Local entrepreneurs help make a community vibrant and unique. Alan lives in the Woodley Gardens neighborhood of Rockville off Nelson Street – and makes great hot sauces. Meeting interesting people I otherwise likely never would have intersected with was one of the cool things about being Mayor. I first met Alan over a decade ago, while I was Mayor of Rockville.
First, about Alan’s hot sauces: What’s great about them isn’t the spiciness per se, but the flavors they bring. Alan’s manufacturing process involves fresh chilies, garlic and other spices which spend a lot of extra time infusing the vinegar that is the base for Alan’s (and most other) hot sauces. All of the ingredients are sourced near his manufacturing facility. You can taste the flavorful difference versus other companies’ hot sauces.
Rebecca and I love to cook. We first added Alan’s Fire Power hot sauce to fresh gazpacho we had made. Wow. It took the gazpacho to a whole other level. We now regularly use Fire Power (made with jalapenos, habaneros and red fresnos) in dishes that call for hot peppers or chili powder. Our son, a hot sauce enthusiast , loves Fire Power and adds it to just about anything.
Alan makes three other hot sauces: Dragon Fire (a green sauce that’s milder than Fire Power; made with jalapenos, serranos, and pasillas), Hyper Nova (much hotter than Fire Power) and, Mango Bango (which includes mango puree, yellow scotch bonnets, Trinidad yellow seasoning, and rare bhut jolokias – also known as “ghost chilies” and originally from Assam, India, near the Bhutan border).
Second, a little more about Alan: Alan has spent much of his life working in restaurants and food production. He knows a lot about natural food chemistry, which he’s put to use in manufacturing his hot sauces. In addition to making hot sauces, Alan’s been involved in area food and hot sauce festivals. He’s aiming to organize a large festival in Maryland in 2015 (more on that, hopefully, in the coming months). And, Alan is now working as a consultant to aspiring specialty food manufacturers wanting help taking their new food products to market.
Alan’s hot sauces are in some stores. You can order from his website and buy them at some local farmers markets (like Central Farm Markets).