Butterfly Bakery Vienna Lager Mustard Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Vienna Lager Mustard

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inU3w8EH6Ew

I don’t often think of Vermont, but when I do, it’s usually in the context of one of the two sauce companies in my favored nations list (see SOTY page, link at right), namely Silk City and Angry Goat, and if I’m not careful, I might just up and add this to that list as well. This is my introductory sauce to Butterfly Bakery (of Vermont, not to be confused with Lincoln, NE, as if anyone ever would) and to say I’m blown away would be a vast understatement.

I think we need to discuss, at this point, or rather I will discuss, the concept of “sweet spot.” It does not have anything to do with sugary flavors, but rather, a sort of advantageous zone or set of circumstances in which to arrive at an optimal result. It was frequently used in terms of what area to strike an approaching baseball with a baseball bat, but here, we are applying it to flavor. I think everyone has one, that one (or more) food or type of foods that are always an instant hit, that one never seems to tire of, that is just immediate and instant flavor gratification.

Now, the reason I bring this up is because I have a number of them. There are a few restaurants where I will inevitably order the same exact order (which is kind of a rarity for me) because it is just so magnificent and the bar set too high for anything to compete (often, I will note this after testing). I think there is some commonality to my palate, certain flavor combinations I greatly admire in a hot sauce, and this one, while not entirely similar to other previous SOTY winners, does echo a few a bit. It also strongly brings to mind cherry peppers, one of my all-time favorite things, yet this sauce is definitely more than just a version of a cherry pepper relish.

Indeed, there are none of those peppers, but red Serranos, which I was kind of shocked by how much I liked. Heat is minimal, to be sure, given the Serranos, but the flavor is outstanding. Add to that a high quality vinegar and one of my favorite beer types and round it out with some salt and mustard and you’ve got a definitely world-beater here. I’ve long said that if a sauce is good enough, flexibility ceases to be much of a factor or even consideration, because it will be good on anything. This sauce bears that out as everything I’ve tried it on has been excellent. Just truly a remarkable sauce and in many ways, this kind of watershed sauce is exactly what I want for the SOTY candidates, of which this is the first for 2025, and the actual winners.

Bottom line: Absolutely brilliant sauce, combining flavors spectacularly, and culminating in a cohesive whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Absolutely a must.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8

Blues Brothers Blues Mobile Hot Sauce Review

Blues Brothers Blues Mobile

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke3cWAIDuYg

I suspect that with most vanity sauces, what happened here was more the rule than the exception. To wit, I have already sort of reviewed this sauce, as it strikes me as a pretty direct 1:1 rebottling and relabeling (or, I suppose it could be a clone also) of the CaJohn’s Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero sauce, which is one I reviewed in the first year of doing this blog, back when the BICH came in a flask (follow the TOC link at right, if you want to check that out). It was a sauce I found worked much better as a grill sauce than an actual hot sauce. Interestingly, for this one, the Blues Brothers line seems to be trying to have its own identity like the Alice Cooper and Motley Crue lines, but still also reference CaJohn’s, as that company is name-checked on the bottle.

Now I say “sort of” reviewed in the paragraph above, because as noted in the video for the BICH sauce, the formula has changed a bit from back when the sauce came in that flask (and I bought several bottles to give as Xmas gifts that year) and John Hard was still that company. This new version, with the 5 oz. standard bottles we normally see, was a somewhat muted version, flavor-wise. The ingredient listing here is the same as the revamped version of the BICH, with some slight shuffling of ingredients, powders being used instead of the chiles, etc. While a bit of the harsh edge of the liquor has been sanded off, in its place is a sort of artificiality that I’m not so much a fan of.

While I think the overall flavor combination is still pretty strong and more or less carries the day and makes this an overall enjoyable sauce, I also think it’s important to note when this happens...and that I’ve already reviewed this sauce and eaten and enjoyed it many, many times under a different name.

Bottom line: If you can’t find either of the BICH sauce iterations (both reviewed on this blog - see TOC), you can pick up a bottle of this. Despite the tinkering, it remains a pretty strong sauce overall, though still more to my preference as a grill sauce, where it brings the Maillard reaction to great effect.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Smokin' Ed's (Hot) Chocolate Strawberry Hot Sauce Review

Smokin' Ed's (Hot) Chocolate Strawberry

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX5QHeiBPCA

I'm not entirely sure if the Smokin' Ed branded line is meant to be a sub-line of Puckerbutt or an entire rebrand, but it strikes me that these are somewhat experimental, but mostly boutique concoctions of Ed stretching out as hot sauce chef. I've gotten a few sauces from this line that will be coming down the pike, including both versions of his wing sauces that use the same "Wing Thing" name as I use for my quarterly FOH video homage to The Hot Ones. They are so far perhaps a bit more interesting than anything else, with this being a really good example of that concept. I opened this bottle in September 2024, so it has taken nearly 5 months to get to this point, which is fairly unusual.

Part of this was because I was trying to figure out what to put in the video with it. I do not typically make videos (in fact, I don't think I ever have) wherein I just eat the hot sauce itself, but sometimes I get a little stumped, such as with this one. I played around with it a while and then finally decided to lean into the cocoa of this sauce (you'll see in the video, which, by the by, if you count run time, is probably the longest video to date I've done, and if you count filming and editing time, is definitely the longest, and if you count the many weeks of pre-production, once I settled on the accompanying food, easily the longest there probably will be). I do really like the interplay of the cocoa and strawberry here, which is, of course, a great combination, but there is a big problem. 

