Scoville Heat Scale

                                                                      

The Scoville Scale and Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) were named for scientist Wilbur Scoville in 1912. At the time, Scoville worked for a pharmaceutical company named Parke-Davis where he developed a test called the “Scoville Organoleptic Test” which is used to measure a chili pepper’s pungency and heat.

Originally, Scoville ground up peppers and mixed them with sugar water, then tested them with a panel of tasters who sipped from these sugar-water-pepper solutions. He would then dilute the solutions bit by bit until they no longer burned the tongues of the tasters, after which he would assign a number to the chile pepper based on the number of dilutions needed to kill the heat.

The measurements are divided into multiples of 100. Note that 1 part per 1,000,000 dilutions of water is rated at 1.5 Scoville Units. Pure capsaicin, the stuff that makes chili peppers hot, is rated between 15 – 16,000,000 Scoville heat units. This is incredibly HOT. 

Several factors can affect the heat of a pepper, but they generally fall into the ranges listed below.

Today, testing chili pepper heat is not quite so subjective. It has been replaced by High Performance Liquid Chromatography, or HPLC, which measures the pepper’s heat producing chemicals and rates them in ASTA pungency units.

The Scoville Scale can be used to not only measure chili peppers, but anything that is made from chili peppers, such as hot sauce. What is really being measured is the concentration of “capsaicin“, the active ingredient that produces that sensation of heat on our tongues.

The term “capsaicin” comes from the pepper plants’ classification, of the genus Capsicum. Capsaicin occurs naturally in peppers along with other capsaiciniods, all of which make up the unique tastes and heat reactions of each pepper,

 

SCOVILLE SCALE FOR SOME OF THE MOST COMMON CHILI PEPPERS AND HOT SAUCES

Here is a list of Scoville Heat Units (SHU) of the most common chili peppers and hot sauces so you can get an understanding of how they relate to each other.

• Bell Pepper – 0 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Banana Peppers – 0 – 500 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Shishito Peppers – 50 – 200 SHU
• Pepperoncini Peppers – 100 – 500 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Cholula Hot Sauce – 500 – 1,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Anaheim Peppers – 500 – 2,500 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Texas Pete Hot Sauce – 747 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Valentina Hot Sauce (Red Label) – 900 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Ancho Peppers – 1,000 – 2,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Poblano Peppers – 1,000 – 2,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Hungarian Wax Peppers – 1,000 – 15,000 SHU
• Valentina Hot Sauce – 2,200 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Crystal Hot Sauce – 2,000 – 4,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Espelette Peppers – up to 4,000 SHU
• Tabasco Hot Sauce – 2,000 – 5,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Huy Fong Sriracha Hot Sauce – 2,200 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Guajillo Peppers – 2,500 – 5,000 SHU
• Tapatio Hot Sauce – 3,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Jalapeno Peppers – 2,500 – 8,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Tabasco Habanero Hot Sauce – 7,000+ Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Serrano Peppers – 10,000 – 23,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Chile de Arbol Peppers – 15,000 – 65,000 SHU
• Cayenne Peppers – 30,000 – 50,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Chiltepin Peppers – 50,000 – 100,000 SHU
• Thai Pepper – 50,000 – 100,000 SHU
• Datil Peppers – 100,000 – 300,000 SHU
• Habanero Peppers – 100,000 – 350,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Scotch Bonnet Peppers – 100,000 – 350,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Ghost Peppers – 1,000,000 + Scoville Heat Units (SHU)
• Trinidad Scorpion Butch T Pepper – 800,000 – 1,463,700 SHU
• Brain Strain Peppers – 1 Million – 1.25 Million SHU
• Komodo Dragon Peppers – 1.4 Million – 2.2 Million SHU
• Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Pepper – 2,009,231 SHU
• Carolina Reaper Chili Pepper – 2.2 Million + Scoville Heat Units (SHU)