Growing for heat & rethinking shu

AJ Drew

AJ Drew

The ramble gets to growing at the end.
 
I was answering a question about Blair's 16 Million Reserve crystals, explaining that it is not a hot sauce and you can not achieve 16,000,000 SHU with a liquid.  Suddenly it occurred to me that the entire bragging rights thing for hottest pepper in the world is bunk.  SHU is a measurement of dry material.  The measurement reflects how much heat is in a specific volume of dried material.  It does not, in any way, shape, or form reflect the amount of that dried material in a fresh pepper.  One pepper might have tons of water, the other very little.  If the two peppers rate identically on that scale, the one with less water is actually hotter.
 
Then something else occurred to me.  If the title is 'the hottest pepper' rather than 'the hottest pepper per dried mass' or some such thing, than if two peppers have the same shu but one is larger, the larger would be the hotter pepper because as a whole thing (a pepper) it has more heat.  That got me to thinking about growing.
 
A great many people feel dry conditions promote the production of capsaicin (the hot).  I have read many who have the opinion that this is a survival mechanism because the capsaicin protects the seeds.  Thing is, I think the capsaicin protects seeds from some preditors and bacteria.  I do not think it protects them from drought.  So I wonder if pods that come from plants that have been deprived water only seem hotter when the pods are fresh.

That is, maybe a well watered plant produces the same amount of capsaicin in those pods but it is less noticeable because it is diluted with more water.
 
Anyone have insight or opinion?
 
Modern tests are based on how much capsaicin is within an entire dried pod I believe and is a lot more scientific now than it used to be.  I'm not quite sure what you're getting at exactly, the amount of capsaicin is going to be the same if you eat the entire pod and it's got a lot of moisture as it is if it's dry, the concentration isn't going to matter if you are able to somehow choke down a dried bhut like a potato chip...it's still going to have the same SHU rating.
 
Sounds like you're talking about the difference between percieved heat and measured heat.

Two peppers that are both 1m shu (to pull a number out of the air), but one is 20% juice, and the other 80% juice (IE water in your original post, pepper liquids that are not capsaicin), the first pepper has a greater ratio of capsacin to flesh/juice/etc (pepper product) than would the second one. Thus possibly giving the first one a greater subjective heat while having the exact same amount of capsaicin objectively.

Except that capsaicin as a chemical is going to be (depending on which capsaicinoid you're dealing with obviously, as they are not all 16m) 16m shu. which should mean (assuming I'm thinking about this right) that the first pepper would score higher than the second because what is actually being measured is the ratio of capsacinoids to other compounds (dehydrated pepper flesh for instance) found in the pepper. The dehydration process should level the playing field when it comes to liquid. But - I assume - all other things being equal the pepper with less flesh once dehydrated will give you a higher shu due to a more favorable ratio of capsacin to dehydrated pepper flesh. I think thats why some people percieve smaller pods as hotter.
 
jsschrstrcks, yes the term 'perceived heat' would be better but I do not like the term measured heat.  I remember watching the FBI guy nearly die eating a Chocolate Bhutlah SM.  Is it hotter than the Carolina Reaper?  The thing he put into his mouth was the size of several Carolina Reapers.  Of course it burned and hurt more.  If I munch five Carolina Reapers they are going to seem much hotter than munching one.  Ah, but if you measure one gram of dried material from either I'd bet Carolina Reaper would come out on top.
 
So we have perceived heat, but then we also have either measured by mass or measured by the whole pepper.  It would be interesting to compare what CPI tests were like compared to what Guinness accepts for tests.  I am willing to bet that since the CPI tests were prompted by hot sauce makers that the tests were based on mass rather than single pods.  My guess being because I can not imagine hot sauce makers using recipes which call for X number of pods.  Thinking they go with weight or volume, probably weight.

Helvete, I just thought of a much better way to illustrate what I am thinking.  If you mix one coolaid pack with two quarts of water and one cup of sugar in a pitcher you get the normal sweet coolaid.  Double the water and you get something half as sweet.  However, each pitcher has just as much sugar and carbs.  The pitcher is the pod, the sugar is the hot.  The more water a pod has, the more the hot is spread out.