That big problem goes by the name of vinegar. This is an exceedingly sour sauce, to the point where I couldn't use it on ice cream or any other desserts. I don't find cocoa to be something I want to put with savory foods, generally, so I had to wrack my brain to find a place for it. I did also like the pretty solid heat of the mighty mighty Reapers at play (non-chileheads may be pushed a touch with this one), but I honestly was more confused with this than anything. I am not sure, at all, what Ed was going for here and was going to shoot the video and bin the sauce, but something extraordinary happened during the filming and I found the place where it is most fitting and intend to use it fully. Normally, I would tell you what that particular food thing is, but instead, I am going to say watch the video (which will be coming in early February 2025). I will say that the sauce does work well with chocolate-type stuff, so long as you can cook it with whatever that stuff is and try to knock off some or all of the astringency. 

Bottom line: As is, this is a very pungent sauce, to the point where it doesn't really mix and match in its raw form. Use it in the right place, though, and it is pure bottled magic.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 1
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 3

Ginger Goat Harvest Heat Hot Sauce Review

Ginger Goat Harvest Heat

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb7PRk0jeQg

Yet another very intriguing entry from another company I’m finding increasingly creative, this one hailing from north of the border in Canada. Canada, as a country, digging hot sauce makes quite a bit of sense, particularly in the colder months, but I wonder if they are growing the pods up there directly or if they are bringing them in. I’d think the former, but have no idea what the growing seasons are up there. It seems likely that certain segments regionally of the lower southeastern United States would lend themselves better to this, but I’m not a pod grower nor do I have plants of any kind, truth be told, so perhaps it’s just idle speculation on my part.

Regardless, what they have done with this sauce is to sort of incorporate an almost more historical collection of harvest time goodies into a sauce, with roasted squash and cranberries. I find this a pretty neat idea, though I will also say that the squash seems to contribute moreso to texture than to flavor. This is very definitely a cranberry sauce first, with perhaps slight notes and what very moderate heat there is from the Ghosties, and little side grace notes here and there from the other elements. It is not exclusively cranberry, though that is the most forward flavor.

One of the larger disadvantages of using this particular ingredient is that cranberries tend to get locked fairly tightly into one mostly annual meal, that of the “traditional” American Thanksgiving feast of roast turkey and all the attendant trimmings. That is not to say it’s not eaten outside of that, but cranberry and turkey tend to be thought of hand-in-hand, when people think of cranberries at all, to which I don’t think there is a lot of thought to them outside of that...maybe cranberry juice, for a mixed drink or a change of pace here or there, but by and large, they tend to be more time-locked to that specific time of year and setting.

As good as this sauce is, it is not going to change that and to that end, the flexibility of sauces that use this ingredient tend to take a dip. What this does, it does very capably and effectively and the results are absolutely delicious, without question. I quite enjoy this sauce in that setting and it would probably be equally good in the any of the myriad tv dinner spinoffs (though I don’t usually partake of those) or in sandwiches with say turkey and maybe a bit of cream cheese, but for me, I don’t particularly like cranberry with chicken or fish or anywhere outside of that.

Bottom line: This is a sauce where the application will largely dictate enjoyment, but what it does there, it does remarkably well. Huge gateway potential with this one. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Dirty Dick's Caribbean Dream Hot Sauce Review

Dirty Dick’s Caribbean Dream

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhbX4FQGIEI 

So, recently, I went out a’shoppin’ for some mustards that might be calling themselves hot sauces, seeing as how I tore through the last actual mustard I had along those lines, the Maritime Mustard Pickle (reviewed elsewhere here). I was plumb out of mustard, you see, and while I don’t use a lot of it all the time, it is one of those things I like to keep on hand and if I could avoid getting one of the pedestrian national brand ones, I would surely do that. Anyway, after making a short list of lines to go look at, I headed off to the hallowed shelves of BYT once more to see what I could see. This was one of those sauces.

While it did not fit that particular bill, what I found was a highly enjoyable entry into a type it had been a good long while since I’d had last, a more or less true dyed-in-the-wool Caribbean sauce, with mustard, all manner of dried spices and a flotilla of different tropical type fruits and even some non-tropical ones to boot. All of this came together in that weird sort of magical combination only Caribbean sauces (and some dishes) can seem to do and I was certainly not unhappy to make this discovery, though it did nothing for my mustard dilemma.

With that type of cuisine, dried spices in particular play a very prominent role and that is certainly the case here. Like many blackened dishes, there is no side-stepping that dried ingredients are used, but rather than trying to downplay it, here, like in the cuisine style, it is embraced vigorously. For me, it works wonderfully and I have yet to find a meat that I did not find this sauce utterly delicious on. It is, to be sure, a very vibrant flavor, but also a very distinctive one. When I find sauces where that is the case, those also tend to be a lot less flexible, as I think food flavors need to almost come to them, rather than the inverse. So, outside of meats, I’m not entirely sure where this would really work particularly well, but it does touch lightly on some mustard applications to a degree as well, such as sandwiches.

Being that Habanero is the heat source here, this is not a particularly blazing sauce. At its peak, after the build, it was slightly over a 1 for me, but nowhere near enough to get the bump. For the most part, I was left with overall a very nice, solid, slightly robust pleasant mouth blaze once I was done using it. Best of all, this is one of the more moderately priced sauces out there.

