Great American Popcorn Co.

The Great American Popcorn Company (Galena, IL) is an establishment selling gourmet popcorn, Jelly Belly jelly beans, homemade fudge, candies, and coffee. My friends know I love spicy food (perhaps too much) and popcorn, and one of them alerted me to Great American's website.

To my delight, Great American has a lot of different flavors of gourmet popcorn to choose from. I ordered a bag of their two spiciest flavors: Freaking Hot and Hellfire & Damnation.

"Freaking Hot" popcorn

"Hellfire & Damnation" popcorn

Hellfire & Damnation has a blend of habanero, cayenne, jalapeno, and other spices. I detected some cheese in the blend as well. So it's really cheesy popcorn with a bunch of heat on it. Freaking Hot is the same thing, but now Great American adds the ghost pepper in it. I could tell Freaking Hot was spicier, but not overly spicy.

On several occasions when I ate the popcorn, I coughed from the chili powders hitting the back of my throat. I welcome such a reaction. It tells me the spice is present and  that I paid for a product that delivered -- literally and figuratively (I ordered from their online store and it was shipped to me).

I am a big fan of their Freaking Hot popcorn and will order that again. I really only tried the Hellfire & Damnation to compare heat levels. I am also intrigued by their sweeter flavors and will try those in the future as well. Great American Popcorn Company has a great popcorn product and lives up to its name. 7.25/10


UPDATE (5/17/11): I have increased the rating for Great American Popcorn Company a quarter point to 7.25. The previous week, I emailed David Lewis, the owner of Great American Popcorn, suggesting some smaller sizes or a sampler popcorn package, just in case people ordering from out-of-state wanted to try numerous flavors and could not make up their minds. Mr. Lewis replied back on 5/17, saying they were about to start offering smaller size containers. He also stated that if I let him know I was ordering again from Great American Popcorn, he would be happy to throw in a few popcorn samples. Now that's a nice guy for ya.