My dream is to change the hot sauce industry by veering towards a new kind of hot sauce: a collectible hot sauce.
At this moment I have ten gallons of pure cane vinegar aging inside of a freshly dumped, single-use bourbon barrel. I am making the FIRST bourbon barrel aged vinegar hot sauce. This isn't sauce that has added bourbon. This isn't sauce with peppers fermented in a barrel. All of that has been done before. No, this is something different: I am patiently waiting for TIME to give this vinegar all the nuance and sweetness from the barrel.
I believe that this flavorful hot sauce will usher in a new way of interacting with hot sauce. By "collectible" hot sauce, I mean treating hot sauce as something precious and special. For us, hot sauce is a culinary experience to share with your friends. It's something to collect with pride. It will come in limited batches.
Just like how the best bourbon is made in small batches, and even single barrel batches, I want to make premium hot sauces with meticulous care, never cutting corners. The name of this premium bottle of hot sauce is "Seven Gables." There will be runs of production with limited amounts, creating exclusivity:
- Each bottle comes in a wooden box case.
- Each box will have a barrel number and batch number written by hand on the side.
- I will sign the side of every wooden box with my own hand.
I come from bourbon world. But as a dad and a business owner, I've made the decision to stop drinking. When a dad makes the decision to drink less, he still needs to collect. There's an ancient archetype of the hunter buried within me. I'm a hunter, but what do I hunt? As a kid I collected rocks and feathers, as a young man I collected watches and bourbon. But what do you collect when you stop drinking?
Well, some of us collect hot sauce.
Early on I realized how premium ingredients made a massive difference in the taste of hot sauce. Premium cane vinegar is crisp with a sweet aftertaste. It's completely different than the blandness of white distilled vinegar. I had an idea: what would happen if I put my favorite vinegar in my favorite container?
Then I could see the vision of this hot sauce.
Bourbon barrels add incredible depth to beer, wine, and other liquids. Why not vinegar. Here's part of my recipe:
- Jalapeños (which pay homage to the most popular pepper in NC)
- Bourbon barrel aged cane vinegar
- Delicious Cowhorn Cayennes (my favorite variety of cayenne with big flavor)
- Sweet onions (to give a sweet and savory base and to add thickness)
Note that there's no added dry "spices" unlike most hot sauces. This is because I want the subtlety of the vinegar to come through.
This recipe was the winner out of 8 recipes that were A/B tested with over 40 different people.
I see a future where hot sauces are about quality and flavor, not just an act of silly pain. This is the "collectible" bourbon future.
To help pre-sell the sauce, I'm offering a big discount. I'm using kickstarter in order to get the idea out to more people. The kickstarter is available until Feb. 28, 2024. Get access to a lower priced bottled today: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shelbyspice/bourbon-barrel-aged-hot-sauce-by-shelby-spice?ref=user_menu
