Est. in our kitchen • Small-batch • Direct to your door
Every bottle made by hand — never outsourced, never mass-produced.
Our story
My grandmother grew chilis in the backyard before anyone called them "artisan." She dried them in the sun, toasted them in a cast-iron pan, and mixed the sauce with her hands. No timer. No recipe card. Just taste, adjust, taste again.
I spent years trying to recreate that heat — that specific warmth that sat in the back of your throat and made the food taste like something remembered. I finally got it right at the kitchen table with my kids watching.
That was the beginning of Ember & Kin. Every bottle we make today follows the same logic: small batches, real chilis sourced from growers we know by name, and enough patience to let the flavors develop the way they want to.
“We make sauce the way food should be made — slowly, carefully, by people who eat it themselves.”
Chilis sourced from family growers — dried, not extracted.
How it's made
Step 1
Every sauce starts with chilis we've chosen personally — dried guajillos from New Mexico, fresh jalapeños from a farm two counties over, and the smoky chipotles we cure ourselves. The variety determines the flavor profile; we never blend down to a generic "hot" heat.
Step 2
Dried chilis get dry-toasted in a cast-iron pan — the same technique that makes Mexican mole sing. This wakes up the oils, deepens the color, and creates a complexity you can't buy from a concentrate. It takes patience. We don't rush it.
Step 3
We bottle the same day we finish the batch. No holding tanks, no commercial preservatives beyond the vinegar that's been in the recipe for 40 years. Every label is applied by hand. Every bottle is checked. The batch number on the label is real — it tells you exactly when your sauce was made.
The lineup
Our gentlest sauce and the one we reach for most. Guajillo chilis, garlic roasted with the skin on, a touch of smoked salt. It goes on eggs, grain bowls, grilled chicken — anything that benefits from depth without dominance.
Guajillo • Roasted garlic • Smoked salt
$14A nod to the original recipe. Dried anchos and chipotles we smoke ourselves, fermented for 30 days before bottling. Complex, layered, and better on everything you eat it with.
Ancho • Chipotle • 30-day ferment
$16Ghost pepper and Carolina Reaper. Mango and tamarind to balance the heat into something you keep coming back to instead of running from. A sauce for people who know what they're doing.
Ghost • Reaper • Mango • Tamarind
$18For the table. Made so everyone eats well together. Cascabel chilis — nutty and earthy — with caramelized onion and apple cider vinegar. Mild heat, serious flavor. Our most-gifted sauce.
Cascabel • Caramelized onion • Apple cider
$14Looking for a gift? We pack any two or four sauces in a kraft gift box with a handwritten card — starting at $35. Perfect for people who have everything, as long as they eat.
Build a gift setWhat we believe
“Good food deserves to know where it came from. We put our name, our faces, and our recipe on every bottle because we eat this sauce too.”
We make every batch ourselves, in the same space we've used since the beginning. When demand grew, we made smaller runs more often — not bigger runs somewhere else. The sauce that arrives at your door was made by the same two hands that answer your emails.
We use a short ingredient list because we choose each one carefully. Dried guajillos from a grower in Hatch, New Mexico. Organic apple cider vinegar. Garlic we roast ourselves. If we can't tell you where it came from, we don't use it.
We sell direct so we can keep prices honest. No retail markup, no distributor cut, no middleman taking a slice. $14 for a bottle of real craft hot sauce that took two days to make is a deal — and we want it to feel like one.
Subscribers get first access to seasonal and limited batches — the Christmas verde, the summer mango ghost, the harvest smoked chipotle we make only in October. We write a short letter with each shipment. You'll hear from us directly, not from a fulfillment center.
What people say
“I bought a single bottle on a whim from their website. I've been on the subscription for eight months. It's the only hot sauce in my kitchen now and my kids fight over the Ember Everyday.”
“Gave the four-pack as a gift to my brother-in-law who thinks he knows hot sauce. He called me two days later asking where to order more. That was the best phone call.”
“Kin's Reserve is the most interesting hot sauce I've put on food in years. The ferment is real. You can taste the 30 days. Worth every cent and worth slowing down to actually taste it.”
Over 1,200 subscribers. 97% renew. We don't run ads — every new customer finds us from someone who already eats our sauce.
Never run out
Our batches sell out fast — especially the seasonal releases. Subscribers get first access to every limited batch, free shipping on all orders, and a handwritten note from us with every shipment.
Pause or cancel anytime — no penalty, no questions. We'll miss you though.
Each batch small enough to taste, large enough to share.