Bottom line: If you’re not familiar with either Caribbean style sauce or the flavors, you would do well to get a bottle of this, as it covers an awful lot of ground at once, and deliciously.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Hot Ones Buffalo Hot Sauce Review

Hot Ones Buffalo

Note: This sauce appeared on Seasons 22 & 23 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eEjow59vno

I'm half-tempted, perhaps more than half, to be my less than flowing, eloquent self with this review. We'll see how that plays out, but there are a couple of things I do want to note. First, this should be properly labeled as a wing sauce, not a hot sauce. They are calling it a hot sauce and I will be judging it based on that, but those will be somewhat distorted, as this is another I don't think is actually a hot sauce. Second, how much you enjoy this as a sauce will be directly predicated by how much you like your wing sauces to be of the "all in one" variety. I personally tend to dislike that, as I prefer to mix and match to my own suiting rather than have it all decided for me, but different strokes and all that.

So, with that out of the way, what we have here is a very, let's call it "comprehensive," sort of sauce, starting with platform of a Cayenne sauce and then building on top of it. Next comes the creaminess by way of butter and this calls up the first of my reservations with this. Adding dairy to a hot sauce, in addition to being somewhat contradictory (this also is reflected in the lack of heat for this sauce), also means that when chilled it will tend to thicken and solidify, as this one does. The end result is a certain gloppiness to the proceedings and it will definitely not help to cut down richness. If anything, in fact, it will just add to it. Additionally, because there is dairy in it, leaving it out and not refrigerating after use is not a great plan. From there, there is a bevy of different items, ranging from celery and chia seed, to garlic powder, red pepper, smoked paprika, and a Habanero powder, which I imagine is there to increase the heat level to an at least detectable level, but if so, it failed pretty considerably by my estimation. 

So, flavor-wise, I don't dislike this sauce. As I mentioned, I am not really a fan of having all that stuff thrown into one sauce and prefer to be assaulted by the vinegar hit of a good solid Cayenne punch to the kisser and then I can tinker around with dipping into either a bleu cheese or, if I'm slumming it, a ranch, to achieve whatever balance I find necessary. All that said, the flavor is quite good and I don't mind it, but it is definitely a composite that really wants to be the main and/or only flavor and so it doesn't work particularly well with dishes featuring a combination of flavors. Again, this doesn't matter if it is marketed (correctly) as a wing sauce, as those are meant to be the main and/or only flavor with a specific meat. In that context, I imagine it will work well enough, or on something like a rotisserie chicken, where there is not a whole ton of other competing flavors. I understand why Hot Ones wanted to do that, as they do not have wing sauces on their wing show, but hot sauces, and the marketing machine must be sated above all, but this, like nearly all wing sauces, is only minimally functional as a hot sauce, which will be reflected in the rating being lower than my overall favorability towards the sauce.

Bottom line: This is low-to-no heat wing sauce labeled as a hot sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3

Heat Hot Sauce Shop Hot Paper Lantern Roasted Habanero & Garlic Hot Sauce Review

Heat Hot Sauce Shop Hot Paper Lantern Roasted Habanero & Garlic

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIOQ_0iSMew

This is the third iteration of what is kind of a signature sauce for Heat Hot Sauce Shop. I have reviewed both of the other two for this blog (check TOC on the right) and while I found them generally favorable, by the end of both of them, the apple cider vinegar was getting to me a bit. For this one, third time is perhaps the charm as the Paper Lantern Habaneros are quite a marvel. I’ve not had them before and have...well, I’d say more tolerated Habaneros over the years than actually liked them, excepting the Red Savinas, but these are very nice, bring way more of a fruity aspect and a very nice roundness to the flavor profile, almost a smoothness. Habaneros can frequently come across as what I would call abrasive a bit, but that is definitely not the case with these.

Here, we have a very nice base for the tanginess of the vinegar to play off of the brown sugar. Under this kind of backdrop, the peppers and roasted garlic comes across very well and make this the best version of this kind of sauce it can be. A lot of the verbiage from the other reviews still applies, as the sauces overall are more alike than not (I still find it slightly too sweet and wish a different vinegar entirely was used), but this is definitely my favorite variation of those three and by far the tastiest. Heat-wise, it sort of falls between them, as slightly hotter than the original version, but not as much as the Limited Edition from before. I’d almost call this a slightly more tamed version of Habaneros and am certainly glad I got this bottle when I did, as I’d not experienced the Paper Lanterns before and they were way more impressive here than expected. This is an impressively flavored pepper as the star here, not quite enough to change my mind about Habaneros overall, but definitely up there, in my estimation, with the Red Savinas.

Bottom line: This is by far the best (and probably most accessible) version of this sauce to get, if you’re curious and want to get one yourself before they’re gone.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Ginger Goat Tropic Star Hot Sauce Review

Ginger Goat Tropic Star

Note: This sauce appears on Season 22 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVY3Rotxpzc

This sauce is probably the best use of an oil in any hot sauce, including wing sauces, ever. It imparts a touch of flavor, but a very nice silkiness to the mouth feel, without feeling slick or greasy. It is not at all sludgy, as sometimes sauces with that component will tend to be, but quite pleasant. The pastel yellow is also a part I get a tremendous kick out of and it all lends itself to the greater whole that this sauce is unlike anything else out there.

