He beat the Carolina Reaper after 10 years of reign. The Pepper X pepper species has been officially designated as the hottest in the world, reports the very serious Guinness World Records on Monday.
With an estimated strength of 2,693,000 units on the Scoville scale, this pepper shatters the previous record of the Carolina Reaper, a species that until now held the title with "only" between 1.6 million units on average, according to the record certificate dated August 23. This score was calculated by Winthrop University in South Carolina, which conducted tests using specimens from the past four years.
2,600 times hotter than Espelette pepper
To understand the potency and strength of these peppers, we need to refer to the values of other, more "common" peppers. By way of comparison, Espelette pepper typically reaches between 1,000 and 3,000 units, Tabasco between 2,500 and 5,000 and bird's eye pepper between 30,000 and 60,000.
Behind this super-powerful pepper, there is one man: Ed Currie. This American entrepreneur had already created the Carolina Reaper in the early 2010s, and has thus done it again with the creation of a new species that surpasses the previous one. He worked for nearly a decade on the project at his farm in Southern California. A former alcoholic and drug addict, the man turned to growing chili peppers as a form of therapy to get out of his addictions, according to the BBC.
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He is one of only five people in the world to have eaten a whole Pepper X pepper and the experience was painful to say the least: "I felt the heat of the pepper for 3 and a half hours. And then the (stomach) cramps came. They're horrible. I lay on a marble wall for about an hour in the rain, groaning in pain," he told The Associated Press.
There's a new hot pepper in town, and it looks terrifyinghttps://t.co/2B8gByrAnx
— Guinness World Records (@GWR) October 17, 2023
In order to preserve the intellectual property and profits associated with its creation, Ed Currie has indicated that the pods and seeds of Pepper X will not be commercialized. The only way to taste Pepper X will be via the sauces that come with an extract of it.