were a lot of other sauces I had open, perpetually, that I preferred. That is fully the case of what I expect here as well.

Consistency-wise, this reminds me more of a lemongrass-type sauce, rather than anything smooth and runny. I don't know what I was expecting, something syrupy or lemon droppy or along those lines, perhaps, but whatever vision it was, this is really its own thing. Another very, very solid entry from Pex Peppers, a company that continues to impress.

Bottom line: A very unique entry into the market, utilizing the seldom-used Fatalii pepper and lemon. This is an excellent sauce to introduce one to the Fataliis and if you're a heavy eater of any of the meats I mentioned, this is definitely worth a go.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Swampdragon Bourbon Hot Sauce Review

Swampdragon Bourbon Hot Sauce

If you are a food reviewer, as I am and have been for well over a decade, and even longer, if you count the informal times, or even if you're just an intrepid food adventurer, as I have always largely been, you will, at some point, experience the sensation of putting something truly awful in your mouth. I have had this happen a number of times and, unless I severely curtail my lust for experimentalism, probably will again a number more before I finally check out. This sauce surely ranks among the worst of anything I've ever put in my mouth. 

After seeing it on a local grocery store shelf, I picked this up on a whim. They also had rum and tequila and I think possibly vodka also. I'm no stranger to bourbon and keep a bottle at hand at all times (unless I'm making a drink of some kind, I also prefer it neat, in case anyone is wondering) and naturally went with that, but also considered the rum as well. Vodka I could not see it adding much and tequila I'm closer to the point of avoiding, so they were really not a choice. It was one of the more expensive sauces on that shelf, which I found curious. Another point of curiousity was the ingredient label, which was "Aged Red Peppers," which I assume to be Cayenne (or possibly, but less likely, red Jalapeno) and a non-specified bourbon. Hmmmm.

Those of us who toy around even at the periphery of the culinary world are familiar with the practice of cooking with or using alcohol products in marinades and sauces and so on. Generally, enough heat is used to cook out the "boozy" part, leaving the taste profile behind. Getting too heavy-handed with whatever alcohol you're using can rather quickly and easily ruin whatever dish you're making and it tends to be mostly used as accent. Even in the sauces that do have it - a few from CaJohn's come more immediately to mind - it is used in the manner I've described.  In this specific case, the selling point is that rather than taking a harsh vinegar hit, why not use alcohol as preservative instead? What this means is that the booze part is not cooked off and instead, you take an alcohol hit instead of a vinegar hit. 

I was tempted to say that the company appears to be very careful not to indicate which brand of bourbon is being used, which I find somewhat suspicious. I imagine it is something they are buying in large quantities of and are likely worried more about a price point than smoothness, for instance. Certainly, all bourbons are not created equal. After pondering this some, I don't believe that I could take one of my finer bourbons and craft a hot sauce with that as at least a co-equal flavor driver, so it probably doesn't really matter how harsh the actual alcohol hit may be. This is just something that conceptually is a moderately intriguing idea, but in actual practice...

I tried this on quite a number of things. If I happened to have it on something hot enough or if I let it sit long enough to let some of the alcohol evaporate, it was vaguely approaching a Louisiana-style sauce, though one I would call more middle of the road. There is not really any heat here, but that is not really what most Louisiana-style sauces are after. When this sauce was used right out of the bottle, the best I could hope for was the alcohol being a distraction. At worst, it was vile and often disgusting.  

This sauce never wound up either complementing the food or improving it, but rather universally wrecked everything it touched. There's just no escaping that you're taking a booze hit with this rather dreadful concoction and most of the foods I use with hot sauce do not work in that setting. Maybe someone out there likes mac and cheese or pizza or chicken strips with whiskey dumped on it, or someone who dips fish sticks or chicken wings in the glass of booze, but that person is definitely not only not me, but also no one I'm aware that I either know or know of. 

Bottom line: This is a mess, an absolutely noxious, and somewhat ill-conceived, concoction. Best use for this would be as some sort of novelty gag gift. Definitely not usable on food and my bottle has already been binned.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Karma Huhu Diablo Hot Sauce Review

 Karma Huhu Diablo Hot Sauce

NOTE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9S_jpQd34E

This is the hotter version (big brother?) to the Huhu Pina sauce and I was interested to see if a hotter version would address some of what I felt were the inadequacies of that previously mentioned sauce (also reviewed here). It somehow escaped my attention that it utilized the 7 Pot Primo (I now have 2 open sauces with that pepper, for the first time ever), but once I discovered that, I was well-pleased. I'm impressed more and more with that pepper, lately. 

