A few days back, I was having a discussion with my friends regarding hot sauces and I started telling them about Hamajang and how good it was. I bought a dozen bottles a few years back and enjoyed the hell out of them on all sorts of cuisines, but I finished all 12 bottles years ago.
The conversation stemmed off from someone mentioning it being on Hot Ones and so I went into my tangent talking about how delicious it was, but that conversation quickly turned into an argument when I told them it had the consistency of Tabasco sauce and similar vinegary flavor but with a spicy smokey taste. My friend was arguing that it was thicker than that and was more like Valentina or Tapatio sauce, and so the argument continued. He happened to have a bottle that he brought to work the following day, and sure enough, he was correct. The bottle looked different and the sauce was definitely thicker, but it did not taste how I remember it.
I knew I wasn't crazy and so I started digging through old photos and found these from September 2017 when I bought my first trial bottle. I loved it so much, I ordered a dozen bottles two days later when I finished the trial bottle. But if you look at the pictures closely, you can see that I was also correct in my memory of the sauce. The bottle cap was wider with a gurthier neck and the sauce was more "watery" than thick. It definitely had a different flavor than the current sauce does. I loved the flavor SO MUCH! I remember trying it on a chicken sandwich and had to resort to pouring the sauce on the bun so that it could soak into it and I could visually gage how much I'd used, since I couldn't tell how much I had poured when adding it to the toppings or meat itself.
I can only assume this change occurred thanks to Hot Ones, when it went viral because of them including it in their lineup and making an appearance as a mid tier sauce on the show. More people probably started ordering it to try it for themselves, and so the consistency and thickness of the sauce must have been changed to better marinate the wings with the sauce or maybe just due to demand going up and they had to tweak the recipe to be able to accommodate the influx of orders.
Whatever the case, I tried ordering Hamajang again from the Adoboloco website and saw that they now have distributors on the main land, which could also be a reason for the change if it's being made differently here, but it used to only be available in Hawaii and shipped from there. I'm curious to know if the original Hamajang is still available on the islands and if so, how can I get it shipped from there instead of wherever this new stuff is coming from. The Adoboloco website doesn't seem to have any information regarding this.
Does anyone else remember having this sauce from the before times? Am I the only one who rememberes this sauce differently and perhaps I truly am crazy? Or are there more people out there like me that remember the glory days of Hamajang? Better yet, is there a Hawaiian native here that can confirm if it's been altered since?
by Kerrchak