I’m really hoping that you read the first installment from Steve Dodd, owner at Hack’s BBQ Sauce. Steve chose us as a platform to make the announcement that he was improving his awesome sauce and has invited us to follow along in his journey to a better sauce. Here is an update:

A couple of weeks ago, I reported to you in a guest blog my decision to create a new barbecue sauce with no peppers and no onions that has the same great taste of the original Hack’s BBQ Sauce, but is made with all-natural ingredients. Today I am excited to report some of our progress.

To start, we found a local bottler who has access to the all-natural ingredients we have been seeking and they are also able to certify the sauce to be gluten-free, which was another part of our quest for a better sauce. With an ample pipeline of quality ingredients, we gathered up a bunch of this all-natural goodness and headed to the kitchen to start making test batches. Purists take note – we didn’t head to the lab. We didn’t hunker down in our manufacturing facility. We went to our kitchen. We believe that’s where everything starts. The initial attempts tasted fine and did okay on the grill, but it still wasn’t as good as the original. Something was missing. We decided to do a blind taste test with some family and friends and their feedback was very helpful. We learned that we were on the right track, but still had a way to go. This was a critical part of the process, real humans tasting our new recipes. Not just anyone, but our friends and family members. If it’s not good enough to pass their test, it’s not good enough to go to market.

After finding some additional natural flavors that we felt were missing, we returned to the kitchen to make some new batches. We spent hours tweaking the recipe, tasting the results and tweaking again until our taste buds were shot! I think we managed to get very close to what we are looking for and I am anxious to conduct another blind test with some friends who are visiting this weekend. In my next blog post, I’ll report the results of these latest trials. In the meantime, be thinking about what we should call this new sauce. Write your idea in a comment section below. Thanks for following our story!

Seriously, I would really consider visiting Hack’s BBQ right now and order a couple of bottles of his original formula sauce. If you have some sensitivity to onions and/or peppers, then this is the only sauce for you. If you don’t have this problem, you’re going to love it anyway. Dark, very thick, very rich – this sauce is yummy. I can’t wait to try the improved version! ~DRR

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