One of the nicest things was that in switching the pepper, a lot of the prominence of the one ingredient that I found to be highly distracting and detracting, the cumin, was reduced significantly. It also wiped out a few of the others as well, leaving ultimately a much cleaner sauce, which is a sweet sauce, with a mild pineapple presence, along with a very nicely blended heat and slight bitterness from the pepper. 7 Pot Primo seems to meld quite nicely in the sauces I've had it in so far and does not share either the flowery aspect of Scorpions or the slightly cloying nature of the Reapers. Now that I'm discovering it more and more, this is one I will be turning to with more frequency.

This one has a solid burn, much like the Wildberry Whoop-Ass from Pex (also reviewed here), and also like that sauce, is somewhat on a delay. You get a nice refreshing burst of heat and then as you continue to consume, you get a greater and greater burn. Quite pleasant and enjoyable, I must say, though this is not going to be anywhere near among the greater sauces I've had, I don't think. 

While the flexibility is increased to the point where this is workable on things like pizza, there is still enough cumin that I'm a bit leery about the odds of me buying more of this. I would not, for instance, use this on chicken strips. I am definitely going to give Karma a closer look, I think. This one was exactly what the Pina should have been, for me, and in a general and broader Mexican food sense, this is a definitely winner, unlike the other which was definitely solid for the al pastor tacos and that was it.

Bottom line: A very fine sauce to kick off the new year and it improved on every single aspect of the Pina. I still go back and forth on whether I will keep it on hand, but absolutely will enjoy the bottle in its entirety.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 6

Best Hot Sauce 2020 + Recap

Number Nine. Year #9. The ninth year of this blog. For the sauces I had, and for this blog, and the video series, it was a strong year. For almost everything else, it was pretty awful. But you didn’t come here for more of the COVID-19 calamity, I don’t suppose, and I’d rather keep the blog on point, as it has been for all (ok, most) of that time. 

Every year, I like to come around at this time, in usually my lengthiest post of the year, and ruminate a bit. I don’t really do resolutions, but I did want to talk a bit about 2021, which is maybe an unusual way to start a recap of a preceding year, but, given that this one will also include the FOH video series, I hope I can be forgiven for my indulgence. But first...a prelude of sorts to that...also, get a snack and a drink, because this post will be lengthy. 

Before I get into the prelude (you can probably see why this is so long), though, I do want to mention a bit of housekeeping, namely that I have further sorted the FOH videos on YouTube and added a new playlist, this one separating out the Sweet stuff from some of the other snacks (check them all out directly in links to the right). Aside for the sauces, I don’t want to get too many videos piling up in one playlist, so there may be another breakout playlist or two coming in 2021. Speaking of the FOH video series on YouTube... 

When I first started kicking the idea of the video series around, it was because, as I mentioned in the post earlier last year, Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, had graciously offered me some sauces to kickstart the blog again. I struggled with the idea a bit, as I had not previously accepted product and, to a degree in the beginning, specifically avoided that kind of thing...but, it was a very generous offer, at a time when my motivation was floundering, so I ultimately gratefully accepted. Still, it felt kind of unfair to me that he gave me actual products that had value, as in stock on his shelf, in exchange for me grinding out words in a blog that had seen better days in terms of draw, at least partially because of my lackadaisical posting to it. So, I hatched the video idea, given that I’ve been doing YouTube video content for a while now on some other channels. 

 I wanted it to be different, but still support the ideals of the blog. With the video series, I felt I could open up and expand the spicy items I was consuming, but the idea of food challenges has held little appeal to me and I will never be competitive with the myriad of others already out there doing it. So, the video series, in addition to the other parts I mentioned, was also to do another the blog did not, which was to get up content consistently. I had originally just wanted to post a video for one sauce a week, which I felt was a pretty attainable goal. I almost missed that, shortly after I launched, but once I got on track, it was smooth sailing. Things were clicking along in that I was soon running at least 2 months ahead (it’s probably closer to 3+, as I write this), so I was able coast most of the time... 

