Blair's Original Death Hot Sauce Review

Blair's Original Death Sauce

NOTE: This sauce appeared in Season 1 of The Hot Ones.

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REaH37rO9_g

I had thought, for quite some time, that I had reviewed this sauce. It was a recurring thought, as I had gone on a pretty good tear of Blair's sauces for a bit, but I checked the list exhaustively and was never able to find it. Then I forgot about it until the resurgence last year, of the blog and with the FOH video series, and then forgot that I'd already checked and re-checked again, but still no review. Once I decided to move forward with trying to sift my way through the sauces of The Hot Ones, it came up again in the list, so I then tracked down a bottle and here we are.

Once I opened it, it was pretty clear to me that I hadn't worked my way through this sauce yet, for reasons that are now unclear to me, but I'm guessing it was due to a few Habanero sauces I'd recently had and my general innate sort of disinterest in that pepper. The Habanero is the the hottest pepper of the crew here, which also has Cayenne and Chipotle. The Chipotle reads more as an accent and the Cayenne is somewhat lost. The predominant taste is that of the smashed garlic, which is prominent and was clearly fresh, as there is no processed taste at all to it. For me, though, garlic reading that strongly precludes this sauce from a lot of applications, as I'm not fond of strong garlic addition in my sauces, for most foods, unless there is already a garlic component (Mexican food, pizza, etc.). This rules it out as a dipping sauce, but does extend it nicely to things like fish tacos, particularly with the additional accent of the lime in there.

Like all of the Blair's sauces I've had, this is very smooth and well-blended. It's not a surprise to me that it took off as well as it did and put the "Death" name on the map, though it's not anywhere near the awesomeness that is Pure Death. Heat-wise, it's on the lower scale of things, perhaps slightly past what I call the dividing line where things become too hot for non-chileheads. I'm not sure what happened with Blair's, but their sauces have been increasingly challenging to come by. This one I'm definitely not sorry I sought out, but I don't believe I'll be replacing it once the bottle is done.

Bottom line: Blair Lazar is a legend of the industry and this sauce provides several aspects of why. Solidly versatile, with a moderate heat level, worth a go if you haven't had it before, but this one is really reliant on individual taste.

Breakdown:

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


Overall: 6

Tonguespank Scotch Whiskey Trinidad Scorpion Hot Sauce Review

Tonguespank Scotch Whiskey Trinidad Scorpion Hot Sauce

Note: I'm not clear exactly on what transpired with this company and its ownership, but this sauce no longer appears to be made.

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNIKT6kIKZM

I had this one on the shelf for a while, quite a while, expecting it to come across as a superhot, open bottles of which do not tend to rotate super quickly through my open fridge door sauces. I think it was one of the first ones I picked up after learning that Burn Your Tongue was back in action, which has been for some time now. Adding to that is that 2020 (and 2019, to a degree) has seen me having the opportunity and thus eating a lot more sauce than in previous years, there is the fact that I am finding the flowery notes of the various Scorpion peppers less and less attractive to my palate.

It reminds me a lot of IPAs, actually. When I first got into home brewing was the first time I'd ever had one, now well over a couple decades ago, and like most people when they first encounter it, I went hog wild with IPAs, seeking, finding, trying, and slugging down all of them I could find. Somewhere along the lines, the microbreweries latched onto this and a trend I call the "hop wars" ensued. Around that time, I was also well sick of the flavoring, had my fill and then some, and drifted away into less flowery beer flavors. So, too, is what is going to be happening with the Scorpion sauces, I imagine, in 2021. I have a few left, as I write this now, but once those are concluded, I don't foresee those being very high on the list of sauces I will want to acquire, much like the Habanero sauces. Those, however, I have somewhat come to terms with, but the superhot I find most favorable lately is the venerable ghost, the Jolokias.

That aside, it took me a while to get a handle on this sauce. It is very runny, as in Louisiana-style runny, but with some very nice flecks of pepper in there, which I always appreciate. I don't know why boozy sauces aren't more of a thing, since I can't think of any sauce with booze in it I haven't found favorable, but here, even though Scotch is not my hard liquor of choice, it works to great effect here, creating a nice unami effect in the aftertaste. The flavor is a bit subtle, kind of like CaJohn's Dread, though, despite the label warning, unlike the Dread, you won't get blasted too much consuming a lot of it to chase the flavor down. The addition of the Habaneros, Jolokias and Scotch whiskey also do a very nice job of rounding this sauce, and taking down that flowery edge of the Scorpions somewhat.

