Jersey Barnfire Smoked Ghost Taco Hot Sauce Review

Jersey Barnfire Smoke Ghost Taco Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video now available here: https://youtu.be/r5NxVwLp_JM

I like smoked peppers quite a lot. So, if I see something smoked, I'm usually immediately interested and have found those sauces to be rarely disappointing. In this case, again on the search for a good Mexican style sauce, I came across this. By the point I found it, I had pretty much reached my quota of the crazy hot sauces and wanted a few "normals" to kind of round things out. I look for sauce for flavor first, so I was pretty excited to try it, unfamiliar as I was with the brand.

The first thing I noticed, though, was the cap. It has a metal cap, which is pretty unusual for a hot sauce and I'm struggling to recall ever seeing one before. I'm sure I must have had a hot sauce like that somewhere, sometime, but it is not in memory, if I did. That part was a bit striking, if only for its rarity, I suppose. Inside, the sauce came out exactly how I think a good Mexican style sauce should, which is to say along the lines of either El Paso or La Victoria, those being the only things even remotely towards hot around the time I was growing up and something I accordingly came to associate with taco sauce, which this was listing itself as.

This sauce has all the normal flavorings of taco sauce, but with that smoked ghost in there, punches much harder. I wouldn't call it overly hot, but you can somewhat readily oversauce, which makes it drift away from what I would consider more of a table sauce, which the two I mentioned definitely are. The flavor here is quite good, very happily along the lines of what I was hoping and with that nice smoky addition, also does well moving a bit outside of the frame, such as usage as a dipping sauce. Naturally, the way the spices typically work, it is much better on Mexican style food, but it can step outside the bounds a bit, if need be, as well, which is a nice touch of flexibility.

Bottom line: This is one of my early favorite from the last haul I got and so far, of the new sauces, the only one I would really consider keeping at hand. I wouldn't say I love it, but it definitely is a nice change of pace and a good change-up to the usual entries in this segment.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Fat Cat Guajillo Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Fat Cat Surprisingly Mild Guajillo Ghost Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akgw4aW0Kao

Like most people online, I'm somewhat of a slave to all things feline, so yep, I love me the cat videos and the cat memes and all that stuff, so if some clever hot sauce decides to market a hot sauce right at me by putting a cat on the label, I'm at least interested. It is meaningless? Sure and maybe not a great reason to initially be interested, but labeling is part of selling and selling is a big part of keeping your hot sauce brand alive and flowing.

Still, for all that, the sauce has to be good. Flavor has to be there or just as quickly, that mnemonic nifty name you came up incorporating the word "cat" will be a double-edged sword and it will just as easily be memorable in the context of a brand to avoid. I think the sauces in the line-up are named well and cleverly, with this particular one being the least cutesy and, if I recall correctly, the least picante.

I'm not strictly familiar with what a Guajillo pepper was...or wasn't prior to starting this review, but it appears to be something along the lines of an Ancho. The famed Ghost pepper, of course, I'm well familiar with and the idea behind this sauce seemed more mole-ish to me. Indeed, seeing the sauce as it came out, dark and somewhat reminiscent of chocolate, seemed much more like a runny mole than an actual hot sauce. It lists out a number of foods it should pair with, but I found it worked best (and maybe only) with Mexican food and not at all well, for instance, as a chicken strip dipping sauce or on the BBQ grill.

Heat is very moderate here, as expected, but the sauce is a nicely flowing thicker sauce that does a really good job sticking to wherever you try to put it, generally. It's not really my idea of what an ideal Mexican style sauce should be, though that appears to be mostly where they're aiming, but it is a kind of nice change of pace and one that I'll finish out, but probably not replace.