This enabled me to plan future stuff, to keep the door fridge sauces to a mostly reasonable and manageable level, as well as keeping my tolerance down somewhat. The idea of this blog is to have it accessible to folks beyond just chileheads, so if I let things just fly too much, the sauces don’t read to me at an appropriate or commensurate level. Activity winds up becoming a flurry of sauces, then a pause while I try to finish off some open ones, then repeat and so on. Unlike some of the other reviewers out there, I don’t just do a review and the immediately bin the sauce. If I like it at all, I will generally finish it out. I really struggle with the idea of waste. 

I have a lot of fun with those videos and really enjoy making them, which hopefully comes through, but chasing down different spicy snacks all the time is a lot more work than I expected. I really mainly was thinking of the sauces for the FOH video series, but figured I would try to do double-postings for all of 2020 to build content. This (and being so far ahead - as I type this, January is in the can and I’m actually working on videos that probably won’t be posted until March 2021 or later) enabled me to do really fun things like some holiday posts and special event videos and whatnot. 

The problem now is that I can’t really record a video of me eating Samyang Hot Chicken noodles or any of those other items again. Those are pretty much one and out and there are a lot less different spicy snacks than there are hot sauces out there. With COVID-19, I largely lost my ability to do Head To Head Chicken Sandwich Battles (or any fast food spicy menu items). I can still do the nut battles, until I run out, I suppose, and even those, I’ve run down the gamut pretty well (as I write this, I have two more to do and that’s it). Trying to come up with content, in fact, is how I arrived at those Head To Head Battles to begin with. Same with the quarterly fridge sauce clean-up hot wings videos, which I will say, has done a great job of not overburdening my open fright door sauce shelf. 

Where this leaves me in 2021, I don’t know exactly, though I do have a bit of time with the backlog, probably pretty close through the end of Q2. I might try to go every other week and see how that goes, but I’m running out of road on non-sauce content, unless I want to open it up to the weird spicy challenges...and I may do a few of those, if they sound like they will be interesting taste-wise and not just the “pour a shitload of extract into things” type. If that becomes a thing, I need to develop my prep a bit more. What I have come up with is helpful, but not quite to the level I want it to be at. My focus has really been, for the most part, even with the experimentalism of the FOH video series, on flavor. 

I have a number of other options I’ve had rattling around the old noggin. I could go replace the non-sauce postings with more sauce postings, once I run out of the non-sauce items. I have the canned content now to support that thought, as I write this, but how long would that continue if I was posting double the sauce content would become a pressing question. I could just go to regular sauce posting and then just do the non-sauce products as I come across things, but I dislike doing that somewhat. I do have some series type “event” videos I kind of have in the back of my mind, which would add a video in per month, but I haven’t formulated it concretely enough mentally, in terms of feasability. 

I might add condiments that often run in the gray area, not quite a hot sauce, but a little too spicy to be just “normal,” which is the hot mustards or possibly some of the hotter BBQ sauces, if I can find any. Those don’t really fit into the blog, which is more specifically hot sauces only, but realistically, how many of those can I do as well will be a question. I really enjoy posting stuff I make, from pizza to barbeque to deviled eggs to hot cider. Those are a blast to do, but that’s not really what I do or what the channel is about, besides the occasional times where it fits in with something else I’m doing. 

The final alternative is just to leave it mostly as a blog/hot sauce support structure. If had to guess, once I run down the backlog, it will probably be weekly sauces every Sunday, the quarterly wing showdown, maybe some Head To Head stuff, if things permit, and any other content opportunistically, as if I find a new kind of snack in the grocery store or something OR if someone wants to see something I haven’t done, then I could do something by request, which would add some nice flexibility, possibly. In any case, while I don’t know how this will look just yet (watch this space, or more relevantly, the YouTube space, I guess), I do know that 2021, at this point, anyway, is less likely to see my video posting at the same pace as 2020. 

 In other changes for 2021, I have decided I’m largely tired of Scorpion peppers and will be drifting away from them once I run out the sauces I already have. I was fairly fond of them for some time, but their overly flowery nature I find somewhat grating now, as I mentioned elsewhere, sort of like the over-hoppy nature of IPA beers. I’m kind of kicking around the idea of doing a post on different peppers and my thoughts on them in sauces, but inevitably, I’m going to leave something out, so going to let that idea gel for a bit. 

