Butterfly Bakery of Vermont – Red Heady Craft Beer Sauce

Butterfly Bakery of Vermont makes a number of beer collaboration hot sauces. It’s a style I’m particularly fond of as there’s a natural affinity between the flavors of beer and those of spicy food, so much that they’re commonly consumed together in cultures throughout the world. This sauce is unique in the Butterfly Bakery of Vermont lineup in that it’s the 2nd sauce made from the same beer, the other being their Heady Topper Craft Beer Sauce.

The differences between the two come down to the peppers used and thus the color. The original Heady Topper sauce uses green jalapenos and thus comes off as a beer-enhanced verde style sauce. This Red Heady sauce still has some green jalapenos, but subs in red jalapenos for the primary pepper and also includes some habaneros for extra kick.

The result is a more full-flavored sauce. The ripe red jalapenos have a natural sweetness that’s a great contrast to the slightly bitter and very hoppy Heady Topper IPA beer used in the sauce. Compared to the green Heady Topper sauce I find that the beer flavor shines through more in this one because those red jalapenos have flavor profile that diverges more from the flavor of the beer than a purely green jalapeno based sauce. The habaneros included also give this sauce a little bit more of a welcome kick, and just enough salt and vinegar to give it a great tang round it out.

I enjoy IPAs as well as foods with some bitter flavors, so the more prominent beer in this sauce made me want to put it on everything. Chicken wings, egg rolls, grilled pork, eggs, sausages, micheladas, I didn’t find anything that this wasn’t amazing on. Butterfly Bakery of Vermont has a knack for making sauces that have complex flavor profiles if you dig in deep, but also have universal “it just tastes good” appeal that make them easy to pair with food.

As is expected this sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, flavorings, colors, or thickeners.

If you love beer and you love hot sauce this one is a must-get. I can recommend the green version as well so that you can taste the difference yourself, but I plan on primarily stocking this one in my collection in the future.

Ingredients: Quill Hill Farm red jalapeno, Dog River Farm green jalapeno, organic white vinegar, Heady Topper IPA, Dutchess Farm red habanero, salt.

Heat Level: 3/10. This is somewhere between a warm mild and a mild medium, there’s some heat but it’s very manageable.