chinense dud of a bhut?

I was in H-E-B (a texas grocery store chain) the other day and noticed, for the first time ever, they have packaged bhut jolokias! Straight into the cart. Pulled one out and put it in a Ziploc to take to work today. Lunch time came around and the guys were all excited to try it. Pulled out my glove and knife to cut it up, we each grabbed a quarter of it, and nothing. Tasted similar to a bell pepper. We were all let down, I was kind of embarrassed and honestly a little angry. Got home to try another one. Cut the stem off, took a slice off the top, annnnnd fire. Not as hot as my ghost scorpions by a long shot, nor did it have the flavor. Just straight burn. It was awesome. So has Anybody ever had a complete dud? This was crazy to me, there wasn't even a tingle in the first one. Sorry for the ramble, Just thought I'd share
 
My local grocery stores don't carry anything as interesting but I have had their habaneros & jalapeños and they're nothing like homegrown. I've wondered if it's over watering for larger pods? Weak commercial hybrids that lack flavor but ship & keep better? Strange that in the same package you had one that was hot.
 
danish said:
That's mass production for you. More than likely they are fed for rapid growth and picked at weight while immature then ripened with ethylene gas.
All fruit tastes better when it ripens on the plant.
Agreed on mass production. If picked too early, I'd be willing to bet that the pepper was never given the chance to develop the seeds/core, and likely not the oils either. Although it should also be mentioned that there is a natural variation in heat of most peppers, even produced on the same plant. However, it is highly unlikely that it would be a complete dud with a pepper as hot as the ghost.
 
Ya its like eating a store bought tomato, verses a nice home grown, even bell peppers will taste different from one you can grow at home and ever since the monsanto has cracked the genome code for peppers I can bet we better look at our green veggies we buy at the store, but thats another story. To say the least I bought some small Habs the other day just to have a snack that wouldn't try to blow my head off, they were ok, but were lacking in much of their flavor and heat they reminded me of little orange bells rather than Habs taste wise and the heat was , well not as good as any I have grown. Where I'm at Habs are as hot as you will find at walmart here, I guess they think that they might lose money if they put out anything hotter.
 
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