When growing peppers at home you may have asked the question: how hot is my carolina reaper pepper?

Carolina Reaper Pepper (photo found on Flickr)

Today the food industry mainly relies on sensitive human tounges to assess the strength of their products. But how would we go on and measure the heat in the chili we grow at home? Before getting into an old study, with a lot of promise, I am breifly describing the most common used method:

Scoville Scale

The most commonly used method have for long been to dilute the pepper and have 3 expert tasters ingest the diluted solution until at least 2 don't feel any heat.  

For the mild Jalapeño chili pepper, it is sufficient with a few thousand dilutions, while the extremely hot Naga Jolokia need be diluted a million times. This is what we typically refer to as the "Scoville Scale" and the unit we get is the "Scoville Heat Unit".

Objectively measure the chili peppers heat

However, research have shown that is possible to be more objectively measured and is no longer just a question of taste; it has become a measurable science of the culinary topic of debate.

English researchers have focused on measuring Capsaicinoids, the substance responsible that makes us feel the heat of the pepper fruits.

Researchers at Oxford University tested carbon nanotubes to help gauge the strength of the treacherous peppers. And their cheap one-time measures should really be able to be on every man's table. A must have for every chili head - grower and eater! Sadly, I can't find any information on where and when to buy this and the study was published in 2008!

The hot chemical is absorved on the nanotubes, after which the capsanoids are oxidized in a single electrochemical reaction. What is measured is the electric currents through the nanotubes.

The researchers have tested their simple method on everything from Tabasco green pepper to Mad dogs revenge. And this simple method has shown to be highly correlated with experts subjective experience! Great news and if you know where to buy this I'd like to get my hands on them! Please leave a comment!

I may update the post when I find more information on the topic.

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