Redacted Honey Trap Hot Sauce Review

Redacted Honey Trap

I love some good cheek, a fair good bit of cheek, one might even say, and finding this, a sauce company out of Tampa, who has apparently decided to take spycraft as their motif, albeit by way of something more akin to perhaps the fine work of the late great Leslie Nielsen. The entire website is decked out in all this glory and apparently this is another newer company, one I was not aware of at all until taking in the magnificence of the newest BYT location. There I spotted it and was instantly hooked by the label design and sauce names.

So we here we have honey and one of the more undersung pods for me, the venerable Scotch Bonnet, which is a great base, to be sure. There are also some carrots and mangos in there to kind of round things out, but neither shows up particularly in the flavor profile. This is much more the Bonnet & honey show and I think the sauce is better for it. Here, for instance, on perhaps great display, is a very good example of the taste relation between the Bonnets and their more ubiquitous, but not as good, as far as I’m concerned, cousins, the Habanero.

A good hot sauce, a good sweet hot in particular, will always have a place in my fridge...at least for a while until I clear the bottle and this is another I had to put the brakes on, so as to have enough left to shoot a video for it. To say I enjoyed using it would be an understatement and this is a pretty ringing introduction for the company. I definitely will be checking through more of their sauces, but as for this one, this style of sauce works very well in places you might use honey, so fried foods, but I wound up throwing it around a bit more than that. It’s not quite sweet enough to be used in a dessert context, though I also tried that, but as long as where you want to put it would be good with honey, this is a winner.

Bottom line: A very strong entry from one of the newer companies on the horizon, definitely worth getting if you like honey-based sauces and want to get a feel for the Scotch Bonnet in comparison to the Habanero.  

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

Merf's Her Majesty Hot Sauce Review

Merf's Her Majesty

Note: This sauce was provided by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, hot sauce emporium of legend. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram. 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRqf9ATQXJA

Very intriguing entry here and one I was not aware existed up until I had this hot little number in my hands...actually "hot" in terms of spicy might not be the right thing here, as this is a very moderate heat, given that the main (and only) driver is Serrano. I had high hopes that it would be another fruit-based sweet hot and I don't run across berries nearly as much as the tropical fruits, so I was pretty excited to see it. This one also featured a combination of strawberry, blueberry, and blackberry. I've definitely done a few sauces with the first two fruits, but can't say that the third one comes up a whole lot, so I was definitely very interested in checking this one out.

The sauce itself, though, definitely tends hard towards the tart. I wasn't sure what the need for lime juice was, as the sauce is definitely closer to sour than anything else, along with some salt notes, but this very clearly was not intended to be sweet. This naturally came as a disappointment to me, as I don't really enjoy sour sauces and think most fruit-based sauces benefit from being on the sweeter side.

Because of this, naturally, this made it a touch on the challenging side for me to find places it to pair it with. This is by no means a bad sauce or unpleasant tasting one, but moreso something not aligned with my palate, though I tried mightily, all the way from savory dishes to actual desserts. It didn't ruin anything or drag any dishes down, but neither did it really add or compliment most of them. It was just kind of a thing I added and was there, separate and distinct. Part of this was also me being a touch unclear where this sauce was aimed. 

Bottom line: If you like your fruit (and fruit sauces) a bit more on the tart side, this might be worth a go. For me, I didn't quite vibe with it, but found it be another sauce more interesting than outright tasty. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 6
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor:5

Overall: 4

HAB Sauce Smoked Habanero Cherrywood Hot Sauce Review

HAB Sauce Smoked Habanero Cherrywood

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz at Burn Your Tongue, the greatest of hot sauce emporiums. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram.

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

This may be the most literal-named sauce I've come across. While the first ingredient maybe tomatillo, everything, from the smell on down to the flavor, is more dominantly that of the second, and for which this sauced is named. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, largely imagining a more run-of-the-mill tomatillo sauce, which tends to lend a bit towards tomatillo, of course, as well as a green chile like an Anaheim, maybe a bit of lime, and some cilantro, with just a touch of garlic and that's mostly where the ingredients here lead...other than no lime or green chiles...or cilantro. Instead, we have the much more prominent note of the smoke, followed by the green Habaneros.

