Hottest Sauce without going PURE CAPSICUM... Hmmm.... There's a ton of capsicum based sauces out there that are far from pure cap. I think there should be a new rating system for hot sauces. 1-10 being NATURAL pepper sauces and 11-100 being pecentage of capsicum in the sauces. That being said, a sauce mixed with only fifty percent of PURE 100% CAPSAICIN POWDER would still only come in at at 50 out of 100. My Con Diablo is a capsicum based habanero sauce that is unbearable, and it would rate only around 20. Not much flavour, but HOT? Send you straight to hell.... :-)
There are so many flavourful hot sauces out there. Personally, I like a nice, clean, straight up sauce, not masked by a lot of 'other' flavours. Vinegar or my fave, lime juice. Don't forget, we also have to keep the sauces from spoiling. I absolutely love the habanero mash and lime juice with lime flavoured Tostitos. Mmmmmmmmm!!
Oh, and then we can get into powder based sauces that can get pretty toasty without adding any oleoresin. I still like the taste of mash over powder though. I gotta tell ya, when I think of Peppermaster's Hurricane mash, I drool. They have it down! I order Defcon's sauces on a regular basis too. It's great on my cereal. I also have my line of sauces, but I absolutely love hot sauces, so I don't restrict myself to my own.
I have some real sneaky sauces..... :-) Blueberry, Raspberry, Tropical fruit..... sneak up and smack you in the head... LOL!
Hey, I even have my Screamin' Meemies Kemptville Redneck Sauce. It was a joke that took off. It's the MILDEST hot sauce out there. 100% pure ketchup. My redneck kinfolk can't handle anything hotter than that, so I named it for them.... All profits from the sale of that one go to SIDS research (sudden infant death syndrome) in honour of friends that lost their newborn to it a few years ago. They live in Kemptville and this sauce gave them a good giggle, so I opened it up to the public. It's a big hit to some of our Canuck soldiers in Afghanistan.
Enjoy,
Mike