This is my go-to hot mustard. Satisfyingly sinus-searing.
I grew up with nothing but yellow. Yellow, yellow, yellow, all day, every day. Never knew any brown or spicy mustards.
I think I tried them for the first time around age 22 or so. Didn’t like it at all. Hard pass for me…
But I did go back to them over the years and…since then… I do think they are good on SOME stuff. My tastes softened towards them some, I can bear them at least.
But me? Dammit, when I was a kid we were GIVEN FRENCHES OR PLOCHMANS (this one more often than not) AND WE LIKED IT.
My wife and I have settled on a half dozen to simplify. Tapatio and Cholula for taco and burrito like things (eggs sometimes), Franks for pizza, Siracha for Asian soups, and Marie Sharp’s for everything else.
For me, it’s probably Valentina, Tapatio, and Cholula as a general-purpose Mexican-style hot sauce. I don’t know if I have strong preferences among those, but Valentina is what I use the most. Franks is for Buffalo wings pretty much exclusively. I’m a fan of Tabasco, yes, over Crystal, so I use that a lot for when I want vinegar and funk. (But I usually have some Crystal around, too.) So bean soups, chili, pizza. Secret Aardvark Habanero, El Yucateco (red, green, and Carribean), Yellowbird Habanero when I want Habanero-type flavors. And I love the Yellowbird serrano for when I want the flavor of green hot peppers. I like Marie Sharps, but also Melinda’s Ghost Pepper or Scorpion when I want a bit more heat. Sriracha I can live without, but I have it in my collection. For soups, I generally use my homemade Sichuan chili oil, or I also like the Fly By Jing products.
I tend to use dry mustard for recipes and salad dressings. Never thought to make mustard from the powder. I also keep a tin of Chinese hot mustard powder, but it sounds like I could potentially use Coleman’s for that. Good to know. With the Chinese variety, I’ve never added vinager, nor have I ever tasted vinegar in a Chinese hot mustard.
My go-to for sandwiches, hot dogs and stuff like that is Boar’s Head deli mustard. It has horseradish and wine in it and is delicious.
I enjoy hot mustard, but my most used mustard is still Maille, which has wine and a variety of delicious flavours - tarragon, horseradish, old fashioned seedy, etc. If I want heat it generally comes from other added ingredients: chili crisp, chilies, Valentina, spicy peppers, etc.
If you ever see this one around, try it. It’s my favorite brown mustard from when I first had it in the 80s. It may be regional, but I’d definitely look out for it. I wouldn’t call it particularly “spicy,” but it’s got some kick and just a wonderful balance of vinegar and spices. (It does not have wine in it, so if you’re looking for that, maybe this isn’t the right one. I don’t really like wine-y mustards much myself.). If it’s not this one, then I like the Löwensenf German mustards:
Sorry, man, but that shit was disgusting. I had it … twice. Once in which I gagged and then another just to verify it wasn’t as bad as I actually thought it was and that I had just imagined it.
Nope. I hadn’t. Ugh.
Acquired taste, I guess.
Really? It’s pretty middle of the road flavorwise for a brown mustard, just finely tuned. There’s nothing unexpected in it. It’s in the same general style as Gulden’s or Koop’s. What didn’t you like about it? It seems to win competitions all the time, so can’t be that acquired a taste. Now Colman’s I can see being an acquired taste. Or any Dijon style mustard.
I think the main problem was… it didn’t taste like mustard, IMO. Not at all. I had run out of my usual yellow and figured I’d try that. Ugh, nope. Not a good substitute.
I like/want my usual yellow.
Do you like brown mustard? There’s a reason I specifically recommended it as a brown mustard,
Apparently not.
That was the first brown mustard I ever tasted.
Since then, though, I have had other spicy, brown mustards. All have been okay. But that one you suggested…it was, by far, the worst.
But that’s me. Brown mustard lovers may love it. I’m sorry for pooh poohing on your suggestion and saying it didn’t taste good, I shouldn’t have done it on second thought.
That’s fine. It’s just a head scratcher for me as I don’t think there’s anything about it that would be out of stylistic bounds for a mainstream brown mustard. Like the ones I named are all in the same ballpark. This one is perhaps tangier. The one I find odd is the Cleveland ballpark mustard—can’t remember the brand. It wasn’t bad, but there was something about it I wasn’t fond of.
Bertman’s is the original, but there’s another brand (can’t remember the name) that’s almost (but not quite) as good.
And I still say that it’s the best mustard ever.
Yeah, it was Bertman’s I ordered.