Bear & Burton’s – Special Reserve Everyday Hot Sauce
Bitter: 🟡○○○○
Salty: 🟡 🟡○○○
Sour/Tangy:🟡🟡🟡🟡○
Sweet: 🟡○○○○
Umami: 🟡○○○○
Heat: 🟡○○○○○○○○○
Quick Flavor Notes: Tangy, Garlicky, Black Peppery
Recommended: Yes
Texture: Medium-thin with bits of garlic and black pepper
Ingredients: Distilled Vinegar, Cayenne Pepper Mash (Cayenne Peppers, Salt), Garlic (Garlic, Water, Citric Acid), Spices, Paprika, Black Pepper, Xanthan Gum
Bear & Burton’s was born in 2020 through the collaboration of Burton Young, a St. Petersburg, FL native and Matt “Bear” Holeman a fishing charter captain from Key West. The company’s original product was their W Sauce, their take on a Worcestershire sauce based on Young’s family recipe and originally bottled as a pandemic-era project to help occupy time and offset losses from declines in the fishing charter business due to Covid-related restrictions. Since then the company has branched out with other sauces including their Fireshire spicy Worcestershire sauce and several hot sauces including their red and green Breakfast Sauces and this, their Everyday Sauce. While their Breakfast Sauce contains Datil peppers, something I like, it also contains a lot of sugar and other ingredients that will mask the flavor of the Datils, something I don’t. Thus I decided to try out their most straightforward sauce first, their Special Reserve Everyday Sauce.
The concept of an every day sauce typically lends towards a more universal flavor profile than many of the more creative small batch hot sauces I typically buy. That’s not necessarily a bad thing however and I do always keep around a few bottles of Louisiana style sauces simply because they can go with anything and add nothing more than pepper flavor, salt, and acidity. Bear & Burton’s Special Reserve Everyday Hot Sauce is a bit more complex than a typical Louisiana style sauce with the addition of garlic, black pepper, paprika, and unnamed other spices though it is still a cayenne based sauce. The cayenne peppers being listed as a mash does imply that there was some fermentation applied as is typical of common cayenne pepper sauces (though many list them as aged peppers). The “Special Reserve” moniker does seem a bit suspect to me however, especially given that this uses a prepared garlic product instead of fresh garlic given the presence of the parenthetical additives, and that leads me to believe they’re also using a pre-prepared cayenne mash instead of doing this in-house in a small batch style. Given that the label also states that this is “Made for” Old Florida Sauce Co (the parent company of Bear & Burton’s) it’s likely that this is made by a co-packer, and there’s a wide range of quality when it comes to those.
Bear & Burton’s Special Reserve Everyday Hot Sauce is medium-thin in consistency but it does have bits of garlic and spices floating in the sauce which is always a big plus. It does come with an orifice reducer which I removed as I like to make sure the bits of the sauce can all flow out. As is expected of this style it’s very vinegar-forward though unfortunately the distilled vinegar Bear & Burton’s used is especially harsh and offers more bite than subtlety. On the positive front the garlic and black pepper are both prominent in the flavor profile and I’ve always loved a hot sauce with a strong garlic presence. Also, while not as black-peppery as something like Scorned Woman it’s present enough to add that piperine kick which of course goes great with almost any food. The cayenne flavor is also quite nice and on par with what you’d expect from hot sauces like Louisiana and Crystal. I don’t get much paprika flavor in this, though the label doesn’t mention if it’s smoked paprika or not, so perhaps it was just added for color and not to add a smoky flavor profile. Heat level is mild again as expected from the style, sitting about on par with Crystal, Louisiana, Frank’s Red Hot, etc.
The beauty of a sauce like this is that it does, in fact, go well with almost anything. There’s enough acidity at play that it’s great in creamy soups like clam chowder, in which I enjoyed it, as well as on other creamy and rich dishes like creamed chipped beef on toast and macaroni and cheese where it also played extremely well. In fact I found that the harsh vinegar bite was much more tolerable when combined with food than when eating it straight. Bear & Burton’s Special Reserve Everyday Hot Sauce also had applications outside of creamy rich foods. I found it to go great with some frozen chili-cheese burritos even though there aren’t any traditional Mexican flavors in this sauce other than the garlic. This is, of course, also great with breakfast foods, and though I haven’t tried their breakfast sauce yet, I imagine this is even a better pairing as it lacks the heavy sweet emphasis of that sauce (speaking as someone who prefers only savory breakfast options).
While not a craft hot sauce and while the “Special Reserve” moniker is stretching things quite a bit I will give Bear & Burton’s Special Reserve Everyday Hot Sauce a recommendation because it is tasty and lives up to its name in terms of flexibility with almost any kind of application. It’s also quite affordable and at least here in Florida easily available on grocery store shelves and adds enough extra dimensions in flavor that it can compliment simpler Louisiana style sauces in anyone’s collection.
