I’m often the victim of my own ambition.

I want to be smarter, tougher — subvert the very reasonable assumptions that come with being a petite Jewish girl from New York whose small intestine withers at the sight of bread. So when I heard about last weekend’s inaugural Nevermore Hot festival at Peabody Heights, hosting some of the hottest, most fearsome hot sauces found along the East Coast, I immediately cleared my schedule.

Now, I love spice. I was raised to see bland food as a sign of laziness. Sometimes seasoning alone won’t do, and the extra zhush needed to elevate a dish is hidden deep inside a bottle. But I’m not so hard-headed that I expect the heat to love me back. As was explained to me by a fellow sweaty festivalgoer: You can’t fight the ocean, you can only prepare yourself for the next wave.

On Saturday afternoon, I, and what appeared to be hundreds of ambitious Baltimoreans, dipped into a sea of habaneros, ghost peppers and reapers. Here’s what happened.

1 p.m. I walk into the hot sauce festival, a bottle of Prilosec in my pocket, ready for battle.

A crowd was building in the brewery at 401 E. 30th St. Lights were strung across the ceiling, and a table packed with pumpkins and red limited edition “Fire Extinguisher” Pilsner beer marked the entrance.

1:15 p.m. Hell’s Kitchen Hot Sauce, a New York-based company, has a packed stand. Business founder and creator Ron Menin allows me to stand behind his table and ask questions. He seems offended when I ask if this is his first festival. (He does hundreds each year.)

1:20 p.m. Menin tosses me his best-selling blueberry maple habanero hot sauce with hints of pineapple and pear. I taste the blueberry first, sweet and soft at the tip of my tongue.

1:21 p.m. I get a punch of spice at the back of my throat. Not bad though. I shake it off and go in for another.

1:22 p.m. I get another spoon taster and try the Cinnamon Ghost Punch, a 2024 award-winning sauce with roasted tomato, paprika, habanero and ghost, Trinidad and scorpion peppers. It has a “Moroccan influence.” To me, its like a warmer gazpacho with some heat on the side of the tongue.

1:25 p.m. I’m sweating, and I don’t want Menin to think less of me. I ask for his hottest sauce, the Ginger Devil, which he describes as “blistering hot.”

“I’m not trying to destroy people,” he says. “These are sauces anyone can enjoy.” On the first spoonful, it’s delightful and tangy.

1:27 p.m. Then the devil kicks me in my throat.

My face is sweating, so I collect myself and take a breather. The line for drinks at the bar snakes through the brewery’s multiple rooms. Tim Sheets, the owner of Black Eyed Susan Spice Co., a local hot sauce company that helped put together the event, tells me he hopes this will be the first of many Baltimore hot sauce festivals.

3:15 p.m. After a brief intermission to break some grocery store news, I return to the festival. So far I’ve been leaning into the pain: The Black Eyed Susan, with its more pepper-forward sauce, singed the front of my tongue. Honorable mentions include the company’s first hot sauce, Death by Chocolate (Sheets told me to ask for the Red Label, comparing it to a Mexican mole and Caribbean jerk), and the Trinidad Thymebomb, a careful balance of acid and warmth with pineapple and banana.

3:30 p.m. I take another three stands down in fast succession. I’m told by someone in the bathroom that I look “sweaty.”

3:31 p.m. The original sauce by Emmaline’s hot sauce stand comes like a fire hose to my mouth. The company from Nyack, New York, may have the most delightful offering: It’s comforting, with a texture that allows you to feel each spice as if it was mashed in front of you. It’s aromatic, with strong hints of chili and lime, and an adorable picture of business owners’ Alice Crowe-Bell and Alicia Crowe’s grandmother in a wedding dress plastered across the label.

4:00 p.m. The multiple barbecue and bourbon flavors from Joe Sudo’s Not Joe Mama’s Sauce coats my mouth 15 minutes after I’ve left his stand. I have no doubt it would be a great marinade for protein.

4:05 p.m. Despite having a delicate cumin-toasted sauce and garlic habanero sauce at the Black Market Saucier, each remarkably flavor-forward — all I can taste is spicy bourbon.

4:15 p.m Old Grumpy Mark’s sauces actually go pretty well with a mouthful of bourbon. I love the name, which owner Mark Kyle said he and his similarly Mark-named friends thought sounded “wise and mysterious.” Their spiciest sauce, the Black Label, is filled with ghost peppers.

4:20 p.m. It took me another five minutes, but Mark’s Black Label may as well have put its cigarette out on my throat. I love it.

4:45 p.m. Business owner Mike Drew of the New Jersey Company Family Band explained to me that events like this are perfect for market research. He’s learned it’s better to be remembered for your flavors than the heat of your peppers. His sauces are smoky with a strong coating of chipotle. But the smokiest sauce has to go to Spice Beast owner Bill Corrado, who somehow managed to make a sauce that feels endowed with liquid smoke.

5:30 p.m. I’ve really enjoyed some of the not-hot sauce offerings: the kimchi at Ferm Foundation; the Bloody Mary mix at Clark + Hopkins, built from the company’s Chesapeake Bay-named hot sauce; and the popcorn flavored with maple, habanero and garlic at Goodlands Food Co.

5:45 p.m. I don’t know if it was the Trini hot sauce, which owner Chima Igboko insisted was only an 8-level spice, or just the culmination of the dozens of hot sauces I’ve already tried, but for the first time I develop a cough that will not go away. The back of my throat is numb, but my tongue is enthralled by the fruity, Caribbean spices with hints of papaya from Igboko’s line.

6:00 p.m. The crowd is waning and vendors are packing up. I feel like Andy Goforth, the owner of Torchbearer Sauces, who told me at his stand that sometimes “you just have to suffer.” I will say Spices of the Sun’s Orange and Mango sauce, a thick orange paste with habaneros, and the cilantro filled “warm-up” from Hot Graham Sauce Co., owned by Baltimore Peabody Conservatory alums, relieved my tongue — if only slightly.

6:15 p.m. After tasting approximately 40 hot sauces, I say goodbye to the vendors who cheered me on as I moved through the room. I feel bad for the final three vendors, whose wares I could not truly enjoy due to the heat in my mouth.

7 p.m. I am in bed, ice cream in hand. Not much is left of my taste buds, but what little I can parse out tastes like victory.