 I do need to look into the Reapers more and those are factoring fairly highly in my plans for the coming year. The process, in fact, has already started in the later part of 2020. I have not historically had a lot of interaction with them on the sauce side, with nearly all of my dealings coming from them on the snack side, but with Scorpions going by the wayside, it is probably high time I look into those further. My sporadic interaction with them has been a touch challenging for my internal system. It is somewhat similar to how my body would sometimes react with Habaneros, which has been described throughout this blog. The interaction with Reapers is that, only amplified, but there are some differences as well, such a burn all the way to my stomach, which is something more typical for me with extracts. Reaper presence can also induce burning urine, which is the only thing which has ever reacted this way with me. Extract doesn’t do that. That particular burn seems to be quantity based, without regard to whether it is the pods or powder. 

It was quite a surprise the first time that happened, I can assure you, even with my heat tolerance probably overall higher than at any other point in my life, so it will be intriguing to see how/if that changes with Reaper sauces. I spent most of December with various Reaper products and my takeaway is that Reapers are not something that one consumes casually. This is not the case for any of the other peppers. Reapers are fairly easy to overdo and it is pretty far from enjoyable when that happens. Playing with those can very easily whip you into pretty bad cap cramps, even after the mouth heat has dissipated. It is the only thing I’ve found that I can re-activate into cramps, either with activity or with carbonation post ingestion, even literally a few hours afterwards...definitely not something to toy with. 

Another of my goals for 2021 is to try to have a support video posted for every single sauce I do a written review for within the year. The past sauces from earlier years of the blog I still plan to work on and ideally can get at least one of those per month, but they are a bit less of a priority than my last goal, which is to try to clear out my backlog somewhat (I have space for 18 bottles, as long as they are not irregularly sized, in my usual spot where I keep the unopened ones that are waiting - I overran that a few times this year, including as I write this, which I would strongly prefer not to do in future). I also will be having video support for all of the SOTY titles that are still available and not either reformulated or discontinued in 2021, probably by the end of Q1...at least that’s the plan, currently. 

Another of my big goals is to do more networking and outreach within the community, something I’ve largely not bothered with in the past, aside from chit-chatting a bit over email with Scott Roberts, when he was around. This year I’ve connected a bit with Kendall at Tasting The Heat, submitted to be part of the voting body for the Hot Sauce Hall Of Fame, connected a bit with some sauce manufacturers, added in some major Hot Ones sauce breakdowns and homages, as well as connected with some online YouTube reviewers a bit. Of course, my main man Roger Damptz at BYT is always in the mix as well. I’m not, however, on Facebook and will never be. I have little to no interest in social media, aside from what I’m currently doing now (Yelp, YouTube, this blog), so if you enjoy the content here or at FOH, please spread the word. I noticed Vic Clinco (World’s Largest Hot Sauce Collection) has a good community going, but I don’t really have a way to reach him, that I’ve been able to find, as we don’t inhabit the same online spheres, so if there are people reading or watching and enjoying what I do here or at the FOH series, I’d love a little referral to some of those people out there, especially if you’re part of a chilehead community. 

Speaking of The Hot Ones (be sure to check on the quarterly updates, posted at the END of every calendar quarter, which are NOT in the Table Of Contents post, but you can click to by expanding the months on the right), I’m slowly working my way through the sauces on that show. Season One was done as of last Quarter, with more coming in 2021. As noted earlier, those tend to be more expensive options than some of the other sauces. Unless and until this blog and video channel thing becomes lucrative, it makes more sense for me to be driven by what appeals to me, rather than chasing a completist fever dream...I have broken down the numbers for all of the years (also somewhat in a link on the right) and have added a few more for this year, and continue to keep that page current, but again, overall not really a priority at present. Right now, the plan is to try to do at least one of those a quarter, so I have at least one Hot Ones entry in my quarterly wing fridge clean up homage videos. I have in mind a couple more breakout playlists for FOH, including The Hot Ones sauces specifically, but that particular one is not really worthwhile to do...yet. 

