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Scoville Units - measureing at home

I have been searching for ways to measure Scoville units at home.

I have found no in-expensive way to do this.

Has anyone run across any method that works for a home kitchen ?

Thanks

don

PS: If not, are there any chemists out there willing to discuss the properties of capsaicin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin
 
I use my 15yr old's friend. The closer his pitch gets to a 3 year old girl the higher the SHU.






Seriously though I am interested in this too
 
bam! HPLC

or this, from wikipedia:

"In Scoville's method, an alcohol extract of the capsaicin oil from a measured amount of dried pepper is added incrementally to a solution of sugar in water until the "heat" is just detectable by a panel of (usually five) tasters; the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville scale. Thus a sweet pepper or a bell pepper, containing no capsaicin at all, has a Scoville rating of zero, meaning no heat detectable. The hottest chilis, such as habaneros and nagas, have a rating of 200,000 or more, indicating that their extract must be diluted over 200,000 times before the capsaicin presence is undetectable. The greatest weakness of the Scoville Organoleptic Test is its imprecision, because it relies on human subjectivity. Tasters taste only one sample per session."

so you would need something to make a good extraction

BAM micro soxhlet
 
I use a variation of Justaguy's method-

the harder the hiccups and the longer they last, the hotter the chile/sauce/etc.


But seriously, I don't know of any way to measure SHU at home. From what I know (which is often proven wrong ;) ) the only way to get an accurate SHU rating is with a lab test. There are labs around that will do it for private persons. I had one done ~10 years ago, seems like it was ~$100.

I'm interested to see if there is any new technology or resources for this, also.
 
I'm working on a SHU thermometer. I ran into a snag that I just can't seem to get over.
I have to put the Pepper, Sauce, powder or whatever into my mouth and chew, then put the thermometer in my mouth.
It's pretty accurate, but I'd like to know the Scoville value BEFORE I put the hot stuff in my mouth.
Ugh!
I'll be sure to let you all know when it goes into production, until then... :high:
 
If u r being serious, then you why can't you simulate the chewing and saliva with some water and chopping, then put the thermometer in the container with the crushed pepper?
 
Maybe try the Dremman's scale and find out that the tepin is the hottest pepper in the world

http://www.ecoseeds.com/pepper.hotness.scale.html
 
If u r being serious, then you why can't you simulate the chewing and saliva with some water and chopping, then put the thermometer in the container with the crushed pepper?

I'm sorry D49, it's 100% BS, sounds cool though right?
 
You could just do a serial dilution... Whatever dilution where the heat drops off completely should be equal to the inverse of the scovilles. (so a 1/4000 dilution that is just barely detectable = 4000 scovilles)

Here's an example. Take say a shotglass of 1 ounce of the sauce you want to test, or finely blended chile puree you want to test, then add 9 ounces of water and mix. You now have a 1/10 dilution. Take 1 ounce of that mixture, add it to a separate glass with 9 more ounces of water. Thats a 1/100 dilution. Do again, your third glass will be a 1/1,000 dilution. The next one will be a 1/10,000, the next 1/100,000, and the next 1/1,000,000.

Taste the 1/1,000,000 solution, if you can taste ANY heat at all you will need to do more dilution, unlikely unless you have a REALLY hot sauce. If you cant taste any heat, then your sauce is under 1,000,000 scovilles.

Taste your 1/100,000 dilution. If you can still detect heat, you know your pepper is hotter than 100,000 scovilles, and need to do a new dilution. If not, its lower and you will need to work from your 1/10,000 dilution glass.

Lets pretend it is hotter than 100,000. I would just guess and check with further dilutions from the highest dilution where heat is still present. In this example, take 1 ounce of the 1/100,000 mix, dilute it into 4 ounces of water, giving you a new 1/500,000 dilution glass. Taste. Heat? If yes, do a new dilution of the 1/500,000. If no, then do a smaller dilution from the 1/100,000 glass, like 1 ounce of the 1/100,000 mix, and 1.5 ounces of water, to give you 1/250,000 dilution. Just keep on honing in like this until you get two fairly close dilutions, where you can taste heat in one, and not in the other. Your sauces scovilles can be estimated to be between those numbers.

Thats essentially how a scoville test is done, though I am sure more precisely, with special water mixtures etc, and with tasters who probably notice lower heat levels than most of us :lol:
 
Thank God for smart people....

I'm like a caveman... Damn! That's Hot!

Nice explanation Flame!

I have flames in my avatar! DOH!
 
You could just do a serial dilution... Whatever dilution where the heat drops off completely should be equal to the inverse of the scovilles. (so a 1/4000 dilution that is just barely detectable = 4000 scovilles)

Here's an example. Take say a shotglass of 1 ounce of the sauce you want to test, or finely blended chile puree you want to test, then add 9 ounces of water and mix. You now have a 1/10 dilution. Take 1 ounce of that mixture, add it to a separate glass with 9 more ounces of water. Thats a 1/100 dilution. Do again, your third glass will be a 1/1,000 dilution. The next one will be a 1/10,000, the next 1/100,000, and the next 1/1,000,000.

