Back in February, I had the pleasure of enjoying a dinner with John Hard (aka CaJohn) and he pulled out this “Mystery Hot Sauce” for us all to enjoy. Well, at the end of the night I snagged what was left of the bottle and trucked it back to the lab for analysis. Here’s what we have based off the meager sample I’ve been hording.

CaJohn’s Mystery Sauce Ingredients: ?

This pours to a very smoothly blended brown sauce with a decent thickness. The taste is reminiscent of a fine stake sauce so I want to say that there’s some Worcestershire Sauce, vinegar (duh), maybe a little brown sugar for sweetness (although it could be raisins, it’s hard to tell because it’s a very subtle flavor….hmmm…could be the peppers I’m tasting too, Poblano could it be?), and some garlic. Not sure I’m keen on the mouth feel with this just straight out of the bottle because it has a slight granular quality to it. But when mixed with food that goes completely away.

The heat here is a little above mild. It has a consistent mild tug similar to Poblanos but it really doesn’t increase that much. Very pleasant and accessible to those who aren’t really into hot stuff that much. I also have to comment on the lavel. This is really a snazzy looking product and has the CaJohn logo subtly printed in the background.

This was really a tricky review for me not having very much sauce left (a heaping spoonful at max) and no ingredients list to go off of. Basically, this is a really good sauce (what did you expect for the man with the most awards in the industry) that I kind of wish CaJohn would produce regularly…possibly under the guise of a stake sauce. Now that I think of it, I don’t believe CaJohn has a stake sauce in his 200+ product line up, maybe this will be the one to fill that position.

Taste: 8.7, Heat: 2

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