Brownwood Farms Ghost Pepper BBQ Sauce
Background
Brownwood Farms was birthed by the DeTar family from their property in Northern Michigan called Brownwood Acres. The DeTar's have been there since the 1920's, but the Brownwood Farms brand came into being in the early 2000's for selling jarred goods. Mismanagement and a bitter legal battle by competing owners ended with the sale of the company to the Ohio based Milo's Whole World Gourmet, who revitalized the brand while also changing many of the original recipes and expanding the offerings. Currently Brownwood Farms has seven unique barbecue sauces along with a variety of other products like ketchups, mustards, salsas, and more.
Aroma
A deep tomato character with a touch of molasses is the first thing to greet you in the aroma of this sauce. While molasses is present, it's notable that there isn't much sweetness, either hinting at a low sugar content or enough peppers to mask the sweet elements. A deeper whiff brings vinegar clearly into the forefront, while garlic and onion sits beyond that along with a less common component that I knew was bourbon from the sauce's label rather than the smell. There's only the faintest tingle on the nose, which lets me know there will be some heat, but from the aroma alone, you don't get the intensity of ghost peppers.
Thickness & Texture
This ketchup-red sauce is opaque, semi-glossy, and only a few black specs of spices can be seen within. The sauce is medium-thick with a tomato paste like texture and consistency. From a suspended spoon, the sauce falls in one large drip at first, then a couple slow, smaller ones, and ceases from there, leaving a thick coating of sauce left adhered to the silverware.
Out of the Jar
In line with the aroma, the first taste is like a spoon of tomato paste with a little molasses mixed in, although with minimal sweetness. As the sauce settles on the tongue, tastes of garlic, onion, and smoke make fleeting appearances as the ghost pepper kicks in quickly. From then on, the pepper masks most other flavors except a lingering tomato, which does get drowned out by the time the sauce exits the mouth, leaving an intensely spicy aftertaste.
Slathered & Cooked
The sauce brushed onto the chicken in a medium and uneven layer that also set unevenly over indirect heat. Without full setting, there was higher than normal sauce loss when the leg was moved over the more intense direct heat, while the sauce that stayed put picked up some caramelization only in the spots where the sauce was the thickest. The first couple bites had the deep tomato flavor I was expecting, but with a little bump in the sweetness that made the molasses have more presence. By the third bite though, the peppers were the dominant trait from there on out. While certainly incredibly hot, the little added sweetness made it so it wasn't impossible to finish eating the entire leg.
Put to Use
I do these sauce reviews in batches, and I make the spicy sauces the last ones I try because the heat can sometimes throw off the taste buds. I originally had this sauce second to last the day I was doing my testing, but immediately switched it to last after the first spoonful released such a strong heat that it gave me hiccups almost immediately. I do love a spicy sauce, but this one felt like it moved into the category where you'd eat it mainly to challenge yourself to see if you could handle the heat. The barbecue profile tasted quality, but wasn't super complex and was fleeting anyway, making it a pretty auxiliary feature. Because of these traits, this wouldn't be a sauce I would personally reach for, but if you are looking to see if you can handle a barbecue sauce that reaches the top tiers of spicy, this could be for you. Just know that whatever you put it on, you're going to be tasting mouth scorching ghost pepper more than anything else.
