Update: I ate the first ripe Brown Naglah the other night. I was expecting a true scorcher. I'm not going to lie; it was very very hot, but it didn't live up to my expectations, which came from shit I've read about it online, plus the fact that it looked pretty evil...
Sliced it in half for purposes of sharing, sniffing, and checking for any moldy seeds or other internal nastiness. It was clean as a whistle, glistening with capsaicin, and displaying a decently developed placenta. It smelled like a chocolate Chinense; no surprise there and I love how those things smell, even if I typically don't like how the fresh ones taste. I'm not sure how to describe the brown-ness of their aroma. They do smell like normal chinense, and this one was probably a little more aromatic than average, but there's something in the whole bouquet of a chocolate Chinense that's is simply not present in the other colors. , I feel confident that, if I were blindfolded and allowed to sniff some recent sliced chinense pods, I could pick the chocolate one out of a field of ten with no problem.
Anyway, we had ordered some French Fries bc we were too pussified to even try this thing without something salty and starchy to cut the heat of it got too hectic. When the bartender said the kitchen might be closed, we became terrified, and when she said that the chef, a guy named Denny "Durkee" Mahoney, has left the fryer on and could make us some fries, he became the biggest hero of the night.
As I usually do at this cowardly initial stage, I started with just the tail end of the thing. Part of the idea is to get a real sense of the flavor, bc the tail tends to be less bitter and more scrumptious than the rest of the pod. But it also tends to have far less placenta and, therefore, far less heat. And in June, I'm still plenty gun-shy with these things. Si the tail tasted great, sweeter than I'd expected and I thought even the tail would be hot enough to kill me but it definitely didn't, so we moved on to the main body of the pod. And yes, that part was truly hot.
So, I was splitting this thing with this guy Dave who really likes chiles but just discovered then last year, and he's one of the few ppl I hang out with who actually enjoys a nice SuperHot burn. Dave is some kinda BigShot guitar player who you've n never heard of but apparently he's got a huge following in Japan and Australia or New Zealand or some shit and was karaoke night at the bar but a few of the actual musicians wouldn't stop asking Dave about some custom carbon fiber guitar he'd got s part of a sponsorship deal. It was s little bit hilarious, watching him talk about technical source and how amazing his weekend at the guitar factory was, while he's sweating and crying like a baby and these guys had no idea why.
I really need to start carrying a stop watch si I can time how long it takes the real heat to kick in on these various varieties of peppers, bc I find myself taking about a delay a lot, mostly with chinense, but I can't really say whether or not the delay is unusually long. But, I often feel like the delays are crazy long, and feel compelled to mention it whenever I discuss it. With that being said, the Naglah has enough heat up front where you KNOW you're in for a real ride, but it's totally bearable for what seems like a long time. A minute? Twenty seconds? I'm not sure, which is why I gotta dig my stopwatch out from my coaching supplies box. But after that initial delay, the heat builds rather quickly and steadily. It's definitely a "heat" sensation as if you are something of a very high temperature, not the cutting pure "pain" one gets from something like a Red Brainstrain or even a Fatalii (on a much lower scale)... Those make you feel like you're being punched in the mouth by a Chimpanzee holding a blade, whereas I think the more typical chile burn is more like you gargled some kerosene, waited ten seconds, then lit a match in your mouth.
I'm not sure which I prefer.
That was a very long post, but here's the summary: the Brown Naglah was surprisingly tasty. Not sure if it's bc it's only the 7th pepper I've sampled this year and I'm easily impressed at this point, but I enjoyed the flavor far more than I have chocolate Supers in the past. And it was really really hot, but not nearly so hot as some of the most brutal I've had. In fact, the NagaBrain that I had a few Sundays back, which humbled like five of us eating small bits, was far and away hotter than this Naglah. Dave was there on both occasions, and agreed with me. Of course, these are early pods and it's totally possible that my Naglahs in August will be little napalm bombs that I can't handle. This is just the first impression.
Body count thus far:
1. Sugar Rush Peach (whp)
2. NagaBrains NOT Yellow (it was Red)***hottest so far (whp)
3. Lemon Drop (WHP, might've been Juanito's..my memory sucks)
4. Bhut Assam Yellow (WHP)
5. Brown Naglah (whp)
I also ate a totally unripe Zapotec Jalapeño and a partially ripe off-pheno Red Brainstrain, both of which I inadvertently knocked off while hamfistedly gardening. I didn't review then bc I tend to want to review fully type, properly developed pods. Plus, I had the Brain in an omelet and the Jalapeño sliced up to garnish a cheesesteak... So not proper pod tests anyway.
Link to a few pics of the Naglah:
http://imgur.com/a/nZxBXrH