Cruzzfish, for industry I agree very much because such testing would help to create products which always taste the same.  I am fairly sure that is what industry wants.  Now for the title of hottest pepper in the world, I would like to see it be a specific pepper not a variety and not an average.  You might have noticed that Guinness does not even mention the variety of the biggest pumpkin or water melon in the splash page.  Instead, they say how big they were and who grew them. 

The way they do it now would be ok if it was called the Hottest Variety Average in the World or something.  But I kind of like the idea of growers trying to get pods hotter and hotter and I frigging LOVE the idea of State Fairs judging it with a panel of folk chomping down on the things.  I know it is not practical, but it would be far more entertaining than what we have now.
 
Except if you eat 10 jalapeno's its not any hotter at the end, than at the beginning. I posit there is a compound in the chocolate pods that causes our sensitivity to Capsacinoids to somehow be increased. There are a number of ways that could work... Also - bear in mind Ted "the idiot" is an entertainer. Not science.
 
Couple of comments-
 
HPLC has been used for almost 40 year to measure the pungency of a number of food items including cinnamon, garlic, all sorts of chiles, and a number of other spices.  It was accepted as industry standard by the American Spice Trade Association back around 1980.   Each spice has a specific profile of compounds that the HPLC tests for.  By measuring those specific compounds in that spice a pungency rating can be assigned to the batch or sample. 
 
The HPLC tester needs to know what compounds to look for when doing these tests and from what I understand, the machines need to be calibrated to those compounds.  I'm not a chemist, and I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.  :lol:  Just what I've learned from talking with a couple different labs.  I've asked some food labs if they can/would do capsaicin testing and have been told "No, it costs to much to calibrate the machine for only one sample".  Which makes sense that some other labs would be able to do a ton of tests for a reasonable price, because they do so many of them. 
 
Southwest Biolabs has been doing the HPLC testinc for the CPI for years.  They are also in the middle of a huge chile growing region and do pungency testingf for lots of chile growers.  Pace needs to know the pungency of their latest batch of ground up jalapenos so they know how much to add to their recipe to maintain their Medium heat.  I made up that example, but the idea applies to any food manufacturer who makes a spicy product.
 
HPLC measures the PPM of capsaicinoid compounds.  Capsaicin is one of many capsaicinoid compounds.  Some products I use come with a CoA that lists the percentages of the top 5 capsaicinoids.  The single most prominent compound in all these things is capsaicin, google is your friend for more on all the different capsaicinoids.     
 
 
Guinness recognizes Ed Curry's Caronlina Reaper as the hottest chile in the world.  While there will always be variations in the PPM of capsaicinoids from pod to pod, the average of the Carolina Reapers were enough to award it Worlds Hottest.  We had a Reaper Eating contest at the recent Cali Hot Sauce Expo.  Each contestant had 100 grams of pods.  Not sure how relevant that is to the conversation....l.just thought I'd share~  :lol:
 
 
 
carry on~
 
jsschrstrcks said:
Except if you eat 10 jalapeno's its not any hotter at the end, than at the beginning. I posit there is a compound in the chocolate pods that causes our sensitivity to Capsacinoids to somehow be increased. There are a number of ways that could work... Also - bear in mind Ted "the idiot" is an entertainer. Not science.
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I know this is not what you meant, but the joke is so right there.  I think if you eat 10 peppers instead of one, it will be hotter IN THE END the next morning.  On substances that make the heat more intensely felt, I think you are dead on accurate.  I can not list compounds in peppers have that effect, but in cooking I know sweets seem to cool it down and citrus seems to peek it up.  So I am sure you are right about the pepper itself having compounds which could decrease or increase the heat felt.
 
SalsaLady, from what I read the testing at CPI was prompted by industry.  I am sure they knew CPI would be using the modern test.  So it does very much make sense that the test would be very well representative of perceived heat because that is what industry cares about.  However, I believe industry recipes are based on weight not pepper count.  What I think they would want to know is how hot a specific mass of the dried material weighed.  So we are back to the what is the hottest pepper question.  Is it a measurement of heat in a specific dried amount (as I think they have been doing) or is it a measurement of the total dried amount produced by a given pod like Smokin Hot thinks. 
 
