The Last Dab Apollo is the fourth iteration of the famous hot sauce the Last Dab featured in Hot Ones, the YouTube interview show. The Last Dab Apollo is made from Ed Currie’s latest creation, the Apollo pepper, and succeeds his previous hot sauce creation, The Last Dab Triple X (check out our review).
Fun fact: The hot sauce name “the Last Dab” comes from the tradition of adding a little extra dab of hot sauce to the 10th and final chicken wing during the celebrity interviews on the Hot Ones, where guests eat spicy chicken wings as the host, Sean Evans interviews them.
The Last Dab Apollo made its debut in season 13 of Hot Ones. The hot sauce ingredients include:
- Apollo pepper
- Distilled vinegar
- Apollo pepper powder
- Apollo pepper distillates
The Apollo pepper is created by crossbreeding Carolina Reapers and Pepper X, possibly two of the hottest peppers on the planet. Want to learn more about the Apollo pepper? Check out our two articles on this topic:
Quick links
- Apollo Peppers – 7 Fascinating Facts You Should Know
- Apollo Peppers: the New Secretive Super-Hot on the Block
Sean Evans, the host of Hot Ones, said, that the Last Dab Apollo hot sauce “is by far the hottest last dab we’ve ever made.” I’m paraphrasing here but he said they were worried it could be too hot for their celebrity guests to put it on the show.
When I heard that they thought it might be too hot for their guests, I needed to find out if it’s all marketing hype or if this is the most sizzling hot sauce ever to be used on the show.
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The Last Dab Apollo Hot Sauce Review
I wasn’t too apprehensive about trying The Last Dab Apollo as I have a high tolerance to extremely spicy food.
I shook the bottle up with a false sense of confidence and placed a dime-sized chunk of The Last Dab Apollo onto a spoon. I inspected the hot sauce for a minute, noting that it looked deep orangish-red in color, which reminded me of Carolina Reaper peppers. I then tasted the hot sauce, ready for a spicy but not overwhelming hot sauce experience.
The Last Dab Apollo took me for a ride. At first, I was pleasantly surprised by the fruity, smokey flavor that had different levels of complexity, but no more than five seconds into the tasting, the heat hit my taste buds and knocked me back.
The Last Dab Apollo’s heat doesn’t ramp up like other hot sauces: it is just there and shows up all at once. Once the heat hit, I felt like a fire-breathing dragon: you know the feeling, every exhale becomes hotter and hotter, and no amount of water will extinguish the burn. Luckily, I had some fresh homemade full-fat yogurt ready to help alleviate the pain and settle my stomach.
If you love trying some of the hottest hot sauces out there, I recommend trying The Last Dab Apollo. But if you prefer medium hot sauces, this is overkill, and it would probably sit in your fridge never to be finished, like others—I’m looking at you, Da Bomb.
Heat: 5/5 – Extremely spicy. It made my mouth burn for about 30 minutes and I had a slight stomachache for about two hours.
Flavor: 3.5/5 – The flavor is complex, in my opinion, a mixture of fruitiness and smokiness. But it isn’t so good that I would put up with the scorching heat to enjoy it time and time again.
Value: 3/5 – A little goes a long way so it will last you a long time. But it is expensive for what you are getting.
Versatility: 3/5 – This is too hot for 99 percent of people out there to use as a daily hot sauce. Its best use, in my opinion, is to add a little bit to big dishes – like stews and chilis – to kick the spice levels up a few notches.
Overall: 3.5 /5 – I enjoyed this hot sauce, but I’m not in love with it. But if you’re like me and want to try any new iteration of The Last Dab, it’s worth the purchase.
Other Characteristics
How Hot is The Last Dab Apollo?
This question is tough to answer as the hot sauce makers have never officially disclosed the Scoville Heat Unit measurements. Based on my experience with similar hot sauces, I’d say the Apollo pepper may come in at between 2.5 – 3.2+ million Scoville Heat Units. But that is my best guess; please let me know if anyone has run any sort of Scoville Unit lab tests on the hot sauce.
Consistency
The Last Dab Apollo is thick and chunky and needs a few smacks on the back of the bottle to coax the sauce out. This hot sauce is so thick because it is made primarily from the Apollo peppers. When tasting it, you can tell that they didn’t use a lot of vinegar when making it.
Color
The color is a deep orangish-red, similar to the color of a mature Carolina Reaper.
Smell
The Last Dab Apollo has a punchy vinegar smell along with that familiar waft of super-hot chilis. I was surprised that I didn’t taste as much vinegar as I thought I would, considering the smell.
Bottle Aesthetic
The bottle features the famous Hot Ones logo with the fire-breathing chicken. The design looks pretty similar to the other Last Dab hot sauce bottles. The differences are the font used for the “Apollo” and the gold backdrop instead of red used in the previous version of the hot sauce.
Where you can buy The Last Dab Apollo
The Last Dab Apollo can be found at their partner’s website and store, Heatonist. It can also be found on Amazon if you prefer shopping there.
