Srira CHA

04/07/2016

This year's peppers were recently planted in the garden, each atop a mound of the most local compost available - from the backyard. Hundreds (if not thousands) of trips to the compost bin over four years yielded a few cubic yards of the most beautiful, lush soil as a result of many experiences of a lawn freshly mowed, the memories of countless family meals and morning coffee sipped over 1,000 days or so.

These are some happy looking pepper plants. They're feeling the love.

They'll need some time to develop, however. There's a long growing season ahead and then the fermentation process and packaging and the thousand natural shocks that hot sauce is heir to, so it's going to be some time before the next batch of Srira CHA. In the meantime, we suggest that you give Hoff & Pepper Hoff Sauce a try. Our missions and values overlap to a great extent: they are also committed to small, handmade batches of artisan hot sauce using local sources. It also tastes delicious.

http://nooga.com/172883/business-heats-up-for-hoff-pepper/

About three years ago, he got into making hot sauce. He and his wife, Michelle "Pepper" Hoffman, bottled some for Christmas one year and had a great response.

08/18/2015

The Sriracha CHA research team is developing a green sriracha.

That's fine and all, but they want to call it "SriraCHArtreuse" and the marketing people just aren't down with that.

Suggestions?

08/11/2015

we suspected as much.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/2015/08/04/spicy-food-linked-to-lower-risk-of-death/?_r=0&referrer&smid=nytnow-share&smprod=nytnow

Data from 485,000 people in China found that rates of ischemic heart disease, respiratory disease and cancer were all lower in hot-food eaters.

03/03/2015

The goat-footed baloonMan will soon be whistling far and wee. Spring will be upon us anon and with it the fresh red jalapeños which are the very backbone of Srira CHA. A tangible anticipation hovers in the air: It's nearly time to create more artisanal free-range vegan gluten-free all-natural cruelty-free delicious hot sauce.

Only,

I still have some of the winter stock lingering with the insidious ubiquitousness of Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass albums in record bins. The time has come for Spring cleaning. I must make room on the dining room table for the next small batch of bottles&jars.

& so that means for you, dear Srira CHA lover, money-saving deals. You can free up funds to buy that first-edition signed copy of "A Remembrance of Things Pabst " you've had your eye on while still getting your locally handmade Srira CHA fix.

While supplies last, you can get any of these four Srira CHA products for just $7:

Original Srira CHA
Unlike most hot sauces, there's not much room for vinegar and water in this handmade sriracha - it's almost entirely hot peppers&garlic. & love. lots of love. also brown sugar & some other stuff. & love. don't forget the damn love.

Srira CHA CHA CHA CHA Chili Boost
Four times more local with a quad shot of flavor. A dash of this blend of traditional chili spices with the hottest peppers on earth will decidedly improve any chili recipe. Justin WIlson's ghost gar-on-tees it.

Srira CHAtney
A spicy, sweet, garlicky, red onion marmalade which is highly addictive and excellent for cooking. Your reality will be altered more drastically than the first time you heard "Marquee Moon."

Kim CHA
Chungcheong-do style kimchi infused with Srira CHA - it's the latest (& some would say greatest) addition to the Srira CHA family. To say that I'm pleased with it would be an understatement.

* Limited delivery options available (by llamas on the run.)

01/13/2015

In these bleak winter months, the Srira CHA R&D team has delved deep underground with millions of chili peppers of every imaginable variety. The team's diligent thirst for the next Srira CHA flavor and their smouldering taste buds have only been quenched in the briefest of respites as the team recently thawed ice crystals on the tips of a lotus blossom by lightly dusting them on the edge of Autre Ne Veut's "Body" EP played on a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon 2M-R turntable.

The R&D team have sown the seed and reaped the harvest with enduring toil. We know not what pleasures they have felt and what nightmares they have endured as they labored deep beneath the apparent. They dreamed their pithy little dreams and sang their silly little songs and thought the thinks they thunked.

They may have been underground for too long, however. The chili peppers fermented slightly longer than usual. The flavors are sharper, more reminiscent of Chungcheong-do than of CHA-ttanooga. The now familiar flavor of SriraCHA has been rendered brighter, more sour, spicier, sweeter - for lack of a better word - MORE-er.

