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hot-sauce Hot Sauces - Your Opinions?

Jupiter

Jupiter

Hi folks,

I recent bought the following sauces and was wondering what you all thought of them, if you've tried them:

Heartbreaking Dawns Mauvais Sang
Heartbreaking Dawns 1841 Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce
Heartbreaking Dawns 1498 Trinidad Scorpion
Cajohns Trinidad Scorpion BBQ Sauce

My own opinion is that they all taste really nice but aren't as hot as I expected, especially in light of their product descriptions being full of 'DOOM' and 'PAIN' et cetera - three of them have Trinidad Scorpions in them and I still don't even need a glass of milk when eating with them! And I am by no means a chilli connoisseur.
 
you cant go wrong with any of those, i know both manufacturers and they pour there heart and soul into every product the put out

go for all of them, i never had most of them but i think i had the 1498 at the chile fest last year johnny had it out as a sample, and i seem to remember it was quite good and it had very good heat
\
where are you from in Scotland? i have a lady friend that married a buddy of mine over here, she is from Glasgow

thanks your Friend Joe
 
I'm from Falkirk which is just 40 mins away from Glasgow on the train! The sauces are definitely all awesome, it was just that I was wondering whether their heat was a bit over-exaggerated in reviews and descriptions.
 
Heat is very subjective. That is why I think it is funny when reviewers give sauces heat ratings like 14 out of 10. There really isn't a baseline. Perhaps my 10 is your 7... or vice versa. Usually those numbers don't mean much to me. When I watch a review, I want to hear about the *actual* flavor... what you taste, etc. Not some number like 8 out of 10 on flavor. :) /* End Pointless Rant */
 
Jupiter said:
I'm from Falkirk which is just 40 mins away from Glasgow on the train! The sauces are definitely all awesome, it was just that I was wondering whether their heat was a bit over-exaggerated in reviews and descriptions.
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great if i see my friend i will let her know,im sure shes a little homesick

im with weston, heat is very subjective, it will all come down to your tolarance

thanks your friend Joe
 
Hi Jupiter,

Sounds like you're a hotter chilehead than what you thought! :) As others have said, heat levels are totally subjective. If you haven't found them yet, there is a review section here on THP where you can find all different reviews from all different levels of conneseurs (sic?) and heat tolerances.



And Welcome to THP. Thanks for your comments.

salsalady
 
What many people don't realize is is that about .000001 percent of the population can tolerate the most extreme of heat. As a manufacturer, to make a product specifically for this market doesn't lead to a huge number of sales. Yeah, we have the ZERO stuff, but I find that about 1 out of 500+ actually enjoy the heat it gives. You can always just dump a bunch of extract into a bottle and call it exreme, but as far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't taste good, I'm not going to eat it, and won't give a crap how hot it is. The small batch hot sauce manufacturer is aiming for a large target market, not a miniscule one. i think this concept is lost by many, especially those who constantly complain about no products being hot enough for them.

If you want something stupidly hot, go buy some peppers, whip up a sauce, and enjoy.
 
DEFCON Creator said:
What many people don't realize is is that about .000001 percent of the population can tolerate the most extreme of heat. As a manufacturer, to make a product specifically for this market doesn't lead to a huge number of sales. Yeah, we have the ZERO stuff, but I find that about 1 out of 500+ actually enjoy the heat it gives. You can always just dump a bunch of extract into a bottle and call it exreme, but as far as I'm concerned, if it doesn't taste good, I'm not going to eat it, and won't give a crap how hot it is. The small batch hot sauce manufacturer is aiming for a large target market, not a miniscule one. i think this concept is lost by many, especially those who constantly complain about no products being hot enough for them.

If you want something stupidly hot, go buy some peppers, whip up a sauce, and enjoy.
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well said - I tell people this all the time at the FM. It's about 3% of the market for either extreme - super hot or super mild. Even my "extra hot" that I'm working on is not crazy insane extreme - it's a food product, but it probably eliminates about 40% of the consumer market since they just can't handle it.

And to me, flavor is priority #1. Anyone can throw 50 lbs of superhots into a kettle and make pepper spray out of it. To me the challenge is making it flavorful.

Tabling every week at the farmer's market I can say with authority that for about 35% of people "mild" is plenty hot enough.

As for the sauces listed, while I've not tried them all, pretty much everything I've had from CaJohn's and HBD is excellent - both companies make outstanding products. If they're not hot enough, there are plenty of "liquid fire" for the lava eaters out there. I recommended one recently in the "superhot" topic on this review board. It's from Puckerbutt's, and it's really, really hot for a non-extract sauce. Definitely gonna light you up, but you won't get the complexity of flavor you might in a CaJohn's or HBD product.

hope this helps!


Ps - good suggestion by Westin!
 
I'm definitely not a better chilli-head than I thought lol: last year I picked a habanero chocolate pepper, took one bite of it and was left with what felt like a chemical burn!

It's more that I almost feel that the sauces are being falsely advertised (or perhaps I should say 'over-hyped'). I read a review before buying the Cajohns BBQ sauce which said:

'This is about as ferociously furnace-like as you can get for an ultra fiery BBQ sauce. Like I mentioned previously, it's almost too hot, even for most chileheads! A lot of diehards who complain about never finding a barbecue topper that's never hot enough will be satisfied with this one. If you eat some of CaJohn's Trinidad BBQ Sauce and still consider it to be too mild, then you're a bonafide freak of nature!'

But it's really not. Anyone can pour it over their chips and not be sent screaming for the milk. I do think there is a tendency when describing chilli pepper heat to over-exaggerate the heat; it's entertaining for some reason to talk about FIRE and DEATH and MELTING FACES. However, I don't think that reviewers and chilli sauce shops should incorporate this into their official descriptions and 'expert reviews'. I honestly did feel a bit misled after tasting the sauces and realising they weren't as hot as described. That being said, they taste amazing.
 
