John Finlay is like butter…’cause he’s on a roll. With two homemade hot sauces done & reviewed by us, it seems like they are only getting better. I have already done the Triple Sevens and Big Sissy sauces, which were both well-made and quite tasty…so what was the chance that John might go 3-for-3? For one thing, he made a lot of it. The other sauces came in a regular five-ounce woozy, but this one came in a twelve-ounce monster sized jar. As fate would have it, that turned out to be a good thing. Not only did I have a lot to use for myself, but I was able to share it with quite a few other people to get some other opinions as well. This sauce has this big list o’ stuff in it:

Ingredients: serrano, dried habanero, red pepper flakes, onion, garlic, lime juice, lime zest, lemon juice, lemon zest, red wine, brown sugar, salt, honey, ketchup, water, vinegar, tomato paste

First impression: Just in jostling the bottle a little, I could tell this sauce was thick. Dark red and full of seeds, it was thicker than either of the two sauces John has made before. Its aroma was indeed a bit alluring, with the strong scent of peppers and slight hint of ketchup and garlic. More than that, it simply smelled good. Pouring out a smidgeon onto my plate, I saw this glob of hot sauce goodness:

Paradoxically, it seems both well-blended while being able to see the spices which are evenly distributed throughout the sauce. No signs of separation no matter how long I let the bottle sit, either. So far, so good.

Taste: This taste was a bit surprising in that it was at first a little sweet, then a little spicy. It all makes a little sense, really. You get that initial sweetness from the honey, brown sugar, and ketchup…then followed by the heat of the serrano and habanero. Overall, I’d say the heat is about a 5/10 but does build a little bit with more consumption. This sauce has so much in it that I gave up trying to taste the individual elements and just enjoyed the overall taste of the sauce. It was a little like steak sauce overall, but I’ll go into that more later.

I tried this out on a wide variety of foods, and definitely felt it was a sauce that was better on food then mixed in it. It’s such a complicated flavor profile that it loses some of its flavor when mixed in with chili, soup, or any other condiment/marinade. Where this sauce excels is poured over food. Any food. Heck, I might even pour this sauce on breakfast cereal to see how it does. As a sandwich/hot dog condiment, it is hard to find another homemade sauce to match it. Thick and clingy, it was a great coating for cooked polish sausage as well. Just about any other meat, be it chicken or fish, was well-matched with this sauce also. I absolutely adored this sauce with steak, and it embarrasses stuff like A-1 or Heinz 57 by showing what quality really is. Both cooked as a light glaze on the meat or poured over it after cooking, this sauce excels with those protein-dominated meals we all like.

Overall recommendation: Again, John has come up with a winner sauce. It’s probably more like a steak sauce than a hot sauce, but each to his/her own. More spicy than sweet, this sauce has a lot of great ingredient, is well-blended, and is thick enough that you won’t worry about it running out of the bottle too quickly. As a blend of flavor, sweet, and heat, this is a pretty darn good sauce. I had the seal-of-approval from quite a few co-workers, who liked the taste also and each person got something a little different when trying this sauce. If John can maintain that sort of widespread appeal with this sauce, it might be a huge success someday. We thank John for all his sauces and wish him the best of luck crankin’ these out to the public. Good job, John!