I've recently aquired some Purira seeds for Seeds of Change that have hatched. I've been reading online that these suckers are so hot that "they couldn't be measured on the Scoville scale that measures a chile's heat.". Now, something seems fishy about that. Is this true? If so, why isn't it recognized as the world's hottest pepper (which I think the Caribbean Red Hot holds)?
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Purira Peppers
- Thread starter imaguitargod
- Start date
sweatnspice
Banned
That seems a little off to me too. Never heard of a pepper that's too 'hot' to test
Sounds like snake oil to me. How is possible to have a pepper that can't be measured. Beware, crop circles may start to appear around your plants.
imaguitargod said:
Guinness book of records recognizes the Red Savina Habanero as the worlds' hottest spice currently. It is a cultivar (of a red hab, I believe) by GNS Spice out of California.
That doesn't in my opinion make it consistently the hottest pepper, but it is the one that holds the record.
That said...
Whoever told you that a pepper was too hot to measure on the Scoville scale has no idea what a scoville scale is or how it measures....
HPCL (acronym spelling?) is the scientific method of measuring the cap content of a pepper, it is measured in PPM which convert to Scovilles: so, as everyone has already stated, it is virtually impossible to be unable to measure the cap in a pepper.
It doesn't make the seeds invaluable, just the suggestion that it is so hot, it is immeasurable. I hope you didn't pay extra for those words.
T
Being a chemist and a pepperhead, I looked into how Scoville ratings are determined. There are several ways, but it basically goes like this: You weigh a sample; be a pepper, sauce, extract, etc. and you prepare a sample for analysis. HPLC-MS (high pressure liquid chromatography coupled to a mass spectrometer for CSI fans and non-chemists). There are other techniques that can be used, but I'm less familiar with them. Basically, all that happens is that the capsacium is isolated from the other components of the sample, and you can calculate what percentage of your sample is capsacium. Knowing that, you can get the amount of capsacium in your injection sample, which you could then use to figure out how much capsacium is in the pepper, and then use the weight of the pepper to get a weight ratio of capsacium/pepper, basically telling you how concentrated the pepper is with capsacium. There is probably some conversion chart to convert capsacium/pepper to Scoville, but those are probably secrets of the various analysis companies (they want your continued business). That's the nuts and bolts of it, and procedure might vary from company to company, but they're all experts and in chemistry, there are usually about 10 correct ways to do one task. With pure capsacium being 16,000,000 Scoville, any pepper must be some amount less.
Yup.
Nope.Tina Brooks said:
See this is what I figured, just another "snake oil" like advertising.
They do have a good heat level, and the flavor is nice.
I have a bag of frozen purira at home I'll have to eat one tonight to jog my memory.
ML
I have a bag of frozen purira at home I'll have to eat one tonight to jog my memory.
ML
Be sure to post the jogging of the memory, because it'll be a bit before I get any peppers off of these guys(they're just babies right now)fatalliman said:
The baby ones taste good, so do the deer with those little white spots. 
Purira is one of the most picante chiles I have ever had.
It also ripens to the most beautiful lipstick red.
My first plant came from a cook at a Chinese restaurant who lived down the block. When he moved, I took the plant he left in the back yard. Dwarfed it and grew it in g'house for 9 years.
It also ripens to the most beautiful lipstick red.
My first plant came from a cook at a Chinese restaurant who lived down the block. When he moved, I took the plant he left in the back yard. Dwarfed it and grew it in g'house for 9 years.
How does one go about drawfing a plant (please let it involve beam and ray guns)? Do you just keep it root bound in a small container?willard3 said:
And, beautiful plant! Were you growing that hydroponicly?
Those pruriras look like what the nurseries around here all call "ornamental peppers". Maybe they don't get hot in Canadian soil?
T
T
Tina Brooks said:
You mean that permafrost stuff?
Yeah, the leaves are the right size, but the fruit looks about 1/2-1/3 size. The plants should be 3 1/2 to 4 ft tall for a full season. Here in St. Louis (USDA zones 5b-6a), we use row covers early and late for unexpected frosts, so I'd imagine you probably need a heated greenhouse for fall and spring! Puriras are great, one of our faves, and usually very strong and prolific plants. Good luck this spring! brookthecook
dreamtheatervt said:
I have often seen the conversion quoted as SHU = 15 * ppm. But thinking about it just a few minutes ago, using the number 15 stuck me as odd, and set off my engineering b.s. detector. This is because the most concentrated substance possible would be 1,000,000 parts per million. That would yield a maximum Scoville rating of......15,000,000? What's going on here?
I researched a bit into the efficacy of weaponized capsaicin, figuring that would be a good place to start. I found a reference to American Spice Trade Association, Analytical Methods 21.0. This document outlines a recognized procedure to conduct a sensory test for scoville units. Going on that, I found out about ASTA Analytical Methods 21.1, dated 1980 - governing a recognized procedure for HPLC testing, which declared the maximum possible scoville rating to be 15,000,000.
So, at last, this facinating page, which states that the ASTA didn't declare the maximum Scoville rating to be 16,000,000 until 1997.
So, by that guide, the conversion from HPLC to scoville should be SHU = 16*ppm, or more directly SHU = 16*%capsacin*1,000,000.
Not that it has a huge effect. For instance, if a certain famous sauce was tested in 1995, and came out at 50,000, then was tested again in 1999, it would come out at 53,000 SHU. Probably within the error of the test. But still, an interesting bit of history.
A little added fact, virtually all of the pepper sprays on the market (not including bear repellant) only use about 1.5 million Scoville as their active ingredient.