2020 overall was the second highest year for posts and the highest year ever for sauces, again, somewhat driven by the FOH series. This is even with a slow down towards the end of the year, partially so I could do some sauce clean-up and save some for January 2021. 2020 has been easily the highest drawing year for blog viewership historically, which was quite pleasing to see. Additionally, in news that will surely be of no interest to anyone other than me, I am now down to 12 sauces (that are still being produced, of course) for which I need pictures. 

Before October was out, I hit 200 full sauce reviews, on my way to 210, a number which is still kind of wild to me, considering where I started the year. 300, even overall, seems a bit unlikely for 2021, but I imagine I will finish fairly close in the overall total. Also, this time out, before I even got to the end of Quarter 3, I had 5 contenders for SOTY. I finished with 6 contenders, which was a different challenge from previous years, but also kind of a good problem to have. The sauce with the most views changed from the prior leader, the O’Brother Chipotle-Habanero, to a new sauce leader this year as well. We will get into the SOTY discussion more, but first, as we usually do, some numbers... 

As usual, all written reviews for sauces can be clicked to from the Table Of Contents page (see link on right): 

Total posts (including this post): 255
Total views (as of this writing): ~24,928
Total sauces full reviewed: 210
Total mini-sauce reviews: 36
Total sauces reviewed, combined: 246
Total full review sauces with FOH video content: 68
Total unopened sauces waiting on shelf for review: 17
Total open sauces waiting for blog review: 1
Total open sauces waiting for video support: 3
Total open bottles in fridge: 10
Highest viewed review: 1,334 - Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce
Highest viewed article, any type: 1,334 - Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce

Current standby sauces are: 

*Emeritus Everyday sauce: Trappey's Red Devil
*Emeritus Asian-style sauce: Huy Fong Chili-Garlic Sauce
*Everyday sauce (and current overall favorite): Blair’s Pure Death Sauce
*Grilling sauce: CaJohn's Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero (BICH)
*Mustard-style sauce: Inner Beauty
*Pizza sauce (as in used instead of actual pizza sauce): Boar’s Head Jalapeno Pepper Sauce Mexican-style sauce: ???
*Louisiana-style sauce: Irazu Cayenne
*Sweet-hot sauce: CaJohn's Happy Beaver
*= Not looking for a replacement 

The more things change...a standby Mexican-style sauce seems to have perpetually eluded me and that remains the case today. I’ve given up on it being a focus, despite being caught up in it once a gain a bit this year towards the end. I have decided to try just blending one, as I had some pretty good entries in that category this year, but nothing that scratched the itch quite right. Of course, there will be a FOH video of that process available also (look for it in early 2021). 

I have also added a new category to my Standby list, to replace some of the departing ones, which is the Inner Beauty, an absolute treasure of a sauce. In fact, I wound up doing a special event for that one, I loved it so much. I ate considerably more of that than any other single sauce. In fact, that is probably my favorite sauce this year and it wasn’t even in contention. I ran down the average rating in last quarter’s update, but it really takes some doing to be in contention for Sauce Of The Year, let alone to win it. I specifically wanted this category to be the creme de la creme of the year and designed the rating system so that no one element could score high enough to tamper with the selection. It has to get fairly high marks in at least 3 of those 4 to be in serious contention. So even Inner Beauty, with it getting a perfect 10 in 2 of the 4 categories wasn’t able to be in consideration. To put it in perspective, even with 210 full review sauces on the blog so far, I still have not hit a total score of 1,000 cumulative, with all the sauce scores combined. The average rating of all those sauces sits just about 4.5 (I’m not going to post a full breakdown of where the sauces fall in this post, as it’s already quite lengthy as-is, but if anyone is interested, drop me a line and I’ll get it Q1 of 2021). 

Most of the SOTY contenders came in sort of early this year, at least comparatively to other years. Those sauces specifically were: Private Selection Calabrian Chile, Arthur Wayne Huckleberry Ghost, Arthur Wayne Limitless, Monroy’s Death By Kraken, Tonguespank Scotch Whiskey Trinidad Scorpion & Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper. Having two sauces from the same manufacturer is pretty rare and had not happened since the first year of the blog. 