There is not a definitely flavor to this, however. For most sauces, this would seem like it was lacking an identity, but here, it lends itself to a wide variety of applications. The flavor profiles of Scorpion peppers and Mexican foods strike me as clashy, and that applies here also, but it did work, to a degree, on some of the foods that could be considered of that style. Heat is definitely present, and should appease most chileheads. It is more of a flash heat and doesn't really build up to what I was expecting, both from the label and from the presence of a superhot as the main pepper, but does have a very nice linger to it. I'd call it overall pretty pleasant, as far as mouth heat and the burn goes. Definitely will not appeal to non-chileheads, though.

Even if this was still available, I probably wouldn't keep a bottle around, as it does not fit into categories particularly well, but is a very good all-around superhot sauce, so if you didn't want a fridge door full of sauces, but did want to have some hotter than normal sauces, this would be a good choice. I'm a bit disappointed I missed it when it was still produced, even still, and will be checking out whatever sauces I can still find from the company. I also note, once again, my list of SOTY candidates has increased for 2020 with this entry.

Bottom line: Another SOTY candidate for 2020 and one of the most curious and unique sauces I've had. Well worth picking up for any chilehead who has not yet experienced it and can still find a bottle.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 9
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10


Overall: 8

Salsitas Mendoza Hell Fire Hot Sauce Review

Salsitas Mendoza Hell Fire Hot Sauce

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp7oR4usa8Y
 

I'm almost tempted to do this review in the form of suggestions. This definitely feels a lot like a fairly ground level operation that is starting to try to expand the gamut a bit, doing farmer's markets, sourcing local product, all the stuff that makes you want to root for a company. The focus, clearly, is on salsas, and most of their product comes in much larger, metal screw-on lidded jars. Their website does not have any product information on it, and has a slightly unfinished feel to it, so I'm not sure what is in it, precisely, but I have yet to see any of those jars of product not have onions in it (save for one particular Kroger product), and that sort of thing is a bit beyond the confines of what I would consider "hot sauce," and hence this blog.

As to this product...I get the desire to have a hotter Mexican-style table sauce. Most of them, particularly the commercial ones, are woefully lacking in this department. Partially, I think this is customer driven, as there are sometimes some fairly complex spice balances in play and over-adding too much can tend to diminish returns fairly readily. I think people also like heat on this type of food, but of a fairly moderate variety. The hottest pepper I've seen added to this style is the Ghost Pepper, and when done with care and judiciously, that can work quite well.

In a few ways, this reminds me of El Yucateco Red, particularly in terms of how the heat reads as an immediate flash heat, though I don't think the sauce overall has quite that kind of polish. This one is far harsher and abrasive, with a fairly prominent bitter tinge that I don't care for. I suspect this is due to stepping on the sauce with various powdered ingredients. Using powders and other concentrates is somewhat of an art, in any style cooking, and if you don't give it some time to gel and mesh, the full effect may not be known, which can prompt an impatience chef to add more to try to get to a desired taste.

I also note that this bottle used a fairly tough shrink plastic to keep the cap on, which is sort of a nuisance, but not the end of the world. Of far greater concern was the bottle being full literally to the cap when I opened it. I managed not to accidentally spill any of it, but wound up having to pour out a certain amount of the neck in order to create enough space to agitate it properly, given that it had separated in the bottle. If you're going to fill to the top, there needs to be an emulsifier or some other agent to hold ingredient suspension, though even then, I would say there is little reason to actually do that. The company seems very devoted to fresh ingredients, so the use of emulsifiers or preservatives is likely not happening.

My final piece of commentary is on the name of the sauce itself. Hell Fire, Hell, Hellfire, et. al. are in fairly steady usage already in the market place. Having customers look for something called by any of those names is certain to lead to brand confusion. The sauce is also nowhere near hot enough for that moniker, realistically, so I'd suggest a name change in the near future.

