You’ve just landed on part 2 of a 2-part Firehouse Jerky review.
To start at the beginning, click here.

Jerky Party

We brought together the miLam staff, friends of the miLam staff, several unsuspecting innocents, and got this jerky party started.

We got the ball rolling with a few rounds of Cards Against Humanity, mixed  in with some 312’s, Bud Lights, Woodchucks, and The Ranual № 2™, which is a sweet-tea vodka lemonade whose exact ingredients and proportions are a well-guarded secret that miLam would love to publish in an exclusive some day. Once CAH had sufficiently proven each of us to be utterly depraved, we broke for jerky.

Firehouse Jerky Review Results: on the whole, thumbs up

Firehouse sent us a sample of their jerky offerings, which included jerky strips and beef sticks in a variety of flavors. We started with the milder ones and worked our way up.

Beef Sticks: we liked them a lot. They’re lean without being dry. They’re pleasantly flavorful, like a nice hard sausage.

Mild: of all the Firehouse products we tasted, a majority of us claimed the Mild Beef Stick as our favorite. It has a tinge of spiciness that sinks in after a few seconds and lingers for a little while. Several of us preferred the Mild stick to the Hot, but that’s a factor of  flavor preference, not quality. Some people don’t go in for hot. 🙂 😮 😀 😆

Hot: we give it the thumbs up. You can taste the flavor of a Tabasco hot sauce right away. The tingle takes a few seconds to build up, and then lingers for quite a while. It kicks without knocking you flat on your ass. Markedly different from “mild” in terms of both flavor and heat. 🙂 😮

Jerky: it softens nicely and produces an enjoyable, meaty chew.

Mild: a bit too mild. In general, it was our least favorite Firehouse product of the evening. We didn’t feel it had a distinct-enough flavor profile. 🙁

Pepper: this one was a standout. The Pepper jerky has a decidedly meaty taste. It’s not “hot,” but has the characteristic warmth of ground black pepper. If it has a black pepper flavor, it’s way in the background of a profile that mainly says “beef.” Of the three flavors, this one is beefiest, and also leaned clearly toward being the crowd favorite. 🙂 😮 😀

Hot: we had mixed reactions to the heat, ranging from some badasses who simply said, “I like the kick” and acted like, whatevs, to others who screamed, “Holy shit!” and ran off in search of something to neutralize it. (Even then it smoldered like coals in the back of our mouths for quite a long time.) Since we were divided, I had make the call, and I say Firehouse’s Hot Jerky has a very direct, sharp heat … like a Cayenne or Habanero chili pepper. Furthermore, I say that it’s a grown-up hot, a grad-school hot, an off-the-charts, martial arts, voo-doo hot. It’s not kidding, it takes no prisoners, it gives your ass a slap and it gits up in yer bisniss. It won’t make you cry or sweat, but it’s firmly beyond the checkout divider that separates the men from the boys. Depending on which camp you’re in, you’ll either love or dread Firehouse’s Hot Jerky. 😈

♠

See Also:

The Short-Term Effects of Eating Jerky

The Long-Term Effects

← Previous: Firehouse Jerky, Part 1