Halloween Fri/First Batch of Product Arrived

If you are reading this, you have successfully navigated Miz Mon and Terrible Tues, scraped through the painful middle of the week, and now finally have reached Freaky Fri! So good work on that (unless you got banged up last night at the bar lamenting the painful FSU loss, and now are hating yourself). Friday means it is now Halloween weekend, which is the second most important thing in October. All year I had plans to either be Toad from Super Mario, or a Sour Patch Kid. Paralyzed by indecision, I have reached Fri with no progress or costume. As a result (and lack any creative abilities), I'm going to try a last ditch run to a costume store this evening. And if it doesn't work, I may be forced to go as a bloody cannibal with JD. (Picture to come later, I assure you it is the most terrifying costume ever. People ACTUALLY will not talk to me once said costume is donned.) It is unclear whether CA will want to join us or not, smart $$$ says no.

But anyway, as mentioned in a previous post, the most important thing about October is that it is Hot Sauce Month. I ordered 16 new sauces, and the first shipment of ten sauces came last week.

The GOODS have arrived


I ordered these ten sauces from Original Juan Specialty Foods. I had previously had the 95% pain, and my sister and her fiancee (little mikey) were real bullish on the garlic style sauce. So I elected to buy basically the whole suite of hot and extra hot sauces available on the website. Coming in at over $50 made me eligible for free shipping. What is kind of hilarious about this strategy is that 1) by offering free shipping for orders over $50 DEFINITELY made me order a couple more sauces than I normally would have. +$10 to the company. 2) the rocket-scientists @ Original Juan's did not specify WHAT KIND OF SHIPPING would be free. So like any opportunistic American, I ordered over-night air-freight delivery. -$45 to the company. So all in, the company lost about $35 on me with their stupidly designed promotion.

But anyway, onto the sauces. JD and I tested every sauce utilizing the "3 drops on a chip, clean the palate with a swig of water, move onto the next one" technique.

The Testing Station



Overall, the results were satisfactory. My takeaways would be that:
1) None of them were overly spicy. The X-treme, Habanero, and Pain 100% were the hottest. They probably were in the 20-30k range, which fills a nice void in my collection.
2) The sauce quality (with the exception of the Spur Tree Scotch Bonnet sauce which was yellow crap) was quite high; full body with chunks of ingredients. A big step up from the runny and thin gruel-like sauces you sometimes see.
3) The pain 95% sauce really is incredible. The sweet pineapple flavor is an amazing complement to the heat, I'd highly recommend this one.
4) Da Bomb Ghost pepper was my other favorite. It is only 1/5th as spicy as its Da Bomb brothers (it is loaded up with other ingredients to reduce the heat, as the ghosts are the hottest peppers in the world), but it has none of their grim flavor. This is my first time hitting up a ghost pepper sauce, and this sauce certainly was a training wheels experience. It has inspired me to get a real Ghost Pepper sauce, most likely will be picking up the Mad Dog 357 Ghost to get a little more feel of the actual heat.

Next week, the last six of my order should come. These are the hotter sauces (more like 75-95k), so I am expecting some fireworks followed by JD waterworks.

Have a great Halloween!