Blind Betty Pineapple Pizzazz – Betty may be blind, but there’s nothing wrong with her taste buds. This is one of those sauces that never lasts with me. A lot of sweet going on with a little heat. The problem with some of these types of sauces is that the little heat is too little. That’s not the case with Blind Betty Pineapple Pizzazz. Don’t let the pretty orange color and the suggestion of pineapple trick you int o thinking there’s no burn here. One tiny taste of Blind Betty’s special concoction and you’ll feel it on your tongue, down your throat, and in your belly. Blind Betty Pineapple Pizzazz is one hell of a hot sauce.

There’s so much more under the hood, though. Massive pieces of habanero peppers and pineapple combined with pineapple and lemon juice, onions, garlic, salt, and a few spices give this sauce a sweet, distinctly tropical personality that you just can’t pass up. Continue Reading

Jolokia BBQ Sauce – This BBQ sauce has been a long time coming. This is a barbecue sauce and, as such, great in barbecue applications, but it’s also a great replacement for whatever sauce you use on your hot wings. I got excited when I saw the bottle. BBQ sauce made with Naga Jolokia. I’ve never seen it before. The thought of getting this sauce on chicken wings was like waking up Christmas morning to presents spread around the tree and piled high beneath it too. I went to the freezer to find I had no chicken wings left. That meant a quick trip to the store, a chicken wing purchase, and rushing back home to fire up a grill specifically for wings, specifically with Jolokia BBQ Sauce.

Everybody knew this was going to be a hot sauce. Most people asked to be left out of it. Continue Reading

Choke Your Chicken – From the people who have been bringing you some of the best hot sauces around comes Choke Your Chicken hot sauce by Insane Chicken. I’ve been waiting for Insane Chicken to create designer sauces using some of the best peppers around, and now it’s finally happened. Insane Chicken has taken advantage of the highly unique taste and aroma of the African Peri-Peri in Choke Your Chicken. One taste told me all I needed to know about Choke Your Chicken. Insane Chicken has taken insanity to another level. This is hands-down the best sauce I’ve ever tasted using the Peri-Peri pepper. Continue Reading

Mountain Man Fire Roasted Habanero hot sauce starts with a very dark brownish-red color that gives makes it look like it will be appealing before you even get in the bottle, then I opened the bottle and smelled it. The aroma more than lives up to what the appearance promises. The aroma is tantalizing, to say the least. You can almost taste the sauce just by sniffing. You can certainly tell it will be hot.
Mountain Man Fire Roasted Habanero doesn’t disappoint in the heat department, either. It has a nice little fire touch that warms the throat and hits the belly likewise. There’s nothing in the heat department here that would embarrass anyone who loves to feel the fire.
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Black Swan BBQ Sauce – Black Swan makes Black Swan Sweet Cognac Sauce and Marinade and Black Swan Wing Commander, both of which are excellent sauces in their own right. Black Swan sauces are made with natural, fresh ingredients and it shows in the exquisite flavor infused in these well-crafted sauces.

Black Swan original BBQ sauce, which is the topic of this little review, is a traditional BBQ sauce with no special effects. That doesn’t take away from the excellent taste factor and this sauce’s ability to turn any barbecue into an event. Continue Reading

Dave’s Temporary Insanity Hot Sauce – As with all Dave’s hot sauces, this one extremely blistering. The word temporary in the title may lead you to believe the heat level is forgiving, but you would be wrong. There is nothing forgiving about the heat of this product. In fact, there is nothing even temporary about the heat level you’ll feel when give Dave’s Temporary Insanity Hot Sauce a try. This sauce will bring you to your knees on impact.

There’s a very simple list of ingredients here that consists of hot peppers, tomato paste, hot pepper extract, salt, cane vinegar, onions, and garlic. The flavors of this sauce, despite the extremity of the heat, come through loud and clear. The distinct taste of peppers are here, along with the subtle undertone of garlic and onion. Continue Reading

Venom Hot Sauce – With a name like Venom, I expected an explosion from the word go. Venom is hot, for sure. It starts with a rich, smoky aroma, a dark orangish-red color, and a medium-thick pour. I started with a chimichanga, which is a flour tortilla filled with whatever your heart desires. This one was simple, stuffed with steak pieces, refried beans, cheese, and some avocado pieces. I dribbled some Venom over the top of the ingredients and cooked them in the oven.

