"Craig
Dremann's Hotness Scale"-different
from "Scoville" Scale?
There's
a ton of controversy about pepper hotness, so in 1984 I invented
an easy method to test a pepper's heat level, to get a fast and
accurate way to measure pepper heat levels.
To test a pepper using the Scoville units, you have to spend several
hundred dollars to have a laboratory test the heat of a single
pepper.
On the other hand,
Craig Dremann's Hotness Scale™ can be done at home in the
kitchen, with a gram scale, a blender, and a graduated baby's
eyedropper (in cc) in about 10 minutes.
The numbers are different between the two scales. You will
see fantastically high Scoville claims published, but those numbers
are nearly impossible to confirm.
What makes Craig
Dremann's scale numbers so much better, is that they relate to
something that is real---they mean that if you take a single ounce
of a particular pepper, how many ounces of salsa will that make
hot?
Plus, you can confirm Craig Dremann's Hotness Scale numbers yourself
in your own kitchen at almost no cost, in less than 10 minutes.
The Method:
Supplies needed:
Pepper(s) to be tested
Gram scale
Blender
Graduated baby eyedropper (at the pharmacy)
Small bowl
Teaspoon.
You are going to do some high school math, to arrive at the number.
The formula:
Weigh water in blender
in grams(BW)/Wt. pepper gms (PEP),
times weight of tasting water/ccs of blended pepper water.
BW/PEP x Tasting water grams/CC.
1.) Add a weighed amount of water to the blender, we usually start with 200 grams. Add those grams to the left side of the equation.
2.) Cut the stem off the pepper(s) and weigh it in grams, and put it in the blender, and add those grams to the left side of the equation.
3.) Then put a weighed amount of water in the tasting bowl, like 200 grams, and blend the pepper.
4.) Take the baby eyedropper and draw out 4-5 cc of the blended pepper water out of the blender.
5.) Take the teaspoon and taste what the tasting water in the small bowl tastes like, without any pepper added to it.
Then add to the tasting bowl one cc at a time, stir into the tasting water, and taste and see if you detect any heat. The heat will first start at the back of the throat.
When you think you are detecting heat, add another cc to confirm.
If the heat comes on too quickly, like with less than a cc of blended pepper, add an additional weighed amount of water to the blender, get a fresh weighed amount of tasting water, and start over.
Sometimes with the hottest habaneros and scotch bonnets, we have to use 1,000 grams of water in the blender and 400 grams of tasting water.
When you have determined how many cc of the blender water, turns the heat on your tasting water, put that number in your equation.
EXAMPLE:
So let's say, that you put 200 GRAMS OF WATER in the blender, and added 10 GRAMS OF PEPPERS and blended.
The left side of the equation is 200/10
Then you put 200 grams of water in the TASTING BOWL, and found that 5 cc of the BLENDED PEPPER water brought the heat on.
The right side of the equation is 200/5.
The you just multiply both sides of the equation:
200/10 or 20, times 200/5 or 40 = 800 DHS
To convert to
SCOVILLE heat units, multiply the DHS by 12.
Updated April 3, 2016. Back to Craig Dremann's main Contents page.