From Their Hands to Yours

Stories from the Market

Bringing the Craic to the Valley: Small-Batch Flavor with Craic Sauce

As winter loosens its grip and the Valley begins to stir, we’re reminded how good it feels to gather again. The days are a little longer, the snow is melting into our familiar mud season and soon we’ll all be out clearing our nests, reconnecting with the outdoors — and with each other.

With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner and the spring equinox close behind, it’s the perfect time to celebrate something the Irish call “craic” (pronounced krak) — the joy of connection and shared experiences. Good food, good music, familiar laughter and the warmth of community around a table.

That spirit of craic is exactly what inspires Craic Sauce, a small-batch hot sauce company founded by Brian Ruhlmann.

Brian’s journey began with backyard-grown peppers — golden ghost and habanero — at his parents’ home in Concord, Massachusetts. The experience sparked a lifelong passion. Later, while living in Dublin, Ireland, Brian immersed himself in the city’s culture and hot sauce scene, launching crafthotsauce.com, a storytelling platform and marketplace for the global hot sauce community. It was there that the idea for Craic Sauce took shape — bringing a bit of Irish “craic” back home.

By 2017, Brian returned to Massachusetts and began handcrafting sauces in Lowell, sourcing 100% of the peppers from farms in Massachusetts and New Hampshire that prioritize organic and regenerative practices. Craic Sauce is known for constant innovation — fermenting peppers, crafting their own vinegar and incorporating unexpected regional ingredients like pumpkin and kelp for a distinctly New England twist.

Their four cornerstone sauces capture that creative spirit:

40 Shades of Chili — Mild
A fresh blend of green chilies, roasted tomatillos, green apples, peaches, lime juice, and cilantro. Fruity and bright — perfect for salads, sandwiches or mixed into cream cheese for a garden-fresh bagel spread.

Mill City Red — Mild to Medium
Inspired by Lowell’s rich mix of cultures. Cayenne, Fresno, and red habanero peppers combine with beets, carrots, onions, and garlic for a fermented Louisiana-style sauce with a sriracha-like kick. Great on eggs, oysters, tacos or stir-fry.

Golden Pumpkin — Medium to Hot
A New England favorite with ghost peppers, habaneros, pumpkin, pineapple, ginger, honey, carrots and garlic. Sweet heat that works on pork chili, wings, fall stews, or even breakfast eggs.

Brian Boru Curry — Medium to Hot
Named for Ireland’s legendary High King, this bold sauce ferments Scotch bonnet and Hungarian wax peppers for six months before blending them with coconut milk, lemongrass, turmeric, garlic and ginger. (see this recipe for Spicy Curry Disco Fries.)

Craic Sauce also experiments with limited-edition and single-source batches, responding to the tastes and ideas of their growing community.

We caught up with Brian for a quick update.

We loved introducing your sauces to market guests last summer. With the new summer season ahead, any updates our guests should know?
We’ve had a number of limited editions as we grow and learn what people like. For grill season, we recommend Merrimack Black — a bold collaboration with Navigation Brewing Co. featuring chocolate scorpion peppers, Black Pepper Porter and fire-roasted ingredients. It’s aged for months and delivers deep smoky heat with rich umami from black garlic.

What other product are you looking to spotlight?
Craic Sauce doesn’t just do hot sauces — we also make a SunGold tomato sauce. It’s sweeter, less acidic and orange in color. It’s not just for pasta — it’s great with rice, vegetables, proteins, or eggs.

Brian and his team actually grow the SunGold tomatoes themselves on a half-acre plot at Mill City Grows. Tomatoes, basil and peppers are harvested and cooked the next day — capturing the taste of summer in every jar.

So you’re expanding beyond hot sauce?
The goal is to keep highlighting bold flavor, local ingredients and fermentation — whether it’s in a sauce or something totally new.

Craic Sauce has also been getting some well-deserved local attention recently, including a feature on Chronicle highlighting their seed-to-sauce process and the creativity behind each batch.

So next time you’re at the market, stop by the Craic Sauce table. Try a bottle or two of their bold creations and share in a little craic — the kind built on good food, great conversation and the community spirit that has long been part of our Valley traditions.

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