Hot sauce vs. Peppers

So I just ate my first home grown habanero. First off, it was delicious. My question has to do with the heat. It was definitely much hotter than a jalapeño that I ate yesterday, but it doesn't seem to be as hot as a hot sauce I've got with a comparable scoville rating. Am I crazy?
 
could it have something to do with the vinegar used in sauces opening your taste buds more since its acidic? iv noticed the same also......
 
If it was the first pod it may not be as hot as ones that grow later in the year.. I'm not sure what hot sauce your speaking of but some are made from extracts and the concentration of the capsaicin could be way higher in the sauce. Just because there rated the same heat doesn't mean much. The more cap the stronger and more concentrated the heat will be. Get ware I'm trying to go with that?
I'll try and clarify that for you. Ok so i had a huge jar of flakes i grew and filled the jar with Everclear. I let them soak for a month shaking the jar every other day. After a month i strained the juice into a Pyrex dish and covered it with cheese cloth. After the alcohol evaporated i was left with a concentrated tar made of cap.. A pepper hash if you will. Lol.. Ok so i eat those pods and there hot, if i take a chink of that tar its way hotter than eating the pepper because its like eating 5 peppers (just a reference could be 2 or could be 10 idk). So now we made it there i have to throw in that the oil will only be as hot ass the pepper. Point being if i make sauce with that i can adjust how (hot) i want it by the concentration. For example (just as a reference again) if i wanted every drop to equal the heat of eating 5 peppers i could. But like i said it won't be any hotter than the pepper just a more concentrated dose of cap so it feels like more.

That help?
 
In my experience liquids make a huge difference, I ate 2 ghost peppers on a sandwich for dinner tonight, if I take just one and put it in salsa, or say chili, omg its hot (I mean a single serving) I can barely eat it


Not sure if it reacts differnt to the taste buds, or gets between teeth in the gums, but it does increase the effect, at least to me it does
 
It's the complete opposite for me, I've eaten a whole red savina before and they're only supposed to be 500k ish, but that pepper was way hotter than the 7 pot hot sauce I had a spoonful of.

Heat dissipates the capsaicin though so commercial sauces can't be as hot as fresh salsa-like sauces since they have to account for shelf life they need to heat it and make sure it won't rot by adding more vinegar/other stuff.
 
The sauce I'm talking about is Blair's ultra death, which is rated at 100k scoville units. Habs are rated 100-300 from what I've read. I'm thinking it might be the hot sauce is a liquid theory and sticks, where as I swallow the hab once I'm done chewing.
 
Oh ok, well that explains it haha. I must have had it confused with one of their many other death sauces. I didn't think I would be able to handle the heat of a homegrown hab, but in all honesty, it was pretty good. Definitely painful, but delicious. The only weird part was the warm feeling in my stomach afterwards :) 
 
Brad in Cheek said:
could it have something to do with the vinegar used in sauces opening your taste buds more since its acidic? iv noticed the same also......
i find this to be somewhat true. raw peppers burn less than vinegar heavy sauces imo.

However if we are talking about blairs, it isn't very vinegar like. extract, stale, cayenne  heavy flavour. i've still got blairs in my fridge, i dont touch it now. grim
 
Blairs "afterdeath" sauce is pretty good at 49, 250 Scoville


I you are referring to sauce with vinegar its a ph issue, most are going to be -4 or less, its not a bad thing its just the way it works, most cola's (pepsi/coke) are -2.5





My reference was to raw fresh peppers, and how they react very differentially when I eat them raw on solid foods, vs adding them to foods with liquid, liquid tends to intisify the heat
 
Afterdeath is a good one.
 
I have some thai hots growing. I will have to compare them to the sauce once they ripen
 
It's that it's liquid, but not entirely.  Chewing up a raw pepper you aren't releasing all the capsaicin and what you do is at a lower rate compared to hot sauce coating your mouth all at once.
 
That pepper should taste a fair bit hotter if you cook it on the grill THEN eat it.  On the other hand, as someone already mentioned early peppers may not be as hot as subsequent ones.
 
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