A sauce that I bought one time and loved was calledDa’ Bomb.
At just under 120k scoville units, it could only be used very sparingly. A drop on a cracker was way too much pain to enjoy, but a toothpick dipped in and spread in a very fine line along the inside of the tortilla was wonderful. A drop to a large batch of buffalo wings made them delicious.
I truly became addicted to the flavor of this sauce and have grown to love the flavor of habeneros. You just have to be really, really, careful. You can seriously regret overindulgence.
And never give this stuff to someone who doesn’t expect what is coming. I’ve seen it happen before and there really isn’t anything funny about it.
I got the Da’Bomb in my eye once. It was still on my hands from having a Da’Bomb contest. Most drops on a chip won. I won the contest, but now I know what real pain feels like.
I must be missing something because I’ve had Dave’s Insanity and it didn’t do much for me (I like very spicy food, far spicier than many people can stand).
The hottest commercial stuff that I’ve had is the aptly named “The Hottest Fucking Sauce” - http://www.firegirl.com/hs1172hf.html. A friend was given a bottle as a gag gift and after a year of him joking about it I cracked it open one time while a bunch of us were having breakfast at his place and put several shakes on my hashbrowns.
Scorching. My tongue was burning for a good 30 minutes and it immediately gave me the hiccups. I’ll still have a drop or two when I’m in the mood but I’m prepared for it now.
I’ve seen other hot sauces including those pure capsaicin ones (that seems to be pushing things a bit, why eat pepper spray?) but haven’t tried anything as hot as THFS yet, although several came close.
It sounds like with all these incredibly hot sauces, you only need a drop to experience the effect, or maybe a couple drops when adding to a large recipe like chili. How do these ultra hot sauces stay in business when people are using so little of their product? Are they counting on people being so surprised by the scorching heat that the bottles are dropped on the floor and broken?
A lot of them are made in vey small batches. The hottest ones are sometimes limited to 999 and hand-numbered. Even that Mad Dog Inferno (150,000 SU) hot sauce that I have is way to hot to ever use in any quantity. It is the size of a large Tabasco bottle and you can only use drops at a time on the rare occasion that you want to ruin the next hour or so. I assume they depend on people buying it for the novelty value. Repeat business can’t be that high.
I agree that they’re probably bought mostly for novelty value rather than for serious, regular consumption.
I did find that the Endorphin Rush I had for a time was a useful way to add MEGA HEAT to a recipe very quickly but it didn’t add much flavor. There are better ways to add heat - even intense heat - to recipes while still making it flavorful. I’m particularly fond of canned chipotles.
I put Blair’s Mega Death on my morning bacon-egg-cheddar sandwich, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoonful total. A $12 bottle lasts me just short of a year. There are probably also a lot of people who buy his hot sauces as novelty items and don’t intend to actually consume it. (No doubt particularly true of the 3/4/5 AM refined-chemic ampules). I suspect Mssr. Blair does OK profit-wise.