Before submitting Super Hot claims, either to Guinness World Records®, or for the Dremann Pepper Heat Search, an easy 15-minute home test can help check Scoville Unit levels for free.
A need for a rapid and cheap heat level test, to rate the heat levels of the fifty hot peppers listed in his heirloom seed catalog, Craig Carlton Dremann, owner of the Redwood City Seed Company modernized the original 1912 Scoville Organoleptic test in 1983, and published this method, so anyone could get an accurate Scoville number at home for free.
The Scoville-Dremann
Heat Test is very simple, only requiring a blender, gram scale,
graduated eyedropper, small bowl, distilled water and a teaspoon.
The pepper's cap and stem are removed and the pepper weighed in
grams. For a world record heat submission,ten whole ripe pepper
are dried to be tested.
A weighed amount of water in grams is put into the blender, and the weighed pepper is added and blended. Then, a weighted amount of distilled water is put into a bowl, and the eyedropper draws out 4-5 cc/ml of the blended pepper water.
Add the blended pepper-water to the bowl of distilled water one ml/cc at a time and stir with the teaspoon and taste. Taste the water before you add any drops, so you can get an idea of what the background-taste of the water will be. Note how many ml/cc of the pepper water you add to produce a detectable heat level. Add another ml/cc just to confirm.
Distilled water is used, so there are not any minerals or chlorine in tap water will interfere with detecting the taste of the heat as it become apparent.
METHOD TO DO the calculations to get the DHS listed below
The Scoville-Dremann 15-minute home method is very useful, for making selections. For example, to stabilize the heat in a variety and produce a consistent heat level and hotter variety each year, Dremann planted 100 plants of a particular Super Hot, and then tested individual fruit from each plant. When harvesting seeds for next year's crop, seeds were saved from the top three hottest from the field of 100 plants.
This method allows a person to evaluate individual plants of a strain, and get an accurate Scoville heat level, before you spend money to have it confirmed officially by a commercial Scoville Heat Unit testing lab.
The Method:
Supplies needed:
Pepper(s)
to be tested
Gram scale
Blender
Graduated baby eyedropper (at the pharmacy)
Small bowl
Teaspoon
Distilled water.
You are going to do some high school math, to arrive at the number.
The formula:
Weigh water
in blender in grams(BW)/Wt. pepper gms (PEP),
times weight of tasting water/ccs of blended pepper water.
BW/PEP x Tasting water grams/CC.
1.) Add a weighed amount of water to the blender, we usually start with 200 grams. Add those grams to the left side of the equation.
2.) Cut the stem and cap off the pepper(s) and weigh it in grams, and put it in the blender, and add those grams to the left side of the equation.
3.) Then put a weighed amount of water in the tasting bowl, like 200 grams.
4.) Bl;end the pepper and take the gradulated baby eyedropper and draw out 4-5 cc of the blended pepper water out of the blender.
5.) Take the teaspoon and taste what the dustilled tasting water in the small bowl tastes like, without any pepper added to it.
Then add to the tasting bowl one cc at a tim and stir into the tasting water, and taste 1/2 teaspoon and see if you detect any heat. The heat will first start at the back of the throat.
When you think you are detecting heat, add another cc to confirm.
If the heat comes on too quickly, like with less than a cc of blended pepper, add an additional weighed amount of water to the blender, refill yout tasting bowl with a fresh weighed amount of distilled water, and start over.
Sometimes with the hottest habaneros and scotch bonnets, we have to use 1,000 grams of water in the blender and 400 grams of tasting water.
When you have determined how many cc of the blender water, that turns on the heat in your tasting water, put that number in your equation.
EXAMPLE:
So let's say, that you put 200 GRAMS OF WATER in the blender, and added 10 GRAMS OF PEPPERS and blended.
The left side of the equation is 200/10
Then you put 200 grams of water in the TASTING BOWL, and found that 5 cc of the BLENDED PEPPER water brought the heat on.
The right side of the equation is 200/5.
The you just multiply both sides of the equation:
200/10 or 20, times 200/5 or 40 = 800 DHS
To convert
to SCOVILLE heat units, multiply the DHS by 12.
Updated December 10, 2022. Back to Pepper seed list