Extracting Capsaicin From Pepper X to Make the World's Hottest Sauce

Alright, I've heard the news: according to Johnny on "Chase The Heat" about a day ago, the Xperience sauce barely scored over 60,000 Scovilles according to lab tests. Not sure what's up with that. My bottle was definitely hotter than the sauce I made from Reapers and ghost peppers, which I assume is hotter than at least 500,000 SHU...maybe Johnny got a bad batch of sauce?? I really don't know. Maybe my peppers were weak! It does kind of check out though: if the sauce really was over 2,000,000 Scoville, I should've gotten way more capsaicin out...like up to FORTY TIMES MORE! Several GRAMS. Regardless, I'm glad to have extract at least some of Ed Currie's precious capsaicin! He can keep Pepper X out of reach for now, but at least I've got something that's hotter!

Fun fact - one of the reasons we hot sauce enthusiasts love really, really hot peppers is so they don't need to use extracts to make really hot sauces. It's because, as you learned, they don't taste very pleasant.

You might be surprised to hear this but that exact same Pepper X sauce was just tested and came back at 61,019 SHU. I'm not a chemist but I grow superhot peppers and there are some things that just don't add up about Pepper X and that sauce in particular. If you want a truly world class superhot pepper get a Chocolate Primotalii.

Once back in the day, (sometime around 2006) I was working with some kids at a restaurant. One of them started to brag about how they could handle the hottest things period no problem. The next day, I went to the grocery store and purchased some fresh scotch bonnet peppers. The next shift, after dinner rush, I brought the convo back to spicy hot foods. Just as I thought, the kid started his boasting and bragging about his hot tolerance. That is when I busted out the scotch bonnets and offered him one. His eyes went wide but to his credit, he didn't back down. I set the condition that he has to chew it at least 10 times before swallowing. To the kids credit, he did it. Then promptly suffered miserably. Sweat, red face, tears, moaning while rocking back and forth. The works. I didn't tell him about the milk trick so he was guzzling water. Once his ordeal was over. He admitted that he couldn't handle super hot. He never boasted or even brought up spicey hot tolerances, ever again.

When I was a kid in the late 60's, my Navy Dad claimed a friend of his won a bet (aboard their ship) by drinking a whole bottle of Tabasco Sauce. The Hot Sauce industry has now advanced beyond my wildest dreams. ❤

This stuff is incredible! I worked at a food factory around 15 years ago. We used to have capsaicin on salt and capsaicin oil which we used for the industrial production of sauces. I managed to get a single grain of the salt in my eye while taking a sample for QA and I cried spicy tears for over a week. One guy spilt a bottle of the oil on his lap and had to go to hospital. We had showers in our locker rooms, and he'd been in there to try and clean himself up (in a panic). Later that day when people showered they complained about their feet feeling like they were burning.

This is a very similar process to what we currently use to extract morphine/ codeine/ thebaine and oripavin from poppy straw. (especially the chromatography) Ive worked 15 years at a factory that can produce 1/3 of he worlds opioids. This video explained more then almost all of the training at the average factory workers revived. the exception was the labs and R&D staff. Well done.

The REAL science happens in the bathroom when that spice works through Zach's biology.

RIP your toilet

There is a very good and simple explanation for why that couple little bites from the red habanero was way spicier than that Xperience sauce. That's because the red habanero can get up to 500,000 shu, but the experience sauce was recently found to only test at 61k shu. Whoever put on the label that the Xperience sauce is 91% of a pepper the averages almost 2.7 million shu was fos...

Your videos are becoming increasingly heroic. Bravo!

Major bonus points for running a column on this. I really wish it was more frequent in YouTube chemistry videos.

Just found this channel and I love it! Thank you!

Its worth mentioning that capsaicin isnt the only culprit responsible for a pepper's spice. There are quite a few other capsaicinoids that contribute. This is why different types of spiciness exist. Like, a jabanero isnt the same 'kind of heat' that you might get off of a pepper with a similar scoville rating, because different ratios of different capsaicinoids change the heat level and type of burn drastically. Not sure if your process was selectively extracting raw capsaicin, or if it was designed to pull all the lesser capsaicinoids out as well.

Completely unrelated to the actual video content itself - I LOVE seeing the board games in the background. Ticket to Ride is such a wild bunch of fun with the right people.

really enjoyed this video

The column chromatography made this a next level extraction! This was definitely the coolest capsaicin video I’ve seen 🔥👏🏼

You sir have some balls. Sub earned. Looking forward to more videos.

Doesn't the vinegar in the sauce react with the aluminiumfoil during drying? A foodgrade silicone mat might be better?

I like that Louisiana hot sauce is finally getting to use in these videos!