Is Australian Geographic's List of the Hottest Chile Peppers 100 Percent Accurate?
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Australian Geographic posted a web article a couple of weeks ago listing the top 10 hottest chile peppers. It's a fairly interesting list with quite a bit of factual, but most chile fans can immediately spot a few glaring errors:
1) The Scoville Heat Unit numbers are WAY off. Where on earth did they get these? The Infinity Chiles coming in at 1,250,000 SHUs? Never happened. Nagas (AKA bhut jolokias, naga jolokias, ghost chiles, etc.) reaching as high as 1.1 million SHU for jolokias (the actual average are considerably lower in virtually all other testing that's been done on them)? What lab(s) provided the HPLC testing results for these? Update October 3, 2011: Nick “Woody” Woods of http://www.firefoods.co.uk has provided a link to the HPLC test results for his Infinity Chili at http://www.firefoods.co.uk/infinity_results.htm, where it is given a rating of 1,257,468 SHU.
2) The inclusion of unstable hybrids. Okay, okay, I realize the Naga Viper and the Infinity had enticed Guinness World Record officials enough to temporarily list them as the hottest chile peppers in their eyes, but to include wildly unstable hybrids such as the brand new Nagabon (a cross between a Naga Jolokia and a Scotch Bonnet) and the Habanaga (a cross between a Habanero and a Naga Jolokia) is patently ridiculous.
3) The lumping together of different varieties. Why do Chocolate, Caribbean, and Orange Habaneros belong in one group, but Red Savina Habaneros get listed on their own? Or all of the Naga family together, especially when their are considerably differences?
4) The exclusion of cultivars such as the Moruga Scorpions, the Yellow and Chocolate versions of Scorpions and Jolokias. If you can separate Habaneros, then why not differentiate the other varieties of peppers, especially when (for example) ripe Yellow or Chocolate versions have considerable less heat than their Red counterparts?
While still being preliminary, this Super-Hot Chiles: The New Scoville Numbers chart I posted up a few months back provides more accurate numbers with a more detailed breakdown of the multitude of varieties. The numbers are courtesy of grower Jim Duffy and capsaicin expert Marlin Bensinger through Analytical Food Labs in Grand Prairie, Texas.
Comments
2011-09-29 20:19:28
Most of the issue revolves around the the fact that there is no one single, recognized, certification agency, using a single set of recognized standards. Not only do you have labs do your testing based on 'how hot do you need it to be?' cross referenced to the size of your check (sorry to burst all you CSI fans' bubble, but it *does* happen), you can also sprout that odd cultivar (known as a 'sport') that throws off a value that very few people in the world can replicate.
Guinness- based on my dealing with them from NON chilehead stuff- are far, FAR from reliable! Not to say that some of their stuff isn't reliable, but they tend to follow the money- they're a business. The fact that it's listed in Guinness (or not!) really doesn't hold much weight in my book given their absolute LACK of scientific standards.
The industry is still in DIRE need of a single, reputable source for testing, using a single, recognized standard for testing and plant certification! The Chile Pepper Institute is trying, but there's always suspicion in the broader marketplace.
Don't even get me started on the seed stuff!!! There are some truly innovative people out there, crossing and growing stable chiles, so this is NOT a poke at them. But, I can take a common chile, grow it in my backyard, give it a fancy name, buy a lab test, and then make the case that it is 'different' based on the ability of chiles to form a land race. Voila! I have the next 'new hottest thing'. The media, being devoid of investigational ability, runs with it and there you have it folks :-) I'm making a killing selling seeds (with a disclaimer) that are never likely to be as hot as the hype.
2011-10-02 18:06:48
Super-hot peppers are just one of hundreds of things that highly OCD people choose to fixate on; marketing depts know this and feed the hype. Of Course.
The references to various "Scorpion cultivars" is misleading as well, since all red Scorpions are pretty much the same. (that should start a fire)
It is also debatable whether there is any real dif between the Scorpion or 7 Pod, since they both have the same pod-shape variants and are the same heat-level.
Butch didn't breed his own variety, he just passed it along- those are his own words. Other people tacked his name onto the pods for fad/hype/sales purposes.
They also attribute the extra heat to "worm juice", which was prob just Butch pulling someone's leg.
chiles either have it or they don't, it's in the DNA, and most chiles don't need any or much feeding at all- 2-3 N feeding/yr in most commercial fields, at most. Ask any University AG dept.
RE: "chocolate habs": there were some of these at Open Fields in '05,'06, & '07 that Butch, Jim, CaJon & others swore were way hotter than the Savina or Francesca, maybe running about 800,000 or more. I picked so many barehanded (30+ lbs) that for 6 months my hands were over-sensitive to hot water, kinda like frostbite, & I still have problems handling peppers for too long. I'll have some smoked chocohab sauce at OF next weekend, look me up.
Brook The Cook
STLMO
2011-10-03 09:58:52
http://www.firefoods.co.uk/infinity_results.htm
GWR is for the worlds hottest chilli.........nothing more ..........nothing less, i agree new testing rules should be worldwide but it never happen.
2011-10-03 20:36:30
2011-10-03 20:39:45
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