Bottom line: Still mostly a hot sauce, there are some strong leanings towards mole with this. I don't eat moles enough to know if this bridges the gap successfully, but it was an interesting, if largely one-off, diversion from the regular Mexican style sauces. Will not be in regular rotation for me, but definitely worth trying out.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

CaJohn's El Castillo Hot Sauce Review

CaJohn's El Castillo Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbuaU0rsCjw

As longtime readers of this blog know, finding a reliable Mexican-style hot sauce has largely been an exercise in frustration for me. Seeing one that was completely knew was pretty exciting and knowing CaJohn's approach to high quality, I had very high hopes. Indeed, which I first opened the bottle and had a little sip from a spoon, I thought I might have stumbled onto the best Mexican hot sauce I'd yet had...sadly, the rest of the bottle did not bear that out and while I think it's a solid entry into the Mexican style pantheon, I don't believe I will be keeping this on hand.

It has an interesting aroma, both citrusy as well as the unique and distinctive chili combination that typifies most Mexican food. Unusual for CaJohn's, the peppers are unnamed, though I would suspect some combination of Arbol, Serrano, and Habanero. This is a very piquant sauce, with both the vinegar and the citrus adding a lot of pungency, which is perhaps the most dominant aspect of this sauce. Heat is very mild with this sauce, which, along with the runniness, can contribute to inadvertent over-saucing fairly easily.

It works well on Mexican foods, but, like most Mexican-style sauces, does not really extend much beyond that. I found it a nice chance of pace from the various taco sauces at both Del Taco and Taco Bell, but one that also quickly wore out its welcome, at least somewhat because it is a bit too runny (nearly Louisiana style level) to be a strong contender here. I don't see it on the CaJohn's website, so possibly it is not being produced any longer, but after I enjoy what is left of the bottle, I don't see myself replacing it with more. Definitely an interesting and crisp taste on the style, though.

Bottom line: Like most CaJohn sauces, this is very well done, but is overly piquant for me.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Honey-Do Hot Sauce Review

Honey-Do Tropic Hot Sauce

This is a curious entry, a sauce that has no idea what it really wants to do..or be..or even present itself. It's unclear why the name "honey-do" was chosen, as it doesn't really relate to the sauce and there is additionally no actual honey present, oddly enough. Why choose a name with an ingredient somewhat normally used in the hot sauce world if you're putting out a sauce in that world without that ingredient? It's like calling something Ghost Fire and then not having Jolokias and a sauce so mild it would make Frank's blush. This didn't color my perceptions of the sauce as I did not realize it was devoid of honey as an ingredient until I got more into the sauce testing.

We have a sauce calling itself "tropic", which almost always means fruit and fruit-sauce is inevitably best on lighter meats. Since I was grilling pork, I tried it out on that and additionally tried it further on what is generally the easiest test, the reliable old standby of chicken strips. It honestly failed pretty miserably. I had to toss the chop that was left from the grill, after struggling through the first half and though it was slightly better with the chicken strip, it did not add any heat nor improve the flavor so much as detracting from it considerably. I don't mind strong sauces (Blair's Pure Death, one of my all-time faves, is very strong), as long as it is also tasty. In this case, the sauce wrecked some of the food entirely.

The taste has this sort of odd, astringent quality, almost like they were trying to make a lighter version of A1. My guess is that the mangos were less than helpful here. Mangos in sauces always go one of two ways: either it is a well-done sweet and liveliness or it adds a sour note to things that tends to move things towards the unpalatable. Here, it is the latter, even with the inclusion of the sweeter red Habaneros and raisins. They really should have pitched some honey in there...it would have probably helped pretty considerably, as well as making more sense. There is precious little heat here, though little surprise, given how many ingredients ahead of the Habaneros.

Bottom line: Easily the worst sauce I've had in 2019 and the first, in quite a while, to have to be binned.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 0
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 0

Hella Hot Carrot & Apple Hot Sauce Review

Hella Hot Carrot & Apple Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kq6nP82lLY

This brand is evidently taking a stab at literalism, as most of their sauces seem to be fairly literally named for the main ingredients, along with the black and white pastiche of what is evidently the shop owner/founder on the label. All good, don't really care about naming conventions or labels a great deal, unless they're spectacular. These aren't, no big, if the sauce inside is awesome, but I will mention that I think it's a great idea that they post recipes and suggestions utilizing the sauces on the website. That is a pretty simple, yet brilliant, touch.

