re: Poll: Do you refrigerate your hot sauce after opening?

Not the ones I use frequently. The ones I use less frequently I keep in the fridge because they can become discolored over time. It doesn’t affect the flavor, it’s just a matter of aesthetics.

You can always pull a bottle out and let it come up to room temperature before you use it then put it back. I had a bottle of hibiscus-flavored hot sauce I brought back from Hawaii that was really good - although not terribly hot - that took me more than a year to go through. I kept that in the fridge. I keep my green Tabasco in the fridge. Here’s one for you - I keep my Crystal in the fridge but not my Louisiana hot sauce. I generally use Crystal for cooking and Louisiana for a condiment so the latter goes faster. (It’s also hotter.)

A bottle of habanero Tabasco barely lasts me more than a few weeks. The last time I bought some, I bought four bottles. It’s not the hottest hot sauce in the world but it’s got a good kick (hotter than any of the other sauces I mentioned in this post) and the taste is fantastic. When everyone else was coming out with habanero sauces, they took their time before releasing one that had a great balance of heat and fruit flavors with banana and papaya and whatever else that I’m not going to take the time to look up.

And it comes in a small bottle that you can put in a baggie and carry it to a restaurant that doesn’t have a decent hot sauce selection. Like Waffle House, for example. The ones around me, anyway.