Award-Winning Hot Sauce: Natural Ingredients, Heat, and flavor

Award-Winning Hot Sauce: Natural Ingredients, Heat, and flavor

I know you are a heat seeker and anything less than high quality simply will not do! Hot sauce should do more than just bring the heat — it should elevate your food and drinks with unique, balanced flavor. That’s why every bottle of The Spicy Shark is crafted with all-natural, high-quality ingredients and a flavor-forward approach that makes each sauce exciting, versatile, and genuinely enjoyable. This is Craft Heat.

If you love heat, you’ll certainly find it here — but never at the expense of flavor or enjoyment. These sauces aren’t designed to melt your face or cause pain. Instead, they’re made with a thoughtful blend of fresh pepper pods and mashes, never pepper extracts, so you experience real pepper flavor along with the heat. Even our hottest offerings, the 6 Fin Series, are carefully crafted, delicious, and award-winning, proving that great hot sauce doesn’t have to sacrifice flavor for fire.

Flavor-Forward Hot Sauce Made With a Wide Range of Heat

Many people know The Spicy Shark because of our advocacy for shark conservation. We are a family of divers and snorkelers who are passionate about our oceans' sharks, hence the name of our company. We feature a shark prominently on all our labels, but now a little more on what’s inside the bottle.

From the beginning, The Spicy Shark has focused on creating award-winning hot sauce that highlights natural ingredients, global inspiration, and careful balance. Heat plays an important role, and we explain that range of heat through our Fin Heat Scale, but it’s never the whole story.

Our sauces are meant to be used generously — at the grill, at brunch, behind the bar, and everywhere in between. This philosophy is what defines a truly gourmet hot sauce: bold flavor, clean ingredients, and versatility that keeps you coming back for more.

You can explore our full lineup of sauces and spicy products in our online shop.

Hot Sauce Pairings That Go Beyond the Plate

One of the best ways to experience heat and flavor-forward hot sauce is through pairings that let the ingredients shine. Some of our favorites include:

• Hot Maple Syrup

  A fan favorite and Scovie Best in Show winner, perfect for cocktails, coffee drinks, glazes, and of course pancakes and vanilla ice cream. Sweet heat with depth and complexity.

• Hot Honey

  A natural pairing for pizza, fried chicken, biscuits, roasted vegetables, and cheese boards — sweet, spicy, and endlessly versatile.

• Caribbean Reef Shark
  

  The combination of pineapple and coconut milk brings tropical flavor that shines on fish tacos, grilled shrimp, chicken, and rice bowls.

We communicate many of our sauce and food pairings by the recommendations on our bottles, making it easy to experiment and discover new favorites. We also show our 5-Fin heat scale, with each sauce having a rating from mild to wicked hot. And then there’s the 6-Fin series for the adventurous type.

Some of the Most Prestigious Hot Sauce Awards

There are countless hot sauce awards, and honestly they’re all great. We are always thrilled to win any award, but a select few are time-tested and truly reflect excellence in flavor, creativity, and craftsmanship. We’re proud that The Spicy Shark has been recognized by some of the most respected competitions in the industry.

Screaming Mimi Awards

Hosted by hot sauce legend Steve Seabury of High River Sauces, the Screaming Mimi Awards
celebrate standout products and branding. In our first year entering (2019), The Spicy Shark received a Screaming Mimi Award for Best Labels, recognizing the creativity behind our brand from the start.

Jungle Jim’s World Food Innovation (WoFi) Awards

Jungle Jim’s is a hot sauce trailblazer and the original grocery destination for hot sauce lovers, featuring the largest hot sauce selection anywhere. In 2023, we were honored to win the People’s Choice Award for Best Hot Sauce Company — a recognition voted on by the people who matter most: our customers.

Scovie Awards – The Gold Standard of Hot Sauce

Held at the Fiery Foods Show in Albuquerque, the Scovie Awards are widely considered the “Oscars of Hot Sauce.” The Spicy Shark has earned 12 Scovie Awards, including:

• Four First Place awards for Caribbean Reef Shark (“World Beat” hot sauce), Blue Shark Blueberry Syrup (Kid friendly), Hot Maple Syrup (Sweet Heat), and Hammah Gatah (Super Hot Unique)
• Overall Best in Show (2020) for our Hot Maple Syrup - we’re still pumped about this one!
• Most Recent Scovie Award (2026) for the Indian-inspired Mako Snake in the All-Natural XXX Hot category.

A little more on that last one. Mako Snake is part of our Extreme Heat 6-Fin Series and is also known for being featured on the hit YouTube show “Hot Ones,” earning respect from serious heat seekers while staying true to our flavor-first philosophy. Side note, you have to check out the Jennifer Lawrence episode!

Our Original Habanero, Hot Honey, Wing Sauce, Tiger Shark, and Smoked Maple Sriracha have also notched Scovie Awards.

Heat, Flavor, and Purpose — All in One Bottle

Whether you’re mixing hot maple syrup into a cocktail, finishing pizza with hot honey, adding tropical notes to seafood with Caribbean Reef Shark, or tackling bold super hot flavor with one of our 6-Fins like Mako Snake, The Spicy Shark delivers award-winning hot sauce made with natural ingredients and purpose.

Because when heat, flavor, and mission come together, everyone wins — including the sharks 🦈