Behold the new hottest thing I’ve ever eaten!
This is CaJohn’s Mongoose hot sauce. It’s Bhut Jolokia peppers, fatalii peppers, vinegar, and natural flavors (which I’m told by a reliable source includes extract, but it’s not offensive-tasting). Best estimates I’ve found of its heat level are 800,000 – 1,000,000 Scoville heat units. The hottest jalapeno is about 10,000 Scoville units. So this is 80 to 100 times hotter than that.
(And at least 160 to 200 times hotter than regular Tabasco. This sauce is very, very hot. Be careful.)
I suspected it would be formidable, but I also had high hopes for its taste. I’m ambivalent about the Bhut Jolokia’s flavor straight, but I love the almost delicate citrus notes of the fatalii.
Indeed, it tastes good. It’s not quite as fruity as Predator Great White or the Heartbreaking Dawns scorpion sauce, but it has a satisfying botanical and earthy sweetness about it.
It claims to take you up slowly and bring you down slowly, and I can confirm. I never thought “I have made a mistake.” I did wonder once “OK, I wonder if it’s almost done climbing?”
It was like my heat tolerance was on the rack. I thought “wow, that’s intense,” and then it went up a bit more. The front half of my tongue was blazing. I had a solid sheen of sweat on my forehead, and I could feel rivulets of it down the back of my neck.
I tried a goodly drop of it straight. It’s quite thick—more like a salsa than a sauce. It’s easy to see that this is mostly superhot chile peppers by weight. Then, I ate it with spaghetti pie for dinner.
I’m so pleased that I’m continuing to find complex and interesting flavor even this far up the heat scale. I was confident I could handle it, but I was afraid I’d say “yeah, I’ll use this just to heat things up with a drop or two.” Instead I’m pleased to report that I’ll use this one for its own inherent taste.
It’s good. But I must say again: if you think regular Tabasco or canned jalapenos are hot, stay away from this. If you’re blazing at that heat level, then this is unfathomable.
7/10
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