Month: April 2011

I don’t normally throw around accolades with any sort of casual frequency. I’m cautious to declare any food product I try – whether it be a barbecue sauce, a salsa, a mustard, a seasoning, or a hot sauce – to be “great”. I have to know for sure that it has the culinary spunk before it rises above the level of an agreeable but generic item.

When I gave the lofty moniker of best sauce (so far) of 2011 to Heartbreaking Dawns 1498 Trinidad Scorpion Hot Sauce, I didn’t think that title would be usurped so quickly. I believe it was “Firehead” Thomas Gately who informed me that Heartbreaking Dawns’ Johnny McLaughlin had sent him a test bottle of the new ghost pepper sauce on which he was working and proclaimed that this newer sauce was even better than 1498. At this year’s ZestFest, Johnny told me his plans of releasing additional sauces to fit in with the “year” naming convention, so of course the then-upcoming one would be another year…this one being 1841 (which the bottle explains as the year Reverend Miles Bronson arrived amongst the Naga people in India, ending the widespread practice of headhunting).

So back to the point: did I agree with Firehead Thom’s assessment? I have to give…