I grow "super hots" every year. I like hot spicy food,
but my favorite for cooking is "silver bullet" white habeneros,
which are not that hot compared to supers. There are a lot
more varieties of superhot than just scorpions, reapers and
ghost peppers.

This past winter was exceptionally mild in Tucson (apologies
to those in the midwest and eastcoast who suffered.) All my
superhots from last year made it through the winter and are
in full foliage and bloom now. I don't do anything to overwinter
peppers and usually have to start from seeds every year, but
this year I'm just going with last years overwinters. They should
get huge as overwinters. I have a carolina reaper, yellow brainstrain,
peach bhut, fatalli, primo, white habenero, SB7J. They will make
a pretty good harvest of peppers in may, then sulk through the
heat till september, then really load up with peppers in the fall.

Anyone with a hot pepper curiosity, send me a pm in september
and I'll post a package of superhots. They are not for the faint of
heart though.

Carolina Reaper is the worlds hottest.  Created by Smokin' Ed.

Guinness Book of World Records --> http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2013/11/confirmed-smokin-eds-carolina-reaper-sets-new-record-for-hottest-chilli-53033/

I have a few plants of these growing, as well as Chocolate Moruga's, 5 different types of Ghost Peppers etc.  I grow all of mine hydroponically.

Nothing beats making pepper rings sautéed in olive oil on PIZZA!

Just like figs, these peppers all taste different once you can get past the heat.  i.e.  Regular ghost peppers have a 'smoky' flavor, yet Peach Ghosts are just as hot but 'sweet'.

For anyone wanting to try a hot pepper jelly...

Pour two cups of cider vinegar into a pot. Add six cups of sugar.

Heat on medium until the sugar is all dissolved and the mixture is clear.

Chop up your peppers. I use two to four ghost peppers. I dont mind the seeds so i leave them in. If you want texture dice up a red pepper as well. I like to dice up six strawberries with mine as well.

Toss your pepper mixture into the pot and keep stirring, never stop stirring!

Add a squirt of lemon juices to help preserve it. And bring the mixture to a simmer.

Add one pack of liquid pectin (I HATE the powder stuff). Stir for another five minutes on low.

Pour the jelly into glass jars and fill to the top. Then boil the jelly jars in hot water for ten minutes.

Once you are done, bake some buttermilk biscuits, spread some cream cheese and a SMALL amount of jelly on them... welcome to my heaven!

That sounds awesome Nick, I will certainly try that!

No thanks, tried habanero and that's already way way too hot for me!

This one is appropriately named Peter Pepper. Rated X.

I have tasted the ghost and if you are careful they can be eaten and cooked with but small mistakes can lead to large pains. The ghost pepper's heat is unlike other peppers as it increases with time rather then fading. It has a nice flavor compared to Habanero and many other hot peppers and you really do need to be careful when handling as one careless sneeze or scratch can cost you. I always thought the Scotch Bonnet was the hottest but I guess new ones have been found.

Frank that is one obscene looking veg.

Hot peppers generally and ghost peppers in particular need a long season to ripen. Overwintering is great way to increase your yield if you have the climate outside or the space inside. I've been growing the same ghost pepper plant since 2011. It requires very little effort to do. I keep a few plants in a sunny room over the winter. I have a plant bulb in the overhead fixture and I keep it on for 12-14 hours a day. If you hand pollinate the flowers, you can harvest peppers all year long.

Hi,
A former neighbor was a french Martinican - those guys are known for eating hot spicy food.
One year, he gave me two peppers for tasting as he had a good production.
I went home, cut one in two pieces and just put it upon my tongue - When the pepper touched my tongue, it felt like a "9volts battery"  upon my tongue - just burning - I kept drinking for like half an hour .
I couldn't feel my tongue - It was like under anesthesia - I didn't even chew that stuff. Just Imagine if I had tried ...
Never again ...
Of course, Madame was willing to try as well - She stopped laughing at me while drinking as well !
No one could even think of chewing the pepper .
Incredible that people think of eating such things. But like they say, you cry twice, while at enter, and at exit :P

Love hot peppers and hot sauce. I visit the Out Islands of the Bahamas at least once a year. There's a tiny pepper there that grows wild that the locals call 'bird pepper'. They use it for many dishes and it is HOT. The locations of the bushes are kept a secret as the wild ones are hotter and have a stronger flavor than cultivated ones. I've spoken to many people who've tried to grow them in the states and failed. They're great on a fresh conch salad or ceviche. The locals use about half of this tiny pepper chopped up very fine for a huge bowl of conch salad and it is almost too hot.

I like hot peppers but you can get too hot for me.  I actually ferment mash, age it and then process it into a hot sauce similar to Tabasco, Franks, etc.
Get flavor with Jalapenos, and Serrano's, heat and flavor with Tabasco, Cayenne, Habanero.

Going to try Aji Amarillo and Aji Limon this year as well.

