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heat Where did the heat go?

M

mitchNC

My son asked me to make something really hot.  I made this recipe the other day, but I also added a Reaper.
 
Ghost pepper sauce
 
I tasted it before I bottled it and it was ridiculous.  One drop had me in pain.
I took it to a get-together last night and people that tasted said it was good, but not very hot.
 
I tasted it and they were right.  It's no hotter than Tobasco.
 
How? 6 ghosts and a reaper and it's not hot?  I was eating it by the spoonful last night (it's yummy).
 
 
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Sugar does not kill heat. A pineapple reaper sauce, a reaper sauce, both are hot! The reason this myth gets passed around it, if your mouth is burning and you eat granulated sugar and rub your tongue on the roof of your mouth, there is a surfactant effect and the granules with absorb some of the cap, and when you swallow, it disappears faster. Honey can work too but the granules work better because you can scrub. Even salt will work, but it won't taste as good as sugar doing it. IN a sauce the sugars are already dissolved and the sauce is "one," so there is no surfactant effect. But still this gets passed around, that sugar and fruit kill capsaicin. Not true.
 
Removing cap from your tongue has nothing to do with those ingredients "killing" heat in a sauce.
 
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From the realm of WTF.
Everyone in my family tasted that latest batch including me, and the heat level was lava.

My son texted me from Louisiana and said the challengers said great flavor, not hot.

What? I took out my bottle and tasted it. A drop, then Teaspoon, then tablespoon.

Not hot. At all. I'm talking 1,000 Scoville.

This throws in a wrench for me if what I bottle isn't what the end user gets.

I'm very confused and my research into this hasn't revealed anything.
 
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The Hot Pepper said:
Sugar does not kill heat. A pineapple reaper sauce, a reaper sauce, both are hot! The reason this myth gets passed around it, if your mouth is burning and you eat granulated sugar and rub your tongue on the roof of your mouth, there is a surfactant effect and the granules with absorb some of the cap, and when you swallow, it disappears faster. Honey can work too but the granules work better because you can scrub. Even salt will work, but it won't taste as good as sugar doing it. IN a sauce the sugars are already dissolved and the sauce is "one," so there is no surfactant effect. But still this gets passed around, that sugar and fruit kill capsaicin. Not true.
 
Removing cap from your tongue has nothing to do with those ingredients "killing" heat in a sauce.
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Beg to differ, Boss.  The whole Scoville Heat scale was based on sugar water dilutions.  While the rubbing of sugar crystals in the mouth may expedite the lessening of the heat sensation, anything with natural sugars will also help.  Apples, carrots, whip cream....
 
From personal experience, I absolutely say that products with sugar taste less hot than products without.  At hot sauce festivals, when sampling Pure Evil Capsaicin Drops, I put 5 drops of PE in a 12 oz bottle of catsup and 5 drops in a 12 oz bottle of soy sauce.  The soy sauce generally gets a heat rating (from customers) of about 4/10 while the catsup containing sugar gets a heat rating of 3/10.
 
 
 
This doesn't help the OP with where the heat is going in his sauce.  
 
I'd suggest making sure the bottle is securely capped so nothing leaks out.  It's kind of like those stray electrons that can leak out of a wire if the insulation gets nicked.
(edit: just kidding about that stray electrons thing~~~ ;) )
 
 
 
 
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mitchNC said:
This is the only sauce I've made that has tomato, and the only sauce that ever lost heat.

This is interesting:
https://foodal.com/knowledge/herbs-spices/turn-down-the-heat/
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I am no expert in chilli growing but i do have quite a bit of experience in cooking having trained to be a chef and i find it interesting that this is the first time you have used tomatoes because when cooking any hot food one of the 1st things i was taught was that the one best thing to use in a sauce if it becomes too hot is tomato puree or chopped tomato. 
 
I have several times made food that i find is at a level of heat that is fine for me but my family say is too hot as i will ask them to taste it before i finish cooking so it will not go to waste and any time it has been too hot i will add a tin of chopped tomato and some tomato puree and yes i will have a completely different sauce than i started out with but it will be at a lower heat and the rest of the family can eat it. 
 
However i can not say i have experienced food that i have cooked that was spicy with either tomato puree or a tin of chopped is it being less spicy after a night or 2 in the fridge. Usually that ends up being hotter but maybe the reverse can happen that the tomato for some reason has strengthened instead of the spice. I just know that when cooking if i am going to be putting any in the the fridge or freezer i try and account for the usual situation that it will end up hotter but it's not only the spice that goes up, it's a bunch of flavors that intensify so yeah like i say, maybe this time it just happened to be the tomatos that intensified more than any of the spicy ingredients.
 
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Mitchcraft said:
 
I am no expert in chilli growing but i do have quite a bit of experience in cooking having trained to be a chef and i find it interesting that this is the first time you have used tomatoes because when cooking any hot food one of the 1st things i was taught was that the one best thing to use in a sauce if it becomes too hot is tomato puree or chopped tomato. 
 
I have several times made food that i find is at a level of heat that is fine for me but my family say is too hot as i will ask them to taste it before i finish cooking so it will not go to waste and any time it has been too hot i will add a tin of chopped tomato and some tomato puree and yes i will have a completely different sauce than i started out with but it will be at a lower heat and the rest of the family can eat it. 
 
However i can not say i have experienced food that i have cooked that was spicy with either tomato puree or a tin of chopped is it being less spicy after a night or 2 in the fridge. Usually that ends up being hotter but maybe the reverse can happen that the tomato for some reason has strengthened instead of the spice. I just know that when cooking if i am going to be putting any in the the fridge or freezer i try and account for the usual situation that it will end up hotter but it's not only the spice that goes up, it's a bunch of flavors that intensify so yeah like i say, maybe this time it just happened to be the tomatos that intensified more than any of the spicy ingredients.
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Hey there Mitch if you  could share some recipes it would be great. I am somewhat Scottish myself and would like to combine ingredients.
 
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