BY ANDREW BAILEY
BG Independent News Correspondent
Angry Irishman wants to have a healthy hot sauce for everyone’s taste buds — even if it’s not hot.
Kevin Mackey and his wife MaryAnn founded the craft hot sauce company in 1996 in Florida.The Sunshine State’s fair weather was perfect for growing peppers, so Mackey began testing various combinations and recipes until he perfected his “first child” — and his favorite sauce — after seven years: the Original Jalapeno/Habanero hot sauce.
“I was looking for a sauce that had enough heat … but didn’t have all the salt and vinegar of big commercial sauces,” he said. He stays away from the extracts that other hot sauces typically use, because “they often have a metallic taste that just isn’t good. We can get the same kind of heat without extracts.
His sauces do include enough vinegar to have a low pH balance, but Mackey wanted to emphasize the flavor over heat, with low salt and low sugar.
“I’ve had a lot of people tell me that our sauces are savory, they have distinct flavor profiles. They’re still hot, but the flavor is what makes each sauce special,” he said.
He unfortunately lost notebooks with recipes in a Gulf Coast hurricane, but he knew the Jalapeno/Habanero process by heart, and moved back home to Northwest Ohio, and began selling the products at local farmers markets, retails stores, and on their website in 2014.
Now, Angry Irishman has eight sauces, four mustards, three dry rubs, one BBQ sauce, and one dessert sauce.
Mackey puts his stand up at the Bowling Green and Perrysburg farmers markets, and the Toledo market in the spring, summer, and fall.
“When someone comes to my stand, I want them to be able to have at least one sauce they can enjoy. I’ve had people say, ‘I don’t like heat,’ but still walk away happy,” he said.
Their BBQ Finishing Sauce can add sweetness to some grilled meats, and Drunk’n Punk’n — a pumpkin pie bourbon dessert sauce, “which can go well on anything from ice cream to pork chops,” Mackey said.
A few more no heat sauces are in the works too, but Drunk’n Punk’n is the only dessert sauce they offer.
But for those who do like heat, Mackey delivers with two “XXX” hot sauces: Frankensauce, a Louisiana-style sauce with seven peppers and a 13-month fermenting process; and Why?, their hottest sauce which has to be made while wearing respirators, with ghost pepper, scorpion pepper, and Carolina reaper.
And Angry Irishman has a few unique sauces that are hard to find elsewhere.
They are one of the few companies that has green olive-based sauces, with the Olive It! Jalapeno hot sauce and the Olive It! Habanero hot sauce, Mackey said.
He said they are also rare for using sweet pickles in their Jherkin McGherkin Jhamaican Sweet Pickle hot sauce. And Drunk’n Punk’n is of the few pumpkin-based sauces that uses bourbon and has no heat.
Mackey grows most of the peppers himself and sources ingredients locally.
“We try to keep it Ohio-based as much as we can,” he said.
And despite trying to be as local as possible, Angry Irishman is still able to create sauces that cover a variety of tastes.
“Not everything has to be tongue-blistering, eye-melting, scorching, make your ears ring hot. Some companies, that’s what they do,” he said.
“Me? I just want to have different levels … if someone comes up to my stand and doesn’t know exactly what they want, I’m hoping to have one product that would fill the need they didn’t know they had.”
Angry Irishman products can be found at retail stores and the Bowling Green and Perrysburg farmers markets, and the Toledo farmers markets in the spring, summer, and fall.
