I'm Ed Currie and I grow the hottest peppers in the world.

Let's answer some questions from the internet.

This is Pepper Support.

[upbeat music]

@DustinDaHusky asks, Peppers, why do you hurt me?

Peppers don't actually hurt you.

It's the capsaicin that's in the pepper

that is reacting with a TRPV1 receptor

that only mammals have

to send a signal to your brain that we perceive as heat.

It's just a brain trick to tell you not to eat the fruit.

There is no actual heat. It will not hurt you.

@VoxVorago asks, Did you know birds can't taste capsaicin?

Yes, I did know that.

Only mammals can taste capsaicin.

They're the only ones with the TRPV1 receptor

that sends the signal to the brain.

@THEJakeDeVries asks, What kind of peppers do they use

to make pepper spray?

The military uses jalapenos because they're so damn cheap,

but they use a lot of 'em to extract the capsaicin.

There is a company that makes bear spray

that uses Carolina Reaper.

It costs a lot more

and it's a lot more potent on the end product.

@aesthemma asks, Quick question.

Why does drinking milk help with spicy food?

I hate to tell you, but drinking milk does not help

with spicy food.

What they're doing is coating all the membrane

inside your mouth, therefore shutting off the reaction

with the TRPV1 receptor.

But saliva eats through carbohydrates really fast.

All of a sudden you're hot again and you drink more milk.

So you wind up drinking a half gallon of milk,

and then you throw up all over the place,

and then you say, Oh, that pepper made me throw up.

No, it didn't. It was the half gallon of milk you drank.

Don't drink milk, drink citric acid.

It's just a matter of time before it's gonna go away.

@Toriaa_B asks, How can I reduce the heat

of the peppers in my hands?

I have washed it twice with detergent.

So what causes the heat on your hands is the oil

that the capsaicin's in.

It's called oleoresin,

and that gets into all the grooves in your hand.

If you use hot water,

what you're doing is opening up all the pores in your skin

and letting that oil go in,

which is just gonna make it last a whole lot longer.

Start with cold water.

Citric acid like lemon juice or lime juice

will also cut that oil, makes it go away a lot faster.

@p_nettling asks, I have no idea what the health benefits

for various raw hot peppers,

but I've been eating them near daily for a month now

and I feel great.

That's awesome!

I eat peppers on a daily basis too, and I always feel great.

Health benefits.

One, because of the heat that we perceive,

the body releases dopamine and endorphin into your system.

That calms your nerves and makes you feel good

and gives you kind of a euphoric feeling

like a runner's high.

But peppers are really, really high in vitamin C

and vitamin A.

They raise your metabolism. They help with digestion.

People think peppers will give you an ulcer.

No, they kill the bacteria that gives you ulcer.

@MaeganMurray asks, Why are pepper seeds

so much hotter than peppers?

#nonsense.

Well, @MaeganMurphy, that is #nonsense.

What it is that's hot is the membrane

that the seeds are attached to.

This white membrane in here that the seeds are attached to,

that is what is producing the heat.

If you took the seeds and washed 'em in hydrogen peroxide

and then ate one, there'd be no heat at all

because you've taken the oil off that seed.

You just gotta watch out for this membrane that's inside.

Now in a super hot pepper,

that membrane goes all the way around the fruit,

but in something like a jalapeno, it's in very defined ribs.

The skin on a jalapeno only has about a third

of the Scoville that the membrane has.

@Joe68846490, Anyone tell me what is the hottest pepper

in the world?

Well, the hottest pepper in the world used to be

Smokin' Ed's Carolina Reaper

at 1.642 million Scoville heat units.

This is Pepper X, which is now the new Guinness World Record

for the hottest pepper in the world

at 2.693 million Scoville heat units,

over a million hotter than the Carolina Reaper,

which was my record for 10 years.

@JillRosenthal asks, What is a Scoville?

Well, a Scoville might refer to Wilbur Scoville,

who is the inventor of the scale

known as the Scoville heat units.

A high performance liquid chromatograph was invented

and that measures all the compounds

in a whole bunch of different things, including peppers.

This bell pepper has absolutely no Scoville heat units.

Jalapeno, which is about 3,000 scoville heat units.

A Hungarian hot pepper, which can go up

to about 10,000 Scoville heat units.

Fresno, maybe 20,000.

