10 hours Ago
Super Bowl Sunday is this week. And in the world of cocktails, that can mean only one thing: bloody marys. The bloody mary is the queen of brunch cocktails, and while the Super Bowl hasn’t actually been a day game on the East Coast since 1989, the bloody mary has remained the game’s unofficial adult drink on into the afternoon.
The bloody mary has always been a combination of vodka and tomato juice. In fact, that’s all it was at the beginning. It was the addition of spices that eventually made all the difference.
And for the most part, those spices have stayed the same for 100 years: black pepper, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce and celery salt. But the question becomes, which hot sauce do you use? And that’s where Biambu Garrett and his Black Bee Hot Sauce Co. come into play.
Garrett, who grew up in Marin, and Black Bee make six specialty flavored hot sauces: a citrus thyme jalapeño; a cucumber melon serrano; a pineapple coconut habanero with ginger; an apple rosemary habanero; a honey basil red habanero; and a limited-edition mango menace with Carolina Reaper. All are vinegar-based, shelf-stable, all-natural and gluten-free sauces. And all will revolutionize your bloody mary.
“This company is basically born of my love of gardening,” said Garrett, 56. “Apple Rosemary is my flagship flavor, and it came from me being in my yard with a couple glasses of vino and some chicken wings.” The former bartender — six years at the Sleeping Lady Café in Fairfax — also played in several local bands along the way — Freak Freely, Mad Café, amongst others — and says his experience as a band leader helped him put his company together.
“I like to put together a group and let each person do what they do. I’ve got a great team. It’s a small team but it’s a very capable team,” he said.
Incorporating in 2021, Black Bee has been burning up the hot sauce world ever since. At the end of last year, Black Bee won Safeway’s “golden ticket” at a trade show in Pleasanton. “I was just tearing down my booth.
I wasn’t even paying attention,” Garrett said. “And then all of a sudden I hear ‘Black Bee Hot Sauce.’ I was shocked.
It was really a validating moment.” That “golden ticket” includes much more than bragging rights. “More important than the prize, we got placement,” Garrett said.
“We are part of the Safeway spring reset program that initially gets us into 30 stores, and depending upon performance, it expands from there.” For perspective, there are 245 Safeway stores in California alone. “We don’t want to be perceived as an economy brand,” Garrett said.
“The flavors are unusual; we designed it for more of a foodie-type person. And we really want people to recognize that this is a high-quality product.” But getting bigger is what it’s all about.
Available online and locally at Mollie Stone’s Markets, Eureka Natural Foods and United Markets, Garrett currently makes about 200 cases a month. He expects to have to ramp up production for the spring reset. To that end, he has contracted with California Hot Sauce Solutions, an Oceanside co-packer, in order to meet the new demand.
“Right now, I just can’t make enough of the hot sauce myself. At the moment I feel like I could name each bottle. As it gets bigger, it will get harder to have that individual connection to each bottle,” Garrett said.
And the hot sauce market is an expanding market. Some studies suggest that it will grow by 20% in the next four years. It’s also an extremely saturated market.
“What sets us apart is that we infuse garden herbs into our hot sauces,” Garrett said. And those herbs help mute some of the heat so prevalent in other hot sauces, which is what makes Black Bee so appropriate for bloody marys. Heat can be a cheat, but it’s really the fruitiness of the peppers — jalapeño, habanero and serrano — in combination with the unusual herbs that enhance the venerable tomato juice and vodka cocktail.
“It tastes good, and it’s got flavor, but it’s not so hot that you’re running around guzzling milk,” Garrett said. “It’s something that’z going to enhance your experience but not take it over.” And when it comes to bloody marys, and their 100-year-old tradition, an enhanced experience is all we really want.
For more information or to order, go to blackbeehotsauce.com . Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol.
I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.
com Black Bee Batched Super Bowl Bloody Mary 1 46-ounce can tomato juice (organic, if possible) 10 ounces Worcestershire sauce (about one bottle, depending on brand) 1 tablespoon fresh ground black pepper 1 teaspoon ground celery seed 1 ounce fresh-squeezed lemon juice Combine all ingredients and mix thoroughly. Refrigerate mix until ready to use. For each drink, combine 11⁄2 ounces of your preferred local spirit (vodka or gin) and 4 to 6 ounces of batched premix over ice.
Add several dashes of your preferred Black Bee hot sauce, stir and add garnish of choice. Note: Set up a self-serve bloody mary bar with Black Bee’s sample set — five 50-milliliter bottles for $37.99 — and a few pint glasses stocked with green olives, pepperoncinis, celery sticks, pickled green beans, pickled asparagus spears and bacon strips — all of which will make for a fun, flavorful and easy self-service bloody mary bar.
Go sports!.
