Yours is the experience I am more familiar with. I planned to leve a bhut in some bourbon for 48 hours. Just 4 hours later I took a little sip. WOAH!!!To take the heat out of peppers and make "hot liquor" I cut in half, de-seed and de-vein bhuts. I soak in my liquor of choice for an hour. The peppers are then patted down with a paper towel. They lost most of their spice. The liquor, however, is insanely hot.
Use dried peppers only. Fresh is like 90% water which won't mix well with alcoholuse fresh peppers. The dried stuff if better for making spices, unless you want to throw some pepper powder into the liqour to enhance the flavor. My brother has several martini's like this. Some are quite good.