Thanks to everyone that entered the 2nd Annual HSB Wing Off, the judges had a hard time deciding the final three without attempting to lick the screen and/or consume more wings then humanly possible.

• 1st Place: Lee’s Kamikaze Wings
• 2nd Place: Sam’s Thai Peanut Wings
• 3rd Place Tie: Chilebrown’s Green Wings & Ham! & Jay’s “Better Than a Big Screen TV at a Super Bowl Party” Habanero Pomegranate Chicken Wings

The Prizes:
1st Place: 1 NFL Jersey of your choice + a Party Sized selection of Wing Sauces + a copy of Wing It
2nd Place: A Hot Wing Sauce Gift Basket + a copy of Wing It
3rd Place: A copy of Wing It: Delectable Recipes for Everyone’s Favorite Bar Snack

Winners: please contact me with your address and relevant information - we’ll dispatch the prizes shortly. Thanks to everyone that entered & we’re looking forward to next years entries! Everyone have a safe Super Bowl Sunday!

Thanks to everyone that has sent in entries for the 2nd Annual HSB Wing Off - just a friendly reminder that the entries are due tomorrow. Don’t miss out on your chance for some great wing prizes!

More aptly titled: How to convince your wife to let you buy a keg.

This all started with my planning for the Super Bowl Party that we’re going to be having in a few weeks. Considering the number of people coming (I’ve ordered CASES of wing sauce) and the fact that they are all college aged - I decided that I wanted to get a keg for the party - save some $ and do my part for the environment . Beyond my dads 3rd marriage and a few times in college, I had never had any keg experience, so naturally I went online to see if it even made any sense for me to do.

Eventually I stumbled upon Micro Matic - a great source of all things draft beer related. On the site, they sell Kegerators and Kegerator Kits - something I had only heard of but never scene. My DYI side was intrigued so I began considering building my own kegerator. Ordering the kit wouldn’t be a problem - it was finding a fridge to fit 1/4 or 1/2 kegs that would be an issue. I looked on Craigslist and couldn’t find anything the right size, but then I remebered that Home Depot had been having a sale on chest freezers - and those could be used as long as they had the right temperature controls.

So off to Home Depot I went and in the clearance section I found the chest freezer that I remembered seeing. At $169, the chest freezer would put the total cost of my kegerator project over $300 - depending on which package I went with. Then, I noticed another freezer next to the one I was looking at - and after a few minutes, it dawned on me what it was - there standing next to the standard white freezer I was thinking about buying was a kegerator!

At $250, it was definitely cheaper then building my own (said the calculator in my head) and I quickly went to the register and paid. The Danby Kegerator was clearanced down as it was the floor model (read: scratch & dent) and at more then 50% off, I was convinced I had a bargain.

Now - I had run none of this by Laura, so on the 3 minute drive home, I had to do some quick thinking and figure out how to break the news to her and still be on her good side. So I went with the “it’s a real money saver” (read: in 8-10 kegs, it will actually pay for itself) schpeel and she bought it. It also helped that she knew I was having a crappy week (leaving one job to take another and job one isn’t playing nice) - and that most of the people that we’re having over for the Super Bowl are her friends and they would love it.

This thing came as is - and while it does have some scratches and dents, I was happy to see that all the parts were there and in perfect condition. So I set to putting it together and then we ran out to buy a keg. Fortunately for us, here in the Houston area there’s a giant liqour store chain that sells kegs and one happens to be just down the street from us. Here’s a list of all the kegs they sell - though the location near us doesn’t have everything (but they deliver!)

I went with a 1/2 keg of Miller Lite to start, I didn’t want to waste a good micro brew while I figured out how to work the thing. Set up was a snap - requires only a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. I was worried about getting the Co2 canister filled, but lucked out in finding a welding supply company that filled it for $10.

The first few pours were all foam, which was corrected after getting the Co2 PSI right. I was pretty lit by 1pm due to the drinking of all the test pours (no beer was wasted) and once I finally got the head to less then 2 inches, I was happy. I did some more research online and found that due to Miller Lites massive foamy quality a longer beer line is needed, which I ordered online for $5. By the time the Super Bowl gets here, I’ll have all the kinks worked out and we’ll be getting a perfect pour every time!

Cheers!

From time to time here, I like to post a few reader questions/comments that I get behind the scenes - because your chilehead feedback is often the best answer to these questions, so here goes…(all questions posted as received)

Info for starting hot sauce business
Just wanted to know if you guys have any information on how to get started on bottling and distibuting my own hot sauce. any information you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
-Arsenio Rosa III

Shotgun Willies Hotter n Hell Picante
Do you know where I can purchase Shotgun Willie’s hotter n hell salsa (not jalapeno)? Moved from CT to MN. Hard to find spicy foods here in MN!
- Lisa

Our Oak Barrels for Hot sauce aging?
Hey guys, nice Blog you got here! We make smaller personal size oak barrels, and I recently found out that Hot sauce is made in oak barrels too. Our customers usually use them for aging wine, beer or other spirits. Do any of you make your own hot sauce and if you do, do you age that stuff in oak barrels? We would be glad to know if our barrels would be of benefit to your guests, members and visitors.

We would be honored if you would check us out! Thanx and keep up the great work here.

