Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Tropical Pepper Company Ghost Pepper Sauce

This week's hot sauce that I'll be diving into is called Ghost Pepper Naga Jolakia Hot Sauce by Tropical Pepper Company. Their website doesn't appear to have any contect but a "Contact Us" link and a background so I'll include their a link to their Facebook page here. According to that they have a comprehensive line of sauces, coconut milk, and seasonings. They don't appear to have their products on their page but I include some of their fare distributed by Amazon.com here.
The label is cute. Their normal logo is an illustration of a toucan holding peppers in its beak. In this iteration, the toucan and peppers are present but the toucan is a skeleton. There is a warning on the bottom left side of the label stating "Caution: extremely hot" as well as a pepper level marker ranging from "mild' to "deadly", the latter of which the sauce purports itself to be. Elsewhere another warning claims that "this sauce will haunt your dreams". We shall see how accurate these foreboding words are.
The pour is fairly thick and slow. A perusal of the ingredients list confirms a suspicion I had that there were thickening agents present (corn starch and xanthan gun). This isn't a bad thing at all to me as I like my sauces to be thick and pour slowly. The color is pleasing as well, presenting as a fairly rich orange-red. There isn't a noticeable amount of sediment at play.
The flavor is not bad at all but with a distinct lack of complexity. Quite a bit of salt is present, possibly too much for my palate, but healthy amounts of garlic greets my tongue as well. The sauce finishes with a very slight metallic taste but this is quite faint. The takeaway is that it's not going to be a bastion of flavor in my collection.
I have to say here that, for once, stark claims of super heat are justified in this sauce. It hits the center of the tongue like lava and lingers for a long time. It bit the back of my throat like a predatory insect that had me scrambling for the water bottle. Tears were shed. The lip burn is also intense with a comparable temporal stay to the initial roasting. I burst into sweat at initial tasting and it only got worse as I layered my mouth with additional samples.
Ghost Pepper Naga Jolakia Hot Sauce may not be a flavor dynamo but it offers a substantial scorch for you fire-chasers out there. Plus, for $6.41, it's kind of hard to pass up for your collection. I am left to wonder where the real online presence of Tropical Pepper Company is, though.

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