Getting to that sauce, this is one is a very definitely orangish hue, though perhaps on the lighter side of that scale. It looks a lot like what you might get if you pureed jalapenos, though there are none in this particular sauce, just apple (not specified as to which and the flavor is pretty much non-existent for that component, so no telling by that), carrot, lots and lots of carrot, Habanero and Serrano, which is an interesting combination that I don't recall seeing used before, but which makes a lot of sense.

I've had a fair number of carrot/Habanero sauces, but this is nothing like them. This tastes like nothing so much as super-finely shredded carrots, with the Habanero and Serrano notes. There are other spice notes in there as well, but specificity in ingredients is evidently not a weighty point to the company and so I'm not sure what they are. It tastes more like carrot than anything else, though, to the point where I almost wanted to make a carrot cake with it, just to see...

The sauce is very thick and a bit choppy, as a puree would also tend to be. This does allow it to be used by way of padding it on meat during grilling, for instance, but it works less well by itself as a dipping sauce. I found it somewhat of a novel concept, as I can't think of another sauce I've had like it, but ultimately, I'm not a huge fan of carrots, not enough to be overly fond of this sauce.

Bottom line: An interesting idea, but one that I'm not ultimately sure is successful. I will finish out the bottle, but will not be keeping it in rotation.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3

2K19 Bi-Annual Update

I've decided to largely do away with doing quarterly posts, mostly because I've posted exactly 2 hot sauce reviews for this year. As the lifespan of this blog goes on, it becomes harder and harder to find new and interesting stuff, both because I've covered quite a bit already, but also dietary changes and not having good sources at hand...that is until I found out that my most very favorite hot sauce purveyor and emporium has returned, that being Burn Your Tongue, a mini-storefront located in a place called the Quilted Bear, itself located in the Newgate Mall in Ogden. I believe he has an online store as well, so readers not within reach of the Wasatch range of Utah are encouraged to check into him. He's a good guy and deserves your support!

I have probably a dozen or more sauces awaiting testing and so on and if the first 3 I've tried (I re-upped yesterday, as I write this) are any indication, I should have some very intriguing deliciousness in store. I think too much of the year has gone by to really reach some of the numbers of previous years, but it will be more than 2, certainly.

I'm also going to be doing something later in the year, which is a first for this blog, and that is accepting some sponsored sauces for review purposes. Roger, the awesome guy behind BYT and the man responsible for sort of giving me a shot in the arm, has graciously offered up some of his fine wares (he does not produce any directly, but is a retailer with a good 300+ available offerings) to get me back swinging away here at TSAAF and it is mightily appreciated. After a bit of back and forth, it was decided that he would pick some to surprise me, so look for those later on in the year and I will note which are sponsored within the review itself.

It also got me to thinking and I'm strongly considering recanting my previous idea that I wouldn't ever be doing videos of any of this. I'm now kicking that can around a bit, as well as the idea that maybe I could put up some of my testing criteria (I tend to use benchmarks a lot) for the respective sauces. Is that of interest to anyone out there? It is probably going to be a good deal of work to shoot footage of various foods and me trying the sauces, but it would be kind of cool to have a video link, as well as the pictures now in the reviews themselves. I probably wouldn't be launching this until next year, so there's a bit of time, but please drop me a line and let me know if this is of interest to you. If enough people want this type of content, I might even move it up to the anniversary date of the blog itself (09/11) to kick things off. I am still holding firm to the idea that I will never be doing stuff like podcasts, at least for now, though I guess if it made sense in the future...

I also had the Reaper ranch sauce at Taco Bell. If they just made a hotter version of their previous Lava sauce, that would have been great. As it was, the ranch kind of wrecks things for me. I don't believe I've had any other memorable spicier options at any of various restaurants out there, but I always keep my eye out. The Reaper ranch was kind of a surprise, but also sort of a shame. It had promise, but should have been better. I wish it had been...

