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organic_wonderful

What's the hottest chile variety?

organic_wonderful
11 years ago

I understand that the guiness world record hottest chile variety is not necessarily the hottest in the world and my online searching seems to be bringing up lots of conflicting info. So I wanted to ask, what is likely to be the hottest chile variety in your experience? And what would come in second, third and fourth?

So far I've bought Dorset Naga, Naga Jolokia, chocolate and orange habanero but if you have any other suggestions I would appreciate it, thanks.

Comments (8)

  • ottawapepper
    11 years ago

    Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper) was hottest 2+ years ago. Current record hold is the Trinidad Scorpion Butch T. The latest challenger is the Trinidad Scorpion Moruga.

    Personally, the 7 Pot Douglah is right up there and hotter that the rest IMHO.

  • dbuchner
    11 years ago

    My HP22B seedlings just emerged so time will tell. They have gotten a lot of hype as new contender!

  • Edymnion
    11 years ago

    Define hottest.

    No really, how you define it will go a long way towards what your answer is.

    Do you want the pepper that at it's extreme can produce the highest scoville score? Do you want a pepper that has the highest average scoville rating? Do you want a pepper that has the highest consistent heat?

    These are all very different things (highest maximum, highest minimum, highest average) that will give you a different answer in every case.

    If you want highest average, that right now would be the Butch T. If you want the highest minimum (and thus the most consistently hot pepper), that would be the 7-Pot Douglah. If you want the hottest maximum, thats where you start getting really murky.

    My advice would be to ignore the highest maximum "hottest" peppers because they often are not stable lines and have an insane amount of variation. What you typically see for those is that they grew out hundreds of plants, tested possibly thousands of pods, and found the *ONE* pod that was a fluke high rating and claimed the whole line as being the hottest thing ever. Doesn't matter if half of them turned out to be glorified bell peppers, long as one of them was uber-high the less-than-scrupulous seed sellers (you know who I'm thinking of here) will start massive add campaigns about it being the hottest pepper ever while offering up absolutely no real evidence to support that claim other than the one fluke pepper they tested.

    So yeah, my advice would be to go for the Douglah or the Butch T if you want world's hottest heat. Butch T's average out as hotter, but the Douglahs have a very narrow range of ratings meaning that you will effectively never get a dud from it, while the Butch T's can have a range of 500k+ scovilles.

    I would never buy seeds from anyone that claims to have the new hottest pepper unless they have provided substantial evidence to support that claim. By substantial I mean multiple test results showing the average heat of multiple generations of the line. At which point Guiness will have picked up on it and will have listed it as the official world's hottest.

    Anyone trying to sell you otherwise is most likely blowing smoke up your rear trying to make a fast buck.

  • organic_wonderful
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    ^ Thanks for the detailed answer.

    I bought some 7 pot seeds that say '7 pot (pot)' on the packet. Is this the same variety as 7 pot (douglah)?

  • DMForcier
    11 years ago

    I don't think so. From a nearby post, "douglah" essentially means "brown or chocolate" so the douglah would be a chocolate 7 Pot. But it also a particular geographical strain. Most likely your will be red.

    As indicated above, that doesn't mean that yours will be any less hot than my douglahs, should the ^$&*)s ever sprout. Way too much variation to make that judgement.

  • peppernovice
    11 years ago

    You will have plenty of heat with the 7 pot. It is a different variety from the douglah, but also extremely hot. I grew a 7 pot cross last year. I received the seeds from ottawapepper. I also grew the bhut jolokia, which was the record holder a few years ago. IMHO the 7 pot was hotter than the bhut jolokia. It was a cross, and that could have factored in, but popular opinion is that the 7 pot is right up there with the front runners.

    Tim

  • jifjifjif
    11 years ago

    Great answers, edymnion!

    I have Butch T and Douglah germinating now. Add well as bhut jolokia. All from ottawapepper. Nice guy he is!

  • peppernovice
    11 years ago

    You'll not find a better guy.....well Bruce(esox7) might give him a run for his money!

    Tim

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