What the heck is a Scoville?
The Scale
It's a little warm in here.
Bring on the heat!
How hot is too hot?
Hot Sauce Reviews:
Main
The Hot Pepper Primer
Ass Kickin' Hot Sauce
Blazin' Saddle Hot Sauce
Sontava! XXX Hot Sauce
Tabasco Family
Tapatio Salsa Picante
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The Scale
The scale is based on a very complicated procedure of diluting the pepper sample in sugar water until the heat can't be tasted anymore. I'd get into it more, but you wouldn't understand me (cause I'm smerter then you).
This is the basic Scoville scale:
| PEPPER |
SCOVILLES |
| Bell peppers, sweet italian peppers |
0 |
| Ancho |
1,000 |
| Anaheim |
1,200 |
| Poblano |
2,000-3,000 |
| Jalapeno |
3,000-5,000 |
| Chipotle |
10,000 |
| Serrano |
16,000 |
| Cayenne |
35,000 |
| Tabasco |
40,000 |
| Thai, pequin, chiltepin |
50,000-75,000 |
| Scotch Bonnet |
100,000-200,000 |
| Habanero |
100,000-300,000 |
| Red Savina Habanero |
570,000! |
 The bell pepper starts off the scale, coming in at a measly zero. In actuality, bell & sweet peppers can get as hot as 150 Scovilles! Wow (he exclaimed sarcastically), keep those away from your eyes...
 Bell's come in several colors including red, yellow, orange & green, but they all have the same Scoville rating just above zero. How exciting... still, they have a purpose and they're great when you grill them up on a shishkebob or add them to just about any (shudder) salad.
As you can see, you can barely even consider a pepper mild until you reach poblano peppers which can reside between 2,000 & 3,000 Scovilles.
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