Manny Focil
The Barrel Source

Bottles
Howdy from Texas………

quick question. I am looking for a particular type of hot sauce bottle and can’t find it so I was hoping you mite be able to point me in the right direction. It’s not the standard Tabasco Sauce Woozey type.

It’s the flat (boot bottle) type…….examples are:

Joe Perry’s Hot Sauce (Aerosmith) Rock Your World Boneyard Brew

Sphincter Shrinker Hot Sauce

Colon Cleaner Hot Sauce

you get the idea……….I thought that type of bottle would be easy to find but I guess not.

thanx for your time
JT

And my personal favorite:

my hot sauce
Email #1
i been told my hot sauce is the best they had well i like to think it is. i make every batch unique i would like you to try it it goes great with every thing. the red it jersey red devil sauce well because i got a case of jersey grown red habanero so the name was mmm i like hockey i made some sauce with chocolate habs and i call it Hot Chocolate fn hot everything i used in it was chard on the grill i drive a truck and i can stop by on a trip somrtime and let you try it 1 gallon left of 5 on the jersey no on the hot chocolate i had green habit which was green habanero hot scauce my bro made my e mail way back so he spelled it wrong oh well later

Email #2
oh yaH i have had someone think my choc hab sauce was so hot they said your trying to kill me! and that was a tooth pick taste dip it and taste my sauce is not just heat it is flavor 1st

Merry Christmas to all the chileheads out there! May your holidays be fiery and your New Year spicy! Laura & I found this chile pepper wreath at the 2007 Houston Hot Sauce festival, made by The Wreath Store. Check out their chile pepper wreaths here and keep in mind that they will cusomize any wreath to match your color choices & preferences. Merry Christmas!

Alrighty, I’m trying to write this from a hotel in Chicago, so it will be brief as the connection is spotty at best. I just wanted to drop a short note to everyone out there to let folks know whats going on. Lately I’ve been disconnected from pretty much all things HSB - but not for any particular reason. I’m just enjoying life with a house these days - spent this past Saturday scaling our roof to get Christmas lights up - sorry to report but I didn’t break my neck .

I’m here in Chicago this week for work - as some of you know, my “real” job is something to do with websites. Well, that’s at least what seems to get translated to folks when I try to explain what I do. Just so we’re all on the same page, my official title is SEM Director - alternatively, Search Engine Marketing Director. I don’t design websites, but I do everything around getting visitors to a website and getting them to convert. So why this little blurb here on the HSB? Well, while doing a session this morning, a few questions were posed to me in regards to website conversions and as I discussed with the room full of small business website owners, my mind began to wander and I thought about all of the chilehead websites out there that start with the best of intentions but sometimes fail in the process.

So, all that being said - the thought crossed my mind to do website reviews. Here’s the deal - if you’d like your website and/or online marketing campaign reviewed, just send me a note below. Now - if you do submit your site for the free review, it will be posted here for all to learn from, so please be aware of that - all of the stipulations for product reviews apply. However, if you would like a private consultation you can contact me using the same form below and we can work something out. Will work for hot sauce is my moto.

When you submit your site, please let me know what areas you’d like me to touch on:
- SEO
- SEM (PPC & Online Media)
- Design
- Architecture
- Customer Conversion
- E-commerce
- All of the above?

And please make sure to submit using a working email address (and the website URL) - I will have questions and will need to contact you to get those answered.

P.S. Please don’t expect any sort of email response until I get back to TX. I may get to you before Friday, but no promises.

Please welcome the latest HSB Reviewer - Brendan! He’s taking my spot as the word on the street of NY and has already stood up to the Phaal Curry Test of Brick Lane Curry House. More on Brendan below…

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!

More on Brendan here

We’ve survived another year! Just like last year and the year before - we’re celebrating late again, but it’s better late then never. Admittedly, I only remembered this year because it’s so close to our anniversary - when I was trying to not to forget that, I had a nagging feeling I was forgetting something else.

The last year has seen exponential growth here on the HSB and in the past 3 years combined we’ve had 1,875 posts and 55,349 comments! Which, when compared to last years birthday stats of 1,234 posts and 39,148 comments shows just how quickly the HSB has grown.

In the past year the HSB has:
• Had 641 posts & 16,201 comments
• Had 1,715,235 unique visitors (up from 1,188,805 last year!)
• Added additional reviewers.
• Recieved visitors from 195 countries/regions.
• Moved across country
• Attended Fiery Foods, Zest Fest & the Houston Hot Sauce Festival
• Made many friends in the fiery foods industry.
• & Pissed off god only knows how many people.

Click to Enlarge

With the 2006 labels gone to the wind, the 2007 Ultimate blog sauce labels have been quietly making their way around the country. This time around the mailing is being handled in a much different manner. This time around, there is only one set of labels going around the country and every time they land at a chileheads door - that chilehead has to reach out to me to let me know they have them in order to find out who to send them to next - this way there’s a track record of who has them and who is going to get them. And I must say, it’s worked quite well so far. In fact, at the rate that this is going, we will have the bottles completed by Christmas.

Which brings me to my next point - anyone out there that wanted to get in on this not yet sign them? Beyond Jim C., who will be getting the labels shortly. My original list will now be finished once Jim signs them, so I want to make sure that no one was missed this go around. And if you were, my apologies - just let me know and we’ll get these labels to you asap.

Thanks!

Everyone -
Just updated to WP 2.3 - please let me know if anything is broken or not working properly.

Thanks!