Skyline Chili Hot Sauce Review

Skyline Chili Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video (with Skyline Chili) now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mYcfwIWFGQ 

Memory doesn't serve me well recalling where I came across this...it may have been one of the very few sauces I ordered from Amazon, but I also seem to think I saw it elsewhere on someone's shelf somewhere sometime...

In any case, we have yet another entry into the Louisiana-style sauce category, though this one is far closer to the runnier, watery version, ala Tabasco. The taste, thankfully, is not along those lines, but far more traditional. The bottle comes with a handy restrictor cap, which you definitely want, as this can get overpowering pretty quickly if you oversauce. This will add both a lot more astringency and more heat than may be desired, as this is one of the few Louisiana-style sauces that also packs a bit of a wallop, utilizing Jalapenos, Tabascos and Cayennes.

Apparently, there is something called Skyline chili, which this is also meant for and which piques my interest a bit, as using Louisiana-style sauce in a chili is not something I would normally consider. IF I find it, I will probably give it a go (not going to order it), but I certainly have not been using the sauce in that manner, but instead in the normal ways I typically use it and which it performs capably, though, as noted, one must be somewhat more judicio
us than normal when saucing.

Bottom line: Nothing ground-breaking here, but a strong entry into the Louisiana-style sauce category, that performs capably, though requiring a bit of caution.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 7

Schlotzsky's Hot Sauce Review

Schlotzsky's Moderately Hellacious Louisiana-style Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8t9mxMFd2I

I almost never go to this chain, but if I see that a restaurant I happen to be in has a hot sauce offering, I generally at least look it over. This one was a tiny bottle, but it was also just a dollar, so I went for it, figuring that I can always use more entries into my overall favorite style of sauce. 

This one is sort of a take on the old Tabasco bottles, that had the restrictor cap built into the glass itself in the mold, rather than a plastic addition. The sauce itself is pretty pedestrian, not sure who thought it was even slightly hellacious, let alone moderately, but advertising and all. The consistency, color, smell and taste is basically everything you would ever want in a Louisiana-style sauce, which I respect. With this style, there is no need (or point, really) in reinventing the wheel. If you're going to do it, it doesn't need transformation, just skilled execution and that is more or less what we have here.

There is precious little heat and flavor is about as middle of the road as you'd expect, with consistency being really a strong criteria for a mass market sauce. Have I had hotter sauces? Definitely, even in this style. Better-tasting, no question, but worse tasting as well and this one fits very solidly right in the middle.

Bottom line: This is a good one to have in your pocket, if your usual outlet for this style sauce is out...if nothing else, makes a great stopgap.


Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Best Hot Sauce 2018 + Recap

7 years....7 years is quite a long time to do anything...between this and the HSC blog, that’s now 12 years cumulative and if we add in Yelp and the other couple blogs I keep, we run closer to a couple decades.

However...the HSC is beginning to wind down and probably will go into more of a holding pattern in 2019. This blog still struggles on and there are a few more sauces I have yet to get reviewed and posted, waiting there, kinda sorta patiently in the wings.

Again, 2018 was a very slow year for both posts and sauces, in fact, the slowest year overall in the list of TSAAF. I hemmed and hawed all year over what I was going to do for SOTY. Should I just choose the highest number of this year, as I have done, for the most part, in years past? Should I go back and open up past years? Or some combination of both? Should I let my wallet decide and go with whatever I bought and used most? In the end, I decided to go with the first option and let the chips fall where they may. Whatever was reviewed this year, highest overall...which wound up in...a bit of unclarity...see below for more on that.

 As usual, all sauces can be clicked to from the Table Of Contents page.

