That day would be September 14, 2006.

Here is some The Backstory for you:

The Backstory

I’ve been growing quite the hot sauce collection at my desk at work. It is currently up to 19 sauces. I get most of them from Bay Cities Deli which is right down the street and has a wide selection.

One day last week I went uber-extreme for the first time and bought a $10, 4oz bottle of “Da Bomb: Ground Zero”. Da Bomb makes three sauces, and Ground Zero is the middle of the three. The “mildest” (if you can call it that, which you definitely cannot) is “Beyond Insanity”, and the most brutal is “Final Answer” ($40 a bottle).

So anyway, I taste a half-drop of Ground Zero, and it is brutal. I spontaneous get up, leave the room, and start walking around the office, with no particular place to go. But I’m on fire, and am seeing stars.

Good stuff.

The Story

Anyhows, since then I’ve been systematically upping my tolerance, and decided to hit Bay Cities again for a couple new “extreme” sauces. (“Extreme” sauces are those for which the primary heat component is pepper extract, rather than actual chiles. In this way, the heat is concentrated to levels previously unheard of.) I got Dave’s Insanity, which I’d tried many years ago and which I’d feared ever since, and the aforementioned Da Bomb: Beyond Insanity. It actually didn’t occur to me until I reached the checkout aisle the humor of buying both Insanity and Beyond Insanity in the same purchase.

I went back to my desk, and made a cheese sandwich. I took half, and slathered one of the pieces of bread with the Dave’s Insanity, which in its day was far and away the hottest thing on Earth, but since then had been far surpassed by other “extremer” extreme sauces.

It was hot. Very hot.

But… edible! And I got through the whole half sandwich without having any particular sort of conniption, and life was good. I’d conquered Dave’s Insanity, after 15 years!

So I turned to Beyond Insanity, which I was no longer particularly afraid of, since 1) I had just eaten Dave’s with no particularly harsh effects, and 2) it was supposedly half the heat level of Ground Zero, which I’d already tasted and survived the previous week.

So I shmeared that shit on the other half of the sandwich, and went to town.

GAAAK!!!

That was a spicy meatball. About halfway through I was gagging acid and running around the office sweating and hoping to avoid being seen. Then I went back and finished the sandwich. I actually dipped it into one of my other sauces, just hoping to cool it down. Specious logic, but I was willing to try anything. Holy crap, was that hot. You know why? Because half the heat level of INFINITE HEAT is still INFINITE HEAT. Yowza.

It was truly: beyond insanity.

But the burn cooled eventually, and I sat triumphant. Good times. Love the hot sauces.

Flash forward to seven hours later, when I leave the office and head up to visit savvyraven, and go with her to the Big Brother wrap party (where I met lots of famous people I’ve never heard of!) Wow. Just, wow.

As I begin my trek down the 10, it starts. A low, dull ache somewhere deep within my gastrointestinal system. Felt something like between a need to puke and a need to grow a tail. With just a little bit of plain old pain. But it’s low, and it’s dull, and it grows a little to medium-low and medium-dull, and maybe at its zenith it’s graduated to significant discomfort, but that fades eventually, and within ten minutes, I’m back to normal.

Ha! That lunch was catching up with me! Thank goodness that’s over, though. Not too bad, and well worth the good times I’d had.

I turn onto the 405.

This is when it occurs to me, I’d had the Dave’s half of the sandwich… then waited a while… and then had Da Bomb half.

And that’s when it hit.

The low, dull aching was nowhere to be seen. A dagger, bathed in hot sauce, stabbed me with great malice and vigor right in my gut. It twisted and turned. It’s steely sharp edge turning my insides to tartare.

It hurt. A lot. And as I descended the grade that separates the Valley from the Santa Monica bay area, I realized I was breathing very heavy, trying to withstand the agony. Breathing too heavily. Hyperventilating.

And the sounds of the highway were replaced by a high ringing sound. And my hands gripped ever tighter the steering wheel, for they too were going numb. Getting dizzy. Getting faint…

This is too perfect, I thought. I was going to pass out on the freeway. Killed by hot sauce. Poetic.

Unable to think of anything but stopping the car, I urgently made my way over to the very next exit, pulled off, found a side street, parked, put the seat back, and just died. My hands were completely numb. I fumbled unsuccessfully for the phone to call savvyraven to let her know I’d be a few minutes late. Lights and sounds swirled around in an acid dream jumble. This was the end of my life.

But, as is always the case with hot sauces, no matter how powerful, 15 minutes later, it’s all over. My circulation came back, my breathing slowed. I could feel the steering wheel in my hand, and the sweat dripping off the top of my head.