The flavor is quite distinctive. Sometimes we can glean hints from the sauce names and other times, it is a vague at best reference and this one seems more the latter. Certainly the presence of mangoes will lend to a tropical vibe, but they don’t play into the flavor as much as the garlic and the superhot peach blend (whatever it is - it is not defined in the ingredients) and the lemongrass and some of the spices. Those more contribute to a sort of Asian-y flavor vibe, which is perhaps why rice vinegar was used. I’m not quite sure the need for two vinegars, but the apple cider vinegar does not show up particularly forcefully, so fine.

When sauces tend to be this unique, they also tend not to mesh well with a great variety of food and I think that is also the case here. The more you can have foods that will move out of the way a bit and let the sauce shine, the better the results. The sauce seems to have a delicate balance and can be a bit prone to flavor cancellation, but despite that, it is never anything less than utterly tasty. This is a sauce that you may have to tinker with a bit to find where it works best (I liked it on breaded meats and suspect it would be wonderful in a salad), but it is well worth that effort. Heat-wise, there is definitely the superhot bitterness, but no accompanying floral, so if I had to guess, I’d imagine maybe a peach Ghostie and peach Reaper. This will probably push some non-chileheads a bit, but is far from overbearing.

Bottom line: Definitely one of the more unique and delightful flavor experiences from the show and generally. Absolutely well worth grabbing a bottle if you’re a foodie and a very impressive outing from Ginger Goat.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Best Hot Sauce 2024 + Recap

Best Hot Sauce 2024  + Recap

Sometimes, I get accused of being overly fond of data, but I only think this is half true. In this very specific case, I got curious to see what the review score breakdown, which I’ve done in other years past, would look like plotted, so I created a chart exactly for that. I will get into that more in the statistics section, where we look at the actual numbers, but if you’re curious about what that sort of thing would look like visually represented, it is here this year. Let me know if you like it and I may continue in successive years.

Before we get into the full year, I did make some minor changes to the blog by way of ease of access and hopefully convenience of searching, on both the TOC for Full Reviews and for Mini-Reviews. Hopefully it reads well across all viewing platforms. One interesting (to me, at least) side effect, that I hadn’t noticed until a few days after that change, was that it’s much easier to see which sauces starting with respective letters have associated FOH videos with them. Again, that will never be at 100%, because the blog has outrun the life span of a few sauce companies and those products are lost and gone forever, and because there are a few sauces I never want to experience at any level ever again, including in the brief span on camera it takes for the video content, but this change to the TOC lists does highlight a point of curiousity, I suppose.

Another change, which will be much less noticeable, is that I started toying around with scheduling posts. Now, I’ve always done it with the Quarterly Update posts (this very one you’re reading, for example, I’ve edited at least 30+ times over the course of the year), but towards the end of 2024, I started tinkering with timing them a bit to put them on a more semi-regular cadence, instead of just dumping them as I did them. This is an experiment that I may abandon, to be sure, but tying into the idea of the posting schedule of the FOH videos a bit, where I try to space them (probably unnecessarily) a bit so they can “breathe” and have a chance for attention without another newer shiny thing competing for attention, I thought I would give it a go on the blog front and see how that plays out. In years past, I would just write them and post. The FOH video series started in 2019 and I’ve always meant the blog and that series to be linked, so I feel it’s worth trying that out to see if it makes an appreciable difference. I truly don’t know that it will, but I’ve also never attempted this in the past, so if nothing else, it’s perhaps more trial-and-error data-gathering than anything else.

For the year as a whole on the blog front, it started pretty *ahem* heated, with a string of consecutive reviews, the last of which was my 500th overall blog post (I also finally got around to a list of my favorite pods earlier in the year, linky in SOTY page at right), but fell off directly after due to COVID, which sucked. A lot. COVID also set me back on some FOH challenge stuff I’d gotten. I did hit the 500th blog post in January and also wound up doing the first-ever quad review, as well as at least one double and one triple. So, while the number of postings overall for the year was the same as the previous year, and yes, that is the very first time that has ever happened in the history of the blog, there was perhaps more extensive coverage of sauces.

Before I get to the rest of the year end stuff, I suppose the big news is, if you’ve paid attention to the FOH series on the YouTube channel, a major change took place in October. My former editing/production tower was running, offline, of course, Windows XP, and a version of Sony Vegas (7.0) from a very long time ago. I didn’t upgrade any of this because: I had it, it was paid for, and at the time, I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to do YouTube. I also had a very workable process (even if it involved a lot of screwing around with SD cards and external hard drives), which I was comfortable with and worked well enough, since I wasn’t planning on doing stuff that required CGI or anything other than some relatively basic editing tweaks.

I got the tower in 2007 and since then, it had produced numerous videos, thousands both personal and across 3 different YouTube channels, all the way to a full-length movie. But, I (obviously) couldn’t upgrade the software any further and that tower wouldn’t process any of the higher definition videos, so I had to intentionally downgrade video recording quality to keep using it. In mid-May of 2024, it started having problems and it became a race against time to get enough recorded wherein I would have enough lead-in to hopefully get used to the new tower, new OS, and new software. The dread day was coming, which I’d put off, but always knew would be along, that, if I wanted to continue producing video content, I’d have to replace the tower and also revamp a good portion of my process, particularly in creating templates and establishing new video levels for the cameras.

