Recently I posted a thread in the Forums about some special bottle sets I was making. Thirteen unique sets of bottles. Thank you all for your amazing support! All thirteen sets are already sold before I even got the pictures up and the amazing thing is even though I said each set was going to be different, no one wanted to see them to pick!

People told me the number they wanted and the luck of the draw gave them a set. One special cork topped and waxed spanish glass bottle with a unique Chipotle sauce kicked up with some 5 million scoville extract. A labeled RedRum taster to go with the collectors bottle and another cork topped and waxed glass bottle with a dry spice mix I made using Bih Jolokia, Habanero, Red Savina, Ancho, New mexican peppers, Onion, Garlic and spices.

Here are pictures of the sets! I still have some taster bottles left (6) for $6.50 each and I also Have RedRum T-shirts for $10.00 each. (plus shipping)

I hope everyone likes the set they got, please no compaining that you like another set better!

My 2006 RedRum Reserve is completly sold out and I have started planning the 2007 Reserve. It is going to be even bigger and better than last years! It will come out some time in the late fall early winter after my “harvest”. I guess I just couldn’t wait that long to do another bottling! The dried Chipotles give this sauce a deep rich smokey flavor and then the 5 million extract kicks in and whacks your taste buds!

Thanks!
Ed
AKA ChileHeadEd

I admit it, I have been remiss in my duties as a Hot Sauce reviewer. I am a layabout, a sloth, a human hot sauce slug! The bottles to be reviewed stack up even though I am consuming hot sauce daily and trying new bottles, the ones to be reviewed remain unopened. I keep planning to do a review, later today, no, tomorrow I will do it, but as procrastinator that I am tomorrow usually becomes tomorrow again!

The Super Bowl! A day for gluteny and slothfullness! No more perfect situation for reviewing hot sauces could be had. I made a plan and put it into motion for the Big Hot Sauce Bowl.

I have three bottles of sauce made by the same company “Crazy Mother Puckers” and during the Super Bowl, with the assistance of another Lunatic fringe Capsacian addict a triple threat review will take place!

We watched the game, we ate, we tasted and reviewed hot sauce and opinions ran like water! Here are the results:

The three sauces for review are “Crazy” Mother Pucker’s Cayenne Concoction, Fire Roasted Fusion and Groovy Garlic. The bottles, 5.7 ounce flasks are very attractive, I have looked at them often on the shelves and I like the shape, the colors, the metallic background and the pelican in various states of hot sauce induced pain. The pelican always seems to be smiling, even though he is breathing fire or has smoke coming out of his bill, much like the way we feel eating this stuff!

Crazy Mother Pucker’s Cayenne Concoction-
Ingredients - Habanero Peppers, Red Wine Vinegar, White Vinegar, Molasses, Tomato Paste, Worcestershire Sauce (Distilled Vinegar, Molasses, Corn Syrup, Water, Salt, Caramel Color, Sugar, Spices, Anchovies, Natural Flavor, Tamarind), Salt, Sugar, Garlic, Cayenne Pepper, Xanthan Gum, & Sorbic Acid

First the smell test, opened up the bottle and we took a good snootfull, it smelled a little like tomato and a lot like steak sauce.

It has a smooth, dark appearance, a few seeds not too thick, but not watery like a franks or tabasco.

Straight taste test yields a little heat, a little sweetness and you can taste the worcestershire directly.

After trying this sauce straight, on tortilla chips and pizza, we decided that this sauce would be great on steak! It has a taste of a great steak sauce, a little sweet, a little spicy, hints of tomato and worcestershire. I cooked up a big London Broil the day after the game and went to town with the sauce! It was the perfect steak sauce!

