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Pepper Extract Methods

J

James Wilksburg

Hey guys,

I'm new to the forum but I have had a good amount of experience with growing peppers recently. I had heard some talk about pepper extract so I looked into it but all of the methods i found involved using alcohol. I am 20 so i am still underage to purchase alcohol legally. Do you guys know of any other way to get pepper extract other then by using the alcohol method.

Thanks for your help
 
Hi James-

Welcome to THP.

You may be confusing some things involving alcohol so here's a couple quick definitions-

The word "extract" on chile forums typically refers to a thick, dark colored liquid in which the capsaicin of chiles is extracted from the chile flesh using alcohol or other solvents. This type of "extract" usually has a nasty taste and most people avoid using it for that reason. Most well known brands that have a superhot sauce or product use extracts. 1 Million Pure Cap is a commercial product and is easily purchased for $10-15. Extracts in commercial products are listed by different names including oleoresin, chile capsaicin, pepper extract and many more variations.

Some of the projects posting on here recently involve putting chiles in vodka or other alcohol. The resulting product is a "chile INFUSED vodka". Some of the capsaicin in the chiles and some fo the actual flavor of the chiles leeches out into the alcohol, but it's not really an "extraction", it's an infusion or tincture.

Someone on here did do a chile extraction process using a sohxlet apparatus. If you're interested, use the search function, it's a pretty good thread. It looked like a fun project to do, but for the time, effort and $ expended, you can purchase commercially prepared extracts if that is what you are looking for.

Also, with all the really great superhots being grown now, there are some really nice chile purees and mashes commercially available. Even for chiles like the Carolina Reaper, Moruga, and other 1 mil+ chiles. These are basically ground up chiles, with a little bit of salt &/or vinegar. Has the flavor of the chile...is HOOOOOOOOTTTTTTT!

Hope this helps~
salsalady
 
I might be wrong, but my instincts as a cook tell me that if you ground up a bunch of chillies, put them in a pot with a bit of water just to cover them, then simmered the mix until the water has reduced down to almost nothing, you would get a concentrated mash of pure hotness. Not sure if the heat of boiling the water out would kill the... heat of the peppers, though.

Reducing is the way us cooks concentrate flavor in sauces, so it might work for pungency as well.

Hmm, when I get some habanero pods I might try this just to test my theory. :think:
 
Terravexti said:
Your not dirinking the alcohol. Your using it for exstraction.
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speak for yourself pal....screw the peppers, I'm drinking the alcohol!

:woohoo:

CBarkley said:
I might be wrong, but my instincts as a cook tell me that if you ground up a bunch of chillies, put them in a pot with a bit of water just to cover them, then simmered the mix until the water has reduced down to almost nothing, you would get a concentrated mash of pure hotness. Not sure if the heat of boiling the water out would kill the... heat of the peppers, though.

Reducing is the way us cooks concentrate flavor in sauces, so it might work for pungency as well.

Hmm, when I get some habanero pods I might try this just to test my theory. :think:
Click to expand...

But water and oil do not mix. So basic science - yes, you'd cook down/concentrate the peppers, but you would not extract any of the capsaicin. You'd end up with cooked down hot peppers. It would be hotter than fresh pods, but it would not be extracting anything.
 
CBarkley,
cooking down the chiles will yield a more concentrated product than just fresh chiles in that you would have eliminated water content from the mix. You would still have all the pulp of the chiles though. It would not be considered an "extract", maybe "concentrated chile puree".
 
Fill a canning jar with fresh or dried peppers chopped fine. Mix one part vinegar with one part water and cover peppers. Do not let the peppers come up into air or they will spoil. Cap the jar. Keep in a cool dark place. Shake up once every day. After about 6 weeks strain through cheesecloth.

This is how you do it in the hood, cuz you get smacked for wasting alcohol.
 
the process helltaco seems to be refering to would be a fermented pepper process, totally unrelated to a capsaicin extraction process.

Rocketman has a GREAT thread that is sticky'd about "Fermenting Peppers 101" a wonderful resource about fermenting chiles. Most of the "old guard" sauces like Tabasco use the fermentation process. Thankfully, the "new guard" sauce makers are utilizing the fermentation process to make GREAT tasting sauces.
 
The way that i had heard of people doing it was that they would take a jar, fill it with peppers, and then cover the peppers in a high-proof alcohol like Everclear. Then they would let that mixture sit in the jar for a week or so, shaking it occasionally. After that mixture had sat a while they would put a coffee filter in a funnel and run the mixture through the coffee filter into a shallow dish or pie pan. Finally, you sit the pie pan somewhere to dry with good air circulation and you let the alcohol evaporate off. What you end up with is supposed to be a concentrated capsaicin/pepper extract. I have never personally tried this but i was looking into it for a fun little project to try out.
 
After I dried my peppers, I removed as many of the seeds as I could so they wouldn't act as non-flavor "filler" in my powder. However, being in close proximity with the placenta, they still had a good coating of capsaicin on them. Plus, there was pieces of the placenta in the mix.

Soak that mass overnight in Everclear.
Drain the everclear into a mason jar.
Soak the seeds again in the rest of the everclear
strain that into the same mason jar
keep the liquid jar open and under a desk lamp
the Ethanol and bit of water will slowly evaporate leaving behind a small amount of thick dark red oil.
If you want, get a little more methanol and wash the sides of the jar (because the oil will deposit on the sides as the Alcohol and water are evaporating)
Pour that into a much smaller jar/vial and evaporate again.

beware. that stuff really burns
 
[background=rgb(255, 244, 228)]If you want, get a little more methanol[/background]
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You mean ethanol. Methanol is poisonous. I'm not normally so picky, but I don't want anyone to go blind because of a typo.

Capsaicin can be extracted with oil. A lighter weight oil like canola works pretty well. Chop the peppers very fine, dried peppers, or peppers with very thin walls give better results because the water in fleshy peppers will cause problems (something about water and oil mixing). Put your pepper bits in a small pot, just cover with oil, put on a very low heat for about an hour, boom! chili oil. It won't be as concentrated as the organic solvent method (alcohol), but the stuff will be quite hot.

Protip: do this outdoors, the vapors can be killer, especially if you get the heat up too high.
 
PepperWhisperer said:
You mean ethanol. Methanol is poisonous. I'm not normally so picky, but I don't want anyone to go blind because of a typo.

Capsaicin can be extracted with oil. A lighter weight oil like canola works pretty well. Chop the peppers very fine, dried peppers, or peppers with very thin walls give better results because the water in fleshy peppers will cause problems (something about water and oil mixing). Put your pepper bits in a small pot, just cover with oil, put on a very low heat for about an hour, boom! chili oil. It won't be as concentrated as the organic solvent method (alcohol), but the stuff will be quite hot.

Protip: do this outdoors, the vapors can be killer, especially if you get the heat up too high.
Click to expand...

true, I meant ethanol, bout you are evaporating it anyway so not that big a deal.
 
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