What I didn’t know is that, instead of just tweaking or changing a few things here or there, I would wind up changing nearly *all* of my prior processes, which took a while to re-orient, since I was busily trying to test different things in order to corral all that stuff. Due to a variety of factors, the lead-in time I thought I had was considerably less than what I actually had, as I fully intended for the new stuff to start going live October 1. As it was, I was still tinkering nearly all the way through October, trying to find better and more repeatable methods, as well as streamlining things once I found a change I liked. Truth be told, as I write this, I am still tinkering with various aspects, trying to get the overall process nailed down and fine-tuned. Admittedly, it is taking a bit longer since I’m doing this all “live,” as in on the fly, instead of just doing rushes and looking at test footage, but I’m just a fat old dude spewing my thoughts on various products, so it ain’t like I’m doing Shakespeare or whatever. The move to newer tech wasn’t all bad, as it opened things up a lot past the software limitations of the old, venerable software, so it’s ultimately going to be to the good, as long as the new replacement tower doesn’t shit the bed, but I’m going to miss the old ways, particularly the simplicity, where I only had to worry about whether I had enough natural light before hitting the record button.

By way of example, the newest channel trailer (posted October 1, 2024) took somewhere upwards of 4 hours to actually finish to the point where you see it now, thanks to a number of fits and starts. The next video from the new tech I had to re-render and re-upload twice because I forgot a 10 second element and couldn’t add it after the fact. Same with the one after that and, as it turned out, all of the videos I did that day, which was around 6 hours of work, had to all be re-rendered.

Anyway, I’d been at least somewhat mentally planning the change to newer tech in the back of my head for a few years, so I was a little prepared, but loss of a thing that you’re personally intimate with, that you spend a lot of time with, is still loss, and whether it’s a person or even something like replacing a car, things are not the same. No matter how much you try to get ready, you never are, truly, fully, when it actually happens. That left a different challenge, albeit another I’d at least accounted for..

I have always recorded ahead, with all of the channels I’ve done, uploaded stuff (or left it on the hard drive for later) well in advance of it going live for posting. I upgraded the audio for a lot of the content starting in the later part of 2023, an alteration which wasn’t meant to be blatant, but that’s not the case with visuals. There is a pretty big disparity between the older videos, which wouldn’t render in HD or even widescreen correctly, and the new ones. I could have done a huge video dump, and debated doing a daily video for every day in February 2025 to clear that backlog before deciding against it, and just intermingling them. So, if you’re wondering why the huge quality difference, that’s why and also partially why I’m running Friday postings until all of the older content is up and posted (into March 2025), at which point it will be only stuff with the new (and I feel, better) content process. I also have a decided backlog of sauce videos currently, per usual for this time of year, so the Friday posts might be going for a good while into 2025. There is also a less than zero chance that I will hit 1000 FOH videos sometime next year, which is kind of wild to me.

For 2024, once again, I started the year off with a substantial backlog of non-sauce FOH content, though not quite as much as the previous year, and overall had a better handle on it, given that I did a bunch of content for the 12 Days of Christmas theme in 2023. While I will not be repeating that, and initially was not going to repeat as many fun, off-the-wall, wacky, but mostly undersung, non-mainstream holidays, as I did for 2024, there are at least 3 that I have planned, entirely filmed, and scheduled, as well as a few more that I may or may not have simply made up (full list in the YouTube Community tab for my page - follow one of the links to the playlists at right). I will also be doing a handful of wing videos in the run-up to the Super Bowl in 2025, but just more looping stuff into that time frame posting, rather than doing anything particularly special for that event, as I did in 2022. I will also be doing, as per usual, the more mainstream holidays when and where I can find things that fit, however loosely.

Again, this winter, as last, I’m doing a number of challenges (in 2025, they will be appearing on the 15th of various months through Q2), but this may be the last year of that. While I’ve done the ones I have mostly opportunistically, what’s left is definitely more in the margins. I am not now, nor will I probably ever be, a member of any challenge organization, be it either League Of Fire or Heat Feasters, and while I think some of the various challenges are interesting, there is not generally an easy way for me to access those products. My focus is on flavor, above all else, and it’s hard to see where paying for overseas shipping, for instance, is going to make a lot of sense considering that nearly all challenge products (and I am loathe to pay over $10 for any of them) both generally are not very tasty and also are more expensive to begin with. Certainly, of the ones I’ve done, I’ve tried to skew it heavily towards those I think will have the least offensive flavor.

Since we’re talking about YT a bit here, let’s game out a bit of the theory behind content, at least for a lower level creator, like myself. The equation probably changes if one is monetized and has a more popular channel, but the concept I would imagine would still be intact. Here is a real world example of where I’m going with this. One of the sometimes more “viral” (though not for me so far) items to make content on was the Paqui One Chip Challenge. To be sure, this was part of my consideration for the 3 years I did them, but also the price point was sub-$10. Even then, a single chip cost more than an entire bag of another flavor, or I could take that same $10 and go get a bottle (I’m rounding a bit on the pricing) of far tastier (hopefully) sauce. Right now, the Paqui is gone and probably not coming back anytime soon. We have a few similar products out there, one of which is called the Jolochip. Right now, that one is going for around $14 or so, again for a single chip. I can now get up to a bottle or more of a far tastier (hopefully) sauce for that same $14. This consideration applies particularly to challenge products, as the quantity and generally my enjoyment is a lot less, but it does apply to an extent to all the products that I purchase, which is why there are still a couple challenges from Old Agness I’m at least moderately interested in doing but haven’t gotten to yet.