Appearance 7/10
Heat 4/10
Taste 8/10
Overall 8/10

Crazy Mother Pucker’s Fire Roasted Fusion -
Ingredients- Crushed Tomato, Vegetable Juice (Tomato Juice, Water, Concentrated Juices of Carrots, Celery, Beets, Parsley, Lettuce, Watercress, Spinach), Salt, Asorbic Acid, Flavoring, Citric Acid, Roasted Habanero Mash (Roasted Habanero Peppers, Vinegar, Salt), Water, Onions, Roasted Garlic, Worcestershire Sauce (Distilled Vinegar, Molasses, Corn Syrup, Water, Salt, Caramel Color, Sugar, Spices, Anchovies, Natural Flavor, Tamarind), Cilantro, and Black Pepper.

The first smell was vegetables, peppers and a little smoke.

It is thick and a deep red with bits of peppers and black specks, the roasted peppers I assume.

The straight taste test yields a crazy mother puckin flavor, vegetables, spicy burnt V-8 is the only way I can describe it! There seems to be way too many flavors going on at once. We try it on some tortilla chips and try to decide what this sauce would be good on…we can’t think of anything!

Appearance 6/10
Heat 4/10
Taste 2/10
Overall 2/10

Crazy Mother Pucker’s Groovy Garlic-
Ingredients - Red Peppers, Distilled Vinegar, Salt, Garlic, and Xanthan Gum

The smell test - It has a distinct aroma of Vinegar and Garlic.

Poured on the plate it is a bit watery, has a pleasing bright orange color with bits of visible Garlic.

Straight taste test brings no surprises, tastes like vinegar and Garlic, light on the heat.

We tried this on Tortilla chips, Buffalo chicken tenders and Pizza, It was very good on Chicken and Pizza! This sauce has a lot of garlic flavor!

Appearance 8/10
Heat 3/10
Taste 7/10
Overall 7/10

Distributed by:
“Crazy” Mother Pucker’s Hot Sauce
20001-A Emerald Coast Pkwy
Destin, FL 32541
Ya ain’t Been Pucked till
ya Been Mother Pucked!

I got the Lil’ Smoke house to review, all right! I love Chipotle peppers and the bottle has a Scovie award sticker! I am a sucker for those stickers, it is a sign that this is gonna be something special! A little research shows me it won 3rd place in 04 in the Specialty Chile Catagory.

Ingredients: Vinegar, Onions, Jalapeno Peppers, Garlic, Salt

Ok, I opened the bottle and give it the smell test….smells like peppers, vinegar and a little spice, no big surprises.

Pour out some on the plate. it is thick, has little chunks, is a nice shade of red with pieces of skin and seeds mixed in, it seperates a little as the solids sit up and the liquid strains down a little, no thickener holding this together.

Straight taste test yields a mild pepper taste, a little smokey, not as much as I was expecting and mild heat. It is a little sweet, I would swear it had a sweetener in it, or those were some great sweet Jalapenos used in the sauce! It smells and tastes kind of like pureed pickled peppers to me.

I put it on my old reliable Egg Sandwich, I hate to be repetitive, but I have this almost every day for breakfast and just love em! It is one heck of a good way to eat hot sauce in my opinion! Plus I am planning on doing three reviews today, 1 for each meal. I have been away too long and need to make up for lost time!

It is mild enough that it doesn’t overpower the sandwich, but there is a little too much vinegar flavor to complement the egg, I think this sauces best use would be on Nachos, added to a homemade salsa, as an ingredient in a marinade, or It would absolutely rock added to velvetta cheese and microwaved and served with Nacho Chips!

Appearance 6/10
Flavor 6/10
Heat 4/10
Overall 6/10

Denzel’s Gourmet Foods Ltd.
Box 398
Enderby, BC
V0E 1V0
Meet Your Maker: Denzel

Wow, what a Trip! I still don’t know what time it is, the 7 hour time difference has me all screwed up, if anyone wants to chat at 3 am look for me! Here are a few pictures from the trip, Paris, London, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

I Got the chance to try some cool foods like Kudu, Crocodile, Impala, Hemsbock, Warthog and Ostrich and none of em tasted like chicken!

