Where is the carolina reaper from
How This Guy Made the World's Hottest Peppers | Obsessed | WIRED
your hands will start shaking your heart
will start going faster you get sweaty
your eyes water you your skin flushes
the mucous membranes run and so you get
snot pouring out your nose
edy curry is the evil genius who brought
the world the Carolina Reaper the
world's hottest hot pepper a Carolina
Reaper is a beautiful fruit that is
hiding a package of evil inside and it's
the hottest pepper in the world I get to
hurt people from all over the world
every single day I might have a little
sadistic streak to me the aptly named
curry has been hyper focused on one
thing since 1981 hot peppers more
specifically he is obsessed with
crossbreeding different peppers to make
them as hot as possible by upping their
level of capsaicin the ingredient that
gives hot peppers their heat and a
Carolina Reaper is an absolute capsaicin
beast
I made the Carolina Reaper by breeding a
pepper I got from a doctor from Pakistan
with a pepper I got from a co-worker at
the bank from the island of Saint
Vincent I was just trying to raise caps
enjoyed levels in the Nagas that I got
from Pakistan to see if I could get one
of the sub caps you know it's to go
higher and we got the Carolina Reaper it
was a gift from God in 2013 Cruz
favorite pepper was officially crowned
the spiciest in the world by the
Guinness Book of World Records
but how spicy is that everybody knows
what a howl opinion is they run between
three and five thousand Scoville heat
units Thai chilies maybe 20,000 Scoville
habaneros on average maybe a hundred
thousand then you get into ghost peppers
they're really about 600,000 and then
you got the Carolina Reaper coming in at
one point six four two million Scoville
heat units on average with a peak heat
of 2.5 million Scoville units we're
talking rollerskates
to Space Shuttle you know now remember
that peppers are organic things with
lots of variation including spice and
size for example jalapenos tend to range
from 3,000 to 8,000 or more
Koval heat units and are generally twice
as big as a reaper
which themselves range from 1.5 million
to 2.5 million and he is a subjective
thing but still let's try to put it all
in perspective roughly 10 spicy
habaneros hold the same amount of
capsaicin as one reaper you'd need about
sixty Serrano's to match a Carolina
Reaper and it takes 600 jalapenos give
or take a couple hundred to match the
amount of capsaicin in one mild
equivalently sized Carolina Reaper
Carolina Reaper does not do the same
thing to me anymore because my body is
used to it so I need something hotter
curry has bread almost 500 distinct
pepper plants constantly trying to push
the level of heat one pepper can hold
and he's not finished yeah we're we're
still breeding peppers that are hotter
and hotter and hotter I used to think
that about 4.3 million was the hottest
you can get a pepper I've already proven
myself wrong and science has now proven
that we can get a lot hotter than man
while the Carolina Reaper still holds
the Guinness world record curry says his
pepper axe is even hotter it's the main
ingredient in this fiery hot sauce the
hottest in the hit YouTube series hot
ones
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to create new super hot peppers curry
uses a pretty straightforward
crossbreeding technique interbreeding
two different pepper plants hoping to
combine attractive traits into a brand
new plant it's the same method human use
to turn a gray wolf into the Chihuahua
the Bulldog and even the poodle except
plants need a little more help it's a
50/50 crapshoot
but we look for a really nice flower and
we use these paintbrushes to go around
the flower and pull the pollen out and
then when you have enough of the pollen
you go to the female and you paint that
power on to the flowers and then you do
this process over and over and over
again it takes patience to create a new
breed a lot of patience plants in the
first generation tend to carry a lot of
their parents traits breeders can start
to tease out specific traits in the
subsequent generations through selective
breeding it generally takes about eight
to ten generations to stabilize a
hybridization and get predictable traits
and consistent fruit if we get desirable
traits like high indices of any of the
caps e Nuits who are looking for them
will keep on going on the cross if it
doesn't work then we got to start all
over again
and it's a very time-consuming very long
process curry grew up gardening so this
level of botanical knowledge is second
nature to him my mother was a Master
Gardener and she taught me how to breed
plants and irises lilies you know
different things up in Michigan so
that's where I literally got that and I
took it to the dope level I started
trying to crossbreed pot when I was
younger and it was dangerous so he
decided to grow something else and land
it on super hot peppers like the
Carolina Reaper I was on a search for
hotter things that I could get and this
was a Vietnamese restaurant that
specialized in spicy food and I asked
them to make it
the hottest they could and they said no
no and I said yeah yeah yeah and when I
eat it I got a rush I got I literally