I'm not quite sure what they intended for this sauce, but with most of those ingredients, I'm thinking it's a tomatillo sauce, which means Mexican style foods, like chimichangas or carnitas or enchiladas or perhaps a nice tamale, maybe a nice fish taco, or perhaps in a marinade potentially for some nice flank steak. In all of those things, I think this would be pretty wonderful, as those all have fairly strong and prominent flavors that this can bounce off of and play with, as well as temper the intensity of the smoke flavor a bit. By itself, it does come across very forcefully as maybe not one note exactly, but by far the majority of the flavor is in that. Also, like most Mexican style sauces, and particularly green sauces of that style, it does not tend to do well outside of that food format.

That said, I do like this sauce a lot and think it fits very well with the more complex dishes. The more there is something there to compliment this, the better, and indeed, it proves often a very nice and welcome addition. I don't typically eat a lot of green sauces, as a rule, so I don't come across these frequently, but the last time I remember one being this favorable was probably Danny Cash's Salvation Garlic-Serrano Sauce (reviewed elsewhere here) or maybe the El Yucateco green (also reviewed elsewhere here). Color is much better here than in the latter, though this one does come across with the flashy heat in a similar manner. It is mostly that, though, just a flash, as this is a fairly tame sauce overall.

Bottom line: A very smoke-forward sauce, with some very nice background notes of green Habanero and tomatillo, followed by a slight grace note of garlic, all with very moderate heat. Definitely plays well with others and in my mind, sort of requires complimentary stronger flavors for best results.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Brick & Mortar Hot Sauce Spots In Utah Update

Update 2024

I am seriously bad at doing this...I, once upon a when, had designs on doing this annually and now, with this post, is nearly the first time I've updated it since November 2020...naturally, things have changed a lot since then and I figured, with the newest location of Burn Your Tongue (celebrating 15 years in July 2024!) in Park City, which is an absolute showstopper (more on that forthcoming), now is a good time to re-up it.

Gone from last time are Pepper Palace in Park City, which is not really much of a loss, and both the Draper and Logan locations of Burn Your Tongue, which might not have been around in 2020. Also, FYE, various local grocery outlets, and World Market, have all done a bit of upgrading to their hot and spicy offerings. I try to keep tabs on all of that, either noting in the written reviews here on this very blog or, if it's not a hot sauce, doing an FOH video on it, which you can check out by following the links at right to my YouTube page. Additionally, all of these locations (as well as some others not in Utah) are covered on my Yelp page, which has a link, also at right. Finally, I also encourage you to check out the previous entries into this less than constantly attended Brick & Mortar series.

Now then, the list:

Burn Your Tongue - inside Quilted Bear - Newgate Mall, Ogden, UT

800+ sauces. I might not need to add anything else to this, actually. This selection is intense and covers every spectrum of hot sauce you might think of, including some mustards and syrups. If you combined ALL of the shelf offerings of everyone else on this list, you’d maybe hit 200 - 250, but not much more. All of them. Combined. Roger, in addition to being the ambassador to spiciness, particularly with his support of the chilehead community, is also an all-around good guy and if you happen to catch him there, you’ll be treated to a great conversation about peppers, the industry, and exactly which sauce you should be taking with you, and maybe even a discount. 

Burn Your Tongue - inside Locals - University Mall, Orem, UT

This one is a sort of truncated version of Ogden, with maybe half of the selection, 350 - 500 sauces or so, with a bunch of snacky stuff and different powdered mixes and popcorn, among other things. Even with the lower shelf space, this location is still more than all of the other non-BYT  spots combined and is super convenient. This is the location I haunt perhaps more than the others, so if you ever want to catch me in the wild, it will probably be here...or would have been, if not for the next entry.