Bottom line: Very hearty stab at a more picante Mexican style table sauce, but one that I also find still needs refinement before I would consider buying again, let alone keeping at hand.


Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1


Overall: 3

Diablo (Scorpion) Pepper Sauce Review

Cactus Candy Company Diablo (Scorpion) Pepper Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXGbtjR6VSM

Much like the Lola's sauces, I get the impression we're dealing here with another base sauce, that then has whatever other pepper added to it. In some respects, it's not altogether a bad idea. You come up with a solid base sauce and then modify it with various super hots to get different flavor profiles. However, like as in many, many other areas of life, the theory is better than the reality. Execution is really what is going to make or break this concept and with both of the sauces, this and the Lola's, it is broken by poor execution. I get that you need to have a recipe that can be scaled up to fit into a heavy production setting and, unquestionably, it is harder to do that than maybe any other aspect, which is why we see so few national commercial (i.e. grocery stores, Wal-Mart, etc.) hot sauces of merit.

For this one, having a base sauce is fine. It is the same one as the Jalapeno styling from this company I reviewed earlier and either it hits or doesn't. It did not, at all, resonate with me, but generally, with the base sauce, you have your spice load in place and then just add a single different component. What happened here is that they added the single component, which was itself a product of multiple components, meaning the Scorpion pepper mash, which was the Scorps + salt, etc. The result was an acceleration of salt, to the point where this sauce immediately oversalts whatever one puts it on. This effect is slightly less noticeable on Mexican style food and pizzas, but in any instance where there are not other flavors for it to meld with (or to make that aspect somewhat), it's immediately noticeable and has the effect of diminishing returns.

Honestly, it's a bit of a shame, as adding the Scorpion element improved this sauce notably. With a relatively tame sauce like this, one can taste the somewhat flowery notes of the Scorpion readily, without needing to worry about excessive mouth burn. Not really useful for myself and other chileheads, but for "normals", this is a good way to experience the flavor profile and a small modicum of the attendant heat, which shows up here mostly in shadow form. However, with it wrecking half of the food it is used on and not, overall, being an especially wonderful-tasting sauce, the oversalty aspect is one I can't ignore and this is another that will be binned immediately after the video support is filmed.

Bottom line: If you have a fondness for salty sauces and want to get a good read on the flavor (without much of the heat) of Scorpion peppers (or want to introduce a non-chilehead to that profile), worth considering.

Breakdown:

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


Overall: 2

2K20 Q2 Update

2K20 Q2 Update

Super huge update, pack a lunch and let’s get to it.

From the last update, I resolved the filming issue for the Fundamentals of Heat video series on YouTube, which you can check out by clicking on any of the links in the Table Of Contents here for any sauces that have a video available. The plan to steadily shoot enough on weekends only to keep ahead is working well. As of this write-up, August and part of September is in the can.

I had to get a bit rangey (even though that took some slumming, dipping even as low as Takis)  to keep things at 2 posts a week, but I’m good through probably October at this point, maybe beyond a bit.  The non-sauce stuff was always meant to be temporary, but I want to keep it rolling as long as I can because those videos are pretty fun to tod. I do have some good sources for other snacks that I’ve recently discovered, so it will be a while before I have to move to every other week on those. I also have thought of a new series, though I think more likely that won’t start until 2021. Still undecided and need to work out the formatting a bit more in my head. As to sauces specifically, I now have enough waiting on the shelf that I will not be able to film them all this year (written review, maybe, but probably not).

I now have 4 separate playlists available in the FOH video series as well, to try to make it a bit easier to digest. I have added all of those playlists to the blog, as well, in another side widget.

I’ve been pretty pleased with this year so far, specific to sauces, the blog and videos only. Obviously, this is a very difficult and stressful year otherwise... For sauces, so far, I’ve had the best Asian-style sweet, the best Cajun, and the best mustard ever, which is pretty nutty when I think about it, considering how long I’ve been eating hot sauces, mustards even longer. The video series is definitely doing an ace job of driving posts for the blog and I’m hopeful it will grow in its own right. If you have not checked it out, please do so.

