the hottest you're gonna find right now will be the red savina or the chocolate scotch bonnet. friend of mine Mark is working on an even hotter strain called trinidad scorpion but he has no isolated seeds.

Chef Jeff's pepper you are referring to is called a Caribbean Red Habanero. It is extremely hot. I question whether it's the hottest as I believe it may be a false claim (Red Savina) and others.

A pepper called Naga Morrich is also said to be nuclear hot though I have not yet tasted one to confirm. There gets to be a certain point where your taste receptors shut down. :)

Chris

Once you get the hottest chinese variaties there is not going to be a lot of difference to the taste. You want be able to tell 400K scovilles from 600k. It would be like sticking your hand a stove eye at 400 or 600 degrees, either way your burnt bad.

Thanks for the info about Caribbean Red Habenero. I've been perusing seed sites and the max seems to be 600K skovilles and chocolate habs seem like something interesting to grow too. I don't grow these for eating, I like to put them in chili or salsa to really give it a bite. The hotter the pepper the less you need in each batch so its kind of a matter of efficiency.

After I burned my fingers last year I wouldn't have advised anyone from eating one of those Chef Jeff's or Caribbean Reds. The only reason I think my habs this year are in the mid 300s because I gave them to a couple people and they ate them and they didn't have to be rushed to an emergency room. I haven't made any salsa or chili yet this year yet.

Has anyone eaten a 500 or 600K hab raw?

The Caribbean Red is as hot as it is claimed to be.

Its variable though. Some have the same heat as orange while others burn you apart.

I've eaten them whole. The CR burned more than any other type of habanero.

Brown Habanero is consistantly hotter than orange. You can trust that it is at its best most of the time compared to CR.

hehe... in the past my hands have burned for around 2 days after cutting up a batch of jalapenos without gloves. I'm therefore not so sure that the burning-hand test is a good measure of relative heat-intensity. :)

Hey mea,

If you want hot go with the CR, Savina, Choco or Fatalli. The fattalis I grew this year were much hotter than any choco I've had...ever

The whole 'world's hottest pepper' debate is just too subject to opinion. I can tell you right now that the hottest pepper I have ever put in my mouth (out of well over 100 different types) was a Trinidad Scorpion, which legsbig mentioned. It is horrid. It's really just plain unbearable.

Quite a few people mention the red savina hab as one of the world's hottest. I grew it last year and simply don't think so, it's also too variable in its heat and it has poor taste.

Legsbig is correct about the chocolate scotch bonnet, it's pretty darn hot too. Honorable mention goes to Pepperjoe's golden hab. It's a killer, and may very well be one of the hottest commercially available.

I have eaten the savinas and choco ..and I have to agree with groovy that the gold hab is pure fire(at least as hot or hotter),,I thought maybe it was just the seeds I got ,so Im glad to see that someone agrees!
On a side note I have had differing heat levels from plant to plant of every variety.
Kevin

That is part of the problem with the "hotest" debate. Heat can vary from pod to pod, and plant to plant due to all kinds of eviornmental and cultural factors.

dont forget to find out if you're a supertaster that perceives chile rocoto to be 1000 times hotter than a habanero!

lol

fatalis are hot, but i dont think they are the hottest.

fatalis have more flavor than most i think tho

SNDK, oh yeah fatalii is a wonderful tasting pepper. Regarding chocolate habs, they are not as hot as a chocolate scotch bonnet. A fatalii is probably hotter than a chocolate hab but not as hot as a chocolate scotch bonnet, on average.

FWIW

I have a friend, a retired Police Chief, That uses Red Savina
on his eggs for breakfast, uses tobasco sause for a mouth wash, Claims that

http://www.fiery-foods.com/dave/davesgarden99.html

Is the hottest thing that he ever tasted

Fer your bowels, not mine :-)

I have been growing red savinas since '91, and have yet to find a pepper hotter, though every year something claims to be. I say this with reservations, however, as the last 3-4 years the seeds I have gotten for red savinas simply have not produced what they used to! Every season some other hab would be hotter, but not hotter than what I call the "ultimate" ones of the year, usually from one plant that season.

My testing isn't scientific, by any means - a friend and I just pop a pepper, chew it for 30 sec, spit it out, and wait! We usually split a large one, like a RS or other large hab. And smaller ones, I have even gone so far as to weigh a large number of them, and find how many RS's are equivalent, and figure out how many we have to eat to make the test the same. One time it was 28 chiltepins.

Many have been up there with them, and even hotter than the milder RS's of the season, but nothing has yet produced what we call a "top tenner", meaning it was one so incredibly hot that it was one of the top ten peppers we had ever had.

I have grown two chocolate habs, a choc. scotch bonnet, a carribean red, a gold hab, white and gold bullets, a number of tepins and chiltepins, and ata ijosi (which was the hottest NON-habanero we ever sampled), but none had a "top tenner".
This year I grew the fatali for the first time, and had great results with just the first one, though it is another super-late variety, something that I didn't like
about most of these types through the years. As hot
as the milder RS's, without a doubt!

