Hot Sauce

Hot sauce is the thin, vinegar-and-chilli-forward splash sauce for the table, not the thick, sticky stuff that goes on the brisket - a style dating to 1868, when Edmund McIlhenny first bottled Tabasco on Louisiana's Avery Island, the blueprint every hot sauce since has followed, even as the flavours moved well past plain cayenne and vinegar into fruit, ferment and everything in between. It's built for a shake, not a slather: wings, tacos, fried eggs, noodles, burgers, anything that needs a hit of acid and heat rather than a sweet glaze, not just at the table but on the grill too.

Start with Fancy Hanks' Cayenne & Watermelon, a bronze-medal, award-winning, fruity, mild entry point made in Melbourne, Uncle Mungos' Mango Carolina Reaper for fruit riding shotgun with real heat, or Nomad Chilli Co's Classics Trio for a proper fermented, small-batch lineup in one gift-ready pack.

Heat runs from Mama Melisse's Mama Hot Sauce at mild-to-medium up to reaper-level extremes like Uncle Mungos' Covid-19 Delta Variant and Heavenly Hell's Reapers Roulette. The range is overwhelmingly small-batch and Australian-made - Atomic Chicken, Mama Melisse, Uncle Mungos and Fancy Hanks among them - with genuine US imports like Blues Hog's Sizzlin' Heat BBQ Sauce in the mix too. Every heat level, one bottle away.

Explore more: our BBQ sauce and a hot BBQ sauce collections.