Kartanga Hot Sauce Review

One of our favorite hot sauces reviewed - Kartanga! by the Four King Hot Sauce Co. This scored high on flavor and heat balance. This is a great hot sauce with all bases covered - versatile, great flavor, color, texture/consistency and....heat. Check out the review below.

New Hot Sauce Company - "Four King Hot Sauce".

Just a heads up to our readers, there's a new Hot Sauce kid on the block, with a few (3) killer sauces just released in the past couple weeks. These are a Bhut Jolokia hot sauce, a Habanero and a Chipotle pepper. These look like nice recipes, in fact we've reviewed the "Mumbassa" hot sauce and it was an absolute knockout!

Check 'em out for yourself at www.FourKingHotSauce.com

Four King Hot Sauce - "Mumbassa" Review

Company - Four King Hot Sauce Co.
Web Four King Hot Sauce
Online Order - No

Ingredients -
Apple Cider Vinegar, Chipotle Pepper, China Red Pepper, Water, Reshampatti Chile, balsamic vinegar, Pineapple, Onion, Nectarine, Apple, Tomato Paste, Paprika, Cumin Seed, Garlic, Brown Sugar, Lime Juice, Honey, Bhut Jolokia Pepper, Tamarind, Sea Salt, Black Pepper.

Packaging / Labeling
The label is really bright and bold and just a little 'risque' in its graphic depiction of a King sitting on his throne (toilet). The colors are retail friendly and the design is well laid out. The product is named "Mumbassa" and is labeled as containing the Chipotle Pepper. An amusing anecdote is printed on the side panel along with a heat index showing half way between medium and hot.

Aroma -
This hot sauce has an incredible nose. It's clearly fairly low in vinegar content as the vinegar is one of the last things to hit the nose. The chipotle aroma is bold and fruity and there's an underlying hint of aroma from the tamarind. The heat content is not revealed too much by the nose, but there's a pleasant hint of the acidity coming from the heat of the pepper.

Consistency -
The sauce is thick and fruity with plenty of pulp and seed. The solid matter stays well in suspension and looks very appealing on the inside of the bottle. This sauce needs a gentle shake to get it to leave the bottle but it's very controllable, unlike some of the other more viscous sauces. I would say this is almost the perfect consistency for any hot sauce worth its salt.

Color -
The color and aesthetics of this hot sauce are quite delightful. The color is a darker brown and just simply screams 'Chipotle'. The flecks of seed offer a little contrasting color and it all just looks so toothsome!

Taste and Heat
Wow. This is a very flavorful hot sauce. I'm not generally a lover of chipotle sauces but the Mumbassa hot sauce absolutely nails it. There's a rich tangy and fruitiness which combats the force of the chipotle, creating a wonderfully balanced flavor profile. The balance of sweet and sour is perfect, the sweetness comes from the brown sugar, nectarine, pineapple and honey, and the slight sour comes from the lime juice, balsamic, apple cider vinegar and tamarind. It's a perfect balancing act and it sets the stage very well for the slow build up of heat on the tongue.
The heat is pretty well gauged per the scale on the product label, it's not a hot, hot heat but it does have a nice build and envelops the tongue and lips without getting too irritating in the throat. The flavor profile is a perfect fit for steak, chicken, BBQ and pretty much any meats. It may also work nicely on pizza, though the thicker consistency may make it a little difficult to pour evenly on a Za.

Conclusion -
I can't think of a much better tasting sauce that's come across my table in recent times. This is a deliciously rich and fruity sauce with the smokiness of the chipotle in sensible and balanced measure.
Highly recommended.

Ratings -
Packaging 4.5 from 5
Aroma 5 from 5
Consistency 4 from 5
Color 4.5 from 5
Taste 4.5 from 5
Heat Balance  4 from 5*
[Heat Intensity Scale  2.5 from 5*]

Overall score - 26.5 from 30

Dave's Cool Cayenne Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Company - Dave's Gourmet Inc.

Online Order - No

Ingredients -
Water, red chiles, Salt, Cane Vinegar, Xanthan Gum, onions, garlic

Packaging / Labeling
The label is fairly attractive, and in the "Dave's Family" of product labels, alongside their Insanity Sauces, etc. Graphically it's quite laid back and won't offend those of a sensitive nature, hence perfectly acceptable for mainstreet grocery stores etc.

