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Now, Pepper X becomes the hottest pepper in the universe, replacing the Carolina Reaper after a decade at the top.
Ed Currie, the founder of PuckerButt Pepper Company nicknamed Smokin’ Ed, is known as the ‘mad scientist’ behind both peppers, who received this award for his Pepper X on 16 October 2023.
Currie has subverted all sorts of parameters to raise the grades of his previous ‘extreme’ version of his pepper, Carolina Reaper, which registered a spiciness of 1.64 million Scovilles (a measure of a pepper’s hotness). Now its Pimiento X has reached the exorbitant figure of 2.69 million Scovilles.
Pepper X, a greenish-yellow colour with a crinkly Carolina Reaper-like appearance, as fans of the YouTube series ‘Hot Ones‘ will know, is the main ingredient in the hot sauce known as ‘The Last Dab‘, which the host offers to celebrities as they answer questions about their life and work history.
However, despite the extreme intensity of this pepper, Currie intends to continue experimenting and/or to move up the scale of ‘super peppers’, working on varieties that could reach 4 or 5, or even 6 million Scovilles.