Great stuff Sam.

Naming other sites when posting…… Yes because I want people to know about my new hobby which is bashing the HSB.

On HWL I allow everything and in return I’m able to delete, reword, add, make fun of and do pretty much what every I want. One day I even banned myself for 24 hours. I had to have the IT department let me back in.

Is it okay for manufacturers to review products? Why/why not?

It matters who you are, if I like you I would say YES, If I don’t I would say keep your comments to yourself.

If you could change one thing about the HZOB, what would it be?

Nothing really Joe and Linda are great honest people who have always treated me fairly, even if they disagree with me I know I will get a fair shake and thats all I ask.

Okay one thing would be seeing them bashing the HSB on a daily bases..(Just Jokin) LOL

What are the top 3 sauces you are eating right now

#1-Fat Kids sauce Extreme buy it by the case
#2 Four brothers hot sauce (NEW) Opened it this weekend excellent
#3-CaJohns Chipolte sauce. Cape fear Chipolte,Short Bus Chipolte another buy it by the case sauce.

Have a great day.

Comment fired by BLANE — July 23, 2008- 2:44 pm

Sam, What do you think about that Jolokia powder I sent to you?
Answer off blog if you wish.

I see nothing wrong with cross-contamination of blog topics/recipes. I do think cross link posting is questionable at best.

Change? I guess more commenting would be nice, but that is up to the lurkers to come out of the woodwork, nothing J & L can do about that. They do a great job of finding info and press.

Everyone knows my opinion about manufacturers reviewing other manufacturers sauces. I would like to see some inner thoughts from the manufactures about their own products and what inspired them to do it the way they did if they feel they must review something.

Three sauces I’m eating right now:
Bwana Bret’s - Sweet Bhuty
W W Sauces - Kiss My Bhut
Mike & Diane’s - Ring of Fire Original

Comment fired by CaJohn — July 23, 2008- 4:55 pm

Looking forward to the Sweet Bhuty and Kiss my Bhut!!!! still need to try the Ring of Fire original.

Comment fired by BLANE — July 23, 2008- 5:24 pm

I don’t see a problem with mentioning other blogs by name. I think the only blogs that would have major issues are like the psycho girlfriend who’s always accusing you of cheating. You’re better off without her.

My policy on recipes and the like is: I will not knowingly duplicate a recipe from another blog without consent. I also give consent to any other blog to copy recipes from my site without restriction (though a shout out would be nice).

Makers reviewing products gets a bit tricky. It depends on the maker. Some can be honest and objective others can’t. The problem is that you can’t tell without knowing the maker in advance.

Don’t change a thing, we love you the way your are.

My three sauces: Killer Chipotle from CaJohns (If I could make something this fabulous I could die a happy man), Precious Booty from me, and Busha Browns Jerk Sauce (guilty pleasure).

Comment fired by Donavan — July 23, 2008- 7:52 pm

Let me answer a few of these questions, although my opinion is just one out of the writers on this blog despite my role as “administrator”….

I have disliked mentioning other blogs by name since we’ve tried to handle reporting as first-person accounting, not hearsay or snippets about (or from) other blogs. I am cognizant that the community of us chileheads don’t always get along, so I’ve been reluctant to add fuel to the fire. That said, I’ve been changing this practice over time to make this be a whole lot less the case.

As long as the recipes aren’t copyrighted material, then they’re in the public domain and can be printed on however many sites there are. It’s nice to have this with the consent of the recipe’s author, but it’s not necessary. As for cross-linking (in comments), we aren’t opposed to doing so, but we appreciate notice about it since links elsewhere do take people away from (and not towards) our blog. It’s more the case that we want to ensure that commenters aren’t abusing the system by posting mostly links to other sites. That stuff tends to get filtered out as spam anyway.

We’ve enforced a “no manufacturers doing reviews” policy for a while to avoid the conflict-of-interest that can happen when you are trying to script an unbiased review of your competition in a capitalistic marketplace. That said, we are open to manufacturers doing reviews on products that are not competing against their own products. For example, we wouldn’t want Sam to review any other spicy honey sauces, but Z & Z Honey Co. doesn’t make any salsas, so that might be something he could do and be more impartial. It’s still a policy that’s a work in progress, so we’ll see how this evolves.

As for what I’d like to be different about this blog, there are a few things. I’d like to see more people involved with the writing other than us and Passow, who do about 95% of it. The more chilehead authors we have, the more “community” it is. We’d like to have something that generates money for this blog, like shirts or bumper stickers or something like that. Not because we want this to support us, but just to break even with the cost of web support and blog design costs that have been there for a while. We’d also like to see this blog continue to grow with international chileheads. We have authors from England, Germany, Sweden, and Canada, so we’d like to see more of that to inspire more readership from abroad.

As for what products I’m using now, I have been tasting:

1. Several sauces from the Sauce Cartel (www.saucecartel.com) in preparation for a big Featured Product writeup.

2. Kato’s Down South Hot Sauce - a simple Scotch Bonnet hot sauce that’s simply awesome

3. Dia De Los Muertos by Captain Thom’s Chili Pepper Company - smoked habaneros and pequine peppers never tasted so good

Comment fired by Joe — July 23, 2008- 8:20 pm

Interesting topic. Anything that inspires people to chat it up is good, and this topic is proof of that.

Change for HZO, well I would find a way to make it so their is no delay in loading. Right now there is a huge pause I do not find in most other websites. Maybe take some of those links off the front page and create another page for them.

Sauces, well I am always doing reviews so right now I am polishing off some sauces pre-move, but the go to right now are:

1- All Spice Cafe’s Cayenne Habanero
2- CaJohn’s 10
3- M & D’s Ring of Fire XX Habanero

Comment fired by Buddah — July 23, 2008- 9:06 pm

Dang! I really thought this would get a few more people commenting.

Comment fired by Sam — July 24, 2008- 11:35 am

I’d buy HZOB T-shirts.

Comment fired by Sam — July 24, 2008- 11:41 am

“Is it okay for manufacturers to review products? Why/why not?”
Sure, as long as they are not reviewing their own stuff. As to why, we’ll just say, I litterally can not count how many times a sauce maker said, “My sauce is the best!”

“If you could change one thing about the HZOB, what would it be?”
I WANT A T-SHIRT!

“What are the top 3 sauces you are eating right now?”
El Yucateco XXXHot, Bent’s Pain 2 Batch 2(ish), Defcon Condition 1 (still the best wing sauce I’ve ever eaten). And yes, I am literally EATING THEM RIGHT NOW.

“Can you describe briefly what each one tastes like?”
That’s what my reviews are for

Comment fired by Jonathan Passow — July 24, 2008- 7:18 pm