A Venice Dad Put Blueberries in Hot Sauce. Then He Made It a Trilogy.

The best-selling hot sauce at FAS Sauce is blueberry. The product page suggests pancakes.

I need you to sit with that for one second, because Joel, the guy who makes it, clearly did. Then he made two more.

The franchise

Blue Scorpion came first: blueberries and scorpion pepper, the shop's "best-selling, blueberry-infused creation." Red Scorpion followed with strawberries and Scotch bonnet. Then Black Scorpion, blackberries plus horseradish, which the shop calls "the final totem" of the Scorching Scorpion Trilogy.

Most hot sauce brands put out a new flavor. This one closed out a story arc. All three come as a bundle for $30; singles are $12 for 5 ounces.

No training, and he says so

His homepage is upfront about it: "Because I have no professional training (oops!), I can break the rules. Who says you can't put cucumber and cherries in hot sauce?"

He did put cucumber and cherries in hot sauce. Flaming Cherry is cherry, cucumber and ghost pepper, pitched as something you drizzle on eggs. There's a Dragonfruit. There's a Peach Reaper, which is a peach and a Carolina Reaper sharing one bottle, which sounds like a nice afternoon until it isn't.

For people who just want dinner: Key Lime (key lime juice, poblano, mild or medium) and Roasted Garlic, the savory best-seller. His recipes page pairs Key Lime with fish tacos and Roasted Garlic with chicken and waffles.

How it started

Per Our Story, in 2020 he was selling deep-fried peanuts for a friend at markets around the state, looked around, and noticed nobody was selling hot sauce, which he calls "a crime in the south." Trial and error, "far too many YouTube videos," and FAS Sauce launched in March 2021. It started with three sauces. It's at twelve.

FAS is his daughter's initials. Two other sauces are named after people too. Lexi's Favorite (Carolina Reaper, scorpion, ghost pepper, horseradish) honors the shop's marketing team, who is Lexi. James' Favorite came out of a hot sauce challenge with a family friend named James, who, per the page, still wants it hotter. The product page reports what customers call it in two words, and the first one is mostly asterisks.

Read the colors before you pour

The house heat chart is called the Joelville Scale, and it's printed right on the homepage:

• Black = Mild
• Green = Medium
• Red/Black = Hot
• Red/Red = HOT!!!

Four exclamation points across two levels. That's the whole warning label. If you can't decide, the Mystery Hot Sauce is $12 and they pick, "on the top hot end." That is a trust exercise with a cap on it.

Where to find him this week

Order online, or go say hi. His market schedule lists:

• Thursday, Oct. 22: Englewood Farmers Market, Old Englewood Village, 335 W. Dearborn St., 9 AM to 1 PM (October through May).
• Saturday, Oct. 24: Venice Florida Farmers Market, 401 W. Venice Ave. by City Hall, 8 AM to 1 PM, rain or shine.

You can also request a flavor. The form floats peanut butter and jelly as options. I am not saying anything. I am just saying the man has a blueberry franchise and a Saturday booth.

Hunting other bottles made around here? Craving hot sauce? Gigly has the local makers, FAS Sauce included. And if this got you thinking breakfast, the Caribbean Pie Co. key lime pie on a stick is a reasonable chaser.

Planning the rest of the week? Sandy has everything in costume.

— Marina