Scoville Units

Wikipedia's article on the Scoville scale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville) mentions that "Scoville ratings may vary considerably within a species—easily by a factor of 10 or more—depending on seed lineage, climate and even soil. This is especially true of habaneros." Thanks for your article though, I would've never known otherwise that tasting spicy things comes from a sensation of pain signal...

k, you're joking right?

You obviously haven't had spicy food that's spicy enough!

I have a bottle of Dave's Ultimate Insanity Sauce in the fridge. It's about 250,000 Scovilles, if memory serves.

One drop is enough for my chili con carne.

I learned about the Scoville measurement while on an elementary school field trip to Avery Island (home of Tabasco). I recommend the visit to anyone in south Louisiana.

While there I bought some of their peppers, which added a nice touch to my dad's homemade picante salsa. Had to get a Tabasco tie also =)

I thought that chipotles were just smoked jalepenos, and as such, shouldn't they have the same scoville rating?

Chipotles are roasted jalapeños, but I think that process makes them even hotter.
I'm Mexican (raised in Mexico) and don't eat chilies, what a joke eh?! Never heard of this scale for measuring hotness. All I know is, my cousins from Puebla cannot live without habaneros, they eat them by the handful, raw, by themselves... geez! I think it's funny some people write habañeros... no tilde needed on the N people!! Haha.
I love your page, I'm a frustrated engineer, and cook!

Interesting piece of trivia for you...

Here in Australia, 'bell peppers' are called Capsicums. Until reading your article I never knew the reason - I am assuming now it has something to do with the name of this chemical Capsaicin.

It led to a lot of confusion and intrigue when I visited Subway in the States. ("You want *what* on your sandwich?!")

re: Bell peppers or capsicums?
Capsicum is the genus of all chiles from bell peppers to habaneros. The name of the chemical capsaicin comes from the name for chile - capsicum.

Thanks for the article!
The day after I set up a blog for my new job at peppertalk.salsaexpress.com with you in the links even!

Having grown up on hot food – our school cafateria had pickle jars of all-you-can-eat jalapenos on the tables – I am what some people may consider (judging from previous comments) either masochistic or insane. So now I work for a "Fiery Foods" company as part of an absolutely crazy and fun industry!

I too love to eat habaneros raw. They have a definite kick but they also have a fruity flavor to them. That fruitiness makes them excellent peppers for use in desserts, fruit salsas and other fruit (especially citrus) recipes. Thai's though are all attitude. Not quite as hot, but no fruitiness. Every pepper has it's own unique flavor, and even substrains have very distinctive flavors as well as heat levels. Some build in heat as you eat more of them, some stay at the same level.

Dave's Ultimate Insanity, has a couple challengers to the title of th hottest hot sauce now... there's Dave's own challenger to the title "Dave's Ultimate Insanity Limited Reserve" label, and there's "Endorphin Rush" (you can find them at Salsa Express among other places.)

Whatever you do don't use these sauces like you might use Tobasco. I made that mistake once. Thought I grabbed the tobasco and put a good 5-6 shakes into a tomato soup. Wow! It took a half gallon of milk and a pint of ice cream to get my mouth back to near normal. And remember I do eat hab's raw!

I always wondered about the Australian way of refering to peppers. Capsicum is the genus name of the nightshade family of plants that includes both Bell Peppers (C. annuum) and the habanero (C. chinense) so it definitely makes sense...just different.

MORE TRIVIA

Did you know that birds can't taste hot peppers?

Apparently, a lot of the peppers rely on birds for seed dispersal. The hot flavor discourages mammals from eating them, but not birds.

EVEN MORE TRIVIA

Did you know that vampire bats have no sense of taste?

They drink blood, and there isn't much useful information one can get from the taste of blood. Blood from a living animal is never toxic.

I don't think HPLC would be that expensive an analytical method to use for measuring capsaicin levels. The wine industry use this technique regularly for other things and if the chile industry could get a bulk testing deal it's quite straightforward. The instruments can be automated so the labour cost would be minimal.

re: chipotles having a higher Scoville rating

I wonder if it's possible that the smoking process removes some of the water content - so that more parts are included in the HPLC test. (at least I think that's what I understood about the process) Sort of the same way that fresh herbs are not as intensely flavoured as the same quantity of dried herbs.

