I wanted your first note of the year to come from the hot sauce part of your life. Happy New Year! I hope you’re in good health and I’m counting on 2022 being a great year ahead.

I’m here to share a recent conversation I had, which is now on the Craft Hot Sauce Podcast. Sometimes when I write this newsletter or market a hot sauce, it’s not my most natural channel of communication. The podcast has grown to be my favorite way of connecting with the wider craft hot sauce community and sharing those experiences with you. 

While talking to customers about potential uses of hot sauces, I realized that we had strongly opinionated theories about how to properly craft your own hot sauce collection that I needed to share with you!

Chief among those opinions is the idea that you need to have a diverse range of hot sauces for every purpose, consisting of your most used everyday hot sauces, unique hot sauces, and sauces to fill in the gaps of heat and flavor.

Hey! Over the past couple of weeks, you have probably seen a lot of decade-in-review articles. I tried to avoid being repetitive, but upon reflection, it was a huge decade for craft hot sauce, and I’m too grateful for your involvement to not say something. Some of you were our first dozen followers back in 2014...

I had a fantastic time speaking with Bob Ferretti from Hot Sauce 4 Good (now called Caldo Hot Sauce)  in our third episode of our podcast series and Jojo from Jojo's Sriracha in Denver. Both companies not only make fantastic small-batch hot sauce, but they have great stories and company visions.