& so an Appalachian relish and a traditional Korean side dish have merged into an absurdly local, artisanalfreerangeveganglutenfreejesuischarlieallnaturalantiestablishmentcrueltyfreenorbghgmofreefireinthetummybecomesthefirefromtheasshandmadedidwementionthatitslocalmsgfreenoaddedcolorsmadeinamericabyamericansbutwithaculturalawarenessandsenstivitythatsrespectablewithoutbeingexcessiveandwithnoaddedsugars delight.

& we call it KimCHA.

12/17/2014

http://time.com/3633813/spicy-food-testosterone/

A French study finds that some really do like it hot

12/08/2014

It's sriraCHA gift giving season. Have I mentioned that I'm an exceptional gift wrapper? Or that it's a complimentary service on request? Or that the kraft paper I use is 100% post-consumer recycled and contains at least 30% shredded Celine Dion album covers?

12/03/2014

As a result of popular demand, we now offer a tiny pocket srira CHA so you can conveniently carry it with you anywhere.

theirs - $7 ours - $5

theirs - an empty tube that you must fill yourself
ours - chock-full of original, locally handcrafted artisanal srira CHA

theirs - a chunky, pocket-filling 36 ml
ours - a convenient, slim 10 ml

theirs - annoying use of the numeral "2" instead of the word "to"
ours - proper English has been employed, you damn ingrates

theirs - back-ordered until after the winter holidays
ours - now available!

theirs - loves Nickelback, devoid of content
ours - s*xy as Carmen Miranda - and has even more delicious fruits and vegetables than her hat

This is not to say that the other version of a keychain hot sauce is a bad or inferior product; we won't know for certain until 2015 - when it actually arrives.

Just sayin.'

12/02/2014

It is with great pleasure and no small amount of relief that I introduce the winter 2014 product line.

Quantities are quite very limited. In fact, these spicy delights are only available through that guy that you know that has a friend who works at that record store in Nepal - and even then you probably would have had to pre-order. Maybe if you see the bearded dude that makes this srira CHA stuff at a bar you can buy him a solid craft beer and then he'll sell you one of the bottles that he was supposed to reserve for the drummer from my favorite cover band, Crystal S**t.

I guess what I'm saying is: get 'em while you can. These stocking stuffers are gonna fly.

11/14/2014

Cole Champion and Larisa Dezayas are the winners of the sugar-free, low calorie, free-range Srira CHA naming contest, having synchronously come up with very similar suggestions. They will each win a Srira CHA product of their choice from the upcoming batch, due to be released on the same day as the new wu tang clan album.

Lo, it shall be called

"FreeRaCHA"

and it will be good.
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We've officially sold out of the first limited edition, collectable, signed&numbered batch. Hold on to those bottles! If you were an early supporter I feel you've earned some recompense. In the near future I'll be offering deeply discounted refills or i'll sterilize and reuse your bottles and give you deals on the new products.
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Price drop!

I found an eco-friendly, carbon-neutral company that will print my labels on 100% recycled paper using soy and vegetable-based inks which are low in Volatile Organic Compounds. Since I'll no longer be making homemade vegan mucilage to affix the paper-wasp-created boutique labels that means savings for me that I'll be passing on to you. Because I love you. That's right. You. You're special.
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About twice a day for the past two weeks someone has asked me if i'm familiar with sriracha2go, a $7.50 empty plastic bottle with a green lid which is both brilliant and viral. I am now well aware. Their refillable vessel is currently back ordered at least 45 days. I'll be filling that void in time for the winter holiday gift giving season with my own local, free-range, sustainable artisan keychain Srira CHA.

The keychain version of Srira CHA will be a 1.7 ounce glass bottle in a handmade fabric keychain case. it will still be pocket-sized, but cheaper than the plastic sriracha2go one and it will actually come full of delicious, locally made, free-range srira cha rather than the empty sriracha2go product. Theirs was a clever creation; I'll be doing it better now. And cheaper.
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The first batch of extremely hot Srira CHA is not nearly hot enough to please me, so I've decided to adjust the recipe and turn it into a spicy chili seasoning. Srira CHA CHA CHA Chili Boost is right around the corner. It will turn a can of beans into gold.
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The feedback from the limited edition trial run has been quite positive. Thanks for your support. I'm very pleased that you're enjoying the results of my most recent ridiculous hobby. It's nothing but fun for me.

