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difference in extract/pure

Hi All
What is extract and pure capsicum or even pure juice out of a fresh pepper ..I don't quite understand all this..Like flavor ..Why is it that we don't want extract ( which I really don't know the difference ) Does extract effect the flavor ...Sorry to many Questions but you understand what I mean ..Thanx in advance Dave.
 
The problem that I have with most extracts is that they screw my guts up. The sauce doesn't have to be hot, but if extract is in there, I need a bottle of pepto. That's the main reason that I don't eat extracts.
 
Never heard of "pure capsicum" or "pure juice".
The reason people don't like extract is that most of the times chemicals are used in the extraction process. often traces of those chemicals can still be found inside the sauce what usually causes bad flavor and/or smell... and like said above, some people are also sensitive to those chemicals. natural sauces usually taste better, even if they're not as hot.
 
if you mean pure capsaicin that is the hottest stuff you can get- 16 million shu's. I don't know anyone else who has, but i have made a sauce out of this which gives tonnes of heat but has absolutely no taste or smell. Extracts on the other hand taste really bad and to most people make them feel sick.
 
Hello Mopeppa,
as it was already mentioned, pure capsaicin is the hottest thing. Capsaicin is the substance responsible for the hottness of chillies. Pure capsaicin is chemically clear, pure capsaicin, produced in laboratories.
Best wishes!
 
pure capsaicin has no taste or smell...and as already mentioned, the chemicals used in making extracts leave the resulting concoction with a "metallic" taste to it IMO...ketones are not good for you either and that is what most use in the extraction process...

"Creator" from Defcon does not use ketones in his extraction process...

pure, natural sauces can be only as hot as the pepper used...but that heat is diluted with each ingredient added to the sauce...
 
I appreciate every ones post (But I still don't understand)What is extract and pure capsicum or even pure juice out of a fresh pepper (WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE) I mean how can a pepper be 10000 "scu" and I extract something from it and it becomes a (1 million 400 thousand "scu") I am just trying to understand all this ..I know I am dumb ..be patient with me ... I need it very plain..:-) Thanx Dave
 
I appreciate every ones post (But I still don't understand)What is extract and pure capsicum or even pure juice out of a fresh pepper (WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE) I mean how can a pepper be 10000 "scu" and I extract something from it and it becomes a (1 million 400 thousand "scu") I am just trying to understand all this ..I know I am dumb ..be patient with me ... I need it very plain..:-) Thanx Dave

Unfortunately, people use different terms to mean the same thing, and the same terms to mean different things...

Capsicum- this word refers to the genus of plants to which all hot peppers belong. It does not refer to pepper extract or a purified form of the chemicals that make peppers hot, though many people erroneously use it to refer to those...

Capsaicinoids - this is a class of chemicals that are responsible for creating much of the "hot" sensation in peppers and foods etc. Most simple pepper extracts will form a mix of several of these.

Capsaicin - this is one of many capsaicinoids, but is the most abundant and common of them. It is also supposed to be one of the hottest of them, and is the one credited with 16 million shu in its pure form. Many people just refer to capsaicin as if it is the sole contributor to heat in peppers, though this is not entirely accurate, but it does simplify discussion.

Concentration - its important to understand this concept if you are going to understand the rest. Imagine a cup of water and a spoon of salt. You can pour one spoonfull of salt into that water and it will be salty. You can pour another and it will be more salty. Capsaicin is like that salt. Add more of it to a sauce, a pepper, a meal, it will be more hot. You can add more of it by extracting it in some form and adding that extract, or you can add more of it by adding peppers that have a higher concentration of capsaicin than what you are adding them to...

Generally speaking, an extract, whether it be capsaicinoids from peppers, alkaloids in other plants etc etc, is any form of something that is more highly concentrated than it was in its natural occurring form. So if you make coffee, then let it evaporate, then collect the resulting powder, you will have a product that could be called caffeine extract, since that powder has more caffeine per unit of mass than the original beans did. However, many different processes can be used to obtain higher purities in a given extract. Generally this is achieved by pulling the compound of interest out of raw material (ie pulling capsaicin out of raw peppers) using liquid chemicals that are very good at absorbing that compound.