While the heat level in Venom Hot Sauce could never be considered weak, it is by no means as dangerous as I’ve felt from other sauces. It’s enough to make anyone who loves his sauce hot stick around for seconds, and it’s certainly not for the uninitiated, but you should be able to eat it without going into cardiac arrest. Continue Reading

Duke’s Roadhouse BBQ Sauce – New York might not be the place you think of when you think of barbecue. Guess what? If Duke’s New York Style Roadhouse BBQ Sauce is any indication of what barbecue sauce is like in New York, bring it on. That’s all I can say.

There’s pineapple juice, pepper sauce, Worcestershire sauce, cane juice, vinegar onions, corn sweetener, anchovies, orange juice, liquid smoke, garlic, black pepper, and some assorted spices. This is top of the line stuff that looks and tastes good on ribs, steaks, pork, fish, and shrimp. I found it particularly friendly to the shrimp, grilled up on a barbecue pit on a fine summer’s day. I skewered the shrimp on a kabob with some roasted red peppers, sweet onion, and beef chunks. Everybody in the family thought it was one of the best eating experiences they’d ever had. Continue Reading

The Beast hot sauce is aptly name. This stuff has enough raging heat to make even the most avid hot sauce lover think he has gone up against a formidable force. The label warns you that the sauce contains the hottest peppers and pepper extracts in the world. A bold statement like that always prompts me to shrug a little. A lot of pepper sauces make that claim. Of those that do make the claim, about sixty percent (I’m estimating, of course) come anywhere close to fulfilling the promise. Some come closer than others. The very few who manage to live up to the words are typically so damn hot you can’t touch the stuff, so forget about enjoying the taste.

Not so with this sauce. The Beast hot sauce has a delicate aroma, a medium pour, and a rich red-brown color to it. Continue Reading

Ring of Fire Habanero Hot Sauce – This is a beautifully crafted sauce. Tomato, onions, habanero chiles, garlic, Serrano chiles, and an assortment of spices make up the ingredient base of Ring of Fire. While that isn’t a lot of ingredients to work with, it’s all we need to put this sauce on the map. The balance of flavors at work here are enough to bring a gourmet taste to anything you use the sauce with. The ingredients themselves, while limited, boast the two peppers that help give Ring of Fire Habanero Hot Sauce a punch pepper taste. All of the ingredients are distributed throughout a medium-pour sauce in big chunks that add the perfect texture.

This original version of Ring of Fire is hot. Not so hot that you’ll be in pain, but hot enough to please anyone who enjoys a kick with his cuisine. Ring of Fire doesn’t neglect taste for the fire, though. Continue Reading

Jim Beam Barbecue Sauce – I was looking for the proof information on this bottle, when I saw the following in small type on the back label: “This is a non-alcoholic product (contains less than 0.02% alcohol by volume.” I couldn’t believe it, because when I tasted this sauce I went “Oooh weee!” And if you know me (which you don’t), that’s what I say when I throw back a good belt of bourbon. Jim Beam Barbecue Sauce may not have a lot of Jim Beam bourbon in it, but it does manage to retain a lot of Jim Beam flavor.

Taken overall, aside from the bourbon the ingredients are in line with most commercial barbecue sauces. What’s different is that tomato paste isn’t the lead ingredient; in fact, it’s the fifth. Ahead of that comes water, vinegar, sugar, and molasses. Continue Reading

Blair’s Sudden Death with Ginseng – I’m a little confused about the addition of Ginseng to this sauce. it doesn’t nothing for the flavor or the heat. Maybe the folks at Blair’s just thought it would sound cool.

Blair’s has a whole line of hot sauces, including Blair’s Mega Death Sauce with Liquid Rage, Blair’s Original Death Sauce, and Blair’s Pure Death with Jolokia. Blair’s Sudden Death with Ginseng doesn’t bring a whole lot new to the table, minus the ginseng, which as I stated, I don’t get. with that aside, this is still one fine sauce.

The ingredients include habanero pepper pods, cayenne chiles, pepper resin, clover, honey, Key Lime juice, and Siberian Ginseng. Continue Reading

Alien Anal Probe Hot Sauce -The name of this sauce sets you up for the feeling that you’re going to be in trouble. A lot of hot sauces do this. Some pay off and some don’t. Alien Anal Probe (the sauce) causes nowhere near the pain or humiliation an alien anal probe would cause, but it does leave you with a satisfying experience.

