Butterfly Bakery of Vermont – Red Ghost Reaper Hot Sauce

Back again with another sauce review from one of my favorite sauce companies, Butterfly Bakery of Vermont. This features the hottest sauce in their stable, the Red Ghost Reaper.

One of the things I most like about Butterfly Bakery of Vermont is that they source almost all of their ingredients from local farms. Not only is that wonderful for supporting smaller farms, it also means that they have access to the highest quality of ingredients available at the peak of their seasons.

This sauce sits right at the edge of extremely-hot and that rarified tier of super-hot sauces. It’s also very straightforward when it comes to ingredients, featuring just four: Carolina Reaper peppers, vinegar, red ghost peppers, and salt. This sauce is all about taking the highest quality super-hot peppers that Butterfly Bakery of Vermont could find and letting them shine.

This is a beautiful expression of pure chile flavor. The reapers dominate the flavor profile, bringing their characteristic slightly astringent bite but mixed with ripe fruity flavors and a floral aroma, then backed up with the tang of the vinegar, and the ghost peppers playing a background role and just filling in the bottom end of the flavor profile with their earthier smokier flavors compared to the brighter reapers.

This sauce really lets me enjoy the flavor of the Carolina Reaper in a way that I haven’t before. Oftentimes that pepper can take on an acrid taste due to it’s insanely high capsaicin content, but in this sauce it actually tastes like the fruit that it is (though obviously a brutally hot and painful fruit) with a bright fresh flavor.

Many sauces that feature Carolina Reapers load up with other ingredients to try to manage the heat or mask the natural pepper flavor which some won’t care for. This lets that natural pepper flavor shine and becomes a celebration of the local pepper harvest. I found this was a great pairing with steak, chicken, sandwiches, or anywhere else I wanted a ton of flavorful heat.

If you’d like to try an extremely hot but extremely tasty ode to the pure unadulterated taste of super-hot chiles, this is a must-try sauce.

Ingredients: Red Fire Farm Reaper peppers, Artesano organic white vinegar, Dutchess Farm red ghost peppers, salt.

Heat Level: 8/10. This is an extremely hot sauce, with Carolina Reapers being the first ingredient and ghost peppers the third, this sauce packs a big punch. Use with caution.