Aroma -
I really don't care much for the aroma of this sauce. There's the obvious odor of the cane vinegar bit it brings with it an underlying musty smell that's hard to pinpoint. Certainly the pepper and garlic aromas are identifiable but there's some other lingering component that isn't pleasant on the nose.

Consistency -
The Dave's Cool Cayenne Pepper Hot Sauce has a very loose and thin consistency. It's really just a few notches up from water in its consistency and has very little pulp or solid particle matter in the sauce. It really doesn't have sufficient body to utilize it as a dressing on smaller finger foods for example. If you enjoy adding hot sauce to your cheese and crackers, as I do, then it's going to be a fairly messy affair with this offering from Dave's.

Color -
The aesthetics of this hot sauce are quite awful in my opinion. The color is a washed-out murky brown color, not at all suggesting of fresh red chiles, as described on the label ingredients. In fact the color had me searching the bottle for the expiration date, which oddly enough was not present. But I bought this a couple days ago from a high turnover grocery store so I'm pretty certain it's well within it's use-by period.

Taste and Heat
The taste of this hot sauce is a little off the beaten track, to say the least. It has a fairly sour flavor and an acidic bite which isn't really pleasant when consumed neat from the bottle. The acidity causes some mouth pucker but also bites and burns a little in the back of the throat, causing you to want to clear your throat, not from the heat but from the acrid spice sensation.

The pepper flavor is really played down, and is almost completely consumed by the prominence of the vinegar. I would swear there are carrots in this mix, such is the taste (and aroma) profile.

The heat is on the warm side, as the product label suggests. It really doesn't develop beyond the initial 10 seconds or so, after which it subsides quickly and is almost entirely gone after around 2 minutes. So if you're looking to bask in the glory of a hot mouth and lips for a while, then don't bother with this sauce.

Is it bad tasting? no not exactly, it's just very much an acquired taste. The label suggests usage on pizza, chicken or pasta, but personally I would use this as a salad dressing ahead of anything else. Perhaps whisk it up with a little honey and olive oil and use it on a tomato, onion and cucumber salad. I wouldn't want to use it on meats or chicken unless I was cooking for myself or others familiar with the sauce. I used it on grilled pork steaks yesterday and on pizza, and sure enough the finished meat retains that acidic and vinegar flavor, without anything really positive being added in the flavor department. On the pizza, well it just doesn't add much for my tastes.


Conclusion -
I'll use this bottle perhaps as I've outlined above on salads etc, but I won't be replacing it when the bottle is gone. But remember, taste is a very personal and subjective thing, one man's poison is another man's.....or whatever.
The fact that this has been around for a while suggests that there are plenty of people who enjoy its rather unique take on hot sauce flavor, which is just fine with me.

Ratings -
Packaging 2.5 from 5
Aroma 1 from 5
Consistency 2 from 5
Color 1.5 from 5
Taste 1.5 from 5
Heat Balance  3 from 5*
[Heat Intensity Scale  0.5 from 5*]

Overall score - 11.5 from 30

Busha Browne's Pukka Pepper Sauce Review

Busha Browne's Pukka Pepper Sauce Review
Company - Busha Browne's

Online Order - No

Ingredients -
Crushed Scotch Bonnet Pepper Sauce - Water, Scotch Bonnet Peppers, Cane Vinegar, Modified Food Starch, Salt, Approved Spices, Grapefruit Seed Extract, Gluten Free.

Packaging / Labeling
The label is quite slick and professional. The color scheme is fairly low key with only a small graphic element on the front panel and fairly large red and green fonts. In terms of label concept it's obviously pitched at a more mainstream outlet such as any highstreet grocery store, whereas some of the more esoteric sauces/labels would be generally unacceptable in this type of retail outlet.

Aroma -
The first hit to the nose is the vinegar, which is normal for this type of sauce. The pepper fruits aromatic tones are quite subdued by the vinegar, you really have to inhale sharply to detect anything beyond the vinegar. Doing so reveals a slight floral note depicting a hint of sweet behind the acidity. The aroma isn't unpleasant, it just doesn't give you many cues as to the flavor profile.

