Killer Butterfly

One of the things I like about Butterfly Bakery of Vermont is that they source almost all of their ingredients from local farms, so they can always use the highest quality ingredients at the peak of their season.

This is their hottest sauce, and it’s right at the border of being extremely hot and that rarified tier of super-hot. It’s also a sauce with a very simple ingredients list, just four: Carolina reaper peppers, vinegar, red ghost peppers, and salt.

This sauce is all about letting those ripe local peppers shine, and it’s a beautiful expression of those super-hot chili’s natural flavors.

It’s reaper-dominant, with a fruity floral front end balanced by the tang of the vinegar and a huge wave of heat following close behind. The ghost peppers are playing a backup role, rounding out the flavor and adding some of those fuller bass notes that the reapers lack.

I’ve never enjoyed reaper flavor as much as I have with this sauce though. Reapers can often be a bit acrid with a slight chemical taste, but I’m not getting that here at all, there’s just that bright fruity fragrant extreme heat.

This is a great one to check out if you’re looking to experience a sauce that celebrates the natural flavor of these peppers.

This is a solid 7/10 or 8/10 on the absolute non-extract-sauce heat scale. It’s not quite Garlic Reaper hot, but it’s very close, and it has a purity of pepper flavor many super hot sauces don’t have due to more complex ingredient lists.