Yellowbird is a pretty good hot sauce. As you can see it gives you quantity, and the quality is decent. But there’s a major problem with the serrano and habanero brands.

According to the scoville scale the habanero is about 10 times spicier than the serrano. That sounds about right to me. So if you buy a habanero sauce, it should be around 10 times spicier, right? Well, not exactly since a sauce has other ingredients. But, it should be considerably spicier, at least.

That’s not what I perceive in the Yellowbird brand. The serrano sauce is nearly as spicy as the habanero line. What’s going on? If you look at the ingredients serrano is listed first for its sauce, but habanero is not first. Carrot is first. A lot of hot sauces use carrot puree in their sauces, but I find that a lot of “habanero” sauces overwhelm you with carrot flavor so that you can say you bought a habanero sauce, without tasting much habanero.

I suspect that that Yellowbird adds a lot more serrano to that lien than they add habanero to that sauce. So the label is officially accurate, but when you buy the two sauces they are not that different in spice levels, because the concentration of capsaicin is actually pretty close.

Overall I would say that the habanero sauce isn’t worth it. The Yellowbird serrano though is a good sauce. Because there’s a lot of pepper there is a fresh green flavor to it, and it’s not so sweet as some hot sauces. Like most good hot sauces there’s an astringency, but it doesn’t overpower.