pmillen posted this in another thread:

How hot is [hot]?

It's difficult to gauge that for someone else...maybe there should be a PF standard scale posted somewhere for reference.  I ask because I am not experienced enough to gauge "Hotness" (is that a word?) from reading the recipe.

Here's starter scale—1 to 10.  One is no heat (soda crackers).  Six is nose running.  Ten is red face, sweat and eyes watering. 

Maybe a group-think can fine-tune the scale.


I like this idea because we have a real problem with hotness in this household.  A jalapeno is borderline too hot for me and Bentley thinks that something is not hot unless it is a Scotch Bonnet.  So I like a hotness scale. 

I can accept the 1 -- crackers and 10 -- blow your head off.  Not sure about the 6, my nose probably runs at about a 4, but I am a sissy, so I would like some more input

So I made some wings a few weekend ago.  Made my usual Frank's, a stick of butter, dry ranch dressing powder, and rosemary in a quart sauce pan.  Used about half of it.  I then put half a bottle of a Scorpion sauce in the sauce.  My buddy said he thought he may bite through his tongue as it went numb.  I had never used this sauce before and he was the one who gave it to me a year or so earlier.  Well, I checked the bottle a few days ago.  It is 780,000 scoville units.  Oops!  They had great flavor though.

Serves him right...Maybe a bit to much for me. 

I enjoy the spice flavor more then the heat, almost impossible to have one and not the other.  But at ratings like that, I do wonder if the endorphins possibly do start kicking in.  I have had Scotch Bonnet...I think they are around 400 to 500K, but they are about it.  seednpiggy from Minnesota gave me some bhut jolokia, (ghost chili) powder.  We got it home after the 2010 American Royal and I was foolish enough to think there would be no issue with smelling the contents...that was an experience I hope to never experience again!

I didn't think they were as hot as he was claiming and he has been know to eat a lot hotter food than me.  It must have been the spicy beef jerky I ate prior to the wings or too many beers as to why I didn't feel the extreme heat.

I haven't thought this through very carefully, but it still seems to me that we should be able to establish a PelletFan Heat Rating so we can gauge published recipes.

It occurs to me that we can assign a numeric heat value to a commercial sauce, like Sriracha.  Let's say we call it 8 on a scale of 10.  We might assign Taco Bell Hot a value of 4 (it comes in three levels, Mild, Hot and Fire).  Based on this information I can rightfully decide that a PF Heat Rating of 5 is my comfort limit.

We might select easily obtainable sauces and eat four drops on a soda cracker and decide that a given sauce is somewhat hotter than Taco Bell Hot but certainly not as hot as Sriracha and give it a PF Heat Rating of 6.  Doing this a few times may produce a usable scale.

Of course I'm assuming that the heat in nationally sold sauces is consistent.  AND, I'm assuming that there's interest in doing so.  The dearth of posts may indicate that there's little interest.

Hotness is to hard to put a scale on. A 3 or 4 on my scale is a 7 to 8 on my wife's. Jalapeños are a wild card at any point. I grow my own, and some for hotness are like green peppers, and others are will blow your socks off when picked at the same color.

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That is funny. I use tobasco like candy, but some jalapeños about kill me while others do not. The Scoville scale has tobasco as higher.

Hotness is to hard to put a scale on. A 3 or 4 on my scale is a 7 to 8 on my wife's. Jalapeños are a wild card at any point. I grow my own, and some for hotness are like green peppers, and others are will blow your socks off when picked at the same color.

I agree completely.  I had the feeling that I wasn't explaining it well.

I was thinking that we all decide to call Sriracha an 8 (or whatever).  Now we have a benchmark from which to label everything else.  Then, my four will be the same as your four and your wife's limit is a two.

The scale isn't intended to be a percent of someone's tolerance

I think the scale would have to be for what the "average PF" could tolerate as pmillen indicates, not a heat sissy like me.  So let's start  with his example and see what can be built.

On a scale of 1 (cracker/no heat) to 1o (blow your head off) what number would you assign sriracha sauce?  (If need be, I can do a poll, I love polls )

I have had some 750k scoville and 1.2mm scoville hot sauces in the last month and sriracha is like candy compared to them.  I had some "hot" sauced wings at a local restaurant on Friday.  What used to be hot to me a few months ago is barely spicy now.  I may have killed my taste buds.

I hate to be the "dirty old man" in the group but when I first read the subject line - I was not thinking of scoville heat units

I hate to be the "dirty old man" in the group but when I first read the subject line - I was not thinking of scoville heat units

Sorry...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rdF7o08KXw

Since "hotness" is even more subjective than BBQ judging
I doubt any accurate scale could be established or agreed upon.

This is what my cabinet consists of at the moment, will add more when I get done drying peppers from this year’s growing season. I like things HOT!

L-R
Jalapeño (2500-8000 SHU), Orange Habanero (100k-350k SHU), Chocolate Habanero (425k-577k SHU), White Ghost (800k-1.04M SHU), Carolina Reaper (1.4M-2.2M SHU)

All I know... is that anything hotter than a Habanero is just too hot for any real good...    In fact Habenaros are too hot.   

for me anything above a really hot Jalapeno, is just too hot for the most part.       So, i'd put a really hot Jalapeno as a 9, and anything hotter, as a 10.   Where 9 is I don't totally regret biting it... but almost do.   10 is effectively... " why am I so stupid "