Although the elusive Nando’s Peri Peril sauce eluded my searching, I did manage to pick up some cool sauces to bring home. I was a little worried about them getting home unbroken in my checked luggage, but they all made it unscathed! It was a little hairy once in Africa (where they allow liquids in your carry on) and I had 8 bottles of Iafrica sauce in my bag. You see they have wires wrapped around the necks of the bottles and I suppose that 8 of them in a bag might look something like a bomb in an x ray! I went under a little closer examination in Zambia!

When I checked my bags for the trip home, I kept waiting for the call to clear the terminal as they checked my bag through, but it never came!

I wound up bringing back:
Mrs Balls Chilli Chutney
Burchell’s Peri Peri
Burchell’s Kali Kali
Elephant Pepper Zambezi Red
Elephant Pepper Baobab Gold
Nando’s Hot Sweet peri peri
Afrique Peri Peri
Afrique Chilli Sauce
Ukuva iAfrica Malawi Gold
Ukuva iAfrica Zulu Fire Sauce
Ukuva iAfrica Mombassa Peri-Peri
Ukuva iAfrica Swazi Mamma Mamba

I will do reviews of them as I get to trying them,
Ed

Many more pictures of the trip below the fold (more…)

I was excited when I saw I had Mom’s Apples & Cinnamon Sauce to review. I have one bottle in the collection, but as some of you collector know, you need to buy two bottles of sauce, one to try and one display!

I have looked at this bottle and thought …Wow, this is really different, I want to try it! If I were looking at sauces at the store or on line and saw this, I would probably be hesitant to buy it at first without havig heard anything about it. It is one of those risky type sauces which you could love or hate and maybe doesn’t have a lot of multi purpose appeal.

The bottle had a 2005 scovie award sticker on it, so that is a good sign! I looked it up and it won 1st place - Hot Sauce - Fruit. It has a picture of, I assume Denzel’s Mom on the bottle and says “Just like Ma used to make, and if she didn’t she probably should have”

Ingredients: Vinegar, Roasted apples, onions, brown sugar, habanero peppers, cinnamon.

I opened the bottle and smelled it, no surprises smelled like apples and a hint of cinnamon. Actually it smelled just like apple pie.

Poured Mom’s Apples & Cinnamon Habanero Hot Sauce on the plate and surprise! It looked like applesauce with a few red bits mixed in. It was thick but was still pourable with a little shake of the bottle.

Straight taste test - first taste was apples, then a hint of cinnamon then a little heat, it wasn’t as sweet as applesauce and I could taste onion on the lingering flavor in my mouth.
I was thinking this would be perfect with roast pork and I happened to have a roast pork tenderloin I just cooked last night, so I slathered it up and gave it go.

If you like applesauce on your pork and you are a ChileHead this is the sauce for you! It didn’t overpower the flavor of the meat, added a nice apple taste and a just a touch of the heat we love. A great compliment to the food as opposed to taking over the dish. I can’t really think of much else I would put this on, maybe chicken or it could be used on Ice cream or make a cranberry apple cobbler with it.

Appearance - 8/10 good packaging, looks like applesauce
Taste - 7/10 - it is what it is, Spicy applesauce
Heat - 3/10 a mild spice, not overpowering, doesn’t last long
Overall - 7/10 - unique, straightforward, good on pork

Denzel’s Gourmet Foods Ltd.
Box 398
Enderby, BC
V0E 1V0

After months of work and lots of blabbering about what I was going to make, the mildly anticipated Redrum Hot sauces are ready to be unleashed on the unsuspecting public!

Every year I have a garden and grow all kinds of hot peppers, mostly Habanero’s, Orange and Red Savina, but a bunch of other stuff also. This year I had Long Joe’s and Cayannes and Jalapeno’s, Cherry’s, Thai Dragon, Hungarian Wax, Anaheims and a few red and yellow bells.

I took all of my harvest and put them into my smoker and smoked them with Hickory wood for 12 hours, stemmed all the little buggers and made a mash, what a pain in the butt!