I'm surprised that "piri-piri" or "African birdseye" chilis - the ones that look like tiny Thai chilis - are missing from that list. Some people argue that the piri-piri is the hottest. (Of course, I cannot find anything on the net that corroborates this....)

Two summers ago, we did some taste tests of various Salsas made from dried chilies that may be of interest to any of you chiliheads.

I was always boasting that the Scotch Bonnet pepper from my home country - Jamaica - was the hottest. It indeed was, along with the Habanero, topping out above 300,000. Recently though, some insane masochists in California have bred a type of Habanero that starts above 300,000 and goes up over 500,000. The soil has a lot to do with the heat, but the pepper apparently needs to mature on the plant in order to reach its maximum. The ones we buy in the supermarket here in Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) are immature, probably to survive shipping. My father grows some good ones through the winter in his kitchen in his secret soil mixture.

When I was little, my grandmother used to put one whole in several gallons of soup then let me stir with a strong warning to not break the pepper because the soup would be too hot to eat. I "experimented" and proved her very right.

Capsaicin actually refers to a family of compounds, which vary in their "heat," explaining why diferent species of peppers (which produce slightly chemically different capsaicins) have different "heat" (and also where they "hit" you - tongue, back of throat, etc.) in addition to the quantity (and mixture) of capsaicin in the plant tissue.

This also is a good reason why it's a good idea to combine different "heats" (tabasco, habanero, cayenne, plus black AND white pepper) in a recipe. Paul Prud'homme explains this principle in his cookbooks (gumbo recipes).

I bought a small bottle of 120K 'Da Bomb Beyond Insanity' sauce 5 years ago. While I used to buy 2 bottles of regular Tabasco at $3 each per year - needing full tablespoons to season my food - this $10 bottle is only about 15% gone now, and still good. It may last the rest of my life...

HPLC is used in the Industry to test Chiles the cost is still rather prohibitive for the average grower..
Trust me I know I was a List member on the now it seems defunct Chileheads List for 10 years..
I currently am growing Houston USA sourced Tepins here in OZ (why because the little shits are hard to grow, and I take it as a Personal Challenge".. FWIW i won 2 out of three local Chile Eating contests here, first time was 1 15 oz glass of blended chiles Habanero's included second time was 12 Habaneros , third time as defending champ i was nobbled by being made to take a small tub of Extract based sauced probably 350k scovies before participating and even then the guy who beat me swallowed several Habaneros whole.. "we were supposed to chew them for the ammusement of the 2000+ crowd..
FWIW Blairs Death sauce brand has more flavour than Daves, Std disclaimers apply although I did have snail mail intercourse with Blair Lazar once in 95-96..
A Fireman mate of mine Jim Campbell in Franklin Indiana does a mean apple smoked habanero Flake and lots of other products, no disclaimer apply here as he does send me a care package of new products from time to time
Luke in OZ

If anyone wants to read a pretty fascinating book on one man's disovery (or rediscovery, as it were) of the pepper, look up Amal Naj's "Peppers." C. 1992; ISBN 0-679-74427-4. It's a good a read as any, though may be a bit dated now. I think it holds up and is still a substantial store of knowledge and information for me...

Hey all, I am now the food science intern at the company that makes the worlds hottest hot sauce. Original Juan Specialty Foods makes "The Source" registering at 7.1 million scoville units, making it nearly half pure capsaicin and somewhere near tear gas. We send most of our product off to get tested for on the scoville scale and actually part of what I'm doing here is figuring out the feasability of doing it in house. You can get all of our products online (including the above mentioned Da Bomb) at http://www.originaljuan.com

{Just testing to see if the admin forgot to turn off the priveleges for 'other' people to edit 'guest' posts. If so, then the admin will need to turn off this feature. - Kenny}

{update....yes...this is no good, I will have to inform the admin to fix this up...it means others can change this message too. Not good.}

how come they dont jus take the capsaican out and put it in a bottle that would kick ass

Someone did and charge $199 for it: Blair's 16 Million Reserve He's sold out.