Having had problems the last several years, I decided to dig out some dried habs from my pantry - lableled 1999 - and found the red savinas that looked like the hottest, the ones with little points on the bottoms, and planted the
seeds from them...and they sprouted! Also did the same with 3 year old ata ijosi - another one I have gotten totally different peppers from the seeds the last two seasons - and got incredibly vigorous plants from these, though I got 4 different peppers on the plants. The red savinas have been better, and if I find a plant producing the hottest, which I usually do, I will dig it up and save it, and isolate it, to save seeds. I'll keep you updated, and if I get a bunch, I'd be willing to share a few with some of the nuts out there!

I been growing peppers for 35 years have 28 that I keep growing 8 of them are hybreds crossed with habs and cherry booms, peter and any other pepper i grow my four huts are Hanoi Red ,Peach Hab, Chocolate Hab,and Red Devils Tongue. All will give a good burn and need very little

The "Dorset Naga Morich" is undoubtly the father of them all as i have tasted them and there just "EVIL" no words can explain the heat except evil.?
I have tasted allot of chili's now and most are in the superhot catagory like (red savina, chocolate hab, fatali ,naga morich ("bangladesh strain") etc) but this "Dorset Naga" is a super cross hybrid strain that wont be beaten for a while.? The red savina is approx 577,000 shu and the Dorset Naga is approx 923,000 shu nearlly double what the guiness book of records holder is the "red savina".

If there are anyone in the uk they can purchase these from the link below.

Just my input on the subject.

Arthur.

Here is a link that might be useful: Dorset Naga

So far anything I have seen with the 'Naga' Label = B.S.

Just my experience

The original naga's are hot but the Dorset Naga is very very very hot as i have the proof in my possesion and its way farther out in front of any other pepper.? Just my taste buds.? LOL

You ever tasted a Dorset Naga Byron.?

Arthur.

ARTHUR,
The englishers that have the "dorset naga" will ONLY sell WITHIN the UK, and then they will ONLY SELL IMMATURE pods. They also "claim" the 900,000+ SHU's, but to my knowledge, they have never submitted their claim for independent verification, i.e. Guiness Records. I understand there is an international chile org in New Mexico, but the englishers have not submitted paperwork or peppers for testing.

BYRON,
I have some naga powder if you'd like to try some.

Regards;
bluelytes@yahoo.com

Hi Bluelytes,

I live in the uk so i can get them easy from them.! And believe me they dont sell immature pods !!!! They will sell you green pods if you request them.!
I recently purchased 12 pods from them and they all were Bright Red so that does mean Fully Mature.:D

They have submitted them to 2 labs in the USA for testing and they both came back way hotter than the savina.?

Byron let me know your e.mail address and i will get your address to send some flakes in and envelope to you and you can see the power im talking about.!! lol

Let me know it here plz.

Arthur.

ARTHUR,
Apologies from the colonies then. The last information I had was that they were selling only immature pods. Things must have changed. Note that I said, "independent verification". I could hire the same US labs that they CLAIM to have used, to get any result I want. Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary proof, IMHO. Their labs are NOT independent, (they PAID for the result they got), nor have they, again, to my knowledge, submitted ANY of their "claims" or paperwork to be verified by any other lab. They could have tainted their samples with pure capsasian prior to sending to a testing lab which would give a HIGH result, but we'll never know I guess, because they wont submit their lab testing procedures or paperwork for scientific scrutiny. Guiness Records are BASED IN England, are they not?? Seems a simple matter to me to have Guiness VERIFY their claim, since they are closely available.

K I'll contact bluelytes off list for a sample, I can no longer eat the real hot stuff ( Raises my BP beyond normal limits)but have a friend that can. And he will give me his honest 2 cents worth. I believe him cause he was a Police Chief. He can handle hot stuff

To the ones that care Arthur is right. Been in contact with him for 4 months have got some flacks from him. They are hot and I do live in the states. have some seeds for next years grow and will let you all know the out come. But beleive the man because he knows frist tongue.
Dan

I have been growing Caribbean Reds for about 10 years now...

I have yet to find a pepper that I enjoy as much as the CR. Not only is it easy to grow and prolific, but it is so versatile. It combines a powerful heat with a wonderful citrusy flavor that is unique.

It smokes extremely well and the CR smoked powder is an essential ingredient in the dry rubs that I make. It also is the main ingredient in the apricot pepper jelly that I make.

What's funny is that I would much rather eat a slice of CR than to attempt to eat a tiny Bird pepper. Now, that one hurts!

I have now had the pleasure of tasting them side-by-side. Once the hellfire wore off it was very hard to judge, but I would say that the Trinidad Scorpion was a slight bit hotter. I have a friend in France who confirms this.

On HPLC tests the Scorpion comes in over 1 million scovilles.

That being said, at this point who cares? They are both way too hot to eat. They're both absolutely unbearable.