But again, the Scoville scale is inaccurate at best. Horsepower, athletic ability, can be accurately measured. There is no skill at making something hot, it's about backing up the heat with flavor. You want hot? Add more peppers, there's really not much more to it. And then you get into the extracts for the extreme stuff. Like I said, we had the Zero tested a while back, considering there is the equivalent of 10 pounds of orange habanero (1 pound dried) in a 1/4 ounce vial, the testing came back at 35,000 SHU. Laughable at best. I've talked to numerous other manufacturers as wll over the years, and many of them find the Scoville testing stuff, while quite expensive and time consuming, extremely inaccurate. I'm not stopping anyone by using the scale as a bible, but you have to realize the results are often quite misleading and unreliable.
It's funny how many people we've met at various shows, who come up to the booth and say stuff like, "Hey man, I don't eat ANYTHING under 200,000SHU!" Everyone in our booth does the proverbial eyeroll, and I give him some of the Defense Condition #1, which is warm, but by no means painful. More times than not, these mental midget's heads turn red and they start to tear. I'm guessing the #1 is around 80,000SHU. Or like the example I gave above where people try the Zero, after tasting all the extreme stuff at the show, and tell us it's the hottest stuff at the show. I KNOW it's not, as there are plenty of other extracts at the show that boast a much large SHU rank. These are real life examples that have happened hundreds of times over the years.
You yourself admit that your jolokia won't be as hot as ones grown elsewhere. Ok, and habaneros grown in Guatemala will probably be hotter than ones grown in Nebraska, or will they? If one pepper is hotter than another, it's hotter, but to force an SHU rank onto a type of pepper, knowing the many variables involved, it doesn't work. I mean really, can you tell the difference between 100,000SHU and 110,000SHU, most likely not. Hotness is purely subjective to the individual, as different peppers will affect different people differently, especially if they have built up a tolerance.
I just don't want to see people falling into the "Scoville Trap", where they will only buy products with stupidly high SHU rankings, and missing out on the flavor aspect of other sauces. There are an amazing amount of great products out there, from all sorts of different manufacturers, that taste great with the added pleasure of heat, but not the type of heat that forces you to shove a rocket pop up your butt to quell the burning in the morning.
I understand the bragging rights thing all too well, hence the reason the insane flock to our National Championship Deathmatch each year at Jungle Jim's Weekend of Fire. I've been asked by many of the competitiors what the SHU rank is, my answer is, "A whole lot of them". They all accept this answer as their internal gastrointestinal devices begin to liquify during the competition.
By the way, I like the Slayer, Reign in Blood avatar, defintely brings back memories. Blurry memories, but memories nonetheless.
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(or alternatively, 'children')
Why am I taking the mick out of poor defenseless Mascara Wearing Badgers today?...
