PHOTO: ADOBE STOCK

Things are heating up on the South Side.

Pittsburgh’s Rivers of Fire, the city’s first hot sauce festival, will take place at Velum Fermentation on Saturday, Oct. 4 from 12:30 to 6 p.m.

There will be 18 vendors, a mix of veteran heatseekers and spicy, new businesses, giving yinzers a chance to feel the burn.

Ticketholders can participate in the Fire and Ice Challenge — eating one hot pepper, then hopping into a Pittsburgh TubClub ice bath. For every brave soul who completes this feat, organizers will donate $20 to Animal Friends for Veterans.

Pittsburgh Hot Talk, a localized version of the YouTube sensation “Hot Ones,” where celebrity guests are interviewed as they consume increasingly hotter wings, will feature Gabriel Knecht of Cold Friends Kitchen, Alex Goodstein of Alex Eats Too Much, comedian Blair Grillz and Parker Raymond Webb, a rapper known as Fungi Flows who is the Guinness World record-holder for longest freestyle rap (50 hours!). He will be spittin’ rhymes while eating the wings.

Hungry chili heads can order their own Pittsburgh Hot Talk set of wings made by Cold Friends. Typically, the eatery only serves their popular wings at New Amsterdam in Lawrenceville.

Nine brave souls have already signed up for the League of Fire hot sauce and pepper-eating contest, a culinary challenge that also involves signing a waiver from the global ranking body for competitive chilli-eating and spicy challenges.

Turner Dairy Farms is donating single-serve containers of milk for all contestants. Other available beverages include 1:11 Juice, Jackworth Ginger Beer, BREW3D coffee truck and Velum’s lineup of brews and non-alcoholic offerings. Parkside Creamery will also be on hand to dish out cool treats to soothe scorched tongues.

Other food vendors include Veggies N’at, Pgh Dumplings, Baked True North, Chocolate Moonshine and Scorch Garden, a local hot sauce vendor that also has a taco truck.

Are you breaking a sweat yet?

In addition to tastes, Iron City Circus Arts will perform three fire shows and the facility has a large room filled with pinball machines and other games.

Rivers of Fire organizer Lisa Ray, co-owner of Hammajack Heat Co., has been planning the festival for a year.

Although never a big fan of spicy condiments, her husband, Frank, started making hot sauce for fun nearly a decade ago and got her hooked. The couple started operating out of a commercial kitchen in October 2022 and now have eight sauces available in more than 26 stores.

If she doesn’t melt this weekend, she plans to make Pittsburgh’s Rivers of Fire an annual event.