This Hot Sauce is so hot, you'd have to gulp 250,000 gallons of water just to put out the fire.
"We live in an extreme world," describes Blair
Lazar, a hot sauce inventor. "And I make extreme foods. ' In his palm of
his hand is the most blistering pepper extract in the world, an over-the-top
version of pepper concentrate so blistering that customers must sign a waiver
clearing him of any liability if they are crazy enough to try it.
Locked in a crystal bottle sealed with wax and a tiny skull,
Mr Lazar's lip-scorching concoction is pure capsaicin - the chemical that gives
habanero and jalapeno peppers their atomic heat. Blair Lazar claims to try his
sauce is to encounter ‘pure heat’ His "16 Million Reserve", which is
released to the public in 2006, is the brass ring of hot sauces, the most
blistering pepper extract that chemistry can create. It is 30 times hotter than
the hottest pepper, the Red Savina from Mexico, and 8,000 times more powerful
than Tabasco sauce.
To put the smallest dot on the tip of your tongue is to
encounter "pure heat", Mr Lazar says. Although capsaicin does not
actually burn - it tricks your brain into thinking that you are in pain by
exciting nerve endings in your mouth - some health specialists think that it
might kill an asthmatic or hospitalize a user who touched his eyes or different
susceptible parts of the anatomy. Mr Lazar has trained his taste buds to endure
the feeling, but he remembers the instant he decided to try his "16
Million Reserve" himself. "The pain was exquisite," he said.
"It was like having your tongue hit with a hammer. Man, it hurt. My tongue
swelled up and it hurt like hell for days. " The Scoville Scale measures
the heat of peppers. The eye-watering merits of peppers are measured in globally
Scoville units, established by Wilbur Scoville, an American chemist who, in
1912, asked panellists to evaluate how many parts of sugar water it took to
remove the heat.
Today, capsaicin content is measured in parts per million,
using a procedure recognized as high-performance liquid chromatography; one
part being equivalent to 15 Scoville units. Benign bell peppers rate zero
Scoville units and the Red Savina joined Guinness World Records at 570,000
units. Pure capsaicin, meanwhile, has a heat score of 16 million units - moving
the name for Mr Lazar's latest innovation. Each of the 999 limited-issue
bottles, priced at $289, comprises of just a few crystals. The concentrate is
so strong, though, that Mr Lazar approximates that it would have to be
dissipated in 250,000 gallons of water before it might no longer be tasted.
His calling as a hot sauce inventor began when he
established that the best way to remove people under the influence out of his
seaside bar was to give them free chicken wings immersed in an eye-watering
home-made hot sauce. Now he owns and manages Extreme Foods in New Jersey,
marketing his existing assortment of sauces, including "Mega Death"
and "Jersey Death", the second, according to Mr Lazar, being the
world's most blistering usable hot sauce. He maintains a refrigerator full of
purified water in his headquarters for those courageous enough to try some of
the sauces. Most testers sweat severely and are powerless to see through their
tears for up to half an hour. It takes many tons of crisp peppers to produce
1lb of capsaicin for the 16 Million Reserve, and the work takes months. First,
wetness is separated from the crisp peppers until a thick tar-like substance is
left. The process by which all additional impurities are removed, leaving pure
capsaicin concentrate, is classified, but the work takes place in a research
laboratory where Mr Lazar and his team wear sealed outfits with masks to steer
clear of inhaling the dust. Several years ago Mr Lazar developed "2am
Reserve" in of the hour at which he once closed his bar. It was hotter
than any other hot sauce creation on the market, measuring up to 900,000
Scoville units. He then distilled even more powerful extracts, including the
scorching "6am Reserve" at 10 million units. Most of the signed and
numbered bottles of "16 Million Reserve" will be purchased by hot
sauce addicts recognized as chile heads.
Buyers have to agree to a rider cautioning that any handling
"must be under a controlled environment using protective and protective
eye wear". "It can’t be used for flavor," says Mr Lazar.
"The only purpose is its heat value." He prefers not to guess on what
might happen should anyone be crazy enough to down a whole flask. Rinsing the
mouth with milk is among the best cures as it binds to fat molecules; it will
also dissipate in alcohol.
Comments