We had a very commercial sauce in the Private Selection, a sort of mid-level market penetration with the Mikey V’s, and much smaller scale for the others. I loved them all, but for different reasons. The Calabrian went by far the fastest and was the most universal of all the contenders this year. It was also the least expensive. The Limitless was definitely the hottest. The Death By Kraken sort of became a forgotten sauce and was not able to sustain the kind of appeal it would have needed to actually be the choice. I think I tired of the mango, which is not a flavor I would say I find super beloved. The Tonguespank, sadly no longer produced, was like a fine Manhattan, revealing multiple layers and depths to it. The Mikey V’s was by far the best-tasting, until the very last minute, when the Huckleberry Ghost slid in under the wire. 

We also had some variety of chiles, with various ones being used in the Calabrian, which was decidedly not hot, the Scorpion for both Limitless and the Tonguespank, and Ghost Pepper for the Kraken, Huckleberry Ghost, and Mikey V. entry. Of these, the Limitless and Kraken came courtesy of Roger at Burn Your Tongue. All of them, except for the Tonguespank, which I had well over a year before getting around to trying, were acquired this year. 

While any on this list would rightfully take their place amidst the other great sauces that earned the title, I eliminated the Calabrian almost immediately, due to having stiff competition this year, While it is a legitimately great sauce, particularly for a commercial one, it ultimately just didn’t hit enough buttons. The Kraken, as noted, was one that I tired of, again probably because there were so many other sauces and so much competition as well. The Limitless was one where I enjoyed it a bit less over time because it was fairly easy to oversauce with it, which made it somewhat less usable. 

Really, the main contenders were the Huckleberry Ghost, the Mikey V., and the Tonguespank, which became more clear as time wore on. This is one of the reasons I don’t decide these things until I’m nearly at the end of trying sauces for a given year. I vacillated back and forth for quite some time, as I really enjoyed the combination of Scotch whiskey and Scorpion peppers, oddly, two components I no longer hold the same love and regard for which I formerly did. The Mikey V., as noted, is by far the best Asian-style sweet sauce I’ve ever had and I loved every bite of it. The Huckleberry Ghost was just this tremendously surprising wonderful concoction. It came down to literally the Mikey V. and the Huckleberry Ghost, on account of flavor for both, as they were of similar heat level. 

Now seems like a good spot to announce that, by a hair, and only due to a slightly higher flexibility in that I liked the flavor more and like the sauce itself on more things, the Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper is the 2020 Sauce Of The Year. It’s the best-seller of the company and small wonder why...it’s just a tremendous, tremendous sauce. I loved it from the start and then on every single thing I used it on, which is not something I could say for the other sauces. In the review, I mentioned it was the frontrunner for SOTY, which was a spot it never really fully relinquished. I’ve had a lot of Asian-style sweet sauces, have a very rich history to compare this to, so when I say this is far and away the best, it is comparing it not only against a wide array of sauces, but also decades of usage. That is not something that can be ignored, especially when you’re coming down to such slim criteria to decide an eventual winner. This was the closest deliberation for SOTY I’ve ever had. 

Previous TSAAF Sauce Of The Year winners (links in Table Of Contents page): 

2012: CaJohn’s Happy Beaver
2013: Blair’s Pure Death 
2014: Born To Hula’s Ghost Of Ancho
2015: Voodoo Chile’s Voo Dew Honey Doo
2016: Pirate O’s Surface Of The Sun Hot Sauce
2017: Z’s Shield Maiden Hot Sauce
2018: Taco Jesus Cayenne Pepper Sauce
2019: Torchbearer Ultimate Annihilation

If you want to read more from me, check out my wine about blog, the Happy Sippin’ Companion (HSC). It has been put on inactive status as of 2019, with no plans to resurrect it, but still remains up for viewing (link also on right). 

I also slug away a bit on Yelp, though, as noted, far, far off the pace for 2020, which you can click to from my widget. My distribution of ratings and further metrics are available on my Yelp profile page. 

As always, I appreciate you dropping by. If there’s any spicy products or sauces you’d like to see me get to or any video ideas you may have, please drop me a line in the comment section of any of the reviews or support videos.

