Hot Drops – Fres-yes
Bitter: ⭐✰✰✰✰
Salty: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Sour/Tangy: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✰
Sweet: ⭐✰✰✰✰
Umami: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Heat: ⭐✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
Quick Flavor Notes: Sour, tangy, fruity, earthy
Texture: Thin with visible seeds and pepper bits
Recommended: Yes
Ingredients: Fresno Peppers, Water, Vinegar, Garlic, Salt, Ghost Peppers, and Xanthan Gum
I first learned of Hot Drops from Gordon Ramsay’s Food Stars television show. The owner of this brand was a runner-up during the second season (where he was robbed, beaten out by some girl making cheap wine marketed towards Gen-Z). Based out of Sonoma County, CA Hot Drops began after the owner Andrew Whiting began experimenting with fermenting during the pandemic and discovered he had an affinity to doing it with peppers. Made small batch with Sonoma County ingredients all of Hot Drops’ products are fermented.
Starting out with Fresno peppers, always a favorite because of their simultaneously fruity and earthy flavor, this sauce also includes water (which I’m assuming is actually the fermenting brine) vinegar and garlic. This also includes ghost peppers which the bottle says are charred before being added to the mix to mellow the flavor. Xanthan gum is also added but it appears it’s a very small quantity because this sauce is still on the thin side when it comes to consistency. On the positive side it does contain quite a big of seeds and pepper bits, something I always love to see. The aroma is full of fermented funkiness with underlying notes of pepper.
The fermented flavor is strong from the outset with Hot Drop Fres-Yes. I’ve had plenty of other fermented sauces in the past but I can’t recall one that had this strong of a lactic acid flavor. It’s a very sour and tangy sauce, and that’s coming almost entirely from the fermentation brine and very little from the vinegar in terms of the flavor profile. The Fresnos are the dominant pepper flavor in the sauce and Fresnos are delicious. There is a fruity flavor that comes through the funk as well that earthy-vegetal Fresno flavor. What I don’t get at all is ghost pepper flavor, or ghost pepper heat for that matter. There’s perhaps just a hint of smoky coming from the ghosts but I’d have to concentrate very hard to pick it out. The garlic comes through a bit more but this isn’t a super-garlicky sauce, just enough to give the flavor some additional depth. The heat of this sauce is minimal – perhaps even less than popular Louisiana style sauces like Crystal or Louisiana, but the flavor is solid, if more heavily leaning into the lactic acid funk than pepper flavor.
Fresno peppers do seem to be chameleons that can go with any type of food so I found this sauce versatile. The strong sour and tangy flavors worked well with a variety of foods, even acidic ones since the acidity of this sauce is quite different from a typical vinegar-forward sauce. I loved this on pasta for instance, added both to a piccata where it blended beautifully with the acidity from the lemon and capers, and in a fra diavolo where it added complexity to the one-note heat that usually comes from the crushed red pepper used in the dish. This is also excellent on sandwiches with its great tang as well as in ramen where the funky lactic flavors add depth.
I can recommend Hot Drop Fres-Yes, especially if you love strong fermented flavors in your hot sauces. While the heat on this one is minimal the flavor is solid and seems to have an especially strong pairing affinity with Italian foods which is something of a rarity with hot sauces.