Consistency -
The Busha Browne's Pukka Pepper Sauce is a fairly viscous hot sauce, not exactly free flowing, but sufficiently liquid to leave the bottle with very little coaxing.
I like this type of consistency, it clings well to food but doesn't leave the bottle in a thick clump. A good shake is needed to distribute the solid particles, which are clearly evident in the bottle. Solids remain nicely in suspension even after periods of storage. Since there are no added solids, other than the scotch bonnet peppers, the only evident particulate matter is pepper pulp and seed.

Color -
The aesthetics of the Pukka sauce are pleasing. The sauce has a bold and bright orange color with shades of red, and nice color accents from the pulp and seeds. It's certainly an attractive color and draws you in rather than repels you, as some of the darker, murkier sauces do.

Taste and Heat
The Busha Browne’s Pukka Hot Pepper Sauce is primarily made from the Jamaican Scotch Bonnet chile pepper and cane vinegar. There are unlisted spices and grapefruit extract, neither of which bring much to the flavor party. So the flavor of the scotch bonnet shines through nicely, impeded only by the cane vinegar.

There's a touch of sourness that hits the palette before the heat and pepper flavor arrive, creating a slight mouth pucker in reaction. The pepper flavor is really very good, despite the prominence of the vinegar.
The heat is on the warm side, allowing the subtly sweet flavor of the scotch bonnet to remain on the palette through all stages of heat development. This warmth envelops the entire mouth including the back of the throat.
The heat rise is sharp, in contrast to many of the hotter/extract sauces available. So within 15 seconds or so the heat has peaked in the mouth. The heat begins to subdue quite quickly, then reaches a point where there's a mild lingering sensation of heat on the back of the throat, the front of the tongue and the lips, which remains for several minutes after consuming the sauce. It's a very pleasing sensation, mild, but apparent enough to remain with you for 10 or so minutes.
So by no means is this a super Hot sauce at least on the relative scale of heat. Scotch bonnet peppers can top the habanero in scoville units, peaking somewhere around the 350,000 plus mark. This sauce is nowhere near that level of heat, it's perhaps in the 4,000 to 5000 SU range, so obviously the pepper is mostly diluted by the water and vinegar. Actually I'm surprised not to see xanthan gum on the label. Since the sauce has such a thick consistency, usually indicative of a high solids content, and since the only solids on the label are the scotch bonnet pepper, I would have expected this to be a much hotter sauce, or to use xanthan gum to firm up the sauce.

Conclusion -
A  very pleasing hot sauce and very versatile too. When I think of something like a Frank's hot sauce I can only think of chicken wings and chicken strips, as a delivery system suited to the sauces flavor profile. With the Pukka Hot Pepper sauce I can't really think of anything that wouldn't be suitable to douse with the sauce. That's a real strong quality in my mind, what's the point of having a sauce sit in the fridge for a couple of years, waiting for you to cook-up the right type of food. So you can apply this easily to hamburgers, pizza, chicken, chili, cold sandwiches and even eggs.

An all around delicious sauce that does nothing terribly wrong.

Ratings -
Packaging 3 from 5
Aroma 2 from 5
Consistency 4 from 5
Color 3.5 from 5
Taste 3.5 from 5
Heat Balance  3 from 5*
[Heat Intensity Scale  1.5 from 5*]

Overall score - 19 from 30
Awarded 3 from 5 stars

Hot Sauce Review - Heartbreaking Dawns 1841

Hot Sauce – Heartbreaking Dawns 1841

Company – Heartbreaking Dawns.

Contact – John McLaughlin

Online Order – Yes

Online Shopping Experience – Good, product arrived quickly via Priority Mail

Ingredients -

Pears, applesauce, cider vinegar, Ghost peppers (Bhut Jolokia), water, onion, carrot, lime juice, sugar, sea salt, garlic, white pepper.

Packaging / labeling -

The bottle is a standard 5 fl oz bottle with black heat-shrink cap. The label, though depicting a fairly gory/graphic scene, is quite subdued by modern hot sauce standards. The label does not use process printing so the graphics appear fairly 2-dimensional. The label contains a short story relating to the origin of the name.

Aroma -

Pop the seal and lid on this sauce and you are met with a wonderfully fruity aroma, followed quickly by the acidity of the apple cider vinegar and a hint of garlic. After a second the aromatic identity of the ghost pepper shines through the mix, leaving you with a sense of great overall balance between sweet, heat and acidity.

