Horrifying Hot Sauce always has been and always will be:

All Natural, with No Additives.
And NO AI ART.

All of our sauces are all natural, with no preservatives, emulsifiers, or additives. This means they WILL separate over time (shake before use) and the color WILL fade after it is exposed to oxygen. The sauce is the same, but it may look a little different. We'd rather have the color fade than add chemicals! And all of the art is digitally painted by Ryan using Procreate, no AI ART EVER. 

What makes horrifying hot sauce different?

Small business, small batches

Horrifying Hot Sauce is a one man band, the absolute smallest of businesses there ever could be! When you support HHS you are literally supporting my family, so thank you!

Fermentation, an artful science

Ryan starts with fresh (and frozen) peppers, vegetables, and fruits, gives them a rough chop, and places them in a brine solution. Then Ryan gives them time to mature, and over the next few weeks the naturally occurring Lactobacillus will break down the mash, giving a depth of flavor you can't get without fermenting. Then Ryan takes the fermented mash in addition to the brine it fermented in, adds additional fresh ingredients and vinegar, blends it up, cooks it, and bottles. Our sauces are pasteurized, so they are shelf and bottle stable, and will stay good (without contamination) for a very long time.

Why are the sauces fermented?

BECAUSE THEY TASTE BETTER.

From Harvard: "In addition to helping food last longer, fermentation also enhances the taste of foods, giving them added complexity. Plus, the fermentation process works other forms of magic on foods, changing them and adding nutrients. For example, by eating fermented vegetables, vegetarians can get vitamin B12, which otherwise isn't present in plant foods, says Dr. Ludwig." (Fermented foods can add depth to your diet).

Introducing the Manzaño Pepper

Many of HHS' sauces include at least a little bit of South America's Manzaño pepper (and in MoMo's case, exclusively) in the mix. This pepper family is unlike most the peppers you've tried, as they grow in colder climates, with naturally black seeds, and a healthy dose of dihydrocapsaicin.

"While other chili varieties are dominated with up to 80% by capsaicin, C. pubescens (Manzaño's family) has an almost equally high concentration of dihydrocapsaicin." (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsicum_pubescens)

This cousin to capsaicin seems to hit people different than the regular stuff - for some it's mild, for some not so much! And the flavor is unlike any other.

Other UNCommon Ingredients

Some of our favorite ingredients to use include:

• Black Garlic: Garlic that has been slow cooked for nearly two weeks, resulting in a black, molasses-flavored sweet garlic
• Chocolate Habaneros: Chocolate refers to the color not the flavor, and these habs are roasty and smoky and about twice has hot as the average hab.
• Citrus: Lemon, Lime, Blood Orange, Yuzu... we love citrus in hot sauce!
• Hibiscus: This edible flower brings flavor as well as a beautiful color to sauce.
• New Mexican Chiles: There's just something special about chiles grown in NM...
• Piloncillo Sugar: This Mexican version of brown sugar brings more molasses flavor as well as sweetness.
• Prickly Pear: As we don't use puree, this ingredient is a pain in the butt (prickly pears have big, thick, black seeds), but it's just too awesome of a flavor to NOT use it!
• Watermelon: Yes, watermelon. We use it in multiple sauces, and it's always a surprising flavor to add heat to!

Hand-made, small-batch rotating sauces

Each batch is hand cut, each pepper individually inspected, and each bottle filled all by hand. Ryan purchases the produce and processes it into your final product all by hand. Some sauces are year round, some come and go when available.

Original artwork, celebrating horror

Ryan grew up with a love of movies, especially horror. But he also grew up loving to draw, and now puts those two passions together with original art paying tribute to (mostly) horror films, both big and small.

Collaborations

With a background writing reviews for low-budget movies and craft beer, Ryan has built a network of other artists and creators to collaborate with, and has made specialty sauces for films such as The Stink of Flesh (available in the store now!) and Three Tears on Bloodstained Flesh, Die You Zombie Bastards!, and in collaboration with breweries like Weathered Souls and Monolith Brewing (available now!).

Experience

Ryan began his adventure in fermenting as a home brewer of beer, after receiving his first kit for Christmas in 2008. He brewed beer for years, and was working to open a brewpub in San Antonio, Texas. Now here in Denver, he is continuing to work on a horror themed brewery to pair with HHS.

He began fermenting hot sauce in 2018, and all of the recipes for sale have gone through extensive iteration and adjustment to fine tune them to become the colors and flavors available today.