On Guinness, I think they are for entertainment and marketing.  Did you know Mr. Curry is a member of CPI?  Smart cookie, knows marketing so goes to Guinness.  Smart cookie, knows science so works with CPI.  Have a friend who is in there for sword swallowing and holding the most cockroaches in his mouth.  Helps him greatly when he is trying to book shows.  Nothing wrong with that.
 
ajdrew said:
Cruzzfish, for industry I agree very much because such testing would help to create products which always taste the same.  I am fairly sure that is what industry wants.  Now for the title of hottest pepper in the world, I would like to see it be a specific pepper not a variety and not an average.  You might have noticed that Guinness does not even mention the variety of the biggest pumpkin or water melon in the splash page.  Instead, they say how big they were and who grew them. 
 
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I think an average is good so that people know what they're going to get, and I'm pretty sure in my record books it does mention the kind of pumpkin. But yeah, it should mention who grew it, where, and what kind of pepper it was. Maybe not an average there.
 
Although a category of hottest average vs hottest ever would be interesting. I know the moruga scorpion hits really high, but it also hits really low. Bhuts don't get as hot as the hottest, but they're more consistent with how hot they are.
 
ajdrew said:
 SHU is a measurement of dry material.  The measurement reflects how much heat is in a specific volume of dried material.  It does not, in any way, shape, or form reflect the amount of that dried material in a fresh pepper.  One pepper might have tons of water, the other very little.  If the two peppers rate identically on that scale, the one with less water is actually hotter.
 
Then something else occurred to me.  If the title is 'the hottest pepper' rather than 'the hottest pepper per dried mass' or some such thing, than if two peppers have the same shu but one is larger, the larger would be the hotter pepper because as a whole thing (a pepper) it has more heat.  That got me to thinking about growing.
Click to expand...
 
Hi!  You don't know me but I do this testing everyday on peppers, and here is my 2 cents:
 
SHU can be measured with fresh, wet, or dry products.  You are correct that the standard testing for super-hots is dried powder.  As you said, the drier the pods, the higher the number.   That's why everyone interested in super-heat tests the dry powder because you can say your pepper is 1 million SHU or whatever.  Fresh Reapers or Primos may be 200,000 to 300,000 SHU wet, but dried they are 1.2 million to 2 million SHU.  
 
At first read, I agreed with you that a larger super-hot pepper may be actually be overall hotter by weight vs. heat, but then I started thinking that maybe smaller pods may be a better idea.  I mean if you have a pod that weights 1/4 of a Primo and both have the same heat, then the little one has a higher ratio of heat to size.  For some reason I think that is cool, and maybe larger pods have more "air" space in them so you actually get more flesh (i.e. more sauce) from smaller ones in the same volume.  On the down side small peppers are hard to work with with so I prefer larger pods.
 
On another subject, I think anyone can be the next "Mr. Currie" if they work as hard as he did/does.  It does't matter in the end whether it's a Primo or not because it's done and we all must move on.  Maybe the brainstrains or the Primo are the next big thing, but it will be hard work whoever wants it.
 
cruzzfish said:
SHU should be replaced with each capsiacinoid given as a percentage of a blended pod if you ask me.
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All you have to do is ask for this.  Also, nobody sends just one pod for analysis, mostly because our spice grinders need more pods than that to get a good, fine grind.   Also, a lab may need more than one pod of weight to run the analysis.  You can probably grind one pod, send it in, ask for the 3 major capsaicinoids percentages and SHU.  It may cost a little extra $ for the additional time.  
 
The reason the simple single SHU value will never be replaced is that 95%+ of the industry is not concerned with this.  They need a value so they can mix the truckload of cayenne pepper mash with another truckload to get a target, ASAP.  The small group of people concerned with more information than just the single value are from the pharmaceutical, pepper spray, and curious chile-heads typically.  These are my favorite customers, but they don't pay the bills.  
 
Oh and anybody can be a member (Even myself and Mr. Curry) of CPI for $25 or more...http://www.chilepepperinstitute.org/memberships.php
 
Ok, that's my rant.  
 
-Tom
 
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