I do the exact opposite. At the farmers market today I had 2 different people walk up and ask "what's your hottest sauce?!?"

And I said to both, "man, I wish people would walk up and ask me "which is your most flavorful sauce?"
;)

I constantly downplay the heat. I love heat, but for me the sell is flavor.
 
As I've been saying since our inception in 2005 as Defcon, but much earlier when I was "cutting my teeth", it takes NO skill to make something hot, it really doesn't. The skill begins with making something that actually TASTES good. You want something hot, add peppers, reduce, wow, you did it (one hand clapping). You want something that people will actually USE in their everyday life, not some heinous bottle that sits in the dusty back shelf, waiting for some half-drunk idiot friend to stop by, and after a few more beers, utter the infamous words, "You can't make it hot enough for me"...Believe me, I've heard that stupid phrase more times than I can count (taken exponentially), and then you dig out that generic bottle of stuff, give him some, and he pukes because of the heat. Yay! Not! If it doesn't taste good, there is no reason for making it.
 
When I started selling salsa in 1995, BBQ potatoe chips were considered "spicy". The first batches of salsa were split 33% each of mild, medium, and hot. It took about 2 batches for me to figure out that 75% of the customers were mild(zero heat) to medium (3-4 out of 10).

As John, JayT, Scott, HBD's Johnny, and most other sucessful sauce makers have figured out, the $ market is mild, not the 2% of crazy people.

Jupiter, I don't know who's review you were looking at, and it doesn't matter at this point. Many reviewers will make references to "habaneros are 2 out of 5. so I give this sauce a 4 outof 5 on the heat scale". Or "for chileheads this would be a 6/10, but for everyone else this is a 9/10." This gives people some point of reference for people to relate to.

Considering that 95% of the population doesn't even know that there are chiles hotter than a habanero, and 98% have never even heard of a superhot....it's a really small clientele for the extreme sauces.

There are some small batch sauces that are freakin' insane on the heat scale. Check out the Reviews here on THP. Just keep in mind when reading the review who the reviewer is and their chile experiences.
 
[sub]The American palette is changing, and it's not just Franks and Tabasco anymore. You have large corporations even dipping their wallets in more and more spicy type snacks (hey, the products may pretty much suck, but at least they are trying). This is a good thing. That being said, some around here still think it's 'normal' to be able to chomp down a couple Habaneros like it's nothing. Perhaps around here yeah, in the real world, no. For most, Jalapenos are as far as it goes when it comes to heat. 10 years ago, you would never see the selection of peppers you do today at large supermarket chains, this is a good sign, but for the majority of the general public, they wouldn't know a Serrano from a Cayenne, all they know is hot or not. I get very tired from the same people coming out and saying stuff like, "I won't eat anything with less than 5,562,134 Scoville Units, because everything else sucks, and if you can't eat stuff that hot, you're a pussy", it's tired, silly, and really makes that person look like a fool. These are the same brainiacs that strut around at shows, chest puffed out like a rooster, hell-bent on expounding their limitless knowledge off all things hot and exclaiming loudly to each and every vendor that they can tell the difference between 6,000,000 SHU and 6,001,000. If the manufacturer doesn't give them their undivided attention, they strut off telling people that that manufacturer doesn't know anything. Again, sad and pathetic, but they exist. Back to the topic, the American palette is becoming more and more experimental, which will do nothing but help the industry as a whole. However, it's going to take a lot longer before you see 50% of the population guzzling Scorpion sauces. [/sub]
 
JayT said:
I am pretty well convinced that people need to go through an evolution with hot sauce. Get the "what's your hottest" stuff out of the way, and then come back for the flavor of all the others. At least that's how it was for me.
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I definitely agree with this. When I first started getting into hot sauces, I wanted the hottest. I was buying up Blair's and Dave's, Maddog... etc. Then I realized that I wasn't actually tasting the food after the first bite or two. It was just heat. As I ventured out into other sauces, I realized that the best ones were the ones that complimented the dish, not over-powered it. I just recently dumped all but one of my extracts [saved for putting a couple of drops in chili, and drunken friends ;) ]. I have been focusing on more flavorful sauces. Some of them have a pretty good amount of heat, but the flavor is key.
 
My next recipe is a T.Scorp sauce. I know already that it's going to eliminate 1/2 of my customers. It's not crazy hot - A lot of saucemakers see that pepper and say "yeah! i can make the hottest sauce evar!!!" whereas i looked at that pepper and said, "man, what a great flavor, how can I tame it down a little so it's good on food?".

As a hot sauce consumer myself, I'm so glad there are folks out there (many are members here) who understand and appreciate flavor. I have some tasty sauces that make me sweat a little, but before they came along, as Ann mentioned, back in the dark ages of the 1990s, my choices were limited to "crazy hot" or "Tapatio/Sriracha".

Hopefully the industry continues to grow in the super-flavor direction. We'll always have the lava eaters - but as John pointed out, it's a bad business model to make something so hot that 3% of the market can handle it and then only 1-2 drops on a rare occasion. I want customers to kill a bottle a week!
:D
 
The key is diversity. Have something for everyone. If people like your sauces, they will try ALL your sauces. If you are a little guy, make a lot of the mild/medium stuff, but if you can afford to have a number of products, have that one HOT one for the nitwits, knuckleheads, and bonafide idiots that 1) want to blow up their friends, 2) want to impress someone with their manhood, or 3) (and these are the really scary ones) actually eat and enjoy it.
 
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