Jedidiah's Beef Jerky - Private Reserve - New Sweet & Spicy

Jedidiah's Jerky is a brand belonging to Jedidiah's Jerky and Gourmet Snacks based out of Laughlin, NV.

The business was started by David Coffey in 2005. Coffey is a veteran of the meat snack industry having started with Polley's Jerky in 1984, and launching another brand of his, River Run Jerky. His father worked in the jerky business before him.

The Jedidiah's brand was created to represent unique styles and recipes that appeal to the dedicated jerky snacker. This Private Reserve line of jerky is a soft and tender beef brisket variety, while their Premium line is the standard jerky.

You can watch a video of Coffey talking about his jerky...
http://www.thetalkmarket.com/video/product/446/

Noticing the ingredients list below, this variety contains "tapatia", which I assume is Tapatia sauce, a popular brand of hot sauce.

Ingredients

Beef brisket, soy sauce, brown sugar, Tapatia sauce, jalapeno peppers, lemon juice, garlic powder, black pepper, worcestershire sauce.

Taste

I get a strong sweetness upon putting a piece into my mouth. There's also a chile pepper flavor that comes through immediately as well. Salty is another significant taste that comes on strong. I can taste the soy sauce in there also.

For being advertised as a sweet & spicy variety, I'd say it certainly fits the bill. It's more sweet than it is spicy, however. If you want to differentiate "spicy" as opposed to "hot", it does have a lot of spicy flavorings that I can detect. The chile pepper taste, which perhaps comes from the Tapatia and jalapeno peppers, give it that spicy bite. But it's not very hot, at least not as hot as the company's Hot & Spicy Teriyaki, that I reviewed earlier. This is probably medium by my standards.

The saltiness is well defined in here, it's what I would classify as "too salty". The saltiness is actually the predominant taste in this. There's enough of the other flavors and seasonings that I can taste to offset the saltiness, but it's actually reverse. The other flavors and seasonings would come out a lot more if it weren't so salty.

The natural meat flavors do show up, but are hard to find mainly because the other flavorings drown it out. If anything there is a slight stale taste to this meat, but it's not really that bad. The flavorings and seasonings do a pretty good job to mask it.

This jerky is sprinkled with tiny jalapeno seeds. Every now and I then I bite into one and get a burst of jalapeno flavor.

Overall, this is jerky has a great taste, offering a complexity of flavors between the soy sauce, sweet, jalapeno pepper, Tapatia sauce, and salt. I could get addicted to this if it weren't so salty.

Meat Consistency

These are whole slices of beef brisket, and sliced thin. The strips are thin enough, and sticky enough, that they clump up into small bite sized peices.

This is a soft and tender jerky, being semi-moist. It's very easy to tear apart and chew. You don't even need teeth to eat this.

The stickiness I described remains in very small amounts on my fingers, but not enough so that I have lick them off before typing.

Being made from brisket, there is indeed quite a bit of membrane to be seen on the edges of these slices, but I haven't found it chewy at all. Everything chews very easily. Otherwise, no tendon or gristle to be found.

Overall, this has a great meat consistency.




Product Value

Jedidiah's Jerky sells this New Sweet & Spicy variety from its website at a price of $7.99 for a 3.65oz package. That works out to a price of $2.19 per ounce, putting this into the expensive price range.

For general jerky snacking, this has a decent value. It's very tasty, and has a taste that lasts all throughout the chew, and is very easy to eat. It's very snackable. I'd call it an excellent value if it were priced about 50 cents less per ounce.

For being advertised as a sweet & spicy variety, it's also a decent value. It certainly is sweet & spicy, but for a price of $2.19 per ounce, you can find much cheaper sweet & spicy brands.

But you might be intrigued with the unique taste this offers, with the jalapeno and Tapatia sauce, and its unusually soft consistency. It's worth buying to just experience it.

Rating

I'm giving this a good rating.

This New Sweet & Spicy variety from Jedidiah's Private Reserve offers a very pleasing taste for folks who love spicy jerky that's not necessarily hot, and provides a very soft and tender texture.

I just found it too salty for my liking. I could give it a best rating if it only toned down the saltiness.

Otherwise, I really enjoy the flavor of this. For me personally, anytime you add jalapeno peppers and hot sauce, you get something that finds favor from me.

To make a beer recommendation, the heavy sweetness in this warrants something light on taste, in fact a hefeweizen or wheat beer sounds good.

Rating: Good

Buy this online:

• http://www.jedsjerky.com