This is one of the most pleasant hot sauces I've nosed up to.

Consistency -

For my tastes this hits an almost perfect consistency. It's sufficiently free flowing to enable easy pouring, yet has sufficient body to cling sufficiently to foods. Invert the bottle then turn upright and there's a 4 or 5 second run-down of solids on the inside of the bottle, with seeds, fruits and skin pulp particles clearly visible on the inside of the glass. Seeds and particles remain suspended in the sauce, so only a gentle shake is necessary to create an even consistency and solids distribution throughout the bottle.

Color -

The 1841 has a nice red color, a little reminiscent of Tabasco original but without the translucency. The particle suspension creates a nice visual blend with the redness of the sauce, with deeper red slivers of skin/peel accenting the base color.

Taste & Heat -

The initial sensation on the palette is the sweetness of fruit. The acidity of the vinegar and a slight bite of salt quickly blends with the sweetness, giving the sense of a well rounded sauce with good balance. The heat hits in the throat area first then deep on the back of the tongue. The heat builds forward quite slowly into the mouth from the back, catching the sides of the tongue, under the tongue and then the lips. From the first hit of the Bhut Jolokia, to developing a full mouth burn takes around 30 – 45 seconds, with a deeper burn developing over a period of approximately 3-5 minutes before it begins to subside.

The heat has an extraordinary way of making you aware of the potency of the ghost peppers without masking the wonderful array of fruit flavors and the flavor of the chile itself. Approaching the 1 minute mark as the burn starts to take hold and the flavor of fruits diminish, I was drawn to taking another hit of sauce to restore the sweet taste of the pear and applesauce. It's one of the first sauces that I've tried that I would describe as addictive, in the sense that the heat level is tolerable, and you just want to restore the intensity of fruit flavors on the palette as the heat tries to overcome them.

Overall the heat from a single teaspoon sample of neat sauce never overwhelms the system. It remains tolerable through all stages of heat development, with just a slight discomfort from a burning in the esophagus towards the later stages of heat development.

Conclusion -

Don't get me wrong, this is a HOT sauce in every sense of the word, it just doesn't have the killer burn of the hotter extract based sauces.

For those people new to the hot sauce experience this would not be a good place to start out. You certainly need to have the benefit of some 'preconditioning' before venturing down this particular path. But for those with a few different sauces under their belts, the 1841 proves to this reviewer to be the perfect every day sauce. Its flavor profile lends itself to most foods, particularly those of Asian origin. A Thai chicken dish would benefit perfectly from the combination of heat and sweet, as would something like a mango chutney, used to accompany an Indian Phal or Vindaloo dish.

Yet it's versatile enough to go with anything, including BBQ food such as burgers, steaks and ribs. In fact I grilled a ½ pound 'Juicy Lucy Burger' (two ¼ pound patties pressed together with cheese in the middle) for dinner and sauced it with a liberal dose of 1841, and the added flavor was just delicious – and yes, plenty of heat too.

This is an absolute must have for anyone with a passion for hot sauce, I'll be ordering another few bottles in a day or two and plan to keep the fridge well stocked.

Ratings -

Packaging 3.5 from 5
Aroma 5 from 5

Consistency 4.5 from 5

Color 4.5 from 5

Taste 5 from 5

Heat Balance  4.5 from 5*
[Heat Intensity Scale  3.5 from 5*]

Overall Rating - 4.5 from 5

* When I rate "heat" I separate intensity (absolute heat, measured against the hottest available) from heat balance. The heat balance is an indicator of how well the heat level compliments the flavor of the sauce as a whole. It's a more subjective measurement of my own personal preference for the level of heat intensity, and not the rating of heat intensity measured against an absolute. In producing the final rating for the product, I omit the Heat Intensity Scale from the rating, since it is misleading in the sense that a lower score does not necessarily indicate a below par performance.

Spicy Delight!

Had to share a picture of dinner! - Grilled chicken thighs with chili rub, habanero Mediterranean style pizza,  habanero tapenade using premium quality Lindsay Olives, spicy pico de gallo with Feta, honey roasted asparagus....

Recipe to follow...