How it all began!

Hounds Head Hot Sauce was born as an experiment in homemade hot sauce making in 2022. Coming out of the Covid period, we had been doing a lot more cooking at home, and I was frustrated with many of the commercial sauces on the market. They were either too vinegar-laden or so flavorful that they overtook anything they were added to. Too much garlic, too much vinegar, not viscous enough to hold on to anything it was poured on, too chunky, etc. That, and the heat levels were either insufficient or too hot to render any flavor at all from anything after tasting the hot sauce.  

We decided to make a mango habanero sauce. To our surprise, the first iteration was on par with what we could buy and somewhat liked. So inspired, we iterated a couple of times, ordered some hot sauce bottles, and began giving them away at work. The feedback was so positive that more and more bottles were given away, and we began to send them to friends all over the country just for fun. It was then that my wife Nyla caught on and started eating it nearly every day. She was not a hot sauce fan prior and now can't get enough of the stuff.

What we learned is that hot sauce is one of the most fun gifts that can be given away. Whether it was our server or bartender at a restaurant or friends we had not connected with in a while, the response was almost always a huge thank you and the best of smiles. It seems like it almost always makes somebody's day. Of course, not everyone is a "hot sauce fan"; we always find out if the person we might give it to likes heat or knows someone who does. Thus far, we haven't found too many "nontakers." We were also getting rave reviews from nearly everyone who had tried it. Pretty soon, folks around town began to refer to us as "those hot sauce people," and we knew we were spreading joy just by taking a day once in a while to make a batch of sauce.

Still, the idea of an actual hot sauce company didn't happen until we received so many recurring requests for more that we thought it would be fun to create a label and increase our production capacity in the kitchen to 100 or more bottles at a time. What really pushed the idea was we were getting requests from people we did not know. Ultimately, the recipe has taken shape into what we think is the ideal go-to sauce for nearly anything that requires a little heat and pizazz, as well as foods you may never have considered needing heat. It is designed to be a flavor journey, transitioning from sweet and fruity to savory and spicy. It is intentionally left without particular and intense flavors or herbs, pairing well with only a small number of other foods. It's great for mixing with mayonnaise to create an awesome aioli, as well as for soups, pizzas, and all the usual breakfast, lunch, or dinner suspects.  

This sauce is made the right way, with a generous amount of fresh produce per batch and a lot of love and labor; it's clearly something special from the moment you first taste it. Folks are always surprised at how fresh it tastes coming from a bottle. It's made the hard way for a reason. Fast forward to now, and we hope you find it like we do. Your go-to bottle of heat in the fridge that never disappoints. We also hope, like us, that you feel it is meant to be shared and that you discover the joy in giving some of it away. An easy, compact, and thoughtful gift that makes someone's day over and over. Although our production is up from reducing hours at our real jobs, it is still made in small batches with incredible effort and love.