INTRODUCTION: I love hot sauces. Been having them for years. Still cannot find one that’s too hot. That doesn’t stop me from trying to, though. So, we go to things labeled with the Carolina Reaper to find something extremely hot, right?

Smell: very sweet, hint of spice and slight vinegar.

TASTE: very sweet, garlic and lime are accounted for. Small amount of vinegar, basically it’s a more refined Franks Red Hot. Taste great! No hint of the Reaper flavor though.

HEAT: ? Still trying to find it myself. I went through the bottle and not a single bit of heat to speak of. If you’re gonna call something a hot sauce, you might want the hot to actually be in there. Even for a rookie to hot sauce this is manageable I am sure. I had lower level hot sauces or hot items to ensure my tolerance wasn’t the issue and sure enough, that’s not the problem.

Conclusion: So is this something to be thankful for? In terms of flavor, yea. Fantastic sweet taste and mildly complex, it makes a lot of things more flavorful. That said, the lack of heat, especially something bearing the Reapers name, should not be so timid. When it was a couple bucks, it would of be four stars, but with no heat and a cost of something, that for a few bucks more, you could go to heatonist.com and buy something equally as good with a burn, this is docked a couple stars.

3 out of 5