For a more reliable but not as cool source, try a chemical supply company that will gladly sell you a gram of synthetic capsaicin for around $650 (natural will run you $950): Fisher Scientific
Finally, here's a list of manufacturers of pure capsaicin:
Buyers Guide Chem

ok... all right.. but.. if I want make at home a scoville test, u know the exact procedures?
(exampe: take xxx grams of peppers, keep in xxx ml of alcohol, etc>).
many thanks.

Chipotles are smoked and dried red jalepenos. The drying process will reduce the weight by as much as 10 to 1 and therefore increase the heat by the same ratio.

I notice that some people say that an already intense hot-sauce is not as hot as another kind. So I'm kind of wondering if the solution to fix that is to simply increase the quantity of the hot sauce that one deems to be 'less-hot'. For example, if somebody thinks a drop of dave's ultimate insanity sauce is not hot enough, then putting 10 drops into their mouth should do the trick ... right? And a good swish around the mouth should also help to get that capsaicin working really good on the taste buds too.

- Kenny

It is important to realize the difference between a basic jalapeno and a chipotle. Obviously the main difference is that a chipotle is smoked, but it does not stop there. To make a chipotle pepper, the fruit is picked when it is ripe. That means that it is red, has a more mature flavor, and has a higher heat content (many people believe that red peppers are not as hot, but they are actually hotter; more sweetness causes the confussion). When sold as jalapenos, the peppers are picked while still green and just beginning to "cork" (the brown lines on the outside of the pepper).

Thus the chipotle pepper (being ripe) is hotter than the green jalapeno. Drying the pepper serves to increase the heat as a ratio of mass, but scoville units are a measure of capsaicin capacity, not ration so drying the pepper does not change the scoville rating.

Do you have references for the 16 figure? Most other sources speak of a factor of 15, which would also put the max attainable SCU value at 15 million.

I am looking for the hottest Habanero flake around.........who has it?

Googling pepper types this afternoon instead of working seems to demonstrate that (A.)there is always something better to do then work, and (B.) there seem to be some regional differences in names.

We have a type of pepper that grows down here on the isthmus of Panama commonly called a pico de pajaro, but if that term is used as a search term a completely different type of pepper is what comes up on google.

What we call pico de pajaro here in panama is a very small, roundish pepper which grows wild and is very hot.

Just something interesting I came across.

During junior high I did a science experiment where I used a calorimeter and measured the crystallization time of the capsaicin in various chili vinegar mixtures. My equipment wasn't so great so the results were crude. However, using the data I was able to correctly order the chillies where scovile placed them.

There is a second article on Digg related to this. It is about Hot Lemonade made with cayenne pepper.

The lemonade is served cold but is heated up to a minimum of 90,000 Scolville and is used to boost energy and a number of other benefits. Check out both.

If you like them, don't forget to digg them by clicking the little dig icon.

http://digg.com/science/digg/page2

Dave's Insanity and other's are the old school. Blair of extremefood.com has long since taken over the hot sauce market with extremely high scoville ratings in heat. (Dave's Insanity is roughly 50,000 Scoville units in heat *Blair's sauces range from 55,000 to 550,000 Scoville units in heat with his reserves and collector sauces ranging to a Guinness record setting 16 million in Scoville heat)

A regular Habanero hot sauce averages about 20,000 to 30,000 Scoville units. The "extract" sauces (usually named stuff like Devils Drool, or Blair's Mega Death, and have entertaining packaging) contain much higher concentrations of Capsaicin extract and range from 250,000 to 550,000 Scoville units. Needless to say that is extremely hot. So much so they carry warnings that they are to be dilluted and used on a per drop basis, and should be kept in a safe place. Generally 300,000 to 550,000 Scoville unit sauces are the apex of heat for even the seasoned "chileheads", and will undoubtedly induce a lot of sweating, eye tearing and nasal drip for a good 10 minutes or so in small applications. The Black Mamba however is in a group of maybe four or five in the world that carry the highest concentraions of Capsaicin at inordinately high levels. Black Mamba was tested and shown to have several million Scoville units per bottle! What this means is a toothpick sized droplet will burn burn burn in a way that nothing ever has before. I now know this to be true. I tasted a drop on a tortilla chip this morning and in the first few minutes almost wished I hadn't. My pallete was aflame with something I didn't perceive to be edible. My throat felt like something had literally blazed a trail through it, my sinuses were vaporized by what I liken to inhaling ammonia to keep from passing out, my entire head was sweating like I had just run 10 miles, and my eyes were a watery mess. This all from a single drop of this stuff (no lie). I seriously couldnt take the heat, and I admittedly enjoy hot foods, so that should gibve you a good indication at the power of this stuff. There is another sauce called The Source which is measured at 7 million Scoville units which is obviously ridiculous.

