Yep, it's insane alright.
Having tried Dave's Original Insanity and hearing all the campfire stories of the dreaded ghost pepper I decided to embark on a mystical journey and ordered a bottle of this.
The bottle was unassuming enough when it arrived. Standard shape, somewhat mundane label, but it contained a substance that had a curiously bright crimson and orange color. Once opened it had a spicy smell, not unlike Tobasco although thankfully without the overwhelmingly foul essence of vinegar.
Well, time for a taste. I got a good thick coat of the bright substance on my index finger and took the plunge. It had a pretty nice tangy flavor... That is it had a nice flavor for about 1500 milliseconds before Oppenheimer hit the red button and, "I am become heat, the destroyer of digestive tracts."
The heat hit me like a runaway freight train hitting a house of cards. No, make that a run away freight train with several JATOs attached to the rear propelling it somewhere above the upper class neighborhood of mach 2. I doubled over and let out a raspy gasp, my face flushed to a hue not unlike the sauce itself, my eyes became a water park. My aural senses became dull like I was at the bottom of a swimming pool.
I heard a knock at the door and stumbled towards it with blurred vision. It was a county sheriff at the door and he was there to serve me. My own tongue, esophagus, uvula, stomach, and intestinal tract had somehow just filed a class action lawsuit against me. I reeled backwards and fell onto the couch and tried to focus my bleary eyes on a small fuzzy object on the floor. It was my cat, standing quietly and observing my plight. Maybe it was the impaired vision, maybe it was the start of something more spiritual, but my cat's face warped into a Cheshire smile many times the girth of his face. Each tooth glowing with the luster of tarnished gold in an unholy candlelight. His eyes sank back into ashen voids, glimmering ember pin points at the center of each gaping socket. The room around him began to dance and spin and the walls eventually melted away to reveal a brimstone canyon stretching as far as could be imagined. "Soooo hoooot it's spoooooky," my cat boomed, his voice echoed with a baritone bass that would surely send James Earl Jones running for the hills. Sweating, hyperventilating, and nearly blind, my vision finally faded to black.
I awoke with blinding light bombarding my face. How long was I out? Slowly gyrating figures came into focus and as my eyes adjusted more I recognized them as people standing over me. A few more moments and I was able to see one of the faces and... Grandpa?!
I bolted upright nearly headbutting the entire crowd looming over me "Am I dead?!" I shouted.
"No, no. You just had a bit too much of the insanity sauce in one go, I'm afraid. You'll be back to the mortal world in a few moments," my grandpa stated non nonchalantly, adjusting his tie slightly.
"So, wait," I began, "Wha... what is this? ...Is this?"
"Maybe," grandpa shrugged, "Perhaps you can ask me again on your next visit in a day or two."
"Next visit?!" I shouted, "I'm not touching that sauce ever again! Except maybe per drop. Diluted in very large amounts of some sort of substrate like chilli. I-"
Grandpa smiled and interrupted, "You only have a few seconds left. You'll be back at least once more, I know that for sure."
"For sure?" I asked genuinely confused.
Grandpa tiled his head, looking at me like I had just grown a third eye, "Well yeah. You already ate the stuff, and what goes in has to come out eventually."
My face cracked and was painted with the same look a deer must have in the headlights of an approaching freight train that is powered by several JATO motors. Before I could seek further council I was grasped firmly by an unknown force and suddenly yanked away. The light got sucked into darkness and the roar of passing wind deafened me. I was falling.
Soon something came into focus, approaching fast. It was the ground, rushing to greet me with the eagerness of a freshman salesperson thinking they've identified an easy mark. I began screaming, as if that would help. My life didn't flash before my eyes, I didn't have any final profound thoughts, my whole head was filled with paralyzing unmitigated terror. Closer, closer, closer. The ground hurled itself towards me in excitement to say hello to my face with a big wet, red kiss. And just as I'm 1mm away from contact...
I jerk upright on my couch, back in my house. Sweaty and tongue numb, cat still sitting on the floor looking as plain as can be. I breathe a heavy sigh of relief, although doing so has a noticeable heat to it due to the remnants of the sauce. I hold my head in my hands and try to regain composure, reassuring myself it was just some weird dream brought on by everyday stress combined with the sudden shock of the ghost pepper sauce. My eyes drift around coming to rest on a stack of papers on the coffee table. Legal papers? I'm... I'm suing myself?
I've since been eating lots of cheese and chocolate hoping to stave off the inevitable second visit to Grandpa.
This sauce is hot. Really hot. Use a drop at a time in large volumes of other stuff that needs a bit of heat.
Pros: Ultra super mega hot. Nice bright, festive color - If HGTV did a makeover of Satan's house they'd probably paint the living room with this stuff for the color.
Cons: Flavor is made irrelevant due to the absurd level of heat. No stopper in the bottle's neck so be careful about pouring.
| 28.0 servings per container | |
| Serving size | 1 tbsp (5 g) |
| Amount per serving | |
| Calories | 5 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| % Daily Value* | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| *The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