For peppers, extractors often want to pull out the most pure version of capsaicin they can, and not too much of the other capsaicinoids, resulting in them using complex processes and several different other chemicals to separate the capsaicin from both plant matter and from the other capsaicinoids and alkaloids present in the peppers. However, there are many many different ways to go about extracting capsaicinoids or pure capsaicin from peppers, and not all methods are equal. Some may use nasty chemicals, some may use natural products etc.

So to answer your question as directly as I can... Pure capsaicin can be "extracted" from any pepper that contains it, whether it is a jalapeno or a cayenne, or a Butch T. The heat of the pepper generally just indicates how much capsaicin (and/or other capsaicinoids) are present within the flesh of that pepper. So you would need lots more jalapeno's to get 1 gram of pure capsaicin than you would need of Butch T's to get that same amount of pure capsaicin. From those peppers you could squeeze out the juice, which would contain some capsaicin in it, and may be more highly concentrated than the entire pepper. Or you could blend the pepper up with grain alcohol and strain out the liquid and evaporate it down to a small volume, which would be an "extract" that is more highly concentrated than the pepper and the juice both. Or you could process that product more and more with all sorts of different chemicals until you eventually are left with a very pure form of capsaicin.
 
Hey Flamecycle and Forum
I have read this post several ( This reply to this post is very belated ) Times I have come to understand a whole lot sense I posted this question..I am a thinker ( very slow maybe ) but I will take time and days to think things over..Thanx again Flame and others for your help and GREAT ! answers..I've learned alot..I often wondered why this real hot pepper didn't hurt my stomach , But this little ole hot sauce in the bottle that wasn't hot did..much understanding..thank you all. Dave
 
I don't think there is anything wrong with extracts. The best tasting sauce I've had uses habanero extract. Far as I know, it's just pepper juice with less water. It should still retain the flavor of the pepper used. Certain methods are probably why it taste like crap and upsets peoples stomachs.

edit:
I've been wondering. Would simply boil strained pepper juice give you a concentrated extract? That was what I planned on trying to make extract for my sauces.
Hey Flamecycle and Forum
I have read this post several ( This reply to this post is very belated ) Times I have come to understand a whole lot sense I posted this question..I am a thinker ( very slow maybe ) but I will take time and days to think things over..Thanx again Flame and others for your help and GREAT ! answers..I've learned alot..I often wondered why this real hot pepper didn't hurt my stomach , But this little ole hot sauce in the bottle that wasn't hot did..much understanding..thank you all. Dave

I think some peppers affect us differently. It may even just be the type of pepper used. Chemicals are suspect too though!
 
Like AJ said, its the ketones that are terrible. Very few people seem to know how to make good extract, with Defcon creator and a few others being the exception
 
POTAWIE please correct me if I'm wrong but isn't what the Ceator does more of a concentration process than an extract process?
 
I don't think there is anything wrong with extracts. The best tasting sauce I've had uses habanero extract. Far as I know, it's just pepper juice with less water. It should still retain the flavor of the pepper used. Certain methods are probably why it taste like crap and upsets peoples stomachs.

edit:
I've been wondering. Would simply boil strained pepper juice give you a concentrated extract? That was what I planned on trying to make extract for my sauces.


I think some peppers affect us differently. It may even just be the type of pepper used. Chemicals are suspect too though!
I hear ya Dulac.....and I believe that..Still Thinking . :think:
 
I'm not sure what you guys mean by "pepper juice". If you mean it like you would mean something like "orange juice" then no, extract is not pepper juice dried out, that's something closer to powders like cayenne powder or something.

The extracts, mopeppa, to try to explain it simpler, are usually a goo-like substance. They take the oils and chemicals that make the peppers hot out, and leaving all of the seed, flesh, water, etc behind.

