We’ve been working on something new: a 50Hertz hot sauce built around the tingle of Sichuan pepper.

Actually, two.

A few weeks ago, we sent beta samples of RED and GREEN to members of the 50Hertz community. Neither recipe is finished, and we still don’t know whether one, both, or either will ever become an actual product.

We asked people to put them on real food and tell us what worked, what didn’t, and what they wanted more of.

So far, 39 testers have responded. And the feedback is already changing how we think about both sauces.

Here’s where things stand.

RED vs. GREEN

The two sauces are pretty different.

RED is deeper, smokier and more savory. 

GREEN is brighter, citrusy, fresh and aromatic.

Both started with the same idea: what happens when Sichuan pepper isn’t just another ingredient in hot sauce, but the whole point?

Chile gives you heat. Sichuan pepper gives you má — that buzzing, tingling, electric sensation at the heart of 50Hertz.

Getting those two sensations to work together without one drowning out the other has turned out to be harder than it sounds.

Early Signal: GREEN Has the Edge

When we asked which sauce people preferred more, GREEN had the edge: 18 testers (46.2%) chose GREEN, 7 testers (17.9%) chose RED, and 13 testers (33.3%) liked them equally. Only 1 tester (2.6%) chose neither.

But the more useful part was why.

Testers kept describing GREEN as bright, citrusy, floral, and unusual. Alexandra gave us one of the comments that stuck with us most:

“I liked the green one because I thought it was very citrusy and fresh and very acidic, which is something I look for in my hot sauces, and it felt most true or honest to the 50 Hertz oil. It felt like a very clear hot sauce version of the oil.”

Bill picked up on something similar, especially in how the Sichuan pepper came through:

“The green was a bright, delightful, tropical note. It felt vibrant, and the huajiao flavor and tingle was a distinct but concordant note.”

That matters. A sauce can taste good and still have no real reason to exist. If we eventually put the 50Hertz name on one, we want you to taste it and understand why we made it.

Right now, GREEN seems closer to that.

Image: RED and GREEN out for a test drive — alongside our Tingly Cashews, which get their citrusy, floral buzz from the same crushed green Sichuan pepper in the green hot sauce. 

The Loudest Feedback: More Tingle

We thought everyone would argue about heat.

Instead, the loudest message was much more on-brand:

More tingle.

For RED, more than half of testers — 21 of 39 (53.8%) — said it needed more tingle. Even with GREEN, which performed better on tingle, 15 testers (38.5%) still wanted more tingle.

Katherine summed up her recommendation in three words: “tingle tingle tingle.”

Leslie got to the bigger issue. She liked RED’s smoky character, but said “without the tingle it just tastes like another chipotle hot sauce.”

That may be the biggest takeaway from this beta.

Maybe the sauces don’t just need to be hotter. Maybe they need to be more 50Hertz.

Image: The betas got tested on everything from savory pastries to pretzels. The verdict kept coming back the same: more tingle.

The Good News: The Flavor Is Already Working

When we asked testers to ignore heat and tingle completely and judge the flavor, both sauces did well.

32 of 39 testers (82.1%) liked or loved RED, compared with 34 of 39 (87.2%) for GREEN.

The bigger difference was enthusiasm: 24 testers (61.5%) loved GREEN, compared with 20 (51.3%) for RED.

So flavor probably isn’t the problem. The challenge is making each sauce distinctive enough to feel unmistakably 50Hertz — and good enough that people want to come back to it.

Image: One tester paired the RED and GREEN betas with a leaf-wrapped sticky rice dish — proof that the flavor was already landing on real food.

So What Do We Fix?

The harder challenge is identity.

For RED, the smoke is both a strength and a problem. People like its rich, savory profile, but the smoke can push the Sichuan pepper into the background. 

We need to figure out how to keep what’s delicious while making the tingle impossible to miss.

GREEN has almost the opposite problem. Its citrusy, floral personality comes through immediately — which is probably why people remember it.

Image: Real-world beta testing: RED and GREEN, side by side on fried fish.

But push that personality too far and things get weird.

Audrey gave us perhaps the most memorable critique of the beta: the citrus was so perfumy to her that it reminded her of “gas station bathroom cleaner (sorry).”

We laughed. Then we wrote it down.

We don’t want to tone GREEN down until it becomes another safe green hot sauce. We just need to find the line between bright, floral, and electric and… bathroom cleaner.

Apparently there is one.

A Hot Sauce Has to Survive a Taco

The feedback got even more useful once people started eating the sauces with actual meals.

Testers put them on tacos, eggs, seafood, pizza, chicken, dumplings, burgers, noodles, vegetables, avocado toast and more. 

But Marco raised a bigger question.

After trying the sauces on carnitas tacos with cilantro and onion, he thought they had “no staying power” once they had to compete with everything else in the bite.

That’s useful.

We’re no longer just asking “Does this taste good?”

We have to ask ourselves “does it still show up when you put it on dinner?”

The Recipe Is Only Half the Problem

Even if we nail the flavor, we still have to figure out how to actually make it.

The sauce has to stay mixed, travel well, taste consistent from bottle to bottle, and work at commercial scale.

Right now, one of our biggest challenges is finding the right U.S. co-packer — ideally one that works with emerging brands, can handle smaller initial runs, and is open to something very Sichuan-pepper-forward.

We’re still trying to answer two questions at once:

Can we make this properly? And is it good enough that we should?

If you know a co-packer who might be a fit, send them our way.

Would People Actually Buy It?

Finally, we asked the question that matters more than “Do you like it?”

Would you actually buy it?

For GREEN, 30 of 39 testers (76.9%) said they’d probably or immediately buy it, including 23 (59.0%) who said immediately.

For RED, 25 of 39 (64.1%) said probably or immediately.

Encouraging? Definitely.

Proof that we should launch? Not yet.

It’s encouraging, but this is a friendly beta crowd — not strangers discovering us for the first time. Still, it’s a strong enough signal to keep going.

So… Are We Launching It?

Not yet. We’re still very much in beta.

GREEN currently has the stronger signal. Both sauces probably need more tingle. RED needs a clearer 50Hertz identity. GREEN needs refinement without losing the brightness that makes it interesting. And we still have manufacturing problems to solve.

The next batches may look different.

That’s the point.

One of our tougher testers, Andy, still ended his feedback by saying the idea could become “the breakthrough tingle product the market needs but doesn't know about yet.”

We don’t know if he’s right.

But we’re excited enough to keep finding out.

More testing to come!!⚡