Update 11/2017: It has come to our attention iZombie hot sauce is no longer available. Feel free to read our review below and don’t be afraid to try one of PuckerButt Pepper Company’s many other delicious hot sauces and pepper related products.
Original Review:
You might be surprised to discover zombies don’t have a great sense of taste. We agree. It’s hard to believe with all of the brain craving and flesh devouring. Fortunately the PuckerButt Pepper Company has created a hot sauce made with the world’s hottest pepper to liven up the palates of both the living and the walking dead: iZombie Hot Sauce.
Fans of the new zombie TV series, iZombie, on The CW will know zombies really can’t taste much their food. It turns out they prefer their food super spicy. It seems when you reanimate, your taste buds stay dead along with many other bodily functions. When it comes to zombie food, the hotter the better. That’s why iZombie’s main character, Liv, pours hot sauce on pretty much every brain themed dish she consumes.
The folks over at PuckerButt created a special iZombie themed hot sauce made with the world’s hottest peppers. When we learned of this we decided we had to get our hands on a bottle. PuckerButt sent us over a bottle for review purposes and we tore into it with the fervor of a horde of flesh starved zombies. Were we able to take the heat? Do we recommend this zombie themed hot sauce? Read on to find out!
Packaging:
Our bottle of iZombie Hot Sauce was lovingly packed in a heavy small cardboard box, wrapped with bubble wrap. Everything arrived safely in great condition.
Bottle and Label:
iZombie Hot Sauce comes in a 5 ounce glass bottle complete with a very cool iZombie themed label. The high quality label features an image of Liv holding a brain in a jar along with the iZombie logo. The bottle is so cool most fans of the show, or adorable zombies in general, won’t be able to part with it when empty.
Ingredients (Know Your Enemy):
There isn’t much left to the imagination here. The ingredients are listed as: vinegar, onions, peppers and garlic. You would think something so simple would be pretty tame. You’d be wrong. iZombie is made with the world’s hottest pepper: “The Carolina Reaper.” Yes. It is just as intense as it sounds. More on the heat later.
Appearance:
The sauce has a beautiful rich orange amber-red hue and a medium consistency. It’s not the thin watery mess you’d find with your typical cheap hot sauce but it’s also not as thick as some other sauces we tried. It’s basically the perfect consistency for you to heed the warning on the bottle: “Tread Carefully.”
The sauce is just thick enough to frustrate heat freaks. Brave souls like us wanting to bathe their food in a sea of sauce will want to remove the plastic plug from the mouth of the bottle that restricts the flow of the sauce. For all you mere mortals . . . it’s there for a reason. Baby steps my zombie friend. . . baby steps.
Aroma:
iZombie has a beautiful earthy pepper smell with just a hint of vinegar. This isn’t the pungent vinegar smell you’d associate with the cheap stuff. It smells like the quality sauce it is. It smells very similar to some of the premium ghost chili pepper hot sauces we’ve reviewed in the past. The aroma hints at some heat, but your olfactory buds alone could never fully alert you to the angry fire packed inside this little glass bottle.
Taste:
We were surprised at how sweet iZombie was. At first taste iZombie tickles your taste buds with a pleasantly sweet pepper flavor. The flavor is almost fruit-like and this sauce really does taste great. . . until the heat kicks in and obliterates your mouth with sensory overload.
Yes. iZombie Hot Sauce is HOT.
Heat:
We know. We know. You want to hear about the heat. Well, Puckerbutt knows heat. Puckerbutt Founder and President, “Smokin’ Ed” Currie developed what is now known as the world’s hottest pepper: Smokin’ Ed’s Carolina Reaper®. The pepper was awarded the Guinness World Record in November of 2013.
How hot is the Reaper? It typically measures over 1.5 million on the Scoville Heat Unit Scale but can hit peak levels over 2.2 million Scoville Heat Units.
