That’s a rather lofty assertion, especially considering your audience here.
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Well, it’s based on a decades of eating barbecue in many hundreds – thousands actually – of places all over the US – and beyond. (There’s actually a real good place in Amsterdam.) And check out the science link.
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Probably a good selection of sauces for some people, but I do not like barbecue sauces that are vinegar heavy on anything (regardless of the “science”.) I may be an abberation. Even as a child I had a strong aversion to vinegar–so much so that my older brother and sister would torture me with it. LOL Oddly enough, mustard (which has a lot of vinegar in it) was never a problem for me.
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To each his own. The sourness – vinegar, mustard, lemon – does bring out/balance the flavor of smoked pork in particular. Sweet sauces tend to smother it, to the extent that beef and pork can de undistinguishable – but then I am certainly an outlier in generally disliking sweet flavors in savory dishes.
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And to be fair, most people on this thread (including me) are mentioning ubiquitous commercial sauces rather than the sort that you’d expect with real-deal, regulation barbecue. In my book, those are two different enjoyable things that go by the same name. So there’s that.
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I don’t know if you’re an aberration. I may be. When I was a pre-teen my version of “salad” was a hunk of iceberg lettuce with vinegar on it. I still make salad dressing with much lower oil:vinegar ratios than most published recipes (I run about 2:1). Pasta salad dressing gets less fat and more acid than most.
You probably would not like my homemade BBQ sauce much. If you were to stop by, I would buy something more to your liking. In fact, your comment makes me think I should be aware of tastes like yours when we start entertaining again.
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good point
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Texas checking in. What is BBQ sauce?
Seriously I will on occasion put a drip or two on brisket but never pork spare ribs. That’s just me. Others down here do use it but I can’t figure out why.
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When we schlepped home two bottles of Arthur Bryant’s sauce so many years ago, they were packaged in unlabeled one quart vinegar [?] bottles, wrapped in butcher paper. Someone sturdy with steady hands and funnel must have been the bottling line back then.
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Sourness doesn’t bother me (although it’s pretty easy to ruin a batch of guacamole for me with too much lime juice.) It’s something specific to vinegar that is off-putting once it’s past a certain threshold. It doesn’t balance flavors for me; it overwhelms the other flavors. I have the characteristics of a supertaster, so maybe that has something to do with it although that’s usually most apparent with my dislike of bitter foods. I’ve never had a problem distinguishing between beef and pork with sweet sauces. That said, I don’t like sauce of any kind on good beef bbq(by good, I’m talking about Black’s, Louie Mueller, Smitty’s, etc. quality beef bbq.) Sauce on beef bbq is just to cover up someone’s mistake, IMHO.
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I wouldn’t call that the Ultimate, but it’s more in my wheelhouse. I like sweet and smoky sauces epecially for things that have no smoke like popcorn chicken. The local bbq joints tend to undersmoke their meats(for my tastes anyway), so I’ll still use a smoky sauce sometimes even with that.
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That’s such a sad statement!
It’s not that bad. I have one really good place here, run by people from central Texas. They get it right(even the brisket), but by the time I can get there, they’re often out of some of their meats.
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ChimayoJoe, what place is that?
It’s all take-out. COVID messed up their plans to have a sit down place. Theirs is actually the best BBQ I’ve had in Colorado.
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If you guys ate french fries and onion rings with bbq down there, you’d find sauce is the perfect companion. Forget the meat.
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Most places don’t have fryers down here. Forget the sides it’s all about the meat. 
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Stubb’s is good as a base for jazzing up, although it’s a little bland all by itself to me.
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