Alien Anal Probe Hot Sauce is a traditional cayenne pepper based sauce with a slightly different color and consistency than most of these sauces. It’s a quick pour, with a bright orange color. The only real ingredient to boast about is the cayenne peppers themselves. The rest of it is your standard vinegar, salt, and spices. With that said, Alien Anal Probe can proudly boast a decent flavor, though without a super hot delivery. Continue Reading

Quaker Steak & Lube Louisiana Lickers Sauce – You don’t know me, but I’m a big guy and I like big flavors. When I first saw Quaker Steak & Lube Louisiana Lickers Sauce, I liked it for two reasons: it has a big name and it comes in a big bottle. Then I saw on the label that the sauce won some Best Wings USA competition. I was intrigued, but wings aren’t big enough for me, so I decided I would make some buffalo drumsticks.

Now, for classic buffalo wings, you want to mix your cayenne hot sauce with butter. Louisiana Lickers takes care of that for you. Actually, it’s margarine, but it’s still surprising to find that as a hot sauce ingredient. Continue Reading

Maker’s Mark Gourmet BBQ Sauce – In the interest of full disclosure, I have to point out that I am a big-time fan of Maker’s Mark bourbon. It’s my first-choice drink in a bar or restaurant, and I buy it frequently. For whatever reason, though, I hadn’t tried Maker’s Mark Gourmet Sauce before. Well, now that I have, I’m more in love with the Maker’s Mark brand than ever before.

If you appreciate Maker’s Mark, you’ll definitely appreciate the Maker’s Mark Gourmet BBQ Sauce bottle. It’s the same distinctive shape as the bourbon, and is sealed with the trademark red wax that makes even opening the bottle a happy ritual. But the real fun – with both the bourbon and the Gourmet Sauce – happens once the bottle is opened.
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Buhba’s Butt Blaster – Sure, the name sounds scary, but what’s in a name? Sometimes everything, sometimes nothing. The sauce didn’t look all that dangerous to me, which goes to prove you can’t judge a book by its cover — or a sauce by its appearance. I poured a big shot of Buhba’s Butt Blaster on a spoon and ate it like I was taking a dose of cough medicine. I noticed two things about the sauce right away. First, it is hotter than a Chines firecracker. Literally, this sauce had me doubling over. Make no mistake about it, this Buhba’s is a sauce for the professional hot sauce user only.

The second thing I noticed was how damn good Buhba’s Butt Blaster tasted even while it was leaving blisters on my tongue and causing me to revert to childhood with my speech. Seriously, this stuff has a gourmet flavor going on beneath the volcanic lava they call sauce. Continue Reading

Pappy’s XXX White Lightnin’ BBQ Sauce – I’ve tried Pappy’s Moonshine Madness (one of my hands-down all-time favorite barbecue sauces ever, and that’s the truth) and even Pappy’s Sauce for Sissies (though I’d rather not spread that around), and both of those sauces are exquisite in their construction. Even the sissy sauce serves its purpose. When I saw Pappy’s XXX White Lightnin, I knew I was going to have to give it a try. As expected, it doesn’t have the butt-kicking glory of Moonshine Madness, but it’s a notch or two above Sauce for Sissies.

As with all Pappy’s sauces, this one is loaded to the gills with ingredients. There’s chiles, tomato, garlic, onion Worcestershire sauce, a little booze, and a whole bunch of other goodies in here I won’t bother detailing. Continue Reading

Colon Cleaner Hot Sauce -  Hats off to Prof Phardtpounder. You’re an honest man. You live up to your word. My colon is now cleaned.  This sauce promises Capsaicin Extremus, and Capsaicin is the active agent in chili peppers that is also used in topical creams to release pain in joints. However, if pain relieving topical cream makes you run around the house begging someone to rip your tongue off and hose the rest of your mouth down with milk, then I’m not sure it’s working. But as a hot sauce, Colon Cleaner is top dog. No matter how much you enjoy heat, this Colon Cleanser is far beyond tolerable. Bet money on who can go the longest without needing a popsicle, and whoever can go 15 seconds will beat out the entire competition. The raging blaze of this sauce stays in your mouth as it is basically a Kryptonite to any heat represents. Continue Reading

Joe Perry’s Rock Your World Mango Peach Tango Hot Sauce is not the same old song and dance. It’s the perfect complement to BBQ chicken. The subtle fruity taste will make you think it’s summer all year long -and that my friends is toys in the attic and love in an elevator.  The chunky texture of the sauce, made possible by the real peaches and mangos, paired with the lightness of the base will make eating livers and creamed Spam a sweet emotion.