Let’s put that in terms non pepper-nerds can understand. A jalapeño pepper typically measures anywhere from 2,000 to 8,000 on the Scoville scale. That means the Carolina reaper is usually several hundred times hotter than a jalapeño. Yep. That’s as hot as it sounds.
There’s a brief moment of bliss between the sweet savory roasted goodness of iZombie’s flavor and the heat. Enjoy that brief 15 to 30 second window; the end is near. Shortly after you find yourself thinking how unexpectedly flavorful iZombie is, the furious fire filled heat pummels your mouth.
The flavor subsides and the heat quickly begins to take over. It all starts innocently enough. It begins first as a warm tingling sensation on your tongue and in the back of your throat before rapidly building over the course of a few minutes in an angry and intense burning crescendo. Your blood vessels will dilate. Your sinuses will open. Sweat may bead on your brow and tears may form in your eyes. None of that compares to the burn.
The heat clearly lets you know Mother Nature doesn’t think people should be consuming peppers so hot. They’re hot for a reason stupid! Your mouth will burn. Oh will it burn. The burning is soon accompanied by a tingling and numbing of the lips. The intensity of these sensations depends on your heat tolerance and how much sauce you use. One thing is certain. The Reaper hangs on tight.
The burning and numbness will persist for a good 15 minutes and that’s IF you’re already accustomed to hot and spicy sauces. The Carolina Reaper® lives up to its name!
In our opinion, if you’ve braved hotter peppers like the Bhut Jolokia Ghost Pepper or the Trinidad Scorpion, you’ll conquer the heat of this sauce without much extra effort. If you’re expecting this sauce to be noticeably hotter than sauces containing the aforementioned peppers, you’ll be a little disappointed. At a certain point ridiculously hot is just ridiculously hot. Distinguishing variances at these extremes is difficult and subjective. That being said, if you consider jalapenos or habanero peppers hot, you may want to ease into this sauce on your day off.
Side Effects:
It’s not uncommon for the uninitiated to experience some side effects to a sauce this hot. Fortunately we’re fairly accustomed to hot and spicy peppers around here and we didn’t experience much in the way of side effects. Aside from 15 minutes or so of mouth numbing and mind melting heat, iZombie didn’t bite back. We experienced a pleasant warm sensation in our chest area for about 45 minutes or so. Fortunately for our friends and family, the only PuckerButt we experienced was the company’s name.
Final Rating:
4.75 out of 5
What We Love:
- Great Aroma
- Sweet Fruity Flavor
- Intense Heat
- Awesome High Quality iZombie Label
- A Little Goes a Long Way
- All Natural
- GMO, Gluten and Nut Free
Meh. (What’s Not So Hot.)
- $12.00 a Bottle (But One Bottle is sure to last you a long time.)
- HOT is HOT! If you’re expecting a HUGE increase in heat over sauces containing peppers like the Bhut Jolokia Ghost Pepper or the Trinidad Scorpion, you’ll be a little disappointed. This sauce feels hotter, but not significantly so.
Parting Thoughts:
If you like it hot we recommend picking up a bottle of iZombie from PuckerButt Pepper Company today. A 5 ounce bottle currently retails for $12.00. Aside from our reluctance to shell out $12.00 for a bottle of hot sauce (it really is worth it) there is little to complain about here. iZombie Hot sauce would make an ideal zombie gift for fans of the show or zombie fans that love their sustenance served up in a blaze of burning flavor.
About PuckerButt Pepper Company:
- For more information about PuckerButt Pepper Company visit their website today at PuckerButtPepperCompany.com
- Subscribe to PuckerButt on YouTube
- Like PuckerButt on Facebook
- Follow them on Twitter
About iZombie:
iZombie Currently airs on Tuesdays in the US at 9pm/8c on The CW. For more information visit http://www.cwtv.com/shows/izombie.
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How would i contain a bottle
You really can’t contain the heat! If you want to obtain a bottle they are available for purchase from the PuckerButt Pepper Company website/store which is linked to within the article!