Total posts (including this post): 185
Total views (as of this writing): ~14,177
Total single sauce full reviews: 148
Total double sauce full reviews: 2
Total sauces full reviewed: 150
Total mini-sauce reviews: 20
Total sauces reviewed, combined: 170
Total unopened sauces waiting on shelf for review: 6
Total opened sauces waiting for review: 0
Total open bottles in fridge: 4
Highest viewed review: 663 - O' Brother Chipotle-Habanero Hot Sauce
Highest viewed article, any type: 663 - O' Brother Chipotle-Habanero Hot Sauce

Current standby sauces are (no changes from 2017):

*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)
*Ramen/Japanese sauce: Private Selection Shichimi Togarishi 
*Pizza sauce (as in used instead of actual pizza sauce): Boar’s Head Jalapeno Pepper Sauce
 Mexican-style sauce: Arizona Pepper’s Chipotle Habanero Pepper Sauce
*Asian-style sauce: Zenso Sweet Chili Sauce
 *Louisiana-style sauce: Irazu Cayenne
 Sweet-hot sauce: CaJohn's Happy Beaver

 *= Not looking for a replacement

Again, competition this year was rather minimal. With the 6 still waiting on the shelf, I somehow have strong hopes for 2019, but I’m probably not going on any sauce rampages until I (finally) clear out the unopened ones that have been waiting. I’m laughing because I just changed the year in the preceding sentence...been trying to clear out that backlog for a bit, it seems...

As mentioned above, I decided that I should go with straightforward, whoever had the highest total, wins. I wasn't dealing with a deep pool, after all. I had, to this point, reviewed a grand total of 12 sauces all year and a number of those were, shall we say, more for coverage and because I happened across them, which is where a lot of these come from. This blog is not now, nor has it ever been, supported at all by the industry. I've never received a free anything, not a sauce, not a dry mix, not a bag of snacks, nothing, so I always try to keep my eye out for new things, even if my consumption is considerably down.

So, my wonderful, clear-cut strategy wound up giving me...a tie. The highest scores of anything this year as an 8, achieved both by Dave's Scorpion Pepper sauce and by the Taco Jesus Cayenne Pepper sauce. The former of these was achieved somewhat by the high heat of the sauce and the latter by something in my favorite type of sauce finally having the stars align enough to be in the running, i.e. precious little competition. I could have compared them, blow by blow, with a number of intangibles, but the reason I like hot sauce is to enjoy it. Dave's, while an overall very solid entry, also can very rapidly run into unenjoyable territory, should one be incautious, so to me, it was an easy choice for me to award SOTY for 2018 to the Taco Jesus Cayenne Pepper Sauce. I would almost put this as an equal to the Irazu listed above and would not and will not hesitate to acquire more for further testing.

Previous TSAAF Sauce Of The Year winners:

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

There is, of course, also my wine about blog, the Happy Sippin’ Companion (HSC), which has now 69 posts, 62 of which are reviews. It has drawn, to date, ~1,148 views in the 5 years it’s been active.

Then we have Yelp. My distribution of ratings and further metrics are available on my Yelp page, which you can click to from my widget.

For those of you who made it, I appreciate you dropping by. If there’s any changes to suggest or sauces you’d like to see me get to, please drop me a line in the comment section of any of the reviews.

Louisiana Cravin' Cajun Hot Sauce Review

Louisiana Cravin' Cajun Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yuqs3mt3qrY

Yet another in a very, very long line of different Louisiana-style hot sauces I've tried, this one is a very solid entry into that market. There is nothing particular to differentiate this from others of the Louisiana-named line or Trappey's. It is slightly less bitter and astringent than Crystal, but that comparison is really parsing hairs.

Like most sauces, this is very runny and comes in a restrictor bottle, which is a good idea. Heat is very, very moderate. In terms of taste, this one is pretty pure, pepper mash, salt, vinegar and that's about it. Don't really need much more than that, but in those elements, one can work wonders, like Red Devil or one can have something that has to be used in droplets or risk overpowering and killing the taste of the food. This one is nestled snugly in the middle. It is not the best tasting sauce I've ever had, but how often is one looking for heavy doses of flavor with this? This style sauce is really, more than any single other factor, to cut down the richness of food...

Bottom line: A very serviceable Louisiana-style sauce, more or less middle-of-the-road and a good alternate if you can't find your regular favorite.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6