Spicefreak

Happy thursday, everybody! It’s the twentieth of august and you know what that means? Absolutely nothing.

Today isn’t anything special. It’s just a normal, everyday thursday. But I do have some news for you, at last, regarding the reopening of the Chilli Alchemist. And that, my friends, is far more special than any day of the week!

As you should be able to tell from the above image, mind you, their sauces aren’t exactly as they were before and they aren’t reopening with all of them right away.

What you see here are Pure, Smoke and Flame – The new versions of the Eternal Flame, original Smoke Potion and Purus, respectively. All three rebranded with simpler names, in order to appeal to more of a mass market. Because Russell – The owner of Grim Reaper Foods and now, also, of the Chilli Alchemist – has had a real hard time, trying to effectively launch a second company from quarantine, and needs to reach as broad of an audience as possible, if he wants to recover.

Personally, I preferred the old names. But I can see exactly why he’s done it.

Most brits only speak the one language and haven’t grown up with exposure to numerous others, like I have. They tend to look at words like “Purus” and dismiss them as non-english, rather than thinking about what english words look similar and inferring the connection to “Pure”.

To someone like me, who lives for the unusual and the fantastical, that closed off world view is entirely alien. Yet I can still see the business sense in catering to it and in removing both the latin and the alchemic symbols, to make the point of each product clearer.

Plus, if I’m entirely honest, it has always bugged me, a bit, that the name “Purus” was put on a blend of chillies, rather than on a sauce with a high concentration of a single pepper. So calling what was once the Eternal Flame – Their purest one-pepper product – by the english translation of that word does please me. As do the other changes to that sauce.

You see, while the Eternal Flame was the old Chilli Alchemist’s extract sauce, it was also one of the purest and freshest-tasting habanero sauces on the market. It was nothing special in heat, scoring a mere nine in 💀📽️my video review📽️💀, but its flavour was far more impressive. So the fact that Russell’s taking out the extract and adding in ginger, to highlight that great taste, has me excited.

And I can’t exactly fault what he’s doing to the Smoke, either, since many people prefer real smoked ingredients to liquid smoke and taking out that smoke flavouring for more chipotle definitely can’t hurt.

So, while none of the new Chilli Alchemist line will be exactly what the old company made, I have faith that Russell knows what he’s doing and look forward to trying his new twists later this month.

If you feel the same, the company will reopen on the twenty-eighth but you can preorder any of their products right now, by visiting their website from the link in my sidebar. Or below this post, if you’re on mobile.

That includes three new products, too: A lightly ghost peppered chocolate spread, called “Scorch”, a similarly spiced, and also salted, caramel spread by the name of “Blaze” and a seriously fancy-looking “dark matter” chocolate. The last of which contains mint oils and popping candy for a wonderful blend of sensations, designed to honour the fallen Melliculus range.

Because that popping candy, which made the original Alchemist stand out from the crowd, will sadly not be returning, like the rest. It just didn’t have the shelf life of their sauces and was far to prone to forming large, ineffectual clumps, due to the moisture in the air.

But still, I’m glad that at least some reference to the sweets that inspired my reviewing career can live on and the rest of today’s news is fantastic.

I’ve been waiting for the Chilli Alchemist’s return for a long time and I’m sure that I’m not the only one.