Panhead Spicy APA Sauce

Background

Long time friends and fellow entrepreneurs Hell Pizza and Panhead Custom Ales were fizzing to join forces. Both companies are known for creating products with strong flavours and the brief here clearly reflected that:

"Create a kick-ass sauce with lots of heat and a punch of hops and flavour reminiscent of Panhead's Supercharged APA. It had to be versatile and suitable for both as a wing and rib sauce as well as a pizza topping"

Challenges

Developing a spicy sauce was easy enough but capturing the hops flavour was a completely new challenge for the team.

Solutions

We worked very closely with Panhead’s brewers here to understand how the beer was ‘super charged’ with hops. They’re the experts on beer and hops and gave us a head start on how we could get the hops into the sauce. This included making up a hops ‘tea’ through to adding them like a herb.

We also consulted with our ingredient suppliers and trialled various natural hops and beer flavours.

Results

In the end the solution was to add the beer itself! Panhead were able to supply a low carbonated beer to be used as an ingredient and the cooking process involved in making the sauce, erased the alcohol.

As with any customised product, the Hell Pizza and Panhead teams were heavily involved in the taste direction of this sauce. The launched product exceeded expectations on ribs, wings and pizza… it starts hoppy, stays hoppy, and finishes hoppy!