I love hot peppers. I've got Bhut Jolokia, Carolina Reaper, Thai Dragon and a bunch of milder hot peppers growing. I also buy Korean hot pepper flakes from the local Asian market. Those work beautifully for my kimchee.

I like to take the dried hot pepper and mix it with Szechuan peppercorns (the seed of the prickly ash) to make a Chinese hot pot-inspired condiment. The peppers burn and the peppercorns cool, to the point of numbing.

I don't have a formal recipe. I just eye it up when mixing. Generally, it is about 1 part roasted (30 seconds in a frying pan) and ground peppercorns to 6 parts dried, ground peppers. Then I add a bit of sea salt and rice vinegar, just to slightly wet it. I finish off soaking the mixture with peanut oil. It makes a spicy paste that really lights you up. Tiny amount is all it takes. My wife refuses to eat anything with it, so I just dab a bit onto whatever I am eating.

My husband is crazy about hot peppers, he's been eating ghost sauce on his eggs for a couple of years now. Thanks to a generous F4F member I am growing Reapers and a few other of the supper hots. The guy that came up with the Reaper live right here in Fort Mill, SC. He used to have a hot sauce booth at a local indoor flea market. Habeneros are my limit. I will make him some wicked pico, before I got a slap chopper I used to wear gloves...

Growth Culture matters

I remember reading about the Carolina Reaper.  A couple of the articles I saw pointed out how much variation there was in individual plants among the various super-hot peppers, including Carolina Reapers.  Although it suggests that individual genes matter, it also suggests that culture matters.  (Can't conclude that just from different individual plants, but it suggests it).  Anyway, I think that when it comes to questions like "what is the hottest pepper variety?", you'd find that although the variety matters (obviously enough), the growth culture also matters to a very significant degree.  If you grow Ghost Peppers and Carolina Reapers side by side in 3 different locales (each location having different soil, different water, different humidity, different sunlight exposure, etc), you might find that the Carolina Reapers are hotter in one locale while the Ghost Peppers are hotter in another locale.  I suppose you'd have to use clones of each plant to really prove it, but you improve the probability of the conclusion by using seeds from individual fruits of each, and averaging across multiple offspring per locale (each locale's batch containing seeds from the same individual parent fruits of the two varieties).  But it's probably a pointless experiment:  lots of hot pepper growers have already concluded that the growth culture makes a huge difference.

We all see that it's similar with figs:  a particular variety turns out differently in different locations.  A Black Mission fig grown in Southern California tastes a whole lot different from a Black Mission fig grown in Maine (if you can even get one to ripen in Maine).  Soil, climate, humidity, amount of sun, etc... all those things have a huge influence.

Not a startling conclusion.  But the amount of capsaicinoids in a pepper variety can vary quite a lot... enough to make the question "what's the hottest variety?" be indeterminate, except for marketing hype.  I'll stick to habaneros... when I was younger the thought of another hotter-yet pepper was a thrill, but now it just makes me think about chemical burns (and my wish to avoid them).

Mike

P.S.  Nice thread, Frank.  Good luck with those ghost peppers!  But watch out you don't burn yourself.  :-)

Also thanks to Martin too.  It's good to get a laugh now and then (no doubt it wasn't funny at the time though).  I guess you've added another couple of words to the adage:  Don't touch your eyes or your wife (husband) when you've been picking peppers.  :-)

Mike 

Post #35 just when you think you have seen a lot.

Yep.  All kinds of unfortunate mixups could happen with something like that.

Question:
Most mammals do react to the 'hot' active-ingredient of these peppers
(think pepper-spray) ...

I have heard that 'birds' have no/zero sensation to it - and as a matter of fact -
some people add (pizza-type) 'crushed-pepper' to their seed mix;
in particular, to enhance the 'red-factor' color in canaries. ?

I plan on chopping up the ghost peppers and making an oil infusion of them. Dribble a little of that oil on food so the heat factor can be controlled.
I do not plan on doing what these two doofuses did on youtube.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1857/are-birds-immune-to-hot-pepper-enabling-them-to-eat-vast-amounts-and-spread-the-seeds

[E: Yes Martin, the above article/url supports that and goes on mentioning that pepper-hotness is beyond our 5 basic senses.]

If you're going to make an infusion to spray on plants you want to have some dish soap with or without oil in the water you use to extract the peppers in.  The Capsaicinoids are oil soluble, not water soluble.

Also, not just cultural conditions but positioning on the plant affects heat.  The lowest peppers are hotter than subsequent ones.

Amazing!?!  Pepper-hotness goes beyond our 5 basic human senses:
Sight, hearing, smell, touch and (above all) TASTE! (think capsaicin = fire/flame pains)
http://www.scientificpsychic.com/workbook/chapter2.htm

Do see article/url on my post#51.

For all's convenience here is it again, any direct comments on it?
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1857/are-birds-immune-to-hot-pepper-enabling-them-to-eat-vast-amounts-and-spread-the-seeds