As of right now, speaking to the blog, I’m beyond the total amount of posts for all of 2018 (15) & 2016 (19) and tied now with last year, 2019 (20). The next ones are 2012 (21), 2014 & 2017, both with 23, and I fully expect to surpass those before end of Q3 this year. That would put us in range of 2015 (32). I think that one is also somewhat likely to fall, but I doubt we will approach the high point of 2013 (52). I will get into the whys of this a bit more in the end of the year recap.

I also have 4 SOTY contenders right now (Private Selection Calabrian, Arthur Wayne Limitless, Monroy’s Death By Kraken & Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper, if you haven’t ready them yet and are interested in checking them out), which is a great relief to me, as the last few years it has been nearly right down to the wire. Of those, Calabrian was eaten the fastest, Death By Kraken packed the biggest wallop and the Sweet Ghost Pepper is, by far, the best-tasting). I have also solved a mystery here in Q2, which was also kind of fun and cool to take a bit of a trip down through history.

Obviously, one of the side effects of the COVID-19 measures is that I have a far greater deal of time at home now, so I’m able to bank videos into the future. I don’t do that at all with the blog, but the sauce videos, especially for the new sauces, take much longer to film, since I have to actually do all the testing for the blog post well before I consider shooting a single frame for the videos. With the non-food stuff, I can generally just open a bag or box or can or whatever and dig right in. They have their own challenge with availability, though, as there are a lot more hot sauces than there are packaged spicy foods.

That aside, one of the things I’ve been trying to focus on, once it became clear that I was going to have some struggles coming up with all of the previous SOTY winners, is to work through a lot of those Hot Ones sauces. My tentative goal right now is to get all 4 of the first seasons (for the sauces that I will consider doing, that is) in the can by the end of the year. If I can do more, of course, I will, but that is the soft goal. Along with that, as many SOTYs as possible, and any Standbys I haven’t done. I’ve gone through all of the sauces Roger (Burn Your Tongue - find him on Facebook and show him some love) shot my way, along with a number of back catalog stuff and some newer ones that looked interesting. Of the SOTY winners, I have done videos for 3 and 3 are discontinued. This leaves 2 that I need to obtain in order to film.

As to those Standbys, once I have the SOTYs done, the Standbys will also be done. I’m not going to bother chasing down the Emeritus sauces, unless there’s a significant demand. I have also revised my Standby list as well. Barring anything unforeseen, I should be able to get all of the SOTYs and Standbys done by end of the year, and put a healthy dent into the sauces for The Hot Ones that I want to get to.

Speaking of the Hot Ones, the list for Season 12 has been posted and I have updated that TOC page with the new info...so, 12 seasons, 10 sauces a season is 120 sauces...except there are many, many repeats. Deleting the repeats gives us 87 individual sauces. However, there are some discontinued/limited edition items on there also. Removing those puts us at 84. Still a solid amount, a good respectable number. I have waived my extract exclusion for this series, but the onions ban is still in place. Ejecting those gives us 50 possible sauces. I have reviewed 15 already, which leaves us 35 to go to get this covered. Interestingly, I have not reviewed a sauce that appears past Season 5. I do want to note that the Hot Ones sauces, especially in the later seasons, tend to be more expensive than everything else out there, even beyond the Hot Ones branded flavors that are only available via Heatonist, which curbs my interest a bit. I don’t know if this is because of some kickback arrangement with the sauce companies and First We Feast, but I get a little balky at anything past $10/bottle (assuming 5 oz. bottle), unless the sauce has some super exotic ingredient, like truffles. Many of those sauces are $14/bottle and higher, which lowers their priority for me significantly and, if I’m being honest, will also tend to impact their Enjoyment To Dollar Factor rating...

