UNIVERSITY VILLAGE — Dark Lord Day is near … and this year things are about to heat up.
And that’s got a lot to do with a very special Dark Lord-infused hot sauce stirred up by Three Floyds Brewery executive chef Pat Niebling that’s been bottled up, dipped in wax and set for sale at the annual beer festival celebrating the Russian imperial stout touted as the “most wanted beer in the world.”
Inspired by the brewery’s “It’s Not Normal” slogan, Niebling took ancho and guajillo chili peppers left behind after aging for a year in cognac barrels to make Dark Lord de Merete, a highly sought-after barrel-aged version of what beer experts consider the world’s best Russian imperial stout.
“I was into hot sauce at the time, and they weren’t doing anything with those peppers in the barrels, so I decided to make some hot sauce,” the chef said.
Niebling added red jalapenos, habanero and roasted poblano peppers, onions, garlic and carrots, mixed in vinegar and a bit of the unbottled stout left in the barrels, cooked the concoction for four hours to produce the deep red sauce that Three Floyd’s founder Nick Floyd named “Dark Lord Head Hunter Hot Sauce.”
It’s spicy — about 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 — with sweetness from the carrots and hints of the chocolate and coffee flavors found in Dark Lord.
“Our chef took the initiative, and I got them some kick-ass art,” Floyd said of the grenade-shaped hot sauce bottles adorned with an image of a female warrior from Middle-earth.
"The sauce is an evolution of [Niebling] growing as a chef.”
If you want to buy a bottle to try at home, you’re probably out of luck. There were only enough barrel-aged peppers for about 500 bottles. You can get one at Dark Lord Day on April 25, but the annual beer fest is already sold out.
But there was a chance to get a taste last Saturday at Bacon Fest at the UIC Forum. That’s where Niebling cooked up his version of a “Texas hot wing” that was slathered in Dark Lord Head Hunter Hot Sauce.
“I think it’s really cool to have the hot sauce that comes from Dark Lord, a beer that has such a huge cult following, and really is another step to that,” Niebling said.
“Dark Lord comes every year, and we’re going to work on having a hot sauce every year. I’m pretty excited about how it all came together.”
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