It's cold outside! Spice it up inside!!
Our Sauces range from PG *mild* to nc-17 *crazy hot*
All of HHS' sauces are either fermented for a minimum of two weeks, or incorporate fresh ingredients with a fermented brine. Then at blending we usually add additional fresh ingredients to balance the fermented flavor.
Year Round sauces
All sauces packaged in a standard 5oz "woozy" hot sauce bottle.
buffet for sheetar
Dark fruits (plums & blackberries) combine with peppers from mild(ish) (jalapeño) to superhot (carolina reaper) for a sauce with a deep depth of flavor and a lot of heat.
Rated R.
The Burning
Our more complex take on a mango habanero sauce, amped up with red jalapeño, manzaño and ghost peppers, and balanced with pineapple.
Rated PG-13.
moMo
Our flagship sauce, with a taste unlike any other. This sauce is exclusively made from mango and manzaño peppers, and is mild to most palates but because of the different version of capsaicin in the manzaño, some people find it much warmer. For most, it is sweet and tangy and slightly hot.
Rated PG.
OMG!!!!!!!
OMG!!!!!!! is HHS' take on a verde sauce. It is made with a fermented base (lemons, jalapeños, serranos, green manzaños, green habaneros, tomatillos, and chayote) with additional fresh jalapeños, manzaños, and chayote, as well as a bunch of black garlic. It is both familiar as a verde while being different with the fermented citrus base flavors coming through.
Rated PG.
Pazuzu
That purple sauce, made from blueberries, prickly pears, and watermelon, and amped up with habanero, ghost, and carolina reaper peppers. It brings a sweet kick up front followed by strong heat.
Rated R.
Shutteracha
Our “Americanized” version of a classic sriracha using a base of red jalapeños, guajillos, and red New Mexican peppers plus some habanero for kick, then rounded out with agave syrup, brown sugar, and lots of garlic. We use this in place of ketchup around here!
Rated PG.
Seasonal, special, & Collaboration sauces
ain't afraid
Ain't Afraid is HHS' one-time 1st Anniversary Sauce. It is made with a huge variety of all ghostly white peppers, jícama, dragonfruit, and lychee. It's a white hot sauce that will haunt your nightmares. Are you afraid?
Rated NC-17.
Alpha-21
Alpha-21 is a collaboration with filmmaker J.R. Bookwalter for his film Side Effects May Vary, an icky-sticky social satire that substitutes the "Atomic hysteria" of the 50's with the recent pandemic, and fills it with plenty of oozy gore. This sauce is an extra hot version of our verde sauce, OMG!!!!!!!, and has additional yellow habanero and yellow ghost peppers on top of that base.
Rated R.
Dellamorte
Our attempt to bottle the flavor of fresh reapers. It starts floral and then quickly escalates to intense heat.
Rated NC-17.
Matool's Hammer
Red New Mexican chiles, superhots, and black cherries and blackberries are enhanced by fresh and black garlic for a deep, roasty heat that builds and lingers. The official sauce of the movie The Stink of Flesh.
Rated R.
Monolith:Red
One of two collaborations with Monolith Brewing in Denver, this is a hotter version of our Shutteracha, which is an Americanized take on a classic Thai-style sriracha sauce.
Rated PG-13.
Monolith:Yellow
Our second collaboration with Monolith brewing in Denver, this is a hotter version of MoMo with the addition of lemons and habanero peppers to give it a kick!
Rated PG-13.
Profondo Rosso
This sauce has a varied, building heat from red jalapeño, manzaño, and carolina reaper peppers, balanced with sweetness from strawberries and raspberries, and finished with roasted and black garlic for a underlying umami flavor.
Rated R.
Season of the Witch
For the PSL lovers of the world, now you can have pumpkin spiced hot sauce. This recipe ferments pumpkin and carrots with a touch of pure vanilla extract, and then finishes with cinnamon, cloves, star anise, ginger, and ancho spices.
Rated R.
Sweets for the Sweet
Sweets for the Sweet is a version of our sauce Black is Beautiful, with a different stout in the brine. It is not a very sweet sauce, as most of the fruit goes into the ferment. It has a deep roasty flavor from chocolate habaneros and the stout beer, as well as some savory tartness from black cherries and blackberries, and a umami backbone from black garlic.
Rated R.
The Color Out of Space
(v2) A combination of fresh peach/purple peppers, açai, prickly pear, and fermented brine from Pazuzu. This sauce will be made with different peppers and modifications to the fruit each time it is made.
Rated NC-17.
What We Eat in the Shadows
What We Eat in the Shadows is HHS' sauce for those who love garlic. It is made from Red Jalapeños, Barker's Xtra Hot NM Chile, Chocolate Habaneros, and garlic FIVE WAYS: fresh, fermented, powdered, roasted, and black! It is a medium heat with a slight build and linger at the end.
Rated PG-13.
Archived or retired sauces
These sauces are not currently up for production again, but could possibly
3 tears
A collaboration with filmmaker Jakob Bilinski for his film Three Tears on Bloodstained Flesh.
Rated R.
original sin
A sauce made from apples and manzano peppers.
Rated PG.
Paimon & Hårga
A 2-part tribute to filmmaker Ari Aster. Paimon is dark while Hårga is bright and sunny.
Rated R.
voodoo
A combination of tropical ingredients brings a medium, fruity heat.
Rated PG-13.
Black is Beautiful *retired*
A collaboration Weathered Souls Brewing Company. Remade as Sweets for the Sweet.
Rated R.
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).
all-natural small batches, focused on flavor first
All of the sauces Ryan makes are made with only all-natural ingredients. Zero fillers, binders, emulsifiers, preservatives, or weird hard to read chemicals. No added sugar to cover chemical tastes - sugar is added when the flavor calls for it! And flavor is the focus of these sauces. None of them are hot to be hot, they are all focused on having amazing flavor that makes you want more, regardless of if your mouth is on fire or not! Even the NC-17 sauces are focused on flavor first, though they are pretty darned hot!
Hand made
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.
Introducing the Manzaño Pepper
Most 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.
SPECIALTY AND HARD TO FIND PEPPERS and exotic ingredients
Most of HHS' peppers come from a local produce supplier in Denver, but when HHS needs really hot or weird peppers, we look to small growers throughout the us to help us get the coolest, most interesting, and hottest peppers out there! Some of HHS' favorite ingredients (besides manzaños) are chocolate habaneros, piloncillo sugar, hibiscus flowers, dried NM chile, and various fruits from blueberries to plums to dragon fruit!
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, 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.