I promise to keep it shorter this time!

Yes, end of April, time for another Hot Sauce Expo excursion to Brooklyn. Though abridged since I taught in the morning and afternoon, and I drove there and parking was… eh, not the worst I’ve experienced. Thank goodness it was Sunday so no meter feeding necessary so it only took 10ish minutes instead of potentially an hour.

I don’t need to go into detail of what it looks like and what happens (though here’s a picture)

because we’ve gone through it a couple times now and the setup hasn’t changed too too much since the move to the Brooklyn Expo Center in Greenpoint (I remember the Penn Plaza days!), maybe some of the stuff outside from the first year to now. There’s vendors along the sides and making three aisles, and there’s alcohol on one side (the beer vendor changed this year to exclusively Lagunitas, as opposed to Lagunitas and Coney Island; Threes Brewing is literally two blocks away so I’m surprised it’s not them), and milk on the other because of course it is, and there’s the Stage of Doom with all the festivities and contests and competitions of the weekend. This year I got there as the Bloody Mary competition was in full swing so I wasn’t paying attention and only watched the Carolina Reaper eating contest, but that’s the most important one since there’s people from Guinness (the record company, not the beer company) keeping tabs. However with the potential changing of the guard in peppers this could be the last Reaper contest (more on that later).

To sauces? Well, first things I hit was the first thing I saw, the Heatonist stand with their Hot Ones sauce. You know the one I’m talking about. The Last Dab. They were not giving samples. I bought a bottle because I knew I had to at some point. I will talk about it later, when Pepper X goodness shall be mine*, muhahahahaha!

*(Pepper X goodness shall not be mine. More about that in a later House of Pain. I don’t feel too too stupid, though I do think the non-X versions shouldn’t be the same price as the X.)

I started my actual tasting with the Heatonist sauce that they did have available to sample, their 3rd anniversary/Butterfly Bakery collaboration Pink Peppercorn Gin. It isn’t brutally hot and definitely interesting pallet-wise, to the point I had a little bit of trouble trying to pinpoint flavors that weren’t mentioned in the name. I think what I was tasting was the lime juice and garlic? Or lime juice and cucumber? Maybe all three?

I then went to the hosts at High River Sauces and asked what’s new. I guess nothing at the moment, because the Cheeba Gold I tried last year is still their newest sauce; I think it had just come out last year or was in the process of coming out so it’s still the newest. I think at this point I’ve tried everything of theirs, so good for me! I did see on the other side they have a new barbecue sauce called Rattler, but I didn’t get a chance to try it. I didn’t get to every table this year, damn growing up and having obligations and work and stuff, so I had to prioritize.

I tried out the Burns and McCoy sauces, originally entranced by their cherry and Trinidad Scorpion sauce Devorandum. They claim it’s perfect for meats, and I can see it, though I think I was thinking of something a little bit sweeter than what it was. Their Exhorresco sauce was also hot, a lot more immediate of a kick than Devorandum, and one of them went down the wrong pipe and hot sauce in the windpipe isn’t the most pleasant experience in the world, that will make you tear up a little, no matter what. I also liked their verde sauce Excubiarum which I think it more apt for the holy and sacred Taco Tuesday than the sauce they recommended, Especia Roja.

Points to Hoff & Pepper for asking the important questions, like “Why wait for someone to come over and pour a sauce for you to sample when we can just install the restaurant-style condiment dispenser and let you do it yourself?” The answer of course is because then you have me who accidentally pours himself an entire mini-spoonful of Smoken Ghost. Which I did enjoy, both in quantity and in quality, the quality being one of that nice smoky chipotle flavor with ghost pepper kick and the quantity being enough of the spoon filled that I had to thank surface tension for not spilling any on me.

When they’re not creating new and hotter peppers (still more on that later) Puckerbutt has apparently come up with an organic line. I asked the difference between the organic hottest sauce and the Reaper sauce, and they responded “about 400,000 Scovilles.” And then I had the two in succession. And realized I have indeed lost my fastball a little since the gallbladder surgery considering I have the Puckerbutt Reaper sauce in my fridge right now and have used it on things in the past, so it should not be a problem for me and I gave a cough when it hit.