Habanero, just about 100,000 Scoville heat unit.

The Chocolate Bhutlah

which is at about 1.4 million Scoville heat units.

Carolina Reaper, 1.642 million Scoville heat units.

And a gnarly Pepper X, 2.693 million Scoville heat units.

@alexzealand asks, Tonight's dinner conversation:

How exactly do you breed hotter and hotter peppers?

Well, Alex, you need to have two pepper plants,

and those two plants have to have

the right compounds in them that you're looking for.

These aren't pepper plants,

but this is the way that you crossbreed

any of the plants you wanna try crossbreeding.

You take a fine paintbrush and you go to the first flower

and you roll that paintbrush around in the flower,

and then you go to a flower on a different plant

and try to transfer the pollen.

As the bud turns into a pepper and the fruit starts growing,

hey, is this the fruit that I really want?

Does it taste like I want?

You take the seeds out and you replant that.

If that grows the same exact fruit,

then you've got the first generation of your crossbreed.

The time span between crossing a pepper

and achieving stability is 8 to 12 generations.

For us, we can do that in six years

'cause we have greenhouses.

But if you're doing it at home,

it's gonna take you 10 years at least to get a stable plant.

@stoneshedcrafts asks, Can I save seeds

from inside peppers, dry them,

and use them to grow pepper plants in the spring?

How about chilies too?

Pepper plants and chili plants are all the same family,

okay, so you can do that.

I do that. That's how I get all of my seeds.

We take each and every seed out of a pepper plant

and then, you know, I save from every single pepper

a few seeds for the future.

I have about 7,800 different kinds of peppers

that I've saved seeds from.

It's a long process when you're doing it.

I recommend wearing gloves.

But you can just pull the ribs out, let them dry,

separate the pepper seeds.

I wash 'em in a little bit of hydrogen peroxide and water,

and it takes the heat off.

@akacinders asks, I have the hardest time with peppers.

I can't seem to get them to grow no matter what I do.

I haven't hit the right conditions yet.

What happens most of the time when people fail

with pepper plants is they're trying too hard.

Peppers are a weed.

If you have sun, you have dirt, and you have water,

you have the right conditions.

And the plant will tell you when it needs water.

Anytime you see that plant start to wilt,

give it a little more moisture,

it'll stand right back up again.

Now the first mistake most people make

is they plant the seed too deep.

Birds eat the seeds, they transport them,

they poop them out, and then a pepper grows.

They're taking a poop and flying away.

That's how deep you need to put that pepper seed,

1/8 of an inch.

@w6oemberdyi asks, How does the Scoville Scale measure

the exact hotness of peppers?

It's a chemical process.

First what we do is dehydrate peppers

for approximately 96 hours,

then we emulsify 'em and boil 'em.

A small sample is taken out and put into a machine

called high-performance liquid chromatograph

is commonly referred to as the HPLC,

and that machine gives us a graph, and that graph has peaks

where all the different compounds are.

And we know these peaks are capsaicin,

dihydrocapsaicin, and nordihydrocapsaicin.

The area of those peaks is then put into a chemical equation

from the American Association of Analytical Chemists,

and that gives you the exact Scoville heat units

of that pepper sample.

@charli_marxcx asks, When are pepper breeders

going to stop?

When is too many Scoville units too many?

Right now we have peppers that are 2.6 million or higher.

Theoretically, if the models are correct,

we can get that up to about 7.9 million,

but it's gonna take a lot of time.

@doki_yanga asks, Yeah, so how do you make hot sauce?

First ingredient has got to be peppers

either in a pepper mash form or fresh peppers.

If you take fresh peppers that have been destemmed

with a little bit of vinegar,

you only need somewhere between 8 and 14%

of the volume in vinegar.

And then you heat that up and you get it to a boil

and then you can it, and that is fresh pepper mash.

And then you need a little bit of vinegar

to acidify it a little bit more.

We're gonna guesstimate about, hm, one cup.

Next ingredient, people like salt.

It's about a teaspoon. That's all you need.

I'm gonna put in a little bit of onion powder

and a little bit of garlic powder.

Garlic gives a little bit of body in there

and all that goodness and flavor.

Black pepper is a spice, it is not a pepper.

And what I like to do, if you have it at home,

you take a little bit of turmeric as it livens up the taste.