Burn Your Tongue - inside Locals - Upper Level Outlets - Park City, UT

Has even more selection than the granddaddy location up in Ogden, with several sauces there that I did not see in Ogden, including an entire Hot Ones sauce section, including their entire branded line, by far the largest I've seen on anyone's shelves. As usual, there was quite a lot of stuff I hadn't heard of on the shelves and encountering the shelves for the first time, I was blown away, which is pretty hard to do for me, at this point. This is easily the biggest selection not only in Utah, but in at least a 500 mile radius, possibly more.

Grove Market - Salt Lake City, UT

This is what it sounds like, a small market servicing a deli counter that makes some of the tastiest sandwiches known to man. Everything there is in service to that, from the fresh desserts to the substantial drink selection to the snacks and so on. There is one neck-high shelving unit that is dedicated to the sauces, but in that area is probably a good 50 or 60 different types, some of which I’ve seen nowhere else. Selection here is a pretty far cry from any of the BYT locations, but still probably second most. It battles back and forth a bit with Pirate O's for that honor at various times, but both of those are more like semi-annual trips for me these days.

Pirate O's - Draper, UT

Speaking of, this is more of a Euro/quasi-Scandinavian import store than anything else. The owner seems somewhat of a chilehead, and is also another good guy that I’ve enjoyed chatting with about sauces, but a couple of shelving units along the back wall means he’s deferring to other stuff that probably sells better and is more profitable, though selection waxes and wanes a bit. Although the last few visits have yielded zero sauces for me to walk out with, since I've covered the entirety of the hot sauce area, with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions that are way more in the "rainy day" category,  I do enjoy the visits here a lot, just something warm and comfortable about it, that so-called je ne sais quoi.

While my overall favorite, and the place that by far gets the majority of my purchases, is Burn Your Tongue, I do have a soft spot for both Grove, for lunches and for being the OG hot sauce location, where I've spent many good hours in conversation with the owner there, as well as Pirate O's, just because there is so much cool stuff to see and even after multiple visits, I still find new stuff that wasn't there the time before. I appreciate that kind of relentlessness. To sum up, for the last major ones standing, three very different approaches, with BYT definitely covering the gamut of the "chilehead" experience, from chile-curious, all the way to hardcore firehead and with a constantly curated selection, often with sauces you can find nowhere else, including in online outlets, while Grove mianly offers some outstanding sandwiche, along with some of the bigger sauce maker names and novelty stuff, leaving Pirate O's, which I always find just an overall fascinating experience, with lots of imported delectables and sauces more in the direction as Grove.

Double Comfort Blues City Hot Sauce Review

Double Comfort Blues City

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

When you think of Blues City, I suppose the first thing that might come to mind is Memphis, Tennessee, and indeed, I suspect that is what they're going for here. The ingredient list, like Memphis Heat (reviewed elsewhere here) before it, is sort of a spin off of on the Cajun style, itself a spin on the Louisiana-style Cayenne sauce. I believe this was meant to be a less hot version of that other sauce and indeed, the heat level here is very low, as is usually the case with both of the other styles mentioned.

This reminds me, in many ways, of a more liquified and much more garlic and vinegar forward version of the first iteration of the KFC Nashville Hot flavoring system, which was my introduction, years and years ago, to that style of flavoring. Here we have a bit of sweetness to complement those other flavors and a very nice rounding to the sauce as a whole. For me personally, I tend to find Cajun style sauces a bit busy and that would also apply to this, which does cut down a bit on flexibility for me, but that is very much my own distinctive tastes and this is another fine-flavored entry from a hot sauce company I continue to be impressed by. 

Like those other styles, it is a fairly loose sauce, so it would need something in which to either soak into, like the breading on a fried food, though, again, this is outside of my preference a bit there, or better yet, with strong flavors to gel with, such as some barbequed ribs or perhaps a nice cream based sauce, like an Aflredo or mac & cheese, basically the usual suspects for those other types as well.

Bottom line: A variation on a theme that takes on its own unique and strong identity, this is definitely a good representative of that style and if vinegar-foward sauces are your jam, this is well worth picking up.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

HAB Sauce Machismo Reaper Hot Sauce Review

HAB Machismo Reaper

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuVmaMGcr3E

Sometimes, the direction of this blog surprises me, even after nearly 12 years, more on that in a bit. 