In perhaps larger focus, I’ve come to a decision about the FOH series on YouTube. I can say, with a pretty high degree of confidence, maybe not quite certainty (I still have at least an easy dozen videos that I have non-sauce product for but have yet to film), but confidence, that I will be producing less content in 2025. Now, this could change if a whole glut of stuff comes out, but here’s the thing:

I started initially making the FOH videos when Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, one of best people I’ve known and a true titan in the industry, offered to sponsor my then-flailing blog (this one you’re reading right now, in fact) and I thought it was poor reward that any exposure for him would be in a fairly low readership blog. So, I decided to make videos also so that there would be a video as well as a blog post for the sauces he provided and maybe combined that would present a larger amount of eyeballs. That was part of it. Another part was to make something that I could point to every time someone would ask me in real life if such and such was actually hot and/or good. I figured if they had questions a lot of other people I refer to as chile-curious would as well. So, I thought I’d build a library of non-sauce content to go along with the hot sauce videos...and that’s what I have now. The playlists are pretty well-populated and I’ve covered quite a gamut of chilehead-related products, beyond strictly hot sauces.

All of that sounds well and good, but herein comes the problem. I have a great deal of fun doing the videos and most of it is at moderate expense, buuuut due to that extensive coverage, the products left to do are a bit on the pricier side. The entire FOH series so far doesn’t realistically draw well enough for me to rationalize the higher expense items, to be blunt. I personally buy nearly everything you see in the videos or in the blog posts and, sheer fun aside, short of being monetized or to at least having more eyes on the videos, I have to draw the line somewhere.

I feel there is a larger discussion here, given that I’ve mentioned that of my top 10 videos on the channel, only two of them are for hot sauces, so it may seem odd to cut back on the content category that is drawing better. To put a big question to rest, no, I am not quitting YouTube. If anything, it is more a re-dedication to the idea of the video content being originally intended to support this very blog. Now, I found a whole lot more non-sauce content than expected, to be sure, and I will still do it as it comes along. As it is, I spend a lot of time researching and trying to make sure I’m covering as much as I possibly can, including pre-planning (as an illustration, right after the Q3 2024 update posted, I was planning into February 2025 - as of this posting, I’m well into May 2025), so I’m hoping, now that I’ve got such immense and intense coverage, that I can perhaps achieve something a little closer to balance.  

Anyway, long and short of all this is that, basically, after the second quarter 2025, FOH video posting will probably be a lot less active than in past years. Sundays will stay hot sauce video day. I doubt I will return to the reaction content, unless I can think up a better way of doing it. The good note is that I will now, hopefully, finally, after pushing it off mostly the last 2+ years, be able (maybe) to move up some of my long-delayed projects that have spent a lot more time on the backburner than I ever intended...which is something I’ve been saying the last 2 or 3 years.

If it happens, that is...plans of mine have a habit at times of forming differently than anticipated, so major caveat there, but IF it does, this won’t be a surprise for readers of the blog. I’ve talked for a while about dialing it back. Part of it is because of the lag time. If it takes me a entire year (or even 6 months, realistically) between filming/producing a video and posting it, that’s too long by a significant factor. This has happened repeatedly over the last 2 - 3 years.

Additionally, while I really enjoy doing the FOH series still, I know from my past dealings with creative works, it is also pretty easy to get burned out and I’d strongly prefer that not happen. I have enough of a cushion so I can take breaks, but when I was doing a gaming channel and recording constantly to keep up a near-steady stream of posted content, I started to really dislike playing video games. That was one of the main reasons I stopped doing that channel. Video games were not fun any longer and I had to walk away from filming content involving me playing them so I could enjoy them again. I learned quite a lot from that, particularly in terms of process, and if I ever get the itch again, it will be different, but that is nowhere near on the foreseeable horizon.

Speaking strictly to the FOH series, my methodology is sound and those videos are still a lot of fun to come up with and film. I just want them overall to move to a more relaxed posting cadence, sort of like this blog is now...at least to a degree. Of course, this plan could get thrown entirely out the window or itself pushed back to 2026 or maybe beyond, depending on circumstances and how much stuff comes out, but that’s where things are tentatively currently.

As with the last couple of years, despite no real emphasis on it, I’m also inching closer to finishing the hot sauce archives project, in which I go back and revisit via FOH videos certain sauces from the blog from back before the FOH content existed. I don’t really have anything specific in mind for that and am not doing any particular planning for it, so I think it’s going to be more or a less a thing that creeps up and I find I no longer have any sauces not covered that I want to do kind of deal. This may wind up coming to the fore a bit, as my current “hit” list that I’ve been keeping for the last few years, my upcoming sauce list that I want to try and make some content with, is probably the lowest it’s ever been. I could finally wind up coming to the point where I’m out of sauces I’m interested in and can easily get. After quite a while of having between 8 - 20 unopened bottles on the on-deck shelf for years, it will be kind of weird if that’s how things develop. I don’t think it will happen in 2025, but I usually do pretty big annual buys for Black Friday and they were a touch muted this year.

Let’s turn now to The Hot Ones sauce coverage project. All of this, as always, is updated on the Hot Ones Sauces page (link at right) as to which sauces are still under consideration and which are not, along with the reasons why not.

