Melinda's Original Habanero Pepper Sauce

Let's look at yet another fun sauce sure to stimulate the senses and hopefully whet the appetites of my dear readers! Today we're going to give a go to Melinda's Original Habanero Pepper Sauce from Melinda's Hot Pepper Sauce and Ketchup. That last little bit of the company name may surprise you, as it did me. This company makes artisan, homemade ketchup! I wasn't expecting that one but I may have to try some at one point.
The label doesn't "wow" me at all, although it does hint at a rustic Latin feeling. The color is a bit of a pale orange for my taste, explained by the inclusion of carrots in the ingredient list. One thing I've discovered on our hot sauce journey together is that carrots are a much more common ingredient in the sauces than I expected.
The consistency might fool you, as it did me, at first. Swishing it in the bottle, it appeared to move like a very thin sauce, much to my chagrin. However, upon pour (dripper insert included this time to help control flow), I noticed that the sauce was much more hefty than I predicted. I'd say slightly gelatinous but that word may have a negative connotation to some minds. Also, there are visible chunks of ingredients in the sauce; not big ones, but the presence is noted upon pour.
In examining flavor, I was surprised to not detect any carrot, save for a bit of fresh sweetness. I definitely taste citrus as well as my beloved garlic leading to a tangier taste, rather than a particularly savory one. This is not a tremendously layered or complex tasting sauce but it leaves a nice and happy imprint on one's tongue.
The sauce is hotter than I expected up initial taste, though once one becomes accustomed to it, it's quite mild. It has an immediate, front of the tongue burn that lingers for a minute or so. Not painful in a negative way but you'll unmistakably know it's there. It also leaves a lip burn that also lingers. Again, not in a negative way but more of a positive stimulation of the tongue and lip.
The best part of this sauce may be its price tag at $3.99 for a 5 ounce bottle. This sauce is good for spicing up most food amenable to condiments, including burgers, nachos, pizza (which is particularly good with Melinda's Original Habanero Pepper Sauce), and my ever-present tacos. I would call this sauce more of a positive accent to a meal than a central taste experience. Definitely something I'd recommend exploring.

Evil Cowboy Smokin Ghost

I want to take a look at a sauce I ran across in my online hot sauce explorations. This one is called Smokin Ghost Hot Sauce by Evil Cowboy Hot Sauce. This company is out of Richardson, TX and is a tribute to the sauces the current proprietor's grandfather used to make. They carry their own hot sauces, dipping salsas, and even some queso blanco!
The color did not much to impress me as it appears kind of a murky red-yellow. Although I wasn't entranced by the color, the skull in the cowboy hat appearing on the label made me smirk a bit. Nothing too creative but kind of gets the point across. The simulation of burning wood that borders the bottom of the label is kind of cute too.
In the matter of consistency, this sauce is thin, but I wouldn't call it runny. It seems uniform in mix so that the edge of a pour doesn't seem watery while the main liquid body is more full of tasty ingredients like some sauces I could name. A note on the pour: it leaves some sediment on the glass of the bottle after the pour. Not a negative thing at all. In fact, I like a bit of sediment as it suggests many ingredients that aren't pulverized into standardized liquid.
The taste is surprisingly complex. It has a savory quality that is cut by what tastes like a bit of ocean. Upon looking at the ingredient list, this was explained by the presence of anchovies. There is also a rich tang toward the end of tasting. Pleasant and not jarring. The garlic is palpable which, if I hadn't made clear before, I like a great deal. It also lives up to part of its name with a hint of smoke in the pepper.
If you're looking for the hottest thing in the sauce market, this isn't your guy. There is a bit of residual lip burn after tasting as well as an initial heat in the middle of the tongue. However, this isn't an exceptional hotness.
While the heat may not be as intense as some would like it to be, I think that this sauce has a complex and very flavorful taste profile. I think that this would be a great addition to hamburgers, oddly enough. At $6 + shipping for a 5 ounce bottle, this might be a good investment if you're an avid cook like myself.