I got hold of a bucket of Red Savina Mash from Jim Campbell at Mild to Wild (Thanks Jim!) and went to work on my baby’s!
The amount of work involved in doing this was ridiculous! I have no illusion that i am ever going to be the next great sauce maker, but I wanted to make some cool stuff to share with friends, family and you guys on the Hot Sauce Blog!

I am a chef, so i was able to make my sauce in the steam kettles at work and sterilize my bottles and all the good stuff to make sure my bottling process was compliant with safe food handling processes, (I am certified in food safety and sanitation).

My first plan was to make a “Special Reserve” so I searched the internet until I found some bottles I thought would look special, 13 bottles for the special sauce! Then I bought some french sealing wax. Over the course of several months I got more and more stuff for the project, Little Axes from Australia, Wax Stamps from Germany, Label ideas from friends and a cool Logo from Cabin Pepper, 5 Million Extract and 16 Million crystals from Mike Muso at HotterNell! Bought me some 5 ounce woozy’s and 10 ounce bottles and I was ready to rock!

It took me 7 hours on my day off from work to make the sauces, I started with my “RedRum Original” made 5 and 10 ounce woozys, a few cases each.
The ingredients are: Red Savina Peppers, Smoked Peppers, Vinegar, Shallots, Corn Syrup, Lime Juice, Herbs and Spices.

Then I made BBQ Sauce, took 1/2 hot sauce and half of my homemade bbq sauce recipe and mixed it together.

Ingredients: Red Savina peppers, Ketchup, Vinegar, Corn Syrup, Smoked Peppers, Shallots, Brown Sugar, Molasses, Lime Juice, Garlic, Herbs and Spices.

Now I think I may have gotten carried away, but I then took some of my Hot sauce and added 5 Million Scoville extract to it, bottled my 13 special bottles, 20 - 5 ounce bottles and had a little left over so I made 6 - 10 ounce bottles also.

But that wasn’t enough! I then took about a gallon of my hot sauce, added the 5 Million extract to it AND the vial of 16 Million Crystals to it, called it my “Extra Special Reserve”.

I made a giant 1.5 Liter Bottle of that, but I had some leftover so I made 2 - 10 ounce bottles and 7 - 5 ounce bottles.
Whew! This little hot sauce project was getting bigger and bigger! I decided to wax the tops of all the bottles, finally got a label done that I liked (a whole day just gluing those on) and put all the finishing touches on this morning!

I signed and numbered the 13 Special Reserves I set out to make from the begining, attached a little bottle of Bih Jolokia Powder and a little axe to each Bottle, put the RedRum seal on it and here they are for your viewing pleasure!

I have sent out a couple of unlabled bottles to people from the Hot Sauce Blog during the process and have gotten some pretty good reviews. The sauce has a rich, unique flavor (from my secret ingredient, I love that “Herbs and spices” on the label!) and the BBQ sauce kicks ass! I am going to send nick a bottle of each for review.

I am donating the #1 Bottle of the “Special Reserve” to Jim’s Step up for Charity, it will be in an auction soon from Nick at Sweat N’ Spice.

All the bottles are labeled 2006, I already have my Idea for next years “special offering”! Each year I am going to do something different!

If anyone is interested in a bottle, leave a comment and I’ll get in touch with you.
~ ChileHeadEd

RedRum Hot Sauce Price List

2006 Original Sauce:
5 ounce RedRum Hot Sauce - $6.50
10 ounce RedRum Hot Sauce - $10.00
10 ounce RedRum BBQ Sauce - $6.50

Collectors:
5 ounce Signed and Numbered (First 13) - $15.00
10 oz. Signed and Numbered (First 13) - $20.00
10 oz. Signed and Numbered BBQ sauce (First 13) - $15.00

2006 Special Reserve with 5 Million extract:
5 ounce RedRum Special Reserve Taster - $15.00
(only 20 made, 13 free with collectors bottle )
10 ounce RedRum Special Reserve Taster - $20.00 (only 6 made)