10/18/2014

the question was posed:

“Ok I have seen you hawk your sauce I'm game, I guess I'm the only person who does not know what sriracha is and what it tastes like and what is it used for? Help a poor ignorant person understand :) ”

charlie, while i know of a certainty that you’re not ignorant at all, i'm glad you asked.

srira cha is the last great hope for the future of rock&roll & (by extrapolation) humanity. it's the sum of all fears. it's the alpha and it is also the omega. it gets 44 miles per gallon on the highway and you can't tell the taste from real butter. srira cha is the natural evolution of crossbreeding the infamous primordial ooze, the end result of an infinite number of monkeys typing forever on an infinite number of typewriters and a mandolin stolen from a gypsy camp on a bitterly cold winter night. srira cha is cruelty-free, gluten-free, scot-free, free love & free range. it knows why the caged bird sings. in a world ravaged by neosurrealism, it's the last bastion of reason upon which we might hang our hats.

srira cha is a meta-edit to its own description in order to remove an oxford comma.

in every bottle, garlic, peppers and eleven secret herbs&spices are immaculately married to the fire which prometheus stole from olympus for the good of all humankind.

srira cha is laying your head down on a cool pillow for an afternoon nap during a rumbling thunderstorm. it's the humblest of braggadocios. it’s today's delivery problems solved tomorrow. it's the bastard child of the monroe doctrine and “tangled up in blue.” srira cha is scraping chewing gum from the sole of your shoe while waiting for the subway on an elevated platform. it’s the living elvis. it is norwegian cross country skier bente skari winning the gold medal in the women’s classical style 10k at the 2002 salt lake city olympics. it's the very embodiment of the color red. srira cha is ready when you are and puts a tiger in your tank.

during the han dynasty srira cha invented the first seismoscope - an ornate dragon&frog earthquake detector which was every bit as beautiful as it was effective. one of srira cha's deep, dark secrets is that it was also causing all of the earthquakes in the first damn place.

the ceiling of the sistine chapel, the great wave off kanagawa, the cave paintings at lascaux and every single paint-by-numbers set ever were painted with srira cha.

you're in good hands with srira cha. the angels, not half so happy in heaven, went envying srira cha. it's piped directly from tralfamadore to your taste buds by the same tubes al gore used to build the internet. srira cha has more fun than blondes. it has the ability to destroy worlds but instead chooses to draw intricate mazes with all of your green crayons. srira cha is the ultimate driving experience. pepperidge farms remembers srira cha.

srira cha drips from my beard unbidden when i think of the delightful freckles on my wife's cheeks. i count them each night after she's gone to sleep to confirm that i'm using the ideal number of peppers in every small batch, because no number could possibly be as perfect as it.

srira cha is tl;dr.

this particular hot sauce tastes like the death of tyrants. it tastes like the blood of the deposed king of the ebola l***r colony, hell-bent on mayhem. the subtle effluvium of srira cha when it is opened can best be described as a vague, fleeting remembrance of the most pleasant dream of your life - a dream that comes sometimes to mind but darts away like a no-see-um in the corner of your field of vision. it is the compendium of all the things that come out of the meat grinders in pink floyd's "the wall." it's an ancient chinese secret. it makes hamburgers taste like steakburgers. srira cha was born not from the flap of a single butterfly wing, but from the idea of the moment just before the flutter.

srira cha is a distillation of all of the sweat s*x throughout history and the sarcastic gratefulness offered to obama by n.r.a. members.

it's the recursive definition of the chebyshev sequence of orthogonal polynomials. it's not stepping in that fresh pile of dog s**t right outside your car door.

srira cha is the tears of all the children who have ever lived, condensed and turned into unicorns and pop tarts. elder dæmons lying in wait in the ultimate sackcloth darkness of the marianas trench fill their igneous nalgene bottles with srira cha. plop plop, fizz fizz - oh what a relief it is. in every bottle lies the pharoah's curse and the contents of pandora's box. srira cha keeps going and going and going. it's finger lickin' good, it melts in your mouth, not in your hands and it is stronger than dirt. srira cha cleans your house for you while you're on vacation. in asgard upon high, in the hallowed halls of valhalla, the æsir and the einherjar feast each night upon the sumptuous sæhrímnir and to those mighty oaken tables the valkyries swoop down amongst the heroes of olde with swords aflame in one hand and srira cha cradled in the other.

& it's only $10 per bottle.