The heat of Joe Perry’s Mango Peach Tango Hot Sauce certainly won’t feel like Janie’s got a gun to your mouth and has just fired the trigger. But the small amount of Habenero peppers will linger in your mouth and you’ll be living on the edge long enough to want more. Continue Reading

Mad Dog 357 Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce – Whereas, there are some hot sauces that are darn near too hot for their own good (or yours); and whereas, humans’ taste receptors are located on their tongues; and whereas, some of those wicked-hot hot sauces make it hard to review because a single drop placed on the tongue burns said appendage so badly the reviewer cannot taste much of anything, let alone breathe without hiccupping; therefore, let it be known that this reviewer will do his best to provide not only a sense of how Mad Dog 357 Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce tastes, but also ways it can be consumed without causing injury.

If you’ve been on this site for any length of time, you probably know by now that the “ghost pepper” (bhut jolokia) is officially listed as being the world’s hottest pepper. Continue Reading

Wake the Fuck Up! Extra Strong Coffee - The first thing to note is that Wake the Fuck Up Coffee may indeed be mega-caffeinated, but it’s not spicy. You may think that because it’s sold by Insane Chicken that there are bits of dried habaneros among the drip ground coffee beans, but no, this is about getting your heart racing rather than your lips burning (unless, of course, you forget to blow on it before drinking it).

The second thing to note is that coffee is hard to review Continue Reading

Mad Dog 357 Collector’s Edition – What a great concept. There’s a 357 bullet keychain as a gift with this bottle. What also comes with the bottle is a lengthy disclaimer and basically a contract saying you won’t hold the company responsible if you hurt yourself. That’s because Mad Dog 357 Collector’s Edition is 600,000 Scoville units on the Scoville heat index. It’s made with 6 million Scoville pepper extract. What that means is really quite simple — this is a weapon in the wrong hands. Really, you can seriously hurt yourself. I knew that was going to be the case before I even tried it, so I was prepared. I was prepared and I still hurt myself. Not bad, but enough to cause a short period of discomfort. Continue Reading

Voo Doo Magic Hot Sauce – This is a hot sauce that has replaced just about all of my steak sauces. It has a thin pour and is the color of A-1 sauce. The ingredients include orange juice, habanero pepper, allspice, thyme, garlic, brown sugar, an soy sauce. The flavor includes a heavy sweet element that gets put in its place by a strong heat factor. The habanero really shines in this sauce. I like to call it steak sauce with a bite. When I grill a steak, I pour Voo Doo Magic Hot Sauce all around the side of the plate and run every bite of my steak through it. The flavor of the sauce brings the steak alive without overpowering the delicate taste of the meat. Continue Reading

Rectal Rocket Fuel Island Jerk Hot Sauce – This one sounds like it’s going to burn bad. It has a dark brown color, which I’ve noticed tends to be the color of a lot of sauces that are simply too hot to eat. The ingredient list on Rectal Rocket Fuel Hot Sauce is spectacular. There’s habanero peppers, scotch bonnet peppers, balsamic vinegar, lime juice, sage, thyme, garlic, paprika, allspice, cumin, fennel, lemon pepper, coriander, and salt. Without having any real fruit (other than the lemon and lime notes), Rectal Rocket Fuel Hot Sauce manages to produce a fruity aroma that combines with the essence of the herbs contained within. Continue Reading

Pure Poison Hot Sauce – Wow. Pure Poison lives up to the name. The sauce is easy to pour and will burn on impact. I poured some on a spoon. Since I expected a thicker sauce, I poured a little more than I thought, and I decided to go ahead and give it a taste. The heat factor was instantaneous and definite. After I gave my mouth a moment to cool off, I decided to smell the sauce. The aroma is beautiful and savory, with an almost gourmet appeal. Beneath the heat, the taste of the sauce was the same.

The ingredients in Pure Poison Hot Sauce are simple but well blended. Habanero peppers, red wine vinegar, orange juice, garlic, garlic salt, and a healthy dose of capsaicin Continue Reading