Angry Goat Black Bison Hot Sauce Review

Angry Goat Pepper Co. Black Bison Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdJb4bac9DE

This is another of a current crop of sweet-hots using berries as a base, this particular one with the addition of cherries, which have also been used on and off. A berry blend is always kind of an intriguing proposition to me in a hot sauce, as we really don't see a ton of use out there in the commercial world, other than in drinks of pancakes syrups, possibly dipping sauces for a dish that has cheese as a heavy component. It is not really a natural fit to things like chicken strips. While it can be interesting in that application, most of the time, it also makes one wish for something else, even in excellent formulations like the Pex Wildberry Whoop-Ass (also reviewed here). 

We are left with, then, the problem of application. This one has suggestions of pizza (not good), chicken (not good), and ice cream (have yet to find a sauce good on that - vinegar and sweet dairy are non-starters for me). The final application from the label here was beef. I don't tend to eat a lot of beef, as a rule, particularly in 2020, when I have, with a handful of exceptions, stopped eating from restaurants at any level (those were either pre-COVID-19 dispersement or takeaway only). Given the year, this has caused me to work on recreating various foods from different restaurants that I miss, sans sushi, which I don't usually want hot sauce on anyway. 

So, having run this through the gauntlet of everything I could think of from the other berry sauces, including cheese and crackers, and having it fail, I finally turned to re-creating the Arby's Triple Cheese Angus sandwich, which has been discontinued. In this application, I finally got a good sense of the read of this sauce. For most, if not all, of the earlier entries, the sauce read extremely bitter, that same bitter heat that can come from superhots. My suspicion is that it is from the Scorpion powder, as the Habanero and Jolokia can be quite flavorful peppers. It wasn't overly flowery, but I got very little of the actual berries, despite them leading off the sauce ingredient panel. 

It is a fairly hefty sauce, in terms of heat, well beyond what non-chileheads would find enjoyable, so it was not one that I could overuse chasing after elusive flavor notes. Once I had it with some beef, though, it paired exceedingly well and I was able to get some nice notes of cherry and what struck me as a touch of pomegranate. This has a veritable laundry list of ingredients, most of them not reading through in the flavor, such as tequila, blackberry, lime, run under by much stronger flavors. Pepper-wise, the combination of peppers does not come through in flavors, but in both build of heat and duration, which can be quite pleasant, if not over done. If overdone, that aspect will be somewhat amplified and also come with a lingering bitterness and harshness, which is pretty far from pleasant.

Bottom line: There are better berry-flavored sweet-hots out there. This one is among the hotter ones, but while somewhat less than Pex overall, manages to trade in the berry flavor for a bitterness in pushing for heat.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3

Arthur Wayne Huckleberry Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Arthur Wayne Huckleberry Ghost Hot Sauce

Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rsnnn7gQvM4

This little gem is an absolute beauty of a sauce. It strikes me as kind of odd, to call a sauce beautiful, and I don't mean visually, though it does have a very cool sort of purplish coloration, with little bits of pepper. It is more in just how incredibly successful this Arthur Wayne chap was in bringing off the huckleberry flavor which reads in just a stunning way. This is one of the better versions of any berry sauce I've ever had, hot sauce or otherwise. I've had a lot of blueberry hot sauces and this one just runs circles around all of them. Pairing this with the mighty Ghost was a stroke of brilliance, as the excellent flavor of the Ghost lends a touch of bitterness and rounds off the sweetness nicely, creating a wonderful marvel. 

I don't personally like the taste of berry on pizza nor on Mexican food or Asian food, but aside from those, this has worked quite well as a dipping sauce, to a lesser but still solid extent on burgers, but most especially, on sweeter breakfast foods, such as pancakes or waffles. It is not quite sweet enough entirely by itself for my suiting, but dropping in a small amount of pure maple syrup fixes things right up and just really takes the whole endeavor up several notches. It also looks amazing on those breakfast delectables, particularly on sweet crepes. 

Heat-wise, it is listed as 8/10, but I find it considerably tamer than that. Like most label ratings, I'd put the heat at half of what's listed, maybe a bit under that, even. This isn't a sauce to sandblast your mouth out in an unholy inferno of superhot pepper scorching. It is definitely far more flavor forward.

Bottom line: If you want a sweet-hot that features berries rather than a tropical fruit, this is the ticket. Probably the best berry sauce I've ever eaten. Unexpectedly, I now have another SOTY candidate in this.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8