The Blair's private reserve collection has the Guinness record in Scoville measured heat with his 16million Reserve pure Cap flake. It's not even extract which is already uber hot, it's actually pure Capscium flake which is like oleoresin heat at extreme concentrations. You need to sign a waiver to even purchase the stuf,f and it has to be handled with gloves and safety glasses (not a joke - seriously). Reportedly one couple of seasoned chiliheads dropped a flake into a pot of soup, melted and stirred it in and both couldn't handle the heat. Another guy at a radio station tried it on the air and was sent to the hospital with respiratory problems.

If you're interested in genuine heat that won't kill you, your best bet is a max of 550,000 scoville to the most at maybe a million. Try something like Blair's Mega Death which is a nice 550,000 Scoville and you'll get what you're looking for.

There are a wide varity of products out there, many of us collect them.
The must visit links for serious chiliheads:

www.hotsauceworld.com

www.hotsauceblog.com


-
~TC~

Checkout <href="http://www.insanechicken.com/worlds-hottest-hot-sauce.html">World's Hottest Hot Sauce</a>. I buy my Hot Sauce from InsaneChicken.com and I am always satisfied . :)

Since people are mentioning their favorite pepper sites, I might as well add the seller than got me in trouble with my wife one day when she went to delete the cookies.

www.firegirl.com

They are very informative and sell a wide variety of sauces from mild to deadly.

is there a kitchen measuring/sensor instrument to check the hotness factor of the food being cooker?

Something I noticed about the "Louisiana hot sauces" that you find in America is that they tend to contain a lot of sodium. I've seen anywhere from around 100 mg/tsp to 300+ mg/tsp. I used to think nothing of dumping a tablespoon on some tamales or a burrito, but now I hesitate to add 900 mg of sodium to an already salty meal. The one with the lowest sodium that I've been able to find is the original Tobasco, with (if I recall correctly) 30 mg/tsp. It doesn't taste quite the same, though.

I agree. Tabasco adds some heat, but is totally lacking in the flavor department. For a more flavorful easily found sauce, Franks Hot Sauce is much better than Tabasco, although maybe not quite as hot.

I personally favor "Endorphin Rush". I use it to accelerate my lamb curry to illegal levels of endorphin production. Great on burritos as well. The delightful dizziness that is brought on by a powerful sauce is something everyone should experience. Tabasco? Lousiana Hot Sauce? Puh-leez.

Also, ER is low sodium.

OK, Prof, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you aren't as sick as I am, but if you are, go to www.firegirl.com you can get your 6 million scoville unit sauces. That's what I do when I need a heat rush.

Also try this for 16 Million:

http://www.hotsauceblog.com/hotsaucearchives/blairs-16-million-product-review/

and

http://www.sweatnspice.com/429-13.htm

Good luck and eat safely.

ER's 33.390K is more than hot enough for this old fool and it helps me watch my sodium ;-)

I like an endorphin buzz, but I don't want to wake up in the ER (the other acronym).

This didn't show up in my usual Opera, so I tried it in Firefox, Lynx, and then (with much trepidation) fired up Internet Exploder (7). No dice, no table, no lucky streak...

AFAIK, there is only one type of receptor (called VR1) which 'detects' capsaicinoids (the group as a whole) some have more effect (cause more/less pain). Therefore to say different capsaicinoids affect different parts of the mouth/throat is erroneous, and therefore using different chillies would not give any difference in pain location. Just another urban myth, I'm afraid.

