I say when that last bit of green disappears, but wait another week or so for added sweetness, flavor.... heat? Of course that's not counting peppers that are picked green also. But, a good way to tell is if the stem of the pod snaps away easily from the yoke of the branch. Leave on even longer if you want to save seed.

Kevin

Personally, when a red bhut turns red, it is ripe....how much more heat do you really want anyway. And I don't know about you, but I cant taste them anyway as my taste buds are fried in the first 10 seconds.
If you are not looking for a second harvest and you don't have a pressing need for the pepper, then by all means leave it on the plant 2,3 or more extra days. Even a week or so. But eventually, it will begin to soften and rot. Either way, a ripe pod is a successful pod.
Bruce

I pick when the color is nearly uniform. A pod plucked a day early will finish coloring on the counter. There is the greatest amount of heat, I've read, right before the pod is fully ripe - after which, the capsaicin begins to degrade. Leaving the pod until fully ripe will increase the sweetness, however, so it comes down to personal preference.

Josh

Yes, there was a test with last years crop observing how pods ripen after they are removed from the plant. The ripening process starts on the plant, the inevitably continues off the plant. The ripening mechanism is scientific and all that.

Bottom line, I wouldn't worry about timing. Snatch it when it's mostly red, before the deers or local idiot children get to it.

Dennis

I pick when pods are 1/2+ through their color change. I rarely let them get fully ripe on the plant because I don't want the plant to start signaling to itself to slow down a bit because it's achieving reproduction. This isn't a huge concern, but I want the resources in the plant going to the growth and other not-so-ripe peppers more-so than continuing to "work" on a pepper that's practically finished doing it's thing.

While picking a non-ripe pepper and waiting for it to change color will have an effect on flavor (bland, astringent, etc), picking a pepper that's already in the process of color change usually has little-to-no effect on flavor.

Technically, you can pick at color break (well before 50% color change) and still get most of that flavor, but I wait for a 50% change out of preference. I'm in my garden practically every day so it's not much of an issue.

This post was edited by nc-crn on Wed, Jun 26, 13 at 18:22

Thank you all.

Came home today with quite a few pods turning now. My main concern here was/is that I don't want to pick just one a day, so I was thinking of leaving them on the plants longer so I could have a one day harvest of decent quantities versus a pepper here and there...

Bill

Bill: the first few will be a "one here, 3 there" type thing... And then all of a sudden, there will be that first big harvest where you have a bowl or basket full worthy of showing off.

Kevin