back to article Brits unleash world's hottest chilli pepper

A British firm has claimed the world's hottest chilli pepper crown, a fearsome beast clocking 1,176,182 on the Scoville scale. Fire Foods of Lincolnshire is responsible for cultivating the Infinity Chilli, which tests at Warwick University confirmed as the planet's most potent. The previous record holder is the bhut jolokia, …

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  1. LinkOfHyrule
    Flame

    Only a matter of time...

    It's only a matter of time until the governtards will ban us from filming ourselves eating hot chillies as it will be classed as extreme porn causing life threatening injuries to a persons anus!

    Notice I haven't used the joke symbol, I'm serious! They probably will!

  2. Cunningly Linguistic
    Flame

    Shouldn't it be...

    ...Bum, Baby, Burn?

    1. Paul 129
      Happy

      Nahhh

      Willy Nelson had it down pat with his

      "Burning ring of fire"

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    May I be the first to say

    Om nom nom nom.

    What worries me about the "scoville scale" is that it absolutely disproves homeopathy. If you dilute a chilli down that much, then by homeopathic theory, you should be able to melt an entire human with a dilution...

    Now, I'm off to see if I can persuade my local police to lend me some pepper spray, I feel like chilli tonight, and I'm out of Ghost Pepper Naga Jolokia Hot Sauce.

  4. SteveK

    Burning

    "An alcohol extraction of capsaicin oil is mixed with increasing quantities of sugar solution until the burning sensation from the chemical is no longer discernible on the tongues of a panel of five testers"

    Surely if you're starting strong and diluting until the testers can no longer feel it is flawed with something this strong? Surely after the first taste of the strongest solution, the testers will be unable to feel anything on their tongues?

    Steve.

    1. blackworx
      Boffin

      Re: burning

      Apparently they changed testers. At least they did back in the days when they still used that method. These days it's all labcoats and chemistry and machines and computers and other sciencey stuff.

  5. jake Silver badge

    If there is no flavor, there is no point ...

    Why not just bottle pure capsaicin & be done with it? The DSWs over "worlds hottest pepper" and "world's hottest hot sauce" are getting tedious, at best.

    That said ... I make my own Habenero/Goat Pepper/Scotch Bonnet hot sauce, from peppers I grow here. Lovely stuff. Tastes of mango, banana, pineapple, a hint of apple, coconut & vanilla ... Is it hot? Yes! But it also tastes good ... if you can get past the heat. I spilled a little on my morning omelet just a little while ago. Doubles as pepper-spray ;-)

    Take about a cup of good cider vinegar (I make my own from my gravenstein apple cider), put it in a blender with a dozen or so ripe Habeneros (seeds & all), a teaspoon of sea salt (not that nasty, metallic tasting, iodine-infused "table salt"), and about a tablespoon each of honey & turbinado/demerara sugar (muscovado or piloncillo also work, if you can find 'em). A tablespoon of chipotle powder adds a nice smoky note, but isn't required. Blend well. Add a little more vinegar if needed, to get a Tabasco-ish consistency. It's usable immediately, but bottle it & stick it in the back of your fridge for a couple months and it just gets better ... A turkey baster with the plastic bit from an eye-dropper stuck on the end works well for re-filling old Tabasco[tm] bottles.

    1. sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD

      Interesting...

      Imma vote u up and try it

      I agree... too much heat can ruin a dish, but also too little just doesn't cut it for certain people.

      Nevertheless I would like to know how to get myself seeds for this super chilli plant.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Why not just bottle pure capsaicin & be done with it?"

      http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PURE-Capsaicin-16-MILLION-scoville-chilli-sauce-1-8ml-/220663779897?pt=UK_Home_Garden_Food_SM&hash=item3360961239

      1. Richard Gadsden
        Flame

        Wimp

        Try finding pure Resiniferatoxin - 1 biillion SHU.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      @Jake

      Everyone who ever played a note of prog rock called; they want their pretentiousness back.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re:AC 09:09

        Eh? Sharing a recipe is considered pretentious in your world? I pity you.

        Pardon me while I polish my Fender Big Block ...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Re:AC 09:09

          In a word, no. Sharing recipes isn't pretentious, but I'm sure that pity you just poured for me will taste more impressive than any pity I ever tasted before. Chin chin!

          1. jake Silver badge

            @AC 23:57 ... Oh. I see.

            You think that actually knowing how to find, grow, produce and combine ingredients to produce food is pretentious. I no longer pity you ... rather, I feel sorry for those around you.

            Consider: Probably the biggest hack good old HomoSap has learned is how to play about with whatever food is local & current ... You are an omnivore, like it or not. Learn to feed you & yours with whatever you have handy. It's a life-skill. If you had a significant other, s/he'd love you for it.

