The ghost pepper of Northeast India is considered to be a “very hot” pepper, at about 1 million SHU. The Naga Morich, with around 1 million SHU, spicy water primarily found in Bangladesh. The scale is named after its creator, American pharmacist Wilbur Scoville, whose 1912 method is known as the Scoville organoleptic test.

This measurement is the highest dilution of a chili pepper extract at which heat can be detected by a taste panel. A weakness of the Scoville organoleptic test is its imprecision due to human subjectivity, depending on the taster’s palate and number of mouth heat receptors, which vary widely among subjects. The Red Savina pepper, a hot chili. HPLC method gives results in American Spice Trade Association 1985 “pungency units”, which are defined as one part capsaicin equivalent per million parts dried pepper mass. Peak areas are calculated from HPLC traces of dry samples of the substance to be tested in 1 ml of acetonitrile. The standard used to calibrate the calculation is 1 gram of capsaicin.

Scoville heat units are found by multiplying the ppmH value by a factor of 15. An orally administered capsule of capsaicinoids claiming 100,000 Scoville units will correspond to around 6. Since Scoville ratings are defined per unit of dry mass, comparison of ratings between products having different water content can be misleading. Numerical results for any specimen vary depending on its cultivation conditions and the uncertainty of the laboratory methods used to assess the capsaicinoid content. Capsicum chili peppers are commonly used to add pungency in cuisines worldwide.

The class of compounds causing pungency in plants such as chili peppers is called capsaicinoids, which display a linear correlation between concentration and Scoville scale, and may vary in content during ripening. The Scoville scale may be used to express the pungency of other, unrelated TRPV1 agonists, sometimes with extrapolation for much hotter compounds. Some sources such as Guzman state a factor of 16 in line with the 16,000,000 SHU figure of pure capsaicin. However, Guzman cites the collins source which clearly states 15 per ASTA. Most” law enforcement grade pepper spray is measured anywhere from 500,000 to 2,000,000 SHU, this would give a median number of 1,250,000.

Rating Chili Peppers On A Scale Of 1 To Oh Dear God I’m On Fire”. Some Like It Hot: Dorset’s Ultra-Hot Chillies”. Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association. Improved method for quantifying capsaicinoids in Capsicum using high-performance liquid chromatography”. Determination of Capsaicin and Dihydrocapsaicin in Capsicum Fruit Samples using High Performance Liquid Chromatography”. Sensory properties of chili pepper heat – and its importance to food quality and cultural preference”.

Capsaicin may have important potential for promoting vascular and metabolic health”. Most law enforcement sprays have a pungency of 500,000 to 2 million SHU. One brand has sprays with 5. Let’s Get Technical: The Limitations of the Scoville Scale”. Carolina Reaper, known to reach as many as 2.