It smelled funny.

I fired the car back up, and headed on to my evening engagement. But the rest of the night, milling with CBS executives and dodging supermodels to get to the buffet, I could not escape the thought… The thought that:

THIS WAS THE DAY I WAS NEARLY KILLED BY HOT SAUCE!

Sauce: JOLOKIA HAVOC
By: DANNY CASH
Website: http://dannycash.com

Jolokia. The word strikes fear and desire into the hearts and minds of any fan of capsaicin, any hot food enthusiast. The mysterious pepper, discovered a couple years ago and found to be, by far, the hottest chile on earth, eclipsing the previous record holder, the habanero, by nearly a factor of three. Known as “Naga Jolokia”, “Bhut Jolokia”, or sometimes the “Ghost Pepper”, one word is enough to say all that needs to be said. Jolokia.

That being said, I had yet to actually taste it when I arrived in Colorado. Perusing our local hippie grocery store, I picked up a bottle of “Gilberto’s Gourmet Goodness’ Zesty Cayenne” sauce, I took it home, sampled it, and immediately fell in love. This will be an upcoming review, but suffice it to say I was so impressed that I immediately contacted the maker herself to express my appreciation. Imagine my surprise when she wrote back, expressing hers in kind, and then telling me all about their operation in Fort Collins. An in with the local hot sauce guys! Awesome.

I mentioned later that their other sauce (Habanero/Garlic) reminded me of Danny Cash’s Bottled Up Anger, which was always one of my very favorites from back when I became a serious hot sauce nerd. Another surprise, she said Danny was one of their best friends. ANOTHER surprise, Danny is local too, right up the road a few miles in good ol’ Englewood, Colorado!

Well, knowing that I’d be supporting a local product, I went right onto Danny’s website and pretty much bought everything in the store. Another Bottled Up Anger. The habanero-laden Radical Heat. The Smokin’ Tailpipe chipotle sauce.

And then I saw it. A 5oz flask of Jolokia Havoc. Nothing but jolokia, and a little vinegar and salt. This was it. This was what I’d been waiting for.

The package arrived, and I frantically, like an obsessed pit bull, rummaged through the box to find the flask. I peeled off the plastic wrapper, and then went about opening the flask. This proved to hurt just as much as the sauce would later, as the flask is, while cool, a real piece of shit, that required me to get pliers out to unscrew the damn cap.

Finally, though, I dug and scratched my way in there, and shook out about a dime-sized dollop onto a corn chip. Within a half-second, I just launched the damn thing into my mouth.

And…

Hmm. Nothing. I was braced, both mentally and physically, for a searing blast of horrific heat which would knock me back into the corner of the kitchen counter, cause me to tumble over, likely crack my head on the pantry door, and then bleed to death while the tarantulas giggled to themselves in their little plastic cups. But it didn’t come.

And I waited, and waited, and… after about 30 seconds of waiting, I realized that in my fear of the heat, I had overlooked one really amazing thing about this sauce, this homage to the jolokia legend — it tasted fantastic! An indescribable deep, rich earthiness, with even a touch of smoke, and even a hint of sweetness, provided maybe the best balance in a 1-ingredient hot sauce I’d ever experienced. Right then, I fell in love.

And right after, the jolokia decided it was done waiting, and kicked into high gear. I’ve never had a sauce with that long a build. Not even close. I would say it didn’t hit full strength until at least a minute after I bit into it. But when it gets there, you know it, and if you’re like me, you’ll love it, and just sit there with a goofy grin on your sweating, red-hued face.

I am addicted to this sauce, in love with the Jolokia, and cannot thank Danny Cash, and the fine folks at Gilberto’s for paving the way for me to enjoy it.

I give Jolokia Havoc:

A million whimpering losers crying out, and then suddenly silenced!

As you know, over the past few years I have undertaken a substantial research project, at no small cost to myself in terms of both dollars and horrific intestinal pain, to determine the world’s best hot sauce.

I have traveled land and sea far and wide, have suffered agony worldwide in my attempt to sample and record every possible variety and flavor of hot sauce, so that one day I might come back here and reveal to you all what the very best hot sauce that has ever been invented by man is.

That day is today.

I have been everywhere, and have tasted hot sauces both mild and searing, sweet and biting, obscure and ubiquitous. No pepper has gone ignored, from the serrano to the habanero, jalapeno, fataali, naga jolokia, pequin, to the lowly cayenne. I have ingested capsaicin-based products from every corner of the world.

So, ladies and gentleman, if I say I’m a hot sauce man, you will agree.

And now… the best hot sauce in the world. 

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