            Trust me kids ... Hacking about with food in the kitchen is more important than computers.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              FAIL

              Oh. My. God.

              Oh SNAP, you really are the worst kind of snob, aren't you? Perhaps instead of making wild assumptions about your critics' ignorance you should look up the meaning of 'pretentious'. For the record, I grow my own, cook my own and from time to time even manage to impress folk with the results. What I don't do is go around preaching from on high about "hacking" my food in a patronising and po-faced manner.

              The funny thing is, I didn't even think you were being *that* pretentious to begin with. I actually thought your recipe looked quite nice and sent it to my brother who is the family "chilli farmer". I knew straight off the bat that *I* was the one who was being a bit of a dick for ribbing you about it, but you've well and truly blown your cover now.

              My OH is a sous-chef and she has a story about your kind for every day of the year. You're the sort of person who would gleefully spout the phrase "oven baked" without even a hint of irony.

              Now, if you'll excuse me I'm off to pick some of these lovely Marmandes. The OH adores 'em. Cheerio.

              1. jake Silver badge

                @AC 23:49 YHBT, HAND :-)

                Side note: Yes, I use "oven baked[0]". It's different than "bread oven[1]" baked, "pizza oven[2]" baked, "solar[3]" baked, "Kenworth[4]" baked, "BarBQ[5]" baked, "grill[6]" baked, etc.

                [0] "Oven" being what you think of when you think of that sad little electric thingie with a door on it to (try to) keep the heat in in one corner of your kitchen.

                [1] I have a 130 year old wood-fired bread oven ... I fire it up once a week or so. Can do ~50 24oz loaves an hour, if I have the need. Took me almost three months to get rid of the brambles and re-point the bricks. Worth the effort.

                [2] What I call my "pizza oven" is built into the bread oven. It uses ~15% of the fuel to get hot ... I suspect it was a "small run" bread oven, but it makes a wonderful pie. Can feed a couple dozen people with it.

                [3] The solar cooking stuff is used mainly by Scouts getting badges. Makes GREAT cookies!

                [4] I can make a couple pretty good baguettes "underhood" in a couple hours when hauling horses for my wife ... Requires a couple stops during proofing & shaping, but hot, homemade Sourdough bread when on the road is worth it.

                [5] My custom smokers all have a built-in oven. Sometimes "fast & hot" is useful, even when going "low & slow".

                [6] I cook pizza on the grill when I'm only cooking for the wife & I, and maybe a couple friends. It's easy, tasty, and practically zero clean-up.

                1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

                  Re: @AC 23:49 YHBT, HAND :-)

                  Er, that's nice.

                  1. jake Silver badge

                    @Sarah

                    I'm just tilting at windmills again ... pay no attention.

                2. Anonymous Coward
                  Coffee/keyboard

                  Re: @AC 23:49 YHBT, HAND :-)

                  You forgot to add:

                  tl,dr: sex with me is a bloody nightmare

    4. Dave Bell
      Pint

      Hot Peppers

      A few years ago, I made about a litre of peppered cooking oil, with some home-grown peppers. Nothing exotic, but a drop of oil was plenty for a recipe. The peppers were nothing special, according to the seed packet, but they were small.

      Unfortunately, while I was recovering from a road accident, my father didn't read the label when he wanted to fry an egg.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC etc.

    "The accuracy of this dilution looks extremely suspicious"

    Why so, it is just one part in how ever many, it is easy enough to do if you have accurate enough measuring toold.

    "being that at which five testers cannot detect the pepper taste."

    That was the original definition of the scale, nowadays it is done with high performance liquid chromatography and then converted to equivalent SHUs. Unfortunately for Mr. Scoville in 1912 when he developed the test he had trouble getting sufficient mainframe time to be able to accurately compute a scale - a problem we no longer have.

    "Are they seriously suggestion that they can taste it to one part in over a million?"

    Why not? 1 microgramme or 210 PO will kill an 80Kg person, which is a far less concentrated amount. OK you may not be able to taste it but I wouldn't like to try it out.

    "The figure isn't even a power of 2!"

    (a) many figures aren't whole powers of 2, they still exist though.

    (b) any number is a power of 2 as long as you use the right power to a sufficiently accurate number of decimal places.

    Hope that helps.

    1. david wilson

      @Lee

      >>"...nowadays it is done with high performance liquid chromatography and then converted to equivalent SHUs"

      And doing that, we can get results accurate to 7 significant figures?

      And that's after somehow correcting for the various ratios of capsaicinoids in a sample?

      It's really impressive if that's possible, but also seemingly meaningless, given the variation between one pepper and another, let alone one plant and another.

