Montana Hot Sauce Built by People Who Live Here

Montana is not the first place anyone thinks of for hot sauce. There is no chile-growing tradition here and the growing season is short enough to be a joke in most of the state.

That turns out to be why the sauces made here are worth paying attention to. Nobody in Montana is making hot sauce because it is the obvious business. They are making it because they wanted a specific thing that did not exist, which is a better reason.

Serrano, for Heat That Tastes Like Something

Most cheap hot sauce is vinegar with heat bolted on. Serrano gives you a green, bright pepper flavor underneath, so the heat arrives attached to a taste rather than on its own.

Beehive Brothers builds theirs to sit in the middle of the range, hot enough to notice and mild enough to keep eating. It belongs on eggs, tacos, and anything that came off a grill.

They make a jalapeno version too, milder and rounder, which is the one to hand somebody who says they do not like spicy food. It usually changes their position.

Huckleberry and Mustard, Which Should Not Work

Vandal put huckleberry into a mustard-based hot sauce, and on paper that is two bad ideas holding hands. Sweet fruit, sharp mustard, and heat is a combination that goes wrong more often than it goes right.

It works because huckleberry is tart rather than sweet. The mustard supplies sharpness, the berry supplies acid, and the heat sits behind both instead of on top. Put it on pork, on a bratwurst, or on a sandwich that needs waking up.

This is also the one visitors buy as a gift, because it is the most obviously Montana thing on the shelf that is not jerky.

The Hot Pepper Jelly

Jelly is the format people underrate. A hot pepper jelly is a condiment, a glaze, and an appetizer depending on what you do with it, and it lasts a long time in the fridge.

The standard move is pouring it over a block of cream cheese and putting crackers next to it. That takes about a minute and disappears faster than anything else on a table. It also works brushed on pork or chicken in the last few minutes of cooking, where the sugar catches and the heat stays.

At under seven dollars it is the cheapest way to find out whether huckleberry and heat is a combination you want more of.

What Goes With Smoked Meat

Since we smoke our own, this comes up at the counter constantly. Heat against smoke needs acid in between, or the two flavors sit on top of each other and both get muddy.

That is why a vinegar-forward serrano sauce works better on smoked sausage than a thick sweet barbecue sauce does. The huckleberry mustard does the same job by a different route, using fruit acid instead of vinegar.

How to Build a Trio

If you want to cover the range, take one green pepper sauce for heat with flavor, one fruit-based sauce for the sweet and sharp end, and one jelly for the table. Those three handle almost anything you cook.

They also make a better gift than a single bottle, because a person who likes hot sauce already owns hot sauce. Variety is the part they do not have.

Questions We Get

How hot are these?
The serrano sits in the middle, the jalapeno is milder, and the huckleberry mustard is more flavor than heat. None of them are novelty-hot.

Are they made in Montana?
Yes, all three, by small producers in the state.

What does huckleberry taste like in a hot sauce?
Tart rather than sweet, closer to a sour cherry than a blueberry, which is why it holds up against mustard and heat.

What do I do with the pepper jelly?
Pour it over cream cheese with crackers, or brush it on pork or chicken near the end of cooking.