With this sauce, I'm reminded of a time, back when I was in my teen years and more fully realizing that chilehead itch, the yearn to burn, if you will,  back when heavy metal had a trend with the guitar players to attempt to reach virtuoso heights with a display of guitar pyrotechnics on the fretboard that would surely leave everyone's mouth agape in awe. This mostly meant that they were often trying to play 1/256th notes, which tended to overwhelm most listeners. This also resulted in a backlash from the old guard, who started really pushing the phrase "less is more." If you've seen the ingredient list of this sauce, you probably already know where I'm going here, but if not...

What we have here is sort of what I like to refer to as a kitchen sink sauce, in that it has a grand and great collection of ingredients. To go back to the earlier part of this review, I would not have predicted that I'd have back to back sauces that I think suffered in their attempt to draw on Asian flavor notes and influences and it certainly wasn't planned. Yet, for me, t is that same lasting impression of both this and the Karma Cosmic Disco before it in the prior review. Obviously, the approaches are considerably different and this one takes a strong aim at a number of different fruits, along with various Asian ingredients.

For me, I'm not sure it really works. I don't know what the design of this sauce is meant to be, other than the hottest in the line-up (hence the heat "death" of machismo). It doesn't really fit into an Asian style sauce, given the peaches and pineapple and general fruity nature, but all of those contrasting ingredients, the soy sauce, the lemongrass and basil, lend a sort of confusion, if not oddness, to the palate. The sauce itself is by no means offensively flavored. By itself, it is somewhat interesting and definitely unique, but when pairing it with foods, we get into a lot of flavor cancellation in not necessarily pleasant ways. One of the bigger problems with having a laundry list of ingredients is that the results can suffer a bit from lack of identity and I feel that is the case here. Heat-wise, since the mighty mighty Carolina Reaper is involved, though not the Habanero, for which the company itself is named, we do have a bit of a punch, though I still found it somewhat on the low side. It's not quite to the point where I'd say it's chilehead only, but is perhaps a more progressive step for those chile-curious.

Bottom line: This is another sauce I couldn't really find a place for it to fit in and another that I really wish sauce makers would provide some guidance for what they intended.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3

Karma Cosmic Disco Hot Sauce Review

Karma Cosmic Disco

Note: This sauce appears on Season 19 of the Hot Ones.

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

This is a sauce that was a pretty big question mark to me going in. Karma is a sauce company that makes stuff I sometimes like, but overall has proven too streaky to move into my list of favorite makers (you can find that list in the SOTY link to the right). I greatly admire that the company is formed by an ex-NASA scientist and I find the many variations on a theme with much of their hot sauce line to be an interesting idea. However, a lot of their sauces just don't resonate with me. 

There are two (I guess you could say three, depending on if you count Scorpion Disco as its own sauce or a revved up version of Funken Hot, both reviewed elsewhere here) main sauces at play here, the aforementioned in parenthetical Scorpion Disco and the Cosmic Dumpling, with me finding to my surprise that I liked the former (and the other former in the parenthesis above) and not really having too much interest in or need for what was essentially a very boutique and perhaps even gourmet pot sticker sauce, as I never eat those. I didn't love the Cosmic Dumpling and it took me quite a while to go through the bottle, so I didn't know what to expect going in. Would it be Scorpion Disco-lite or an actual true homogenization of a hot sauce with strong Asian flavors?

To my dismay, what I found I would describe more as a clash of worlds. The smell and color are definitely more towards the Cosmic end of things and because of that, the initial taste is more in that direction before we get into flavor cancellation and the hammer floral bitter notes of the Scorpion come screaming in. This sauce reads to me a lot more of Scorpion peppers than does the Scorpion Disco, somehow, and that is among my least favorite superhots. The listing is for a "superhot blend" rather than specifically, but while I think this is probably the upper range of heat for normies, this won't give too many chileheads much of a challenge in terms of heat.