Taste the 1/1,000,000 solution, if you can taste ANY heat at all you will need to do more dilution, unlikely unless you have a REALLY hot sauce. If you cant taste any heat, then your sauce is under 1,000,000 scovilles.

Taste your 1/100,000 dilution. If you can still detect heat, you know your pepper is hotter than 100,000 scovilles, and need to do a new dilution. If not, its lower and you will need to work from your 1/10,000 dilution glass.

Lets pretend it is hotter than 100,000. I would just guess and check with further dilutions from the highest dilution where heat is still present. In this example, take 1 ounce of the 1/100,000 mix, dilute it into 4 ounces of water, giving you a new 1/500,000 dilution glass. Taste. Heat? If yes, do a new dilution of the 1/500,000. If no, then do a smaller dilution from the 1/100,000 glass, like 1 ounce of the 1/100,000 mix, and 1.5 ounces of water, to give you 1/250,000 dilution. Just keep on honing in like this until you get two fairly close dilutions, where you can taste heat in one, and not in the other. Your sauces scovilles can be estimated to be between those numbers.

Thats essentially how a scoville test is done, though I am sure more precisely, with special water mixtures etc, and with tasters who probably notice lower heat levels than most of us :lol:

Hot damn! This post is the one that finally convinces my better half to keep some shot glasses "in stock". :beer:
 
I think with schovilles tests he used a sugar water mixture. Just FYI. :)

I think you're right but it's still an easy way to compare peppers at home in an almost science-y fashion. We might conduct our tests using beer to dilute the peppers. :beer:

We'll call it the Drunken Awareness Scale and it will be totally accurate. I expect the results to look something like this:

INSANE: Tepin
^
. Scotch Bonnet
v
MILD: Trinidad Scorpion

Oh wait, I think that's been done already.

Nevermind.
 
Nice explanation Flame!
Flamecycle, that is a brilliant and simple way of doing this.

Printing this for future reference!
Hot damn! This post is the one that finally convinces my better half to keep some shot glasses "in stock". :beer:

:cool: Glad I could help.

I've never tried doing this method because I don't really care :P , it is just an idea. So if anybody does try it, let us know how it goes. I could imagine there being problems with confusing sauce flavor with heat, and with inability to fully dissolve larger chunks from sauces etc... Also, like Nova said, making up a couple gallons of sugar water to use in your dilutions may make it more like the real test, however I dont know what affect it would have or what concentration you should use. Oh, and if you suck at math, you may really mess up your estimation :lol:, so write down exactly what you do as you do it...
 
You could just do a serial dilution... Whatever dilution where the heat drops off completely should be equal to the inverse of the scovilles. (so a 1/4000 dilution that is just barely detectable = 4000 scovilles)

Here's an example. Take say a shotglass of 1 ounce of the sauce you want to test, or finely blended chile puree you want to test, then add 9 ounces of water and mix. You now have a 1/10 dilution. Take 1 ounce of that mixture, add it to a separate glass with 9 more ounces of water. Thats a 1/100 dilution. Do again, your third glass will be a 1/1,000 dilution. The next one will be a 1/10,000, the next 1/100,000, and the next 1/1,000,000.

Taste the 1/1,000,000 solution, if you can taste ANY heat at all you will need to do more dilution, unlikely unless you have a REALLY hot sauce. If you cant taste any heat, then your sauce is under 1,000,000 scovilles.

Taste your 1/100,000 dilution. If you can still detect heat, you know your pepper is hotter than 100,000 scovilles, and need to do a new dilution. If not, its lower and you will need to work from your 1/10,000 dilution glass.

Lets pretend it is hotter than 100,000. I would just guess and check with further dilutions from the highest dilution where heat is still present. In this example, take 1 ounce of the 1/100,000 mix, dilute it into 4 ounces of water, giving you a new 1/500,000 dilution glass. Taste. Heat? If yes, do a new dilution of the 1/500,000. If no, then do a smaller dilution from the 1/100,000 glass, like 1 ounce of the 1/100,000 mix, and 1.5 ounces of water, to give you 1/250,000 dilution. Just keep on honing in like this until you get two fairly close dilutions, where you can taste heat in one, and not in the other. Your sauces scovilles can be estimated to be between those numbers.

Thats essentially how a scoville test is done, though I am sure more precisely, with special water mixtures etc, and with tasters who probably notice lower heat levels than most of us :lol:

I assume this is a multi-day project so your tongue has time to reset
 
I assume this is a multi-day project so your tongue has time to reset
Good point. But I would think you could hone in on one day, knowing that the dilutions where you DID taste heat are likely accurate, but without waiting and abstaining from spicy foods etc you probably wouldnt be reliable in identifying which dilutions did NOT have any heat.

The truth is that many people on this board probably wont taste the low amounts of heat very well at all. Even if you do it between multiple days, is anyone here really going to go a few days without spicing up their meals etc? Not even sure waiting would be enough.

Best case scenario would probably be to pull in friends, spouses, and better yet - your kids ( :shocked: ) to give a second opinion on the dilutions where you believe this is NOT any heat present.
 
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