tagged: capsaicin, chile, featured, hot, pepper, roberts, sauce, scott, scott roberts, spicy

Scott Takes 16 Million SHU Pure Capsaicin on Blotter Paper

Posted by Scott Roberts in Bloggers Bug Stream, Food

Capsaicin is the chemical compound that gives chile peppers and hot sauces their heat. Simply put, the more capsaicin a chile or sauce has, the more extreme the burn will feel.

The amount of capsaicin is measured by the Scoville Scale by the amount of Scoville Heat Units, which can range from 0 to 16,000,000. To put it into perspective, an average jalapeno pepper might be around 5,000 SHU, a habanero is approximately 100,000 to 300,000 SHU, and the world’s hottest chile pepper, the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T, clocks in at over 1 million SHU all the way up to 1.4 million. Pure 16 million SHU capsaicin is found in crystalline form (sort of like table salt) and can be deadly in large amounts.

Johnny McLaughlin of Heartbreaking Dawns Sauces and Seasonings was brainstorming a safe way to experience the taste and heat of pure crystal capsaicin (16 million Scoville Heat Units) in effective quantities. Here is his experiment….Blotter Paper. Johnny ordered up some collectible blotter designs from a source in the UK (note these are collectibles that are not intended for or have ever been used for anything illegal) and took 30 G of pure capsaicin crystal and let it break down in 1.5 pints of alcohol. The blotter sheets soaked overnight and layed out on a drying rack. The concept is that the alcohol would evaporate, leaving the crystal imbedded in the 100 per sheet individual hits. So did it work? YES…

Johnny sent the capsaicin-encrusted blotter paper sheets out to several chileheads to try, including myself. I tried a total of 20 squares to see what kind of burn it would put on my tongue. Here are the results, which include some coughing and reflex gagging…

Read more of Scott’s coverage of the fiery foods and BBQ world at ScottRobertsWeb.com.