The other part of this is flexibility, or more specifically, the lack thereof. Do I use this as a predominantly Asian sauce, for a food type I don't really ever have and even if I did, am not sure I'd want those harsh floral notes there, or do I use it more where I would Scorpion Disco and just potentially have a confusing mouthful of flavors, depending on what gets cancelled out on a given food? I did opt more for the second of those options, a lot more where I used the Scorpion Disco and I can't say I loved any of the results too much. I get a lot of Asian spices there that come through as jarring and honestly have not really found any place, as I write this, where I think the sauce fits well. This may be one that comes down to whether it is good on wings or not, as I keep the Hot Ones show sauces for my quarterly Wing Thing videos on the FOH video series on Youtube and I may play around with it a bit on some Asian stuff, but the union between this sauce and my palate seems a rather unhappy one, ultimately.

Bottom line: This is another Hot Ones and Karma sauce that I struggle with, sad to say. It may have an application where it works wonderfully, but I have yet to discover what that may be.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 3
           Flexibility: 1
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 2

JimEmi's Creations The Red Sauce Medium Hot Sauce Review

JimEmi's Creations The Red Sauce Medium

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MQkcq89yfU

Interesting sort of stylization in the name, with what I presume is the first name of the sauce creators or company owners, capitalized for both and then run together. On their website, this sauce, the only one available, comes available in a coffin package, should you so desire, with a choice of colors, which itself is kind of curious. Most of the mini-coffin packaged products tend to be on the hotter side of the scale, which this is nowhere near, so no idea what they're going for there. The sauce itself is made by Angry Irishman, out of Ohio, though JimEmi's is from CA, which is kind of nice to see the co-packer get some love on the label. 

I'm not sure entirely what they were going for with this sauce, other than to make a sauce that is visually red, which this one is, quite deep, rich, dark almost to brown red. It is fairly thick, but flows pretty smoothly. When I looked at the ingredients, it seemed to me like it would be oriented towards Mexican/Southwest flavors and that is indeed where I found it to be best, thanks to a fairly strong note of cumin in the flavors. I could see this also working possibly in ramen, though I did not attempt it. There are additionally some nice notes of chili powder, tomato and an underlying sweetness from the honey, with the Habanero playing in there mostly as a back current of very slight heat. 

While I found the sauce very accessible and potentially a good gateway sauce, I also found it a bit frustrating, thanks to a personal quirk of wishing sometimes that a given sauce had this or that note to it. For this one, while I would have loved fire-roasted Habs in there, it seemed like there was something missing, a flavor note, and after some pondering, it is smoke. If this had a nice delicate flavor of chipotle in there or, better yet, make it a smoked Habanero or Ghost, the latter if they wanted to bump the heat a bit, that would have been just exquisite. Unfortunately, I've not been able to get this out of my head (fortunately for me, this does not happen with every sauce or anywhere near that often) and now lament the sauce it could have been and I wish it had been. Still, what is here is undeniably delicious and worked fantastically well on all the things I tried it on, which were admittedly limited to that food type I mentioned in the paragraph above. I am not a huge fan of cumin and a little goes a very long way for me. This sauce had a bit too much of that note for me to go too far off adventuring, but when it stays in pocket, food flavor-wise, it's very nice. I'm excited to see what they do next.

Bottom line: Excellent flavoring of ingredients you would generally find in a taco sauce or taco flavoring, tinged with a touch of sweetness and low heat. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Lola's Mango Ginger Scotch Bonnet (Hyvee Exclusive) Hot Sauce Review

Lola's Mango Ginger Scotch Bonnet (Hyvee Exclusive)

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WrpKZBBB3o

I try really hard to keep an open mind and give things a chance, even when I've been underwhelmed in the past and this entry serves as good example of that principle. I previously did all of the varieties of the Lola's sauces I came across and the highest any of them rated was a cumulative 4, which is not exactly inspiring. I found them solid on ramen, which was where I used them the most, but not anything overly compelling (reviewed elsewhere here), with one of them so indistinct and uninteresting, I didn't bother to film a video of it (though in hindsight, I now wish I would have, if nothing else, pairing it with one of the others). I then nearly completely forgot about the company until I saw it during my vacation travels this year.