To break it down a bit, there are 4 seasons within the first 20 wherein I’m missing a single sauce. As far as I can tell, the only one still available is in Season 9 (though it’s a very expensive sauce - the only place I’ve been able to find it recently it’s like $30 and the sauce is a Scorpion sauce and there is no Scorpion sauce in the world I think would be worth that, and probably not most sauces in general, so I’m also considering not doing that one at all), so I’ve updated the full list accordingly, with the other 3 being evidently discontinued or otherwise unavailable. The only other sort of outlier is the Zombie Apocalypse from Torchbearer, a sauce I didn’t find enjoyable, but which I will film a video on, both to see if my feelings have changed, more in the name of completion than anything, but only if I find it on (a heavily discounted) sale, which, heretofore, I have not.

Anyway, that this all means is I could be super close to entirely caught up in 2025, even with mostly slow-walking it, as I’ve been doing the last couple years.

Current to now, the seasons with sauces outstanding are:

Season 9 - 1 remaining
Season 20 - 2 remaining (2 at hand)
Season 21 - 2 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 22 - 5 remaining (4 at hand)
Season 23 - 3 remaining (2 at hand)
Season 24 - 2 remaining (1 at hand)
Season 25 - 3 remaining (2 at hand)

These are the sauces remaining, by slot position on the show:

#1 - 1 remaining (1 at hand)
#2 - 1 remaining (1 at hand)
#3 - fully covered            
#4 - fully covered
#5 - 3 remaining (3 at hand)
#6 - fully covered
#7 - 3 remaining (2 at hand)
#8 - fully covered
#9 - 5 remaining (4 at hand)
#10 - 1 remaining

We will get into the SOTY discussion more, but first, as we usually do, some stats for the blog:

Total posts (including this post): 578
Total views (as of this writing): 83, 251
Total sauces full-reviewed: 511
Total full review sauces with FOH video content: 386
Average rating, all full review sauces: 4.64
Total min-review sauces: 61
Total sauces reviewed, combined: 572
Highest viewed individual blog review: ~2.07K - Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet

As mentioned, since I get asked this question a bit, if all these sauces follow a sort of Bell curve, as things are wont to do, I made a graph this year, which is below:

As you can see, it is not precisely a Bell curve, but rather heavily skewed towards a cumulative rating of 6 and under. There are, of course, zero perfect 10s and that is by design, so I don’t imagine there will ever be any. There are a total of 7 in the 9 rating, all of which but one are SOTYs. The only other 9 I need to probably do a video on, in which case, I am rather doubting it will retain that particular value, but we’ll see once I get to it. I’ve been putting it off for a while, as I bought another bottle after the bottle for the written review and subsequently liked it much less than before, but not enough to re-rate it. One of the things the FOH video series has done has been to largely relieve me of those qualms.

Because I seem forever fascinated by certain data, I keep wanting (and immediately forgetting that there is no actual on-site mechanism for this) an actual word count for the blog overall. This post, for instance, is over 5000 words, but most of the reviews, which are the bulk of the content, run anywhere from 500 - 750 words generally. So, if we pick a median of 625 words and multiply by the full review tally, which is 511, we get 319, 375 words. That leaves another 67 posts to account for, but that was the easy part.

The Quarterly Updates range pretty heavily, but generally run at least 1000, except for the year end ones, which are much longer, closer to this one. There are 13 of those and most of the time, as I recall, they were in the 3,500 range, so that’s another 45,500 to the word count, bring us to 364,875. We still have another 54 posts left. Some years, there were not 3 other Quarterly Updates before the final ones and there are also the “outside” articles, such as the intro column or my trip to Fiery Fest or my favorite chiles, etc. Now we get into work, as I more or less would have to count the exact number of those for the 12+ years I’ve been doing this, as well as an exact count on the mini-reviews, but conservatively, I would estimate that is easily another 100K+ for the word count, if not more. It could be much more. Still, I think it’s an easy 450K+, which, if you consider novel length to be 100K, puts it in an interesting context. The only sure way is to cut/paste this into a word processor and count the words and that is too much, even for me. If this ever takes off and gets wildly successful, perhaps then...

I don’t have a lot more to say about the other numbers, other than noting the streak of the highest viewed post on the blog, for the last couple years, is the Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet, which is a pretty nice sauce, especially for a mass market commercial one, and being a house brand to boot. The expectation might be, since interest in that review tends to still be a bit pronounced, despite the review itself being from 2017, that there would be corresponding interest in the accompanying video. That has not been the case, as the video, which was posted in 2022, is towards the bottom. The highest viewed FOH video, thus far, is from 2023, for one of the Hot Ones/Hot Pockets collabs. As noted earlier, hot sauces generally are seemingly of less interest on the video side, being 2 of the top 10 and 4 of the top 20, though if you extend condiments into it, there are a couple mustards also in the top 20.

I’m not entirely sure why this is the case, other than snacks and stuff being generally overall more popular, but also a lot of the other stuff in a finished product and you experience it for that time and that’s it. Condiments like hot sauce tend to be of a longer duration and are more of a commitment overall, if people choose to acquire some. Generally, one will not buy a bottle of any condiment expecting to use it all in one sitting. Conversely, I still, despite actively making content on YouTube for the past 8 years and doing this blog for 12+ years, really have no idea the voodoo of why some stuff draws and other stuff doesn’t.