Peppers have flavors. The heat evoking chemical, capsaicin is actually NOT a flavoring/taste compound. Capsaicin is actually a PAIN inducing compound, and its "flavor" is actually your response to the pain receptors, which is why it can be noticed in your mouth and throat at the top of your GI tract, in your stomach sometimes causing heartburn in the middle, as well as at the "bottom" of the GI tract in some people. The pepper burn can also be on the outside of the body, like the skin, and especially the eyes. BE VERY CAREFUL when handling high Scoville unit sauces and additives not to touch your eyes. You will NEVER forget that experience.

There are only four main tastes: salt, sweet, bitter, sour. If you count unami, the flavor of MSG, there are five. However, not everybody can taste unami, which explains why some people can tell you on the first bite when they eat food that has MSG. Most all "flavors" are actually smelled, so don't expect a gourmet creation from a cook who has a cold or summer allergies.

I put my vote for InsaneChicken's Hot Sauce Catalog . They send out the products quickly and their customer service is excellent. ;)

Have tried Dave's Total Insanity and my picture is on the wall down at a restaurant in Corpus Christi to prove that I was an idiot. But that was just a lark, for something really hot.
But, besides hot, there is absolutely wonderful flavor in one of the hot peppers, the habanero. This sauce is fantastic in stew, soup, or many foods where more depth of flavor is desirable. Doubt me....just try in a small, safe quantity. And, yes, you are welcome....in advance.

Having spent years sampling as many sauces as I can, regardless of heat content, Tabasco original rules the flavor roost. If I'm looking for something to merely increase the heat, others are far better suited, but as a condiment, Tabasco is my standard by which all others are measured.

I just returned from a mexican restaurant called Juan's MexiCali....If any of you "Big Men" that love "Hot Stuff" think they can handle this...BE MY GUEST, and BE FOREWARNED !....They sell to the public a hot sauce deemed "The Bomb" ... Remember those little white plastic serving cups you normally get a serving of ketchup or other condiments in ? .... I downed as a shot 1/2 of one of these of The Bomb - even before the server could warn me, or even speak....His reaction was Oh My GOD !
Little did I understand why, until about 5 minutes later, ... Yes I'll admit, it was Hot on the lips as an after-taste , spicy on the tongue, But little did i know what would happen when it finally hit my stomach ! ... I wont tell you the result of downing this 1/2 shot of The Bomb ( too graphic - and I
would rather you find out yourselves ) ...but I will tell you this.... It's Scoville Unit measurement was exactly 855,000 scoville units ... yes, you heard me...not a typo....855,000 scoville units ... now having just read this...I'll also tell you that it's NOT the hottest sauce they sell.... I don't know the name of this one, and you have to sign a waiver before purchasing it...but I'll warn you...the deem it "The HOTTEST sauce on earth" ...with a Scoville Unit measurment of an unbelievable 7,000,000 !!
Or...7 million scoville units for those who cant add zeroes....anyone "man" enough to try it ? ....I doubt it !!

Check this out:

http://www.hotsauceworld.com/bl6amrepeexe.html

This is up to 16 Million scoville units.

I remember being at a bar about ten years ago where they were featuring various brands of Tequila shots and serving gratis Buffalo wings. One of the patrons was being a loud pain in the butt, repeatedly saying the wings weren't hot enough in a really annoying manner. He said there wasn't a hot sauce that he couldn't eat. The bartender, having had enough of the guy, gave him a spoon and a bottle of Dave's Ultimate Insanity, and then walked away. The annoying patron apparently never heard of it because he poured a spoonful and downed it like it was cough medicine. He had a reaction just like you described. He had too big an ego to admit he was dying. He excused himself to the men's room, and didn't return.

I'm surprised that the restaurant you went to served the Da Bomb as a condiment, instead of using it as a "food additive" that it is really meant to be. The ultra high octane hot sauces can be dangerous to a person's health.

has anyone heard of Mad Dog hot sauce?? it has a scoville rating of 600,00. the beauty of it i s that it is hot without being harsh. a smooth hotness if you can believe that. i enjoy eating spicy foods and can handle a fair amount of heat., but this stuff is not something i play around with. i've had it a few years and there still lots in the bottle.