      Basically, it would seem to make as much sense as measuring people's height to the nearest micron.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Pedant mode - on

      "any number is a power of 2 as long as you use the right power to a sufficiently accurate number of decimal places"

      Only when you take into account imaginary powers for negative numbers, for example 2^(4.53236014 i) = -1. But zero isn't a power of 2. Or the power is undefined anyway (probably approaches -∞)

      *cough*

  7. Terry Dooher

    Good for them.

    Surely if they kept diluting it down to 30C, then it would blow your head off?

    Y'know, 'cause it has the, like, memory of chilli...

    1. david wilson

      @Terry Dooher

      >>"Surely if they kept diluting it down to 30C, then it would blow your head off?"

      No - you mad fool!!!

      Have you learned *nothing* from Science?

      It would, of course, be the world's most potent *cure* for having your head blown off.

  8. OffBeatMammal

    would the Arch Chancellor like it?

    .... or would he still reach for the Wow Wow Sauce?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    friday lunch curry is back on the menu

    ..so all the network geeks can appreciate a damn fine curry with their friday lunch beers again - for the last few years they've become rather tepid ;-)

  10. Bob Foster
    Grenade

    Anti Terrorist usage

    Read last year Indian Special forces where developing non lethal grenades for anti terrorist use containing powder from their most powerful chili's.

    Worked somewhere last year where the guys were into how "hot can you get a chilli" one up manship, until someone brought in some Dorset Nagas. The expressions and after effects of them tasting microscopic specs of these raw is a sight I will always remember fondly, and as for the chilli produced from them well I don't think anyone got past a couple of mouthfulls lmao

  11. Tony Luck

    1,176,182 is a lot less than infinity

    So expect some product labeling lawsuit when someone buys these "Infinity" chilies and discovers that are finite.

    Poor planning too ... what will they call next year's even hotter chili? The "2xInfinity"? The "Aleph-1"?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band

      "Next week? But the sign outside says '24-hour Cleaners'".

      "That's just the name of the shop, Sir".

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Weaponise

    In regards to using it as a weapon on a plane surely you could utilise this stuff in some sort of pressurised handheld spray system. Wouldn't getting a blast of this stuff in the face incapacitate the target leaving you free to......

  13. Dan Herd
    Go

    All I want to know is...

    ...will a coyote speaking in Johnny Cash's voice tell me to try and find my soul mate if I eat this?

    1. Alphabet Soup 1

      Re: All I want to know is ...

      Johnny Cash as in "Ring of fire"?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Dorset for ever

    The Dorset Naga has been independently tested at 1,598,227 Scovilles, soundly beating this pathetic pretender.

  15. Flaco Dude
    Headmaster

    quick calc

    Whoa -- one drop of that stuff needs to be diluted with over 58 liters... !?!

    ~ ( 1176182 / 20 / 1000 )

  16. asdf
    Flame

    why the brits?

    Why the heck would the Brits be the one to come up with this when Jalapeños are more than adequate for their crap fried cuisine. My only guess would be for the Indians in the UK. Still being in the southwestern US in the desert and often making trips to Mexico I can tell you nobody eats as many peppers as often as they do. I still find peppers there I have never seen before. The Indians (from India, dots not feathers as we say) have caught up nicely though considering they didn't even have peppers until the Euros came to the Americas.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Ha ha

      You really have bought into the outdated, stereotyped view of British food haven't you? Sure we eat a lot of crap, but take a look at yourself - you're talking to us from the country that gave the world spray on cheese for chrissake.

  17. asdf
    Flame

    basically 1 million scoville

    would be stronger than pepper spray (think averages like 650,000 scoville). Still their nice for bragging but extract based pepper sauces tend to suck on flavor (will take good Mexican chiltepin sauce over Dave's Insanity Sauce any day).

  18. Someone Else Silver badge
    Boffin

    What?!? No spell checker?!?

    There are only 2 'l's in "chilli" [sic] when you're talking about an environment where you need a coat to stay comfortable...quite the opposite of what's being discussed here, I think.

    1. TomatoQueen
      Go

      Dear Me

      There is in fact ONE and only ONE L in chili. Add another L and you identify yourself as a dick-waving ponce.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Anonymous pedant

    " But zero isn't a power of 2. Or the power is undefined anyway (probably approaches -∞)

    *cough*"

    Zero isn't a number if you are truly being pedantic. Nasty cough you have there.

    1. jake Silver badge

      @Lee

      "Zero isn't a number if you are truly being pedantic."

      Yes, it is. Zero is the number between the set of positive integers and the set of negative integers. It is also the number that your computer uses as a baseline.

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