You got a little bit there in that preceding paragraph, but I’ve really been trying to compile data, both because I have, like a lot of everyone these days, some goodly amounts of time on my hands, and because I’m somewhat of a data junkie (one of my soft goals is also to get an average rating), but also because it helps me to get an idea for future projection. I’ve added a few new pictures (and am getting closer to the point where nearly everything that I can add pictures to on the blog now has pictures) and started chopping out titles from the list that are no longer produced, such as the Zakk Wylde stuff and the Bad Brains sauce. There are a number of others that were evidently limited editions, now gone, so I will never be able to get to 100%. One hot sauce company, Wicked Cactus, sadly is shuttered entirely. By having an idea of how many I can possibly get, that will give me an idea of how long into 2021 I can extend the weekly video thing. There are also a number of sauces that have been reformulated in a way that will cause me to exclude them from future consideration and a number I intensely disliked and probably will not be bothering with at all, since I’m not going to re-buy sauces for the purpose of a single video (unless this somehow wildly takes off and I can do it professionally). 

As of right now, I have 183 full reviews on the blog, which puts me well over 200, if you count the mini-reviews. 200 full reviews is do-able for 2020, but unlikely, as I also have some back catalog stuff to get in there for the blog/FOH tie-in. There will not be videos for everything or probably even close to it, but I’d be pretty content at around 50% or so, at least of the full reviews, which also won’t happen this year.  I will probably re-compile everything sometime in Q3, when I start working on 2021. Check back for the quarterly update then, if you’re interested in this.

Hopefully you’ve all been enjoying the new stuff as I try to branch out a bit more. I will say it is a great load of fun to do and I’m enjoying myself immensely producing this content. Of course, if you have any suggestions on anything you could care to see in the world of spicy foods, drop me a line and I’ll definitely try to get to it.   

Inner Beauty Hot Sauce Review

Inner Beauty Hot Sauce

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

I should start this one off by noting right away that this is not so much to me what I would call a hot sauce, as much as it is a sweeter, pour-able dijon style mustard. The label calls itself a hot sauce, though, and that's what I try to go by when reviewing entries, but I don't consider it a hot sauce, per se. For heat, it relies on the wonderful Scotch Bonnet and I was kind of hoping it would be similar to the Bad Brains hot sauce kicking around a few years back. It wasn't quite hot sauce in that direction or to that level, instead definitely far more learning hard in the direction of mustard. It reminded me at times of that old favorite, as well as at times a nice honey mustard, though not heavy enough on the honey there for my taste. I eventually modified that with some raw honey and was well-pleased with the results.

This is also one of my more thoroughly, perhaps even somewhat exhaustively, tested sauces, as the flavor I loved instantly. I would not hesitate to call this perhaps the best mustard I've had. There was some minor suspension issue and the top of the bottle definitely was a bit different than the rest, once I got into it a bit enough to agitate, but all of it was great. Heat is relatively minor, as these things go, but, like Louisiana-style sauces, I don't necessarily want a whole ton of heat to go with them. It also comes in a flask, which I like quite a bit, as a rule (I don't know why, exactly, but I do).

The big question for me was whether or not this was going to fit into the SOTY criteria and that's not an easy answer. Mustards are a bit limited in what I like them on and dijons a bit narrower still. I had a couple of easy 10s in flavor and value, but heat as a 3 is about right. How then, could I conceivably get this into that higher echelon? The best mustard ever surely must belong in a conversation about SOTY? Right? But the best Cajun style sauce I had (also this year) missed the cut also. It brings back to why I have the categories I do. Getting near SOTY should not be an easy thing. It should be hard. It should be a trial.

But I loved this sauce, so much so that I tried it on everything in the vain hope that I could realistically give it a higher flexibility rating. Mustard on pizza...not a good idea normally, here, two flavors I liked separate, and together, just tasted like two separate flavors I liked in my mouth at once. On chicken strips, it was ok, but not sweet enough (hence my addition of raw honey). for my taste. Where it really excelled was on sandwiches and I came up with a variety of sandwiches, including hot ones, like hamburgers, to test this. I almost never have hot sauce on a cold sandwich, but here, this sauce excelled in an application that nearly no other sauce has or is likely to do in future. That has to mean something...but alas, I can't, in good conscience, given it enough of a nudge to get into the running for this year. Still a great mustard and if you love Scotch Bonnets in a mustard style sauce, or dijon mustard in general, this one will make you quite happy.

Bottom line: Best mustard I've ever had, and as a hot sauce, the best mustard I've ever had. Outstanding.


Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10


Overall: 7

Hotter Than El Ragin' Cajun Hot Sauce Review

Hotter Than El Gator Jake's Ragin' Cajun Hot Sauce

Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlf0Yc_uJcw

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

Quite a mouthful to say the full name of this sauce, but digging into it, quite a mouthful in each bite as well. It always amazes me that certain saucemakers are able to pack so much flavor in such a scant few ingredients. This is yet another one, something that takes great skill and which I am here to applaud. I notice also on the black neck wrap of the bottle a sticker with "WINNER 2018 Fiery Food Challenge". This refers to the Zest Fest of that year, but in looking through the list, I see this came in 3rd in the Louisiana-style category, which suggests the #1 and #2 respectively must have been some kind of fantastic.

I will get to the sauce shortly, but I can't leave without addressing a minor issue I have, which is not really helped by entities who know better perpetuating things. Take, for example, the Zest Fest itself. This was put in the Louisiana-style category, which is fine, if that's the closest you can get, but the full list for 2018 was 3 pages, just for the contests and top 3 finishers. If you can have a Louisiana style, you can have a Cajun (categories for any festival I might be deciding, incidentally, would be quite a bit more extensive) as well. Less so online, but when I talk to people about this whole hot sauce thing, which happens frequently, once they find out that I'm one of those weirdos who likes to light their mouth on fire, there is a lot of confusion about Cajun vs. Louisiana-style. I think this can largely be summed up in one ingredient: garlic. A good Louisiana-style sauce needs 3 things: Cayenne, vinegar, salt. Any other flavor components will tend to detract from the glory of the Cayenne, which should stand alone to better shine. With Cajun, there is a much wider range of potential ingredients, but every good Cajun sauce will have garlic. I realize I sound like a hot sauce sommelier, but one of the fun things about having a blog is that I can just redirect people here rather than explaining all of this to them when they equate Cajun to Louisiana-style. Similarities, sure, but identical. Nay, I say. Nay.

That aside, despite all the turmoil of 2020, I have to observe, from a purely chilehead perspective, that I've happily had experienced, for me, the best sweet Asian-style sauce (Mikey V's Sweet Ghost) and now, to my mind (and tongue) the best Cajun sauce. Most Cajun sauces tend to pound one half to death with garlic. I love garlic and have been known to roast several bulbs in the oven (with a little olive oil and kosher salt, natch - I'm no savage), to eat the cloves as another might candy, but with granulated, a little goes a very long way and too much and it will wind up stepping all over everything else. Here, the very delicate tightrope is handled very deftly, in that it is still present, but is not the overriding characteristic, but another supporting player. Exceedingly well-blended and crafted, this is by far the best example of a Cajun sauce I can think of.

So, I hear some of you saying, where and why do I use that in place of Louisiana-style, which is a valid question or maybe questions? Again, we look at the garlic. Where would we be without garlic in the sauce of a pizza? Nowhere. So, in places where garlic is a natural fit, pizza, nearly all pasta dishes, garlic burgers, maybe in a pinch Mexican food, and so on. Where it fails is in heavy cream sauces or cheese sauces, such as mac & cheese or a ham & cheese sandwich. To me, the Cayenne winds up fading a bit and I'm left with much more garlic than I would prefer. In the past, I would not consider keeping both sauces at hand, but I will say this one has opened my eyes a bit, rather than making Louisiana-style do full duty on nearly everything.

If there is a slightly shortcoming, heat, as is usual for this and the Louisiana-style, is a bit on the light side, meaning there is precious little of it. If you're a chilehead looking for your heat fix, this isn't going to help much. If you're looking for flavor, though, you won't go wrong. 

Bottom line: If you're not familiar with Cajun style sauce, start here. If you are familiar with the style, but have not had this particular one, also start here. A true stem to stern fundamentally great sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9


Overall: 7

Lola's Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Lola's Fine Hot Sauce Ghost Pepper

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvx4-ERbON0

 I don't usually start off reviews this way, but I strongly encourage you to read the Lola's Original review prior to reading this.

