PexPeppers: Pueblo’s Own Hot Sauce
For those that want to shop local, keep an eye out for a hot sauce brand that is uniquely Pueblo.
Garrett Peck of PexPeppers Hot Sauce sells a wide range of products including hot sauces, pepper flakes, and pepper seeds with plenty of spice to enhance one’s favorite dish. Four of the products in his repertoire feature the Pueblo Chile; the “I’m So Chile” Pueblo Hot Sauce, Pueblo Red Roasted Hot Sauce, Gold Rush Pueblo Chile Hot Sauce and Pueblo Spark Pepper Flakes.
“After that I have 15 other sauces which range from… Pueblo Chile and Jalapeno, those levels, all the way up to Carolina Reaper, which you might have read is the ‘Tropical Revenge Hot Sauce,’” Peck said. “When I open up my new shop some time near Thanksgiving, I am going to expand to pepper jellies, other condiments, maybe fresh salsa if I can get the license for it.”
PexPeppers’ forthcoming shop will be located south of Lake Minnequa in the space formerly occupied by The Rig bar at 2705 Lake Ave. PexPeppers products can also be found on his website, https://pexpeppers.com/, or at numerous locations throughout Pueblo and across the country.
“We are all-natural, no preservatives other than vinegar which is used to preserve everything,” Peck said. “We work with super local ingredients… I try my hardest not to go out of Pueblo at least for the chiles, but the super hot ones I purchase from American farms. Nothing is from outside U.S.A.”
Peck’s personal favorite sauce is the Pueblo Red Roasted Hot Sauce.
“Pueblo Red, which is Pueblo Dynamite Chiles, that was based off of enchiladas that I made here at home,” Peck said, “I really nailed the recipe one time. I modified it a little bit to turn it into a hot sauce… It reminded me of when I first moved here… One of the first times I met the Musso’s, they gave me some chiles to play around with, which leads into the enchilada story.”
For beginners that are just getting into hot sauce, Peck recommends his Garlic Fuego Jalapeno Hot Sauce. Garlic Fuego is a vegan friendly, mild hot sauce with garlic, white onion and jalapenos. According to the PexPeppers website, Garlic Fuego is great for “Mexican, breakfast foods, white meats, and even Italian!”
“It gives a more traditional hot sauce experience, but if you want to open your mind to something new… If you can handle your heat, I would look at Purple Pulsar,” Peck said. “That’s a ghost pepper, blueberry, strawberry sauce.”
While the mild Garlic Fuego is listed as a 2.5/10 on PexPeppers’ heat scale, the Purple Pulsar Ghost Berry Hot Sauce is rated an 8/10. Hot Sauce Veterans looking for a challenge should consider some of the “Super Hot” sauces offered by PexPeppers including the 7 Pot Panic Hot Sauce, Atom Splitter Tropical Douglah Hot Sauce, and KillerSwarm Hot Sauce.
“KillerSwarm, that one most people have problems with so that’s a great challenge sauce,” Peck said. “It’s made designed for extreme chileheads; people who are looking to increase their tolerance for, you know, they can’t just find anything hot enough.”
As September’s Business of the Month, PexPeppers offered a giveaway basket. Click the button at the bottom to navigate to the post on Instagram.
The items in the basket included:
Sauces: BeeBOMB, Pueblo Red, I’m So Chile, Taco Fuego, Gold Rush, Cosmic Peach, Solar Fuego, Lemon Laser Beam, 7 Pot Panic, Tropical Revenge, Atom Splitter, and Wildberry Whoop-Ass.
Pepper Flakes: Pueblo Spark, Fiesta Flakes, and Muerte.