Re: [CH] Hottest Hot Sauce. (No extracts)
jim@wildpepper.com
Mon, 06 Oct 2003 10:50:16 -0500
Wow! A gold mine of an opening for me and every other 'evil corporate
type' on the list :-)
In answer to your questions, in no particluar order....
Blair is at extremefoods.com as well as deathsauce.com His original
Death Sauce (one of my favs since I'm a vinegar fan) is extract free.
I'm at wildpepper.com My Ralph's Righteous and Red Savina(R) Garlic
sauces are both extract free and as hot a natural hot as you are going
to find.
CaJohn also makes a lot of extract free sauces (from my chiles!) and is
at cajohns.com His include Krakatoa, Flame, and the Legend.
Pure pepper resin is also called 'extract', 'oleoresin capsaicin' (ORC
for short), 'capsicum resin or extract', and sometimes 'concentrate'.
Resin is made through either mechanical, solvent, or steam extraction of
capsaicin- the chemical in all chile peppers that make them seem hot.
This tarry resin is combined with a carrier oil (usually soy-bean) and
is identified with that 'burnt cat hair' taste we chile heads are
familiar with. Common commercial ORC varies in strengths from 1/2
million, 1 mil, 2 mil, and 4 mil.
Hot sauces using habs can rate quite low based on the percentage of hab
in the sauces. Much also has to do with what test is used, who does the
testing, and so forth. That still doesn't give you the whole story
because a very sweet sauce with lots of hab is going to seem much less
hot than a bitter one with less hab. Much has to do with the way humans
perceive heat as opposed to a HPLC machine that measures ppm of
capsaicinoids.
That also explains why some of the chilehead sauces (like mine) cost
more than Franks or Durkees or Tabasco. The highest among them might
rate 14% or so pepper solids while mine are generally not less than 75%.
Hope this helps & am happy to answer any other questions you might
have. Be careful or you actually might think I know something :-)
-Jim C
Mild to Wild(R)
www.wildpepper.com