Where I saw it, as you may have already guessed, was at a Hyvee. The Hyvee grocery chain, for those unfamiliar, is a largely Midwestern presence and I found the stores I visited to generally be pretty fantastic, though admittedly, I didn't entirely love the layouts. I believe I may have Yelped some of the locations I visited, if you happen to be interested in my ramblings there. Regardless, I didn't glom onto the fact that it was a Hyvee Exclusive until I was getting ready to shoot the FOH video for it (link up top, when available, as per usual). 

Despite some misgivings, such as the color of this, which is a sickly sort of yellowish-green, and the idea of ginger in the sauce, which often is disappointing, but fruit-based sweet hots I find myself nearly perpetually in need of and figured I may as well give their foray into this a shot. These are not expensive sauces and worst case, I was just out a few bucks. This is not, to be perfectly clear, a fruit-based sweet hot.

It is instead a sauce that more closely resembles a slightly thick turmeric-flavored vinegar. Mangos are the first listed ingredient (and ginger towards the last, which really kind of brings a nice air of confusion to the naming structure of the sauce), but they perhaps contributed a bit more to the body of the sauce than the actual flavor. This is a fairly loose sauce as well, so I'm not entirely sure how much I believe the ordering. The Scotch Bonnet contribute a bit of warmth, but not a lot of flavor, and the ginger is nearly entirely absent. 

Now, I don't dislike turmeric, on the contrary, but I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out where this sauce was supposed to go...and given the nature of the Hyvee customer base, who it was for, either. Pairing this sauce, which requires something that can go with the pungency of vinegar and the very forward nature of turmeric, proved a challenge that I eventually tired of attempting. This is not a good thing for the sauce, neither was my overall impression that it was just odd and peculiar. The suggestion was to use it on anything, but those ingredients paired with, say, a mac & cheese, pizza, or even a ramen, sound more stomach-churning than appetizing, also not a good thing for the sauce. Even on chicken tendies, a lot of what flavor was there vanished and I was left with a light variety of sour notes, again, not a good thing.

Bottom line: This is not exactly a bad sauce, but more one without a place, ill-fitting in nearly every application I tried it in.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 3
           Flexibility: 1
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 2

Tennessee Honey Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Tennessee Honey Habanero

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DEOPLP7IAc

I think, at this point, I can pretty safely say that this is a hot sauce company whereupon everyone that cares about this kind of thing should go find a bottle that appeals to them and try something. Not all of the sauces I've done so far have hit with me, but of the ones that did, when they did, they did to massive effect and, not to put too fine of a point on it, this is exactly the kind of hot sauce company we should, as chileheads, be supporting, the kind who put flavor first and have a very comprehensive approach, all the way down to their phenomenal website. 

The first of those sauces that blew me away was the Blood Orange Ghost (reviewed elsewhere here) and this is the second. While I think heat could stand to be slightly hotter here (it is quite minimal overall), my sole complaint with this one is that the sauce is a lot looser than I would prefer and not only does it try to run down the threads and the neck of the bottle, but that same looseness also inhibits its flexibility somewhat. This winds up putting it more or less into the Louisiana-style category, as far as application, though the inherent sweetness here might not always quite be what I want in some of those uses.

The flavor is fantastic, both starting and finishing with honey, while the vinegar and Habanero does a very nice balancing job during the in-between. This is another so delicious that I had to purposely reach for other sauces so that I didn't wind up just blasting through the entire bottle before I had a chance to film anything for the FOH accompaniment to this. Prior to that series, I would have probably finished this bottle in 1 - 3 days, as it hits a lot of the sweet spots, so to speak, for me. I hasten to add that though there is honey flavor and a bit of sweetness fore and aft, it is not overall generally what I would call a sweet sauce, as the vinegar is quite present. Pairing the Habaneros with bell pepper also seems to have tempered the flavor of the former somewhat, which works wonderfully.

Bottom line: This is a truly magnificent sauce from a flavor perspective and while the heat probably won't be satisfying for chileheads, it is a near-perfect gateway sauce for the chili-curious, who like the more vinegar forward entries out there.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7