Every August is the PDX Hot Sauce Festival. It’s a celebration of all things hot and spicy. There are dozens of vendors from around both the local area as well as around the country. It’s interesting to see how many different kinds of hot stuff that people make.

But it’s not just all vendors, there’s a lot of things going on. The local Hammer Brothers WWF-style Wrestling does matches all weekend.

Then there is the contests. The stage of doom hosts actual Guinness World Record attempts to eat the most Carolina Reapers. Or maybe try your hand at bobbing for Reapers, Burning BBQ Pork challenge, or Spicy Tacos from hell.

The star of the show, in my opinion is Ed Curry and his creations. I always stop in because he usually brings a bunch of Carolina Reapers for sale. This year you could buy a bag of 10 reapers for $5

Also present, you can taste test all of his hot sauce creations. All the way up to pure Reaper puree (Reaper Squeezins) and his new Xperience made from the supposedly even hotter Pepper X. I didn’t even see those latter ones on his website yet.

New for this year, he even brought Pepper X Oil, and even Pepper X ‘sludge’ that’s the purest of the Pepper X extract. It comes in a simple printed bottle and is supposed to be the hottest thing in the world (literally and figuratively). I bought a bottle. Lets see how it goes.