Which leads me back to new and hotter peppers. As I mentioned, it might be the last year of Reaper eating contests because there are now many claims to the hottest pepper throne. First there’s the Welsh Dragon’s Breath pepper, which has been reported as high as 2.48 million Scoville units—in comparison, the average Carolina Reaper is around 1.6 million, going as high as 2.2 million, as Guinness reported, re-updating the record at the Expo. Unless the Dragon’s Breath is a hoax, as it hasn’t been officially tested nor has it been seen as an ingredient in anything.

Then there’s the Chocolate Bhutlah, which I saw powder of at the Puckerbutt table (I’ll finish my Reaper powder first), created by accidental cross-pollination of a 7-pot douglah, a lesser-known super hot but one of the hottest, and a ghost pepper. It is also rumored to be hotter than the Carolina Reaper, and we know the pepper exists considering Puckerbutt was selling the powder and peanuts with it (I did not notice the peanuts or else I would have gotten them), but it has not been officially tested and so we’re not sure what the number is. If I knew of it and had the time I would have tried Chocolate Plague which showcases this new pepper.

The third is of course the already legendary Pepper X. The X makes it sound cool.

I asked Puckerbutt if there were any Pepper X sauces in the works and was given the ol’ classified “We can’t tell you anything.” So I’m guessing “eventually,” especially because of how limited the first edition Last Dab was. Probably later in the season (at the other Hot Sauce Expos, whether Chicago, Portland, Arizona, or California) they’ll start rolling out, that’s my guess. Or maybe after the lab results come back on it and/or the bhutlah. Oh, next year’s Expo is gonna be fun, isn’t it. It’ll be like when the Reaper came out and everyone was experimenting with it… but with more and hotter peppers!

Also regarding new exciting things, I went to my friends at Defcon Sauces (y’know, the ones whose Curbstomp I wrote about way back when) asking if they finally were coming up with the Mk. VI wing sauce that I had asked about last year. And they were! And it should be out this summer! And as much as I asked John, he said he couldn’t tell me. I did get Padre Weaselo a thing of their Grimm Styx, which are hot smoked meat sticks (goddammit, phrasing) that aren’t brutally hot because Padre Weaselo specifically told me “hot but not unbearably” and he approved! After all this time I figured I needed to get him something.

As for Madre Weaselo, who doesn’t have my or my dad’s capsaicin tolerance, I got her something called Benny T’s Vesta. They call it a “dry hot sauce” and it seems similar to a rub except it can be used on more things than just meats, like how they put it on chips with hummus. When I asked about the difference between it and a pepper powder, they talked about the different ingredients and ways of making it so that even though there are a whole bunch of peppers in each container you don’t feel like death. I tried the Reaper one (of course) and even though there was a bit of the power of it in the back end as the heat lingered, it was extremely manageable. I got the regular hot level for Madre Weaselo rather than the Reaper or Scorpion or Ghost because she wouldn’t want anything too vicious. And if I’m using it, I can just use more, putting that “hot sauce on my hot sauce” stereotype to use.

So yes, once again, fun was had by all, even if maybe this year was a bit more holding pattern and abridged for me than years past. Oh, and I got one of these bad boys!

I didn’t just pop it in my mouth this time; I made Reaper-infused olive oil. Hope it doesn’t suck! And that I don’t get botulism! (There’ll be a mention of how it goes or a full-blown how I fucked up did it once I get a chance to try it.)

Shout-outs, for what my shout-outs are worth, to High River Sauces who run the Expo, whether it’s here or around the country; to John and Defcon Sauces, whose Mk. VI I’ll be anxiously awaiting; and to Vic Clinco, the owner of the world’s largest hot sauce collection. We took a selfie and compared surgeries.

Images courtesy of me; DFO screencap taken by me and thanks to BourbonBrotherBill’s questioning.

Next time on House of Pain, Senor takes on his toughest challenge yet, not being underwhelmed by the hype monster!