First you have to mix it up and then you put it on the stove

and you heat it up to a minimum of 185 degrees.

After that is done, you can put it in a container

and put it in the refrigerator.

Hot sauce by law right now has a two-year shelf life,

but science that has to do with that pH

says it's good for 8 to 10 years no issues at all.

@caraesten asks, Everyone, what is your strategy

on how to win a hot pepper eating contest?

Starting to think I might be in over my head.

You're gonna need to do hotter and hotter peppers.

Start with jalapenos, then maybe go to Fresnos.

If you're daring, you might jump to a habanero

and you eat those.

Then you look for a ghost pepper and you eat those.

So the next question comes from Andydoodle56.

I just bit into a Carolina Reaper.

It hurts so good, but WTF what's happening to my body?

So Andy, I think the best way to explain

what is happening to your body is to bring in a victim.

Bella is going to eat this Reaper.

So the first thing that happens

when she bites into the pepper, you get this sweet taste,

but then the heat hits.

And immediately from the back of your throat

all the way through your mouth

there's an explosion just like lava.

Those TRPV1 receptors are shooting signals to your brain

and you're gonna have a fight response

or you're gonna have a flight response.

Now, when you have the fight response,

you kind of look like she does.

Her body is starting to sweat.

It's getting into her blood system,

so she might or might not feel a little like her arms

feeling a little bit lighter

or different parts of her body tingling.

What your body starts doing is pumping the dopamine

and endorphin into your system, kind of akin to a narcotic

and it's gonna give you a runner's high.

When you are hot, your body starts sweating.

It's trying to cool you down.

How do you feel?

Like, I feel floaty.

My throat and my tongue absolutely feel searing pain.

I'm having a hard time concentrating.

Like I heard maybe five words you said.

And it feels like my throat is wanting to close

and it's on fire.

It almost feels very puffy right here,

and that's a precursor to capsaicin cramps.

If you're feeling that way,

just get on outta here, Heather.

Alright, you got it.

I wouldn't recommend anybody doing a whole pepper.

The best way to do it is to cut it into little slices

and just taste it.

@I_Exude_Sarcasm asks, When people eat shit

that is made with raw ghost peppers

and all those spicier peppers,

do they lose a bit of the lining in their colon?

It doesn't cause ulcers or anything like that,

but what does happen is that massive amount of capsaicin

your body's perceiving as a poison,

your stomach extrudes it into the smooth muscle

and you get a cramp.

And that cramp can be very, very painful,

and they come in waves.

Guys think they're dying, but they're not dying.

They're just having a menstrual cramp

and they don't know what it feels like.

And as the pepper makes its way

through your intestinal track, it's gonna catch up

with your colon and your anus.

So you might experience the burning ring of fire.

@babywasteland asks, Has anyone ever died

from eating an extremely hot pepper?

To my knowledge and through all the research we've done,

there has been no record of anybody dying

from eating an extremely hot pepper.

The only real concern you need to have,

do you have an allergy to nightshades?

'Cause peppers are in the nightshade family.

Most people know that

because they've been given tomatoes when they were young.

Do you have a preexisting heart condition

that can't handle the elevation in metabolism?

And do you have an aneurysm anywhere that's been diagnosed?

Other than that,

there's really nothing to fear from peppers.

@Nyxian_Saint asks, You ever think about

how different wasabi hotness is to hot pepper hotness?

Most Americans have not had wasabi.

What they've had is horseradish that's been dyed.

Horseradish does not have capsaicin in it.

The burn is from a different compound

that we also perceive as heat.

We do a wasabi mustard with Reaper peppers that is amazing.

The lingering burn from the horseradish family

that happens on the side of your mouth and in your nasal

combined with the burn from super hot peppers

that goes brutally down your tongue and into your throat

gives me an endorphin rush like nothing else.

@Austintiii asks Guys, what do you think

the next hottest pepper is going to be?

Yeah, I think the next hottest pepper is gonna be Pepper Y

because I developed it, I know the genealogy,

I know the stability, and I know the testing.

I have not heard of anybody out in the pepper community

who actually has a stable pepper

that can even beat Pepper X.

So when I'm ready to release Pepper Y,

that will be released.

Thank you for all the questions today, folks.

It's been an honor to be here.

Thanks for watching Pepper Support.