Pineapple Pizza Hot Sauce

A Hawaiian slice in a bottle.

A mild hot sauce built on fresh pineapple, house-made tepache fermented with pepperoni spices, fermented orange habanero, and a whipped honey-olive-oil emulsion. Awarded Silver at the Scovie Awards 2026, Fruit Hot Sauce category.

Pineapple on pizza is the most polarized food debate in America. We took a side, and this sauce is the result.

The move is the tepache. Traditional Mexican tepache ferments pineapple with piloncillo and warming spices like cinnamon and clove, drunk lightly tart and effervescent. We ran the same fermentation with pepperoni spices instead: fennel, oregano, paprika, garlic, black pepper, anise, the works. Four days in a fermenter and you have a pineapple base that somehow tastes distinctly like pizza.

From there it comes together fast. Fresh pineapple goes in alongside the tepache, lacto-fermented orange habanero, and a whipped honey-olive-oil emulsion that gives the pour a silky, pillowy texture meant to evoke pizza crust. The result is bright orange, glossy, and weirdly accurate. Your brain registers pepperoni even though there's no meat, the fresh pineapple is right there, and the texture reads as crust. Eat a spoonful and your tongue is telling you Hawaiian pizza.

The heat builds like a crescendo, falls into a quiet middle, and rises again on the finish. 2 out of 10. The fun sauce in the lineup.