The first time Sarah and Joseph Stanoch hosted a “Hot Ones”-inspired party in 2017, they debunked the theory that milk is the best way to extinguish a spicy mouth. After watching one of their friends chug a gallon over the sink and then proceed to puke, the couple was grateful they stuck to beer. “I used to work at Anheuser Busch, so we actually had the party in my office on a Saturday, and it was just four of us, but they had a bar in the office with unlimited beer, and I feel like light beer really helps with the heat,” Sarah said.
“Milk is clearly not the way to go, and water just exacerbates it because it swirls the heat around your mouth.” “Hot Ones” is a popular YouTube series that host Sean Evans started in 2015. He interviews celebrities while they eat their way through chicken wings with 10 increasingly hotter sauces.
Evans uses hot sauce as a way to disarm his guests, asking them more personal questions as the spice level heats up. And Colorado’s had a few features in the lineup over the years, including Boulder-based Seed Ranch Flavor Co.’s Hot Thai Green sauce in season 11, Fort Collins-based Burns & McCoy Exhorresco sauce in season 7 and Mezcaline Oaxacan sauce in season 18, as well as Denver-based Sauce Leopard’s The Seventh Reaper sauce.
During that time, hot sauce culture has become its own beast. Evans’ painful interviews have inspired masochists like the Stanochs, to convince their own friends to gather around a table and cry, sweat, .