And now, finally, we turn to the Sauce Of The Year for 2024. We started off wild and wooly, with the first 2024 SOTY candidate with the very first review in January 2024 of Silk City’s marvelous Shake And Pour Over, then another came a few days later with the Karma Ashes 2 Ashes sauce, which supplanted the Puckerbutt Chipotle Xpress as the hottest SOTY candidate to date and kicked the year off with a roar. The Ashes 2 Ashes held the frontrunner position from that point on. Next came around a 9 month gulf before an absolute gem of a sauce in the Cajun style mold, the Two Heads Music City Heat came along. That sauce was my 500th overall full review for the blog, a distinction that perhaps is meaningful only to me, but it did add a certain note of specialness via that association. The Music City Heat was also the fastest I went though them, though not by any great extent. The contenders this year are all fantastically delicious sauces and so my deliberations moved into hair-splitting, by-the-barest-of-margins territory.

Like many of the other years, I will state that any of these is an excellent choice and I’ve resolved this dilemma in the past by looking at total overall score or moving to an intangible, such as which I enjoyed more, which is really the ultimate criteria, I suppose. Obviously, I loved them all considerably, but which weighs heavier, a sauce that I find so tasty that I burn through the bottle in a heated rush or one that is both tasty and hotter, which takes me longer to whip through it and then I can also enjoy it longer? So, while I really admired the flavor combination of the Music City Heat, find it to be an utterly brilliant sauce that speaks pretty directly to me, and will definitely be buying more of that as soon as I run out more of my Louisiana-style/Cajun sauces, ultimately, I think it is a neater trick combining higher heat along with outstanding flavor and thus, accordingly, am giving the nod to the Sauce Of The Year winner for 2024: Karma’s Ashes 2 Ashes.

Previous TSAAF Sauce Of The Year winners (links to reviews in SOTY Table Of Contents link to the right):

2012: CaJohn’s Happy Beaver
2013: Blair’s Pure Death
2014: Born To Hula’s Ghost Of Ancho
2015: Voodoo Chile’s Voo Dew Honey Doo
2016: Pirate O’s Surface Of The Sun Hot Sauce
2017: Z’s Shield Maiden Hot Sauce
2018: Taco Jesus Cayenne Pepper Sauce
2019: Torchbearer Ultimate Annihilation
2020: Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper
2021: Gindo’s Original
2022: Hellfire Hellboy Legendary AF
2023: Retsuko Rage

If you want to read more from me, check out the YouTube Community page, which also contains a number of photos of different food things, as well as brief little notes to span the gap between the quarterly postings here.  

I also have another blog, where I type about wine, the Happy Sippin’ Companion (HSC). It has been put on inactive status as of 2019, with maybe a handful of posts since then with no plans to actively  resurrect it, but still remains up for viewing (link also on right).

I also still slug away on Yelp, which you can click to from my widget. I’m finally resuming posts from my earlier layoff, but it’s still way off the pace from pre-pandy years. My distribution of ratings and further metrics are available on my Yelp profile page....I think. Maybe.

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

Melinda’s Louisiana Red Cayenne Hot Sauce Review

Melinda’s Louisiana Red Cayenne

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw8Go5a6IX4

Back a dozen (and change) years ago, when I started this blog, there were two names floating around, getting a lot of attention, this and Marie Sharp’s, but neither of them had a sauce I could consider getting, despite me checking out the entire lines of both, as they tend to be onion happy. Sharp’s is still, to my knowledge, that way, but Melinda’s has seemingly decided to make an overt push to become a much larger mass market commercial company, branching out into various sub-lines, and adding a lot more sauces to the line-up. I believe this may be one of those, as I don’t recall seeing it in the past.

Flavor-wise, it bears out the mass market push I was mentioning. This is a very tame sauce, with very pedestrian flavors and nearly all the hallmark edges of a Louisiana-style sauce, which the label is at minimum referencing, sanded off. The first hit is still vinegar, but it is considerably blunted. So, too, the Cayenne, which also has been neutered of any heat. This is a slightly salty taste and there is a definitely a strong note of garlic as well. This one is fairly heavy on xanthan gum, to the point where it reminded me more of ketchup, texture-wise, than either a Louisiana-style Cayenne or what I think it’s closer to, the spin-off Cajun style. In terms of flavor, it is definitely more Cajun style, but, the flavors are kind of amalgamated and meshed together into a much softer approach than we normally see in hot sauce.

That does not mean this sauce is by any means not. Indeed, I find the flavor to be pretty pleasant and think this would make a fantastic point of entry sauce (again, think mass market) for anyone just off-handedly picking it up. Perhaps that is the intent of it, and with that dulling down, this does lend a certain amount of flexibility to the sauce that might otherwise not be there. This, in conjunction with the thickness of the sauce and tendency to hold in place, makes it useful on pizza, for instance, where normally a Louisiana-style would not go. It does cover most of the usual stuff there, so breakfast and fried foods as well, even to ramen, where I would also personally not use Louisiana-style. All of those things work against it, for me, anyway, when it comes to richer dishes, like mac & cheese.

Bottom line: A very solid, very middle-of-the-road, albeit thicker consistency than usual, approach to a Cajun style hot sauce, only sans heat. Chileheads can skip this one, but it could serve a great entry point for the chile curious. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 0
           Flavor: 7
           Flexibility: 7
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9

Overall: 6