By Who: A panel of sauce tasting experts with over 40 years combined experience tasting sauces from all over the world. Six firefighters at Station 111 in Indianapolis. This panel has tested literally hundreds of sauces and salsas submitted by folks from as far away as England and Australia. As firefighters, their opinion is brutally honest and frank- most firefighters do not have the time or patience for anything else.

Scoring: Points are awareded on a 10 point system with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. The number in parenthesis indicates the number of scoreres agreeing on a particular point.

Synopsis: The sauce received a mostly positive review. Lowest marks were for heat (mediocre scores) and the highest marks were for flavor and aroma (high to very high). Overall score: 6.8

Appearance: Sauce is a dark brown color, with obvious pieces of chile visible (4 reviewers). Sauce appears fairly thick and seems to hold together well inside of the bottle. Pours in a controlable fashion. Score: 8

Consistency: Decent consistency, about what you’d expect from a sauce that looks intended for meats. Tried on chicken with good results. Score: 7

Aroma: Very nice aroma with a pronounced chipotle smoked aroma. Smoke tends to score very well with firefighters for some strange reason Score: 9

Taste: Strong with a pronounced smokey note. Chipotle is readily discernable as is a hint of sweetness. Mostly scored well with the reviewers (4). Some thought the strength of the sauce would limit the uses (3). Score: 7

Heat: This sauce was on the upper edges of most of the reviewers tolerance (4). It has a sneaky kind of heat (most likely from the chinense- suspected to be habanero) that built up at the end of the taste. It is not for your average joe, every day use. The heat lingered as well, burning mostly mid-range. Score: 4

Uses: It worked well on chicken, putting it on at the start of the cooking which helped to drive off some of the heat. Complimented meats well, though not viewed as appropriate for all dishes (fish) because of the intense smoke flavor. Score 6

Overall: The sauce scored fairly well. It is hard to go wrong with chipotle, and the chinense used to give it some heat did not overpower the smokey flavor of the chipotles. A mostly well designed sauce that would need only minor modifications for every day use.

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