Lane's BBQ Pineapple Chipotle
Background
At the start of his career, Ryan Lane bounced around from one customer service industry to another—car salesman, realtor, mortgage sales, and insurance. In his last gig in insurance he began to use the love of barbecue and grilling that he developed in college to feed his co-workers and clients and it finally clicked that his love for connecting with people was most meaningfully made through cooking. So he quit his insurance job and began slinging cue next to a farmstead he and his family frequented. He found quick success there, but a permitting issue forced him to stop and he decided to lean into catering, finding a space in Bethlehem, GA to cook out of. After about a year and half of that, Ryan saw a need to expand the business and started to craft his own rubs, which took off and allowed him to further grow Lane's in staff, products, and reach. Now the brand boasts five unique sauces, twenty rubs, and a variety of other spices, seasonings, marinades and more, plus offers co-packing services. Lane's products are available online, in stores all over the United States, and also internationally.
Aroma
A sweet and extra fruity aroma fills the nose on first whiff with the fruit being pretty clearly a tomato and pineapple combo. There's also a lot of depth with an upfront savoriness, molasses tilt to the sweetness, smokiness, and slight tartness. A deeper inhale starts to bring extra complexity into focus with the standard onion and garlic duo and then pepper adding that telltale tingle on the nose that lets you know there's going to some heat in the taste.
Thickness & Texture
While this semi-glossy sauce has a dark maroon hue and is mostly opaque, you can still see a ton of spices that come in medium black and white bits along with smaller red ones. These spices add a slight texture to the sauce that sits just about in the center of the thickness scale and has a consistency like thinned ketchup. The sauce falls from a spoon in a very fast pour that quickly turns into numerous medium drips and ends with five or so slower and smaller ones. Once the sauce is done releasing, a thin coating is left on the spoon and in it you can see even more spices.
Out of the Jar
The initial taste has a very common sweet tomato and molasses flavor, but as the sauce settles on the tongue, it turns more unique with tastes of pineapple and soy sauce adding depth, saltiness, and savoriness. Next, vinegar takes the edge off the sugar, but doesn't obliterate it, setting the stage for the smoky chipotle to be easily discerned. At first the heat of the peppers is kept in check and other spices can be tasted, but as the sauce starts to exit the mouth the heat of the chipotles takes hold, the vinegar increases, and the fruits and sugars persist, creating a well balanced and full bodied barbecue aftertaste.
Slathered & Cooked
This sauce brushed onto the chicken in a thin and even layer that set very well over indirect heat and then had no sauce loss over direct heat. There was a medium amount of caramelization with no burning at all. The first few bites were all sweet tomato, but then pineapple and soy sauce worked their way in after that. A couple more bites released the chipotles and spices, accounting for all the flavors that could be tasted straight out of the jar. The peppers never got quite as spicy, but by the time the leg was done there was a very good balance between heat, sweet, smoky, fruity, and tangy.
Put to Use
I initially rated this sauce highly when I first tasted it because it delivered a great progression and depth of flavor with deft inclusion of the pineapple and chipotle components. Then when going to write up this review, I bumped it up even further because it accomplished something that, looking back at all my reviews, not many sauce achieve—a full accounting of all flavors both on and off the grill. There have been a few other fruits sauces that hit my palate in a better way, but I can't deny that this is an incredibly well crafted barbecue sauce that strikes a great balance, wide range of flavors, and excellent performance on the grill, making it deserving to be in the top ranks in my mind. The flavor is strong, but not overdone, making it well suited for almost any use. It certainly added a ton of flavor to my chicken, but it's likely strong enough to go up against hearty meats like ribs, burger, brisket, etc. This sauce left me with a strong desire to keep exploring the robust line of Lane's sauces, so expect to see more of them here in the future.
