Barry’s Hot Sauce – Original X Reaper Edition Feature

Barry’s Hot Sauce is one of the first small-batch makers we ever reached out to and oddly enough it was around what size pot he used to cook.

That was June of 2019 and since then we’ve chatted on and off. He was one of the first people we sent sauce to outside friends and family and he gave some awesome feedback. Even for the ones he didn’t like, he let us know what about it could be improved or where it didn’t quite hit his expectations. We also chatted about starting out, how to get into commercial kitchens, etc and it was immensely helpful. I’ve done my best to follow his lead and be a resource to new makers as well, whether through this site or in person, to help bring in even more ideas to the hot sauce community. Barry’s Hot Sauce also supplies a lot of local bars and restaurants in the Boston area and gets most of their peppers from an all-organic farm in Concord, MA.

For this Too Hot Tuesday we tried out his recently released Original X – Reaper Edition, which is the Original Sauce with the habanero peppers swapped out for Carolina Reapers. Ingredients: Distilled Vinegar, Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Onion, Carolina Reaper Peppers, Lemon Juice, Garlic, Salt & Spices.

On the initial whiff, you get a bit of the heat along with a lot of the tomato. You can see a lot of specks within the bottle of sauce, an overall awesome look and a vibrant red from the Reapers, bell peppers and tomatoes.

The initial taste is a nice blend of all of the ingredients followed by a kick to the teeth of the Carolina Reaper. It’s not a “drop you to your knees” level of heat, but it gets your attention and is going to be a heftier heat than some are able to handle. As the full array of ingredients rolls around and you get some of the lemon juice to round things out, the heat continues to well. Original X lingers for a solid couple of minutes and then wanders away, leaving you to think about what you’ve just done.

Overall, this is an awesome update to the Original sauce and between the two I would likely only go for the Original X in the future, but that’s largely because I like to chase the spicy dragon and this Reaper Edition brings the heat.

Similar to our sauces, Barry’s Hot Sauces stays away from added sugars, opting for things like apples or lime juice to pull out some sweetness. He also goes light on the salt, with none of his sauces eclipsing the 15mg sodium mark. Located in Boston, Massachusetts you can find him at a broad array of farmer’s markets as they start to open back up.

Barry’s Hot Sauce just celebrated their 1-year anniversary on May 13th and since the beginning has added a new sauce, new labels and new bottles even (these now sport a bit wider mouth wide with a metal cap). Barry’s Hot Sauce currently features four sauces.

Jalapeño: One of the hotter jalapeño sauces we’ve tried and features apples and ginger to liven things up just a titch. Initially, when we had this one, it was unclear if it was hotter, or same amount of heat as the habanero from Original. Unknown, but tasty regardless. Ingredients: Distilled Vinegar, Jalapeño Peppers, Serrano Peppers, Apples, Onion, Lime Juice, Garlic, Salt, Ginger, Spices.

Original: “The one that started it all.” When we first had this one I was concerned about tomatoes being so high on the list. I’m not much of a tomato guy, but the other ingredients in this one really evened out nicely. True habanero heat that lingers a bit at the back of the throat, but won’t kill you. Ingredients: Distilled Vinegar, Tomatoes, Bell Peppers, Onion, Habanero Peppers, Lemon Juice, Garlic, Salt & Spices.

Ghost: This was the first favorite for us from Barry’s Hot Sauce. Some awesome hit of sweetness from the pineapple and lime juice with some citrus from the habaneros and then a big kick from the ghost peppers. We snagged some more of this stuff when we bought the Original X.  Ingredients: Distilled Vinegar, Bell Peppers, Onion, Pineapple, Habanero Peppers, Lime Juice, Bhut Jolokia (Ghost) Peppers, Garlic, Ginger, Salt.

What is Too Hot Tuesday? Too Hot Tuesday is a chance for us to go through new hot sauces that we dub “too hot” in heat (mostly super hot peppers), essentially doing some market research and trying new flavor profiles while also featuring another small batch hot sauce maker. Each week, Medium Monday and Too Hot Tuesday feature a small batch hot sauce maker we’ve either chatted with, admired, or noticed something cool that they were doing within the hot sauce space. These are not intended to be reviews because all sauces have different unique qualities and as creators ourselves we’d rather feature the sauce and the company instead of nitpick at where a sauce doesn’t meet a set of numbers. We’ll leave that up to the experts. Have a sauce or small batch hot sauce maker you think we should try? Let us know on Facebook, Instagram or contact us via our contact page.

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