8 ounce Collectors 2006 RedRum Special Reserve with free taster bottle
Signed and Numbered only 13 bottles made – $40.00

2006 Extra Special Reserve with 5 Million extract and 16 million crystals:
5 ounce RedRum Extra Special Reserve signed and numbered only 7 made - $20.00
10 ounce RedRum Extra Special Reserve signed and numbered only 2 made - $25.00

Illegal Alien Hot Sauce

Ingredients: Vinegar, Cayanne peppers, Lemon Juice, Salt, Garlic, Spices

Sitting down to do my first Hot Sauce review…..
This should be easy I do this almost every day, but just for me in my head! Now I can share it with the world!

I love the Label on the Illegal Alien Sauce, This was the Lawn Mower release, but I had been sent a “tasting bottle” so I wouldn’t have to open the signed and numbered offering. Nice use of colors, Funny theme, that must be one fast lawn mower with the flame paint job! There is also a version with a Lettuce Picker and one with a Leaf Blower. The next release voted on by you the Hot Sauce Blog Readers will be: “Alien building a brick wall in front of the barbed wire fence”
The bottle doesn’t describe much about whats going to be inside other than “Hot Sauce”

First I opened the bottle and smelled the sauce, It had a mild peppery smell with a hint of vinegar. It smelled like a Franks Red Hot or Durkee sauce.

Poured a little out onto a plate to check the consistency. It was thicker than your average cayenne Pepper sauce, but still on the thin side. It had little bits of stuff in it and had a nice rich red color.

Next was the straight taste test. First flavor I got was the salt then a hint of Lemon or lime and black pepper, it wasn’t particularly hot, the kind of sauce you could pour on just about anything.

I decided to try it out on an Egg Sandwich, so I made some scrambled eggs with a slice of cheese and toasted half a bagel. I poured a good amount of the sauce on the bagel and then put the egg and cheese on top. I like the sauce under my eggs.

The sauce was a nice complement to the eggs and cheese, not too hot, but after I was done I had a nice little tingle going on, nothing requiring a beverage or an antidote. It is comparable to your Franks or Durkee Red Hot only thicker and more flavorfull, definitly a whole world above your average Cayenne sauce, only drawback was it was a tad salty. I think this sauce would be a absolute killer on chicken wings, take buffalo wings to another level!

Packaging 9/10
Appearance 9/10
Taste 6/10
Heat 4/10
Overall Rating 7/10

I talked with Jack Penrod and he told me the Illegal Alien Sauce was going to get a little tweaking for the next release with more Cilantro, Lemon and cutting back on the salt.

Penrod Pepper Products &
Super Spicy.com
Mesa, Arizona

Tags: Hot Sauce, cayenne, Pepper

I met with David Ashley at his home office in Massachusetts. He has his office in his basement where hot sauces are everywhere, prototypes samples, cases of Mad Dog of every imaginable flavor are piled in the entry room and there are shelves of sauces outside the door to the office….

Why Hot Foods? And what was your first sauce?
I made my own BBQ sauce for years and my friends kept telling me I should sell it. My first sauce was my Original Barbeque but I noticed people wanted the hotter sauce, the hottest sold the best. I saw the writing on the wall and made hot sauce. My first hot sauce was Liquid Fire.

What is your favorite product you make?
It is a toss up between Green Amigo and Hot Teriyaki.

Any new products we should be ready for in your line?
Next Year I am going to be coming out with a gourmet sauce, not hot, I am trying to extend into other areas.

Where do you see the future of hot sauce in 5 years?
I see the Hot Sauce market continuing to grow. It has changed over the past years going main stream into supermarkets and then pulling back into specialty type stores again. It is ever changing.

What is your favorite sauce you don’t make?
My favorite that I don’t make is Sriiracha hot chile sauce, it has a great flavor and I really enjoy Thai and Mexican foods

Do you eat the foods you make?
Some, I eat a lot of my sauces, but not a lot of the super hot.