^^^^Hot without being harsh, . . . . at 600,000???? Your mouth must have an asbestos lining. 600,000 is very hot any way you look at it. There's no way anything can camouflage a 600,000 sauce.

hot without being harsh yes. it doesnt taste like industrial paint strippers are at work in my mouth when i consume it. it still has a tremendous heat. the bottle comes with its own serving spoon. a very tiny serving spoon. its produced by ashley food co. of Sudbury Ma. their site is www.ashleyfood.com
when purchasing this hot sauce at a local vendor i had to sign a waiver to not use the sauce in practical jokes. it wasnt cheap but its been worth every penny. they do have other sauces in the million ratings of which i am looking forward to tasting, after some serious training. a little bit of Ye Olde Colon Cleanser. yee haa!! seriously, i love their sauces as they are not loaded with sodium. and i guess that some people just can handle heat. years ago i went on a trip to Cancun Mexico for Christmas with a couple friends. we ended up taking a snorkeling tour around the islands. part of the tour involved having a meal prepared on a small private island. i asked our waiter if they could make a Habanero sauce for me to go along with the copius amount of grilled meat. they brought out a nice zesty sauce for me. it was a perfect match for the meal. my friends saw me eating with such gusto that they decided to try the sauce. just a dip of the fork into the sauce to check for heat. they didn't think it was that hot as they saw me pouring it over my food. needles to say the sauce proved more than a match for them. it ruined the rest of their meal. and i had a good laugh at their expense. some people just cant handle any heat i guess.

If you guys really wantto try a pepper that will light you up. You all need to try the Ghost Chilie. It is from India and has been used as a weapon. I work at a produce company and I got a sample of this instrument of SATAN. One of my co-worker took it in his mouth, he could not even finish the bite before he spit it out and ran out of the room. They have clocked over 1 million scoville units.

I looked up the ghost pepper. Here is more info. You can even buy the seeds. It entered the Guinness Book of Records in 2006 as the hottest pepper in the world.

http://www.nmsu.edu/~ucomm/Releases/2007/february/hottest_chile.htm

Having bought and tested many sauces, I found an easy way of pre-selection. Of course they all promise the best burn-out, yet few really keep that promise and even fewer state the hotness on the label.
If your sauce has any preservatives in the ingredients list, you can forget about it. A good hot sauce does not need them, as they are anti-fungal, anti-bacterial. In fact the compounds in there are made by nature to prevent you from eating them. Oh, well so much for the evolutionary reasoning.

And on the side -- having Blairs Megadeath around for a while (actually much longer than any of the others) I noticed that the heat is painful, but shallow. I prefer to add more of a rich, flavourful sauce as my long term favourite, called Alberta Crude. By far not as hot (would guess in the 5-15% range of megadeath) but, hey, add more AND you get the depth with the heat.
Cheers!

The retailers that make you sign a waiver don't do it for no reason. This stuff really is hot and people don't know it. It's like holding an atomic bomb in your hand and thinking its those little poppers you throw down on the ground at Halloween to startle people. Put a little drop on someone's food is a funny prank right? Well think again. My brother thought is was a good idea to put some pepper extract rated at a million scoville units into my friend's bottle of unsuspecting Heinz hot and spicy ketchup. I thought we were going to have to take the dude to the hospital. It's like he couldn't breath. And it's not like he put it directly on his food. He mixed it only a couple of drops into the bottle and we had to throw it away! Just be careful folks. It might sound like a cool idea to go buy really hot crap online, but beware.

It's funny that the topic of discussion always revolves around "which is the hottest chile?" or "which is the hottest hot sauce?"

Ricante Hot Sauce & Cevicheria has a line of hot sauces that aim not only to provide an enjoyable burning sensation but also to add flavor and spice to your meals. Our hot sauces bring the tropical flavors of Costa Rica (well, CR's food is not really flavorful but the country is) combined with the spiciness of Mexican food.

You can buy Ricante hot sauce online, or come enjoy a refreshing bowl of ceviche if you are in the Tamarindo area. We can also do custom labels which makes for a great gift, what better than to hot sauce as a gift[/url]!

Pura vida![/url]

Totally false:

hot peppers, hot sauce, or even extract , or capsaicin will NOT kill taste buds.