Rogue: Moruga Blood Orange Scorpion Pepper Sauce

Hello again chiliheads! I'd like to apologize again for last week's lack of a substantial post. I just didn't get a sauce order that I was hoping to get. No matter! Today I'm going to talk about Rogue Moruga Blood Orange Scorpion Pepper Sauce by High River Sauces. I will admit that, at first, I was excited for this sauce because I assumed that a brewery of which I am fond was associated with this sauce. This was not to be the case. No matter! On with the examination!
I like the label but I'm not amazed by it. It looks nice and I like the rendering of the peppers in their respective formation. With that said, I think the logo it a bit amateurish, though I like the cute scorpion tail descending from the "G". It's nothing that I'll write home about but it's not something I'll flush down the toilet in disgust either.
I love the color here. It's a nice deep red with just a hint, an implication if you will, of orange, appropriately. The bit of lightness suggests a summery heat. The consistency, however, is not something I'm even partially a fan of. It's a runny and relatively thin sauce, so be careful while pouring. The bottle is not fit with a dripper insert, as most thin sauces are, and I think that is a mistake in delivery here. I may actually put one of my own on this bottle.
The flavor on this one is nice. I taste a nice note of fruit up front. I detect a freshness of apple, which is fun. I also taste a bit of another fruity sugar though I can't totally identify it. I assume it's blood orange from the name of the sauce but that doesn't jump out at me, so I will leave that as an assumption. All in all the flavor is well balanced and left me feeling positively.
This sauce is nice and hot, but not close to the upper echelon in regards to heat. It's more of a surface of the tongue burn with one interesting and unique property: it felt like the burn finished as a full body one. I even felt flushed for a couple of minutes after a good tasting. I have experienced sauces that have done this to me in the past, but they're relatively rare.
At a price of $7.99 this is not a bad deal (though the shipping cost of shipping at $3.50 is fairly high). I think that I'll try this on my tacos next week as I think that'll be a good pairing with the fruitiness of the condiment. I'll put a dripper insert on it first.

Late Shipment

Unfortunately I can't do a review this week as my shipment of sauce has not arrived. Please accept my humblest apology.

Iguana Deuces Sup'a Freaky Hot Sauce

This sauce was given to me as a gift (which was very sweet, thanks Jessica and Brian) this past holiday. We will examine it, as we tend to do, to give my wonderful readers some background before trying it themselves. This sauce is Iguana Deuces Sup'a Freaky Hot Sauce (which will just be referred to as Deuces for brevity's sake) made by Half Moon Bay Trading Company.
This sauce has a nice deep red color with a hint of orange. In this case the orange tinge doesn't take away from the aesthetic pleasure I get from the coloration. This is a habanero sauce, so the shade makes sense here. Visually, this product is quite appealing to me.
The consistency of the sauce is a nice, thick delivery. It pours slowly but doesn't explode out of the bottle as some condiments tend to. In pouring it over my tortilla chip, the thickness helped in creating an even layer of sauce. Deuces has one of my favorite viscosity levels for a hot sauce.
The layers of flavor are present and create a tropical feel for me. I pick up citrus flavors (not all that uncommon in hot sauces today), specifically pineapple. For me, this is interesting as I have pondered experimenting with pineapple in my own sauces. There is also a satisfying level of garlic flavor lending to a rich sauce experience.
This sauce is quite hot. It almost is at a level that distracts from the flavor profile, but not quite. It accomplishes this by being spicy and interesting at the tip and front of the tongue, but not scorching. Once it hits the middle and back of the tongue, get ready for a chaser to ease the heat. Not surprisingly, there is little to no lip burn.
This is a really nice little sauce that I intend to use on tacos next week. At $2.15 for a 2 ounce bottle, it's a steal! I encourage you to check this one out! I hope that you'll enjoy it as much as I did.