What is a typical day like for you?
I drive my son to school, walk the dog, check my E-Mails, Do the internet orders, return phone calls, write letters and send fax’s to the production plant.

What was your best burn ever?
While I was creating Habanero 750 I tasted some 1.6 million extract

Worst burn ever?
I am not stupid enough to have had a worst burn. I look at stuff before I taste it and use a toothpick in the proper situations!

What sets you aside from the other hot food makers and their products out there today?
I think what sets me apart is that I only use quality fresh ingredients. My sauces are all about flavor, not only are the sauces hot, all the sauces I make taste good!

What is your inspiration before you embark on a new concoction?
The idea for inferno came to me in a dream, but most of my sauces come from ideas I throw around for a while. Then after the sauce is perfected I think of a name and a label for it.

Outside of creating hot products, what keeps you occupied or out of trouble?
Being a father keeps me busy and taking care of my aging Chocolate Lab, Bear. I took Bear for an hour and a half hike today; it keeps us both in shape!

Any weird stories or uses for your sauces you would like to share?
(and this is where the interview got good!)
There are a few, some people use it as a skunk or deer repellant.
There is a 80 Year old woman in Kansas who buys a bottle of inferno every month!
When the Habanero 750 first came out I was told people were putting it on women’s nipples and licking it off as “nipple shots”.
(And the best story…) One time at the packing plant we were tasting some new sauces and I had brought some vanilla ice cream to cool “the burn” of all the hot sauce tasting we were doing. At the end of a long day the plant manager asked me to go upstairs before I left, I was reluctant but he insisted and when I entered the upstairs office there was the Head Mixer with his (member) in a cup of milk trying to cool it off, he had apparently gotten some extract on his hands and well you can figure it out!

How many different recipes do you go through when developing a new sauce?
It took 6 or 7 years to perfect my BBQ sauce, 50 tries and about 6 months for the inferno but the 357 I hit just right on the first try.

How did you get started in the industry?
I made home made BBQ sauce for years, I was a partner at Alice’s Restaurant (THE Alice’s restaurant immortalized by Arlo Guthrie, you can get anything you want except Alice), my friends kept telling me I should sell my sauce and so I did.

What is your biggest challenge so far?
Finding new customers, there is a lot of turnover in this business.

What is the most common question you get?
What is the Hottest sauce you have?

What do you want to know from the readers of the HSB?
What kind of sauces would you like to see?

Along with David’s co owning Alice’s Restaurant, he has several ties to the Rock and Roll world. His company initially made and packed Joe Perry’s Rock your world hot sauce and Bob Weir’s line of sauces. In 1977 David was around the band Led Zeppelin in New York while they were on tour in the United States.

We finish the interview with a tasting of Mad Dog’s Revenge 1 million scoville hot and a tasting of a 1.6 million scoville extract, David plays the harmonica while Bear, the big brown lab howls along….

Ashley Foods produces:
Mad Dog’s Revenge
357 Mad Dog Hot Sauce Collectors Edition 600,000 Scoville
357 Mad Dog Hot Sauce
357 Mad Dog Extreme Wing Sauce
357 Mad Dog Extreme Mustard Sauce
Mad Dog Inferno Reserve
Mad Dog Inferno Hot Sauce
Mad Dog Liquid Fire Hot Sauce
Mad Dog Green Amigo
Mad Dog Teriyaki Hot Sauce
Mad Cat Hot Sauce
Idiot Boyz Hot Sauce
Mad Dog Original BBQ Sauce
Mad Dog Ultra Hot BBQ Sauce
1 Million Scoville Pepper extract

Ashley Food Company, Inc.
P.O. Box 912
Sudbury, MA 01776
Toll Free: 800 - 61- SAUCE
Fax: 978-579-8989
Office: 978-579-8988
Contact: David Ashley