I went to a hot sauce festival last summer in Long Beach. It was a ton of fun, and there were some really amazing hot sauces there. In fact, I found my new favorite from a local company in SoCal called Infinity Sauces. Their Tri-Haba-Saurus Rex is outstanding. Definitely not hot for the sake of being hot, as it has a ton of wonderful flavor, but most certainly very hot.
As for absolutely ridiculous and over the top? Did that there, too. Ed Currie, from Puckerbutt, brought his hybrid pepper called the Carolina Reaper. It's currently the hottest pepper in the world: A ghost pepper is around 1,000,000 on the Scoville scale; The Reaper has been tested at 2,200,000, with the average being around 1,600,000. I tasted the Reaper Sauce, which was pretty insane. It also had a lot of flavor to it, but just absurd levels of heat. Then there was the Reaper Squeezins sauce, which was more of a hot just to be hot sauce. That **** was ridiculous.
But I was drunk, and stupid, and... long story short, I got convinced to eat just two small pieces of a Carolina Reaper.
Definitely one of the worst decisions of my life.
http://www.cahotsauceexpo.com/ If anyone in the area wants to check it out. There were about 50 booths last year, each with between 5 and 30 sauces to try. And booze. Lots of booze.