Thank you for the link. I would like to hear that.

Very interesting indeed. My husband is from Trinidad, and they do make very hot sauces which they use as a condiment. They have a way of using whole hot peppers in their cooking in which you get mainly the flavour of the pepper and some of the heat. The idea of eating a whole pepper is quite foreign to them.

EXCELLENT find, ottawapepper!!

I was kinda LOL @ some of the comments by Ed.

Reapers are an antibiotic that kills the "bad bacteria"???

Their inards not only "eats through" surgical gloves, it actually removes the fingerprints from your fingers?

And here I thought they contained capsaicin, not battery acid! LOL!

But what particularly caught my attention - he has students doing his HPLC testing, instead of a lab?

Was that also what was used for Guinness?

Bosland and DeWitt were a joy to listen to, and I did indeed learn something new! :)

I had not heard that particular explanation for the heat in superhots before - but when you look at all the yellow goodness in the walls of a typical superhot, it makes sense.

While everyone has heard of "stressing" plants to increase heat, removing most of the pods was news to me! (probably not as useful a "trick" for the hobbyist that wants to eat 'em, but when you're trying for the record...)

And while I knew that peppers were originally brought from the New World to India via Portuguese trade routes (I think I learned that years ago from one of DeWitt's old books? Or was that Jean Andrews?), I was unaware that superhots were a fairly recent import to India, let alone we had tracked-down the specific person who brought them there!

Recommend everybody take the time to listen to this.

Thanks daveintexas.

Actually, I didn't "find" it... it found me... just turned the radio on ;-)

I mentioned "with a grain of salt" regarding the facts presented. Without prejudice;

Prior to the Reaper fame, on another forum, I found Ed to be a genuinely knowledgeable pepper enthusiast. Nice guy and all but, IMHO, he lost me with being a poor judge of character by associating himself with (persona non grata on GW) and peppers for curing cancer and the god bit.

With respect to Dr. Bosland I kind of lost trust when I read Jim Duffy's account of how the Moruga was tested for the world's hottest record. Duffy supplied all the seeds for the test group and batched the current record holding TS Butch T in with all the other TS'. From my humble perspective, they watered down the competition by blending it with other lesser pods. Both the student conducting the test and Dr. Bosland overseeing it approved.

I must admit that I enjoy Dave Dewitt's writing but in reality some of his assertions as to the origins of certain varieties is pure conjecture. Hell, for all I know he's right. Very interesting reading regardless,

FWIW,

Bill

ps. University test results being used for Guiness records is not uncommon:

Bhut Jolokia - NMSU
(flash in the pan) Naga Viper - Warwick University
etc. etc. etc.

This post was edited by ottawapepper on Sat, Dec 20, 14 at 10:18