Beer hot sauce with your brewery’s name on the label

Breweries and taprooms, brewpubs, bottle shops, cocktail and neighborhood bars, and distilleries with a tasting room. Places with a loyal crowd, a merch shelf that’s mostly shirts and glassware, and a bar top where a bottle can sit next to the register.

Our sauces are made in Colorado, so a taproom here can sell one as a local product; see Colorado breweries and taprooms on our Colorado page. The bottles ship to taprooms anywhere in the US.

Three sauces in our line are made with beer. All three sit at the friendly end of our heat scale and suit bar food, and each leans a different way. One thing to get right before you name yours: these sauces are made with beer, but not with your beer, so the label shouldn’t say or suggest the sauce contains your pilsner or your flagship pale. Name it after the taproom, a beer it pairs with, or an in-joke from behind the bar instead.

• Pilsner Sriracha (H17, Heat 2/5): garlic and chili, clean and bright. The pick for pilsners, lagers and anything fried.
• Farmhouse Ale Serrano (H18, Heat 2/5): green serrano heat with an herbal edge, for saisons, farmhouse ales and fish tacos.
• Pale Ale Chipotle (H19, Heat 2/5): smoky chipotle that stands up to hops, for pale ales, IPAs, burgers and nachos.

A craft beer hot sauce collaboration puts the brewery’s own beer into a small-batch recipe, made with a sauce maker. That is a custom recipe, and it runs as a co-packer project: someone develops the recipe with your beer, the new recipe gets a food-safety review, and the first run is scheduled around both kitchens. We don’t bottle custom recipes, so we can’t put your beer in the bottle.

What we do is the house label: one of our beer sauces with your brewery’s name and art, from 48 bottles, ordered in an afternoon. On the label, say what is true. “Pairs with our IPA” or “Made for the taproom” works; “Made with our IPA” doesn’t, unless your beer is in the bottle.

If a true collaboration is what you want, here is the usual route:

• Find a sauce maker or co-packer that takes custom recipes, and agree up front who owns the recipe.
• Supply the beer for test batches and the production run, and pick a style that holds its flavor after cooking.
• Expect test batches, a food-safety review of the recipe and a larger first run than a house label needs.
• Meanwhile, a house label on one of our beer sauces can test demand at the bar before you commit.

A small card by the register, or a line on the back label, helps people choose. Starting points:

• Pilsners and light lagers: Pilsner Sriracha, for garlic and a clean finish.
• Saisons and farmhouse ales: Farmhouse Ale Serrano, for green chile and something herbal.
• Pale ales and IPAs: Pale Ale Chipotle, whose smoke stands up to hops.
• Ambers, browns and stouts: Chipotle (Heat 2/5), or a 12 oz Beer Mustard BBQ Sauce for the grill.
• Sours and fruit beers: Mango Pineapple (Heat 2/5).

Upload your existing can or tap-handle artwork as a PNG and the taproom template gives it a band across the label, with the brewery name on the front. Keep the front within about 2 inches across so it reads on the curve of the bottle, and use the back panel for the pairing note, your address or a QR code to the tap list. Only upload art you have the rights to print.

Labels work well as limited drops tied to a release: every bottle in a batch shares one design, so each new label is a new batch with its own minimum.

The register is the obvious spot, but the best moments are the busy ones: food-truck nights, when people are already eating; release days, when regulars are buying beer to go anyway; and tours, when visitors want something to take home besides a pint glass.

A release-day bundle is simple to set up: a to-go four-pack and a bottle of sauce at one round price, with the pairing note on the back label. If your health department allows it, keep one opened bottle by the pretzel board or the food truck window so people can taste it with a beer before they buy.

Bars with a brunch program can add a 25 oz Bloody Mary mix with their name on it: it runs the Sunday bar, and the same bottle sells to guests who want to make it at home. The mixes are sold as non-alcoholic mixers, and the ingredient panel on each bottle lists what’s inside, so a distillery can pour its own vodka alongside and sell both bottles together.

Stock is ordered at wholesale prices with a wholesale quote: send the label, flavor and quantity, and we reply with wholesale pricing and an invoice. At 96 bottles, a hot sauce costs $6.47 delivered; sold at $12.99, that is a 50% margin. A 25 oz mix at the 48-bottle minimum costs $11.60 delivered and leaves 36% at $17.99. The margin calculator on this page runs your own prices.

Reorders come in cases of 24 and usually arrive two to four weeks after you order. Check with your licensing authority and health department that you can sell packaged food alongside drinks, and collect sales tax as your state requires.