What I think we have here is a sauce manufacturer coming up with a base sauce and then substituting in various super hots for the heat element. This naturally also alters the flavor a bit as well. In this case, it improved the heat slightly and the flavor a bit more. It still does not work particularly well on Mexican foods, and generally follows the same applications as mentioned in the Lola's Original review. It did fail as well, pretty considerably, on mac & cheese, but did fare fairly well as a chicken strip dipping sauce.

It does not really strike me as flexible enough, though and only 2 of the four criteria I have really moved. There is still precious little heat here (I'm reluctant to give it the full bump to a 2, as it is more between a 1 and 2), and the Jolokias have been considerably restricted and tamed here. The sauce flow problem also persists a bit with this one, but oversaucing will just create flavor issues, rather than any heat problems.

Bottom line: Markedly better in flavor (and slightly hotter) than the Original, it is still a far cry from the "everyday" sauce it claims and ostensibly tries to be.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4

Grace Scotch Bonnet Pepper Sauce

Grace Scotch Bonnet Hot Pepper Sauce

A while back, I reviewed another of the Grace products, their sort of generically-named "Hot Pepper Sauce," which you can access via the TOC, if you want to read that review. It was a pretty positive review. Scotch Bonnet are also a pepper that has my immediate interest, if I come across it. It is often paired with onions, so I don't enjoy it in sauces as much as I like, but like fire-roasted anything, if I see it, I'm immediately interested.

With those two things going for it, this should have been an easy slam dunk, but instead, a sauce I was greatly looking forward to enjoying turned out as one of the worst things I've ever put in my mouth. I have no idea where it went wrong, but fighting back a gag reflex to smell, let alone eat, the sauce, is several bridges too far. Even if it wrecks my streak of filming a video for every sauce in 2020, that streak ends here as this sauce is unusable. From my attempts, it does have an ok heat factor, but the flavor (and odor) is noxious. Maybe the sauce went bad, I don't know, but it comes out with the thickness of gravy and is repulsive. I had harbored, for a bit, the thought that I could mix it in with something, but even that failed, and then wrecked what I was attempting it with. That, naturally, was the final straw and my disappointment is great.

Bottom line: I have no idea who would conceivably enjoy this, but it wasn't miss. An offensive waste of good Scotch Bonnet peppers.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: -8
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 0

Mikey V's Sweet Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Mikey V's Sweet Ghost Pepper Sauce - [TSAAF Sauce Of The Year 2020]

UPDATE: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK4sWES9-xA

This is one of those few sauces that I feel fortunate to have stumbled across. It is easily the best sweet-hot Asian style sauce I've ever had, very deftly combining stunning flavor with a very pleasant amount of heat, definitely more substantial than Zenso or any of the other sauces in that vein, but not so hot as to overshadow the tremendous flavor. Though it has been since surpassed as reigning SHU champ, the Jolokias and I seem to get along very well and there are not very many sauces that come to mind with it as the main heat driver that I haven't like and quite a number where I found it to be a vast improvement, such as this one. It definitely works very well in Asian style sauces and I again find myself surprised there are not more of those floating around. In many respects, this is a lot like the Pure Death in that the sauce itself is so good, I have trouble finding things it doesn't go well with, aside from things I dislike sweet in, such as ramen or Mexican food.

That leaves a pretty solid myriad of choices, though. It works fantastically on meats, with cheeses. It even works in a PB & J sandwich or as a dipping sauce or on pizza. Where it shines, of course, is where you would naturally use it, in various Asian dishes. I didn't love it on a few of those things, but it wasn't awful or inedible, but more unusual in a way that made me think it was an interesting experiment, but would be a waste of sauce to continue along that path.

Heat-wise, it definitely blows everything else in that style out of the water, but the very thick nature of it does some odd things to the consistency of heat. No change to that stellar flavor, but I'd find pockets where the heat was a very robust warmth, much past anything else out there, and a few places where it was more similar to the other sauces, wherein the heat is minimal. No agitation would change that and it wasn't a huge bother, just more something to observe. There are also a lot of largish particulates suspended in the sauce, besides the usual red pepper and pepper seeds, which is again not a bother for me, but bears noting.

Bottom line: Easily the best of the Asian style sweet-hot sauces I've had and the new peak of what that kind of sauce can be at its finest. It is also not only another candidate for SOTY, but is now the new frontrunner.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8