The problem is there's a lot of other 'gunk' in extract because it's not made as carefully as pure capsaicin. Pure capsaicin has to be made in a carefully controlled lab and has ONLY the stuff that makes it hot in it. It's super pure and so hot it makes pepper spray look like a bell pepper.

Maybe that helps?
 
I spent some time in Milan, and there, pretty much everyone has their own home made alcohol... you buy the pure alcohol, put whatever you want in it, and through osmosis (i think) and time, you extract the flavor of whatever you put in side...

There was one made of black walnuts, cut with wine, that tasted like 100 proof maple syrup... you only want a thimble of the stuff - and it takes 3 years to age... but it has a really good taste.

I suspect one could do something similar... puree hot peppers (to reduce the time - more surface area exposted = less aging time required), soak in alcohol (sealed container for some months), then filter, and let the alcohol evaporate...

I bet its expensive to mass produce something in this fashion... but I bet it would make a decent extract.

With the walnuts, the producers know its done when the nuts turn white... I suspect peppers would turn white at the end as well.
 
Concentration - its important to understand this concept if you are going to understand the rest. Imagine a cup of water and a spoon of salt. You can pour one spoonfull of salt into that water and it will be salty. You can pour another and it will be more salty. Capsaicin is like that salt. Add more of it to a sauce, a pepper, a meal, it will be more hot. You can add more of it by extracting it in some form and adding that extract, or you can add more of it by adding peppers that have a higher concentration of capsaicin than what you are adding them to...

Generally speaking, an extract, whether it be capsaicinoids from peppers, alkaloids in other plants etc etc, is any form of something that is more highly concentrated than it was in its natural occurring form. So if you make coffee, then let it evaporate, then collect the resulting powder, you will have a product that could be called caffeine extract, since that powder has more caffeine per unit of mass than the original beans did. However, many different processes can be used to obtain higher purities in a given extract. Generally this is achieved by pulling the compound of interest out of raw material (ie pulling capsaicin out of raw peppers) using liquid chemicals that are very good at absorbing that compound.

For peppers, extractors often want to pull out the most pure version of capsaicin they can, and not too much of the other capsaicinoids, resulting in them using complex processes and several different other chemicals to separate the capsaicin from both plant matter and from the other capsaicinoids and alkaloids present in the peppers. However, there are many many different ways to go about extracting capsaicinoids or pure capsaicin from peppers, and not all methods are equal. Some may use nasty chemicals, some may use natural products etc.

So to answer your question as directly as I can... Pure capsaicin can be "extracted" from any pepper that contains it, whether it is a jalapeno or a cayenne, or a Butch T. The heat of the pepper generally just indicates how much capsaicin (and/or other capsaicinoids) are present within the flesh of that pepper. So you would need lots more jalapeno's to get 1 gram of pure capsaicin than you would need of Butch T's to get that same amount of pure capsaicin. From those peppers you could squeeze out the juice, which would contain some capsaicin in it, and may be more highly concentrated than the entire pepper. Or you could blend the pepper up with grain alcohol and strain out the liquid and evaporate it down to a small volume, which would be an "extract" that is more highly concentrated than the pepper and the juice both. Or you could process that product more and more with all sorts of different chemicals until you eventually are left with a very pure form of capsaicin.


Flamecycle put up the best definitions of all.


I'd just like to expand once on the one salt analogy.

If you think about capsaicin in chiles like salt in ocean water, that's kind of how it works. Some oceans/seas have a higher salt content than others, just as some chiles have more capasaicin than others. If you take 1 Lt of water from 3 different oceans, dry it/dehydrate it/ pour it in a flat pan to evaporate....each ocean will leave behind a different amount of salt in the drying pan. Just like taking a certain amount of jalapeno, habanero and bhut would all leave behind different amounts of capsaicin because each chile has different amounts of capsaicin inherent to that variety of chile.


How that capsaicin chemical compound is separated seems to be a key point in the process.
 
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