I am a 25 year old country boy from the hills outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania, living in Harlem and working in midtown Manhattan. My interest in hot sauce began when I was about 13, with just plain Tabasco. A friend of mine and his dad would go through about half a bottle on their eggs every morning, and I thought that this was a very cool ritual. I quickly became crazy about Tabasco, challenging myself to use more and more on each dish, all the while finding new and exciting ways to use it. A few years later, my family began giving me baskets of other hot sauces as gifts for Christmas and birthdays, purchased from gourmet grocery stores. This is around the time it turned into an obsession, or perhaps an addiction. I began seeking out the hottest, coolest, and most flavorful sauces I could find, but my pursuits were limited, as the food stores I was exposed to only carried mass produced items. Likewise, I really didn’t realize the breadth of the hot sauce industry, let alone the existence of any kind of hot sauce lovers’ community.

After my senior year of high school, some friends and I went to the Delaware shore for “Senior Week” festivities. There, we discovered a store devoted solely to hot sauce. I was in heaven. I did not know it was possible for such a place to exist. After perusing all the products and sampling everything I could, I realized that I had stumbled upon the single best hobby ever, and it has remained a constant source of pleasure for me over many ups and downs in life. Becoming involved in this blog represents my efforts to take my hobby to the next level, and I could not be more excited! I love to write, I love hot sauce…here I am!
Top 5 Sauces:
You Can’t Handle This Hot Sauce
Predator Great White Shark
Dinosaur’s Devils Duel
Uncle Brutha’s Fire Sauce No. 10
Frootsy Creole Pepper Sauce

Hottest Item Ever Consumed:
I’ve dabbled with Satan’s Blood a few times, so technically that was the hottest. But I have had some crazy experiences with straight up habaneros. The first and most authentic endorphin rush I’ve ever had was from spreading Da Bomb Ground Zero (do they still call it that?) on an egg sandwich like it was butter. One time my friend spilled a puddle of Possible Side Effects on the carpet and my dog licked it up. He didn’t look very happy about it.

How many hot sauces owned:
I have about 40 active bottles, and around 60 empties. I like to finish what I start, and nothing stays unopened long.
Empties:
about 20 assorted Tabascos from my early years when that was all I knew about
My Dad’s Hot Sauce is Hotter Than Your Dad’s Hot Sauce
Guyank Original Sweet Hot
Black Eyed Sally’s Mardi Gras
Nando’s Chickenland Peri-Peri
Pain Is Good, Batches #114, #218, #37
Bailey’s Irish Scream (before they had to take Bailey’s out of the title)
El Yucateco Chile Habanero
Arriba Mango Pepper Sauce
Franks Red Hot, Extra Red Hot
Busha Browne’s Pukka Sauce
Tropical Pepper Co. XXXX
Sontava
Scorned Woman
Trappey’s Red Devil
Louisiana Chipotle
Marie Sharpe’s Habanero
Sonia’s Moco Jumbie Jump Up
Firegirl’s Spam Sauce
Frontera Tangy Arbol
Iguana Mean Green Jalepeno
Dave’s Ginger Peach
Chesapeake Fire
Jamaica Hell Fire
Mountain Man Fire Roasted Habenero
Melinda’s Original
Arizona Gunslinger
Desert Pepper XXX
Georgia Peach and Vidalia Onion
Cholula Original
Pickpeppa
Walkerswood Jonkanoo
…as well as about 10 of my failed attempt at a “dessert sauce,” and several that I also have active bottles of (see below)

Active Bottles:
in addition to my “Top Five”…
Satan’s Blood
Da Bomb Ground Zero
Mad Dog Inferno, 357
Srirachi
Bello Hot Pepper Sauce
One Fucking Drop at a Time
Mad Cat
Spicy Chesapeake Seafood Hot Sauce
Louisiana Gold
Brooklyn Petro Exhaust
Blair’s Original Death, Sudden Death
Trappey’s Indi-Pep
Elvis All Shook Up
Grace Crushed Pepper Sauce
Iguana Vicious Jalapeno
Tapatio
Anchor Bar Suicide Wing Sauce
Hot as Shit Hot Sauce
Endorphin Rush Beyond Hot Sauce
Possible Side Effects
Dave’s Ultimate Insanity
Catoctin Mountain Orchard Screaming Hornets Hot Sauce
Rhode Island Red Hot Sauce
Melinda’s XXXtra Hot, Extra Hot
Iguana Golden Habanero
Alan’s Maniac Carib Sauce
Dinosaur Garlic Chipotle
Tiger Sauce
Louisiana Supreme
Tennessee Sunshine
Pure Cayenne Gourmet Pepper Sauce

Tidbits:
I have attempted to make my own sauce, in very limited quantities, 3 times. The first was a Thai chile and tomato paste base, with a lot of garlic and sautéed onions. I’ll admit, it was straight from a cook book, but I was pleased with how it turned out. The next time around, I used basically the same recipe, but with habeneros that I grew myself. Something about that homegrown aspect made this batch even better than the first.

The next batch was a bit of a disaster. I had been thinking about how devils and Satan and hell were such a common thread in hot sauce titles. And I was thinking how Jesus never gets a fair shake. I am not particularly religious, but I do believe that hot sauce is inherently good, and I don’t think Jesus would have really had a problem with it. So it got me brainstorming…I decided if I was going to give it a Christian-themed name, I might as well make the hot sauce as far from traditional as possible, and as the Christmas season was approaching, it would make a perfect gift for friends and family alike.

The hottest sauce (or additive, as it were) I own, at 800,000 Scoville Units, is called Satan’s Blood. So I thought, if Satan’s Blood could kill, then perhaps Jesus’s tears could resurrect! The idea worked on so many levels: A sauce so hot that even Jesus tears up from it! Or, a sauce that was so beautifully hot and satisfying that Jesus cried tears of joy when he used it. “Jesus’s Tears” was a bit too dramatic/borderline offensive (because hot sauces are always so careful not to offend!), so I decided to allude to it with a biblical reference. At two words, John 11:35 is the shortest verse in the bible. It says “Jesus wept.” The sauce would be called John 11:35 Hot Sauce, and the quotation would appear in smaller letters underneath.

For the sauce itself, I wanted it to be really hot, but also refreshing and soothing. To that end, I chopped up two different kinds of mint. I also jam packed it with cloves. Mint and cloves also seemed pretty Christmasy to me. For the heat, I used habaneros that a friend had grown and given to me. As the base, instead of some kind of vegetable concoction, I decided to use three different fruit juices: pineapple, orange, and cranberry. I wanted it to be a sauce one could use on desserts rather than meal food, in order to complete the unconventional approach I was taking.

To make a long story short (okay, I realize it’s already long), I didn’t know too much about preservatives, so I ended up using way too much vinegar. I had to freeze the batch after blending and cooking it, because the bottles I ordered were stuck at some UPS depot in Canarsie, and Christmas came and went before that whole ordeal got sorted out. When it was finally bottled and ready to go, I realized that not only did the sauce have the color and consistency of diarrhea, but it kind of tasted like spicy gym socks. I gave a few bottles to a few sympathetic people, but I regard the concept as an utter failure. If Jesus was a chilehead, he’s surely crying now.

Sauces I’ve eaten in my lifetime:
All of the ones listed above, as well as various samples at hot sauce stores. Best guess? Probably 150 or so.