got a rush like I was taking some dope
curry has been sober for over 20 years
now but he says that a natural high has
kept him going producing and eating
hotter and hotter peppers when I first
ate the reaper it knocked me to my knees
I was like 3 years clean I hadn't felt
that feeling in a long time I knew that
was hot you get this like euphoric
feeling and that's your body trying to
overtake the pain that the chemical
reaction is giving and eventually the
endorphin rush overtakes the pain and
when you get into the higher pain you
get the more pleasure so it's just
chasing the dragon as crazed tolerance
grew and grew his pepper growing hobby
ballooned into a full-on
all-encompassing lifestyle when I met my
wife she wouldn't have anything to do
with me she called me a funny little man
when I asked for a number she said not a
chance in hell you know but I heard she
liked salsa and I was growing tomatoes
and peppers and stuff so I whipped up
some peach mango salsa and she talked to
me we got married 9 months later so I
put like 1,400 plants in her backyard
and we were making hot sauce and salsa
with with what we weren't using you know
inbreeding and that's also won her over
she convinced him to start selling his
sauces instead of giving them away
so he started pucker but pepper company
and in 2012 he quit his high paying job
in banking to dive headfirst into spicy
peppers approximately 4:00 a.m. every
morning I start sorting through those
peppers to sort for grade to sort for
color and I separate them into the mash
peppers the seedings peppers the ones I
want to eat and the ones were going to
dry curry grows peppers he makes hot
sauce
he makes salsa he makes mash and mustard
he drives the whole fruit and makes beef
jerky he even saves the seeds last count
I think there was 3,800 seeds in my
office different types and we've cut
more stash all over the plate I think
we're around seven thousand seeds
different types of seeds some of those
are going to be for sale to the public
some of them will never be to sale for
to the public some go to the medical
community and some are just because I'm
an addict and I can't stop you know I
can't stop collecting them but capsaicin
is a strong strong irritant to our skin
eyes and lungs and there's so much of it
in reapers that caution is needed while
handling them when people are seeding
they wear double gloves because the oil
inside the peppers will actually eat
through nitrile gloves but that's not
because they're protecting their hands
my hands are on fire all the time that's
because they're protecting the soft pots
of their body they take their gloves off
before they go to the bathroom see where
I was touching those peppers earlier is
on fire right now the air is actually
spicy for more than 100 years peppers
have been measured using the Scoville
scale it was started by Wilbur Scoville
in 1912 originally the level of spice
was determined by five individual taste
testers but today the level of heat is
measured in a lab and so curry knows
exactly how dangerous his peppers are it
was subjective then now it's analytical
everybody uses the same process
no one's tastes are involved if you put
my wife and had her eat a reaper she
would tell you it's 10 million Scoville
if you have me did I'll say it's a
hundred thousand you know that's
subjective the machine doesn't lie it
measures everything the same way curry
works with a local chemist to find out
exactly how much capsaicin is packed
into his peppers we grind those peppers
and emulsify them and then we pump them
through a machine called an HPLC a
high-performance liquid chromatograph
and that measures the different
properties that are in a pepper you can
go for the tannins cap see noise
flavonoids coloring agents what whatever
you want to do we analyzed all of it
there's a very specific math equation
that you put the area of the peaks in to
be come up with the Scoville heat units
all this obsession with heat might seem
crazy but it couldn't come at a better
time
America's appetite for spice is getting
bigger and bigger every year
the u.s. hot sauce industry saw a 150
percent growth from 2000 to
14 with steady increases since then
today it's 1.5 billion dollar industry
in the United States I believe it's
costly changing demographic of America
they brought with them food that we
never had before
I mean when I was growing up there were
no Thai restaurants there were no
African restaurants Caribbean
restaurants Indian restaurants but as
the demographic of America change they
brought in their food cultures and we
got exposed to that and then there's the
internet where people post painful
videos of themselves eating peppers
constantly hot sauce is now a mainstream
thing people are always doing some crazy
stunt with it this didn't happen 10
years ago for those of you out there
that want to eat a whole Carolina Reaper
I highly recommend that you do not do it
despite these warnings business is good
and curry gets to spend most of his days
surrounded by what he loves the most I
get out of bed at 3:30 in the morning
just to go and play with peppers and I
stay there all day long on fire eating
them all day long this is my happy place
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