Dave's Gourmet is a company notable for creating and introducing Dave's Insanity Sauce, which for a while held the title of "world's hottest sauce." The sauce is widely distributed—at least in gourmet hot-sauce boutiques and online hot-sauce sites. It is well-known to hot sauce enthusiasts, and is often used as the standard of comparison for extremely hot sauces.

In the United States, a growing interest in hot sauces in general and extremely hot sauces in particular can be dated roughly from the institution of the annual Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show in 1989. The original Dave's Insanity Sauce premiered circa 1995 and was one of the first sauces to be made directly from capsaicin extract, allowing it to be hotter than the hottest habanero-pepper sauces of the day. It was the only hot sauce ever banned from the National Fiery Foods Show for being too hot. It has been rated at 50,000 Scoville units, compared with 2,500 for Tabasco sauce, which prior to the 1990s was the hottest sauce known to the average consumer.

(Reported Scoville unit values for sauces vary widely, either as a result of imprecision in the test itself or natural product variation.)

The introduction of sauces made from capsaicin extract started an arms race. Dave's Gourmet has since introduced sauces with increasingly greater concentrations of capsaicin under names such as Dave's Commemorative Insanity, Dave's Total Insanity, and Dave's Ultimate Insanity, which has been reported variously as from 90,000 to 250,000 on the Scoville scale and comes with a caveat Use this product one drop at a time. Keep away from eyes, children and pets. Not for people with heart or respiratory problems. A recent introduction is Dave's Private Reserve which comes in a coffin-shaped package and has been reported variously as from 300,000 to 500,000 Scoville units.

As of 2004, other manufacturers have apparently overtaken Dave's. Products claiming to be pure capsaicin extract are being marketed, with Scoville ratings ranging from 500,000 to 10,000,000 units (the latter for a product called "Blair's 6 a.m." which claims to be pure capsicum oleoresin in crystalline form). Products with Scoville ratings in this range bear warnings that they "must be diluted before use," or "use as an ingredient only," or "for use as an additive, not for direct consumption." This raises the question of whether they should properly be considered sauces at all; some specifically say "this is not a sauce." That fact that many of the extreme products have names or descriptions like "private reserve" and "limited edition" raises the suspicion that they are created mainly for publicity and for bragging rights, and are purchased as curiosities and collectables rather than for actual use.

External links

• Official website
• List of hot sauces with reported heat intensity in Scoville units
• The World's Hottest Hot Sauces & Their Scoville Units