Extracting and Purifying Capsaicin From Pepper X (To Use as Hot Sauce)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 พ.ค. 2024
- In late 2023, Ed Currie's Pepper-X was crowned the new hottest pepper in the world, with an astounding Scoville heat rating of 2,693,000 (compared to the Carolina Reaper's previous 1,600,000-2,200,000). So logically, my first instinct was to use chemistry to make it over five times hotter!
UPDATE: the capsaicin giveaway has officially ended, there are no more samples available!
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Credit goes to @FirstWeFeast for some of the pepper-related video content used: • Pepper X: Sean Evans, ...
Some footage from @NileRed and @ShawnWoodsMousetrapMonday was also used:
• Turning plastic gloves...
• Does The World's Spici...
Also, a shoutout goes to @ChaseTheHeat for actually testing Scoville rating of the Hot Ones Xperience sauce. As it turns out, it might be way less spicy than I thought: only about 61,000 SHU! Its possible my bottle was a bit hotter, since it felt worse than the sauce I made exclusively from Carolina Reapers and ghost peppers, but I really can't be sure. It does kind of check out though: if the sauce really was over 2,000,000 Scoville, I should've gotten way more capsaicin out...up to FORTY TIMES MORE! Several GRAMS of the hot stuff. Regardless, the capsaicin I did obtain still should've been fairly pure and from Pepper X.
WARNING: although everything I do here is legal, some of the content shown on LabCoatz is dangerous and should not be repeated! This procedure was fairly tame, but in general, it's not a very good idea to taste or eat things that have been in contact with chemicals or labware. I took all of the necessary precautions to remain safe!
Also, to avoid legal trouble, I feel like I should elaborate on what I said towards the end of this video about "cooking a legal version of meth" in a future video: the "legal meth" is a safe, off-the-shelf cold medicine called propylhexedrine, and although its molecule is shaped almost exactly like methamphetamine's molecule, it is not addictive and is generally not used recreationally due to it's unpleasant side effects. It can be bought at almost any American store as "Benzedrex" without even needing an ID, so me making a small amount for demonstration purposes should be completely fine.
0:00 Introduction
0:34 Project backstory
1:44 Prepping the sauce
2:45 Ethanol extraction
4:34 Steam distillation
5:59 Column chromatography
9:06 Acid/base extraction
9:55 The tasting lineup
11:32 Taste test: Louisiana Hot Sauce (2000 Scoville)
12:58 Taste test: homemade Reaper sauce (~1,000,000 Scoville)
14:11 Taste test: Last Dab Xperience (2,000,000+ Scoville...or 61,000? Idk)
16:02 Taste test: Habanero pepper (100,000-300,000 Scoville)
18:37 Taste test: PURIFIED CAPSAICIN (15,000,000+ Scoville)
22:55 DO YOU WANT SOME?
23:27 Conclusion - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Alright, I've heard the news: according to Johnny on "Chase The Heat" about a day ago, the Xperience sauce barely scored over 60,000 Scovilles according to lab tests. Not sure what's up with that. My bottle was definitely hotter than the sauce I made from Reapers and ghost peppers, which I assume is hotter than at least 500,000 SHU...maybe Johnny got a bad batch of sauce?? I really don't know. Maybe my peppers were weak! It does kind of check out though: if the sauce really was over 2,000,000 Scoville, I should've gotten way more capsaicin out...like up to FORTY TIMES MORE! Several GRAMS. Regardless, I'm glad to have extract at least some of Ed Currie's precious capsaicin! He can keep Pepper X out of reach for now, but at least I've got something that's hotter!
Yeah you know this is turning out to be pretty weird because I have had this sauce and it is definitely over a million scovilles. Either he did get a bad batch. Or there is something else in pepper x that is burning us. Or Johnny is being untruthful about something which I doubt. This will be interesting to see play out.
The other interesting thing is a sauce that in theory should be 2 million SHU isn’t as hot as a bite of a red habanero? That is also interesting just from LabCoatz reaction.
Somebody should have all kinds of sauces tested for their SHU.
There are many sauces claiming they are the hottest while not even coming close to the heat level of a single super hot pepper.
Somebody is getting sued for making a false claim just wait and see.@@merlost1624
Johnny scoville wouldn't lie about it. I got a bottle sent to Scotland and it was never 1 million let alone 2. I have hotter British sauce in the cupboard. It's a big of a scam if you ask me.
Fun fact - one of the reasons we hot sauce enthusiasts love really, really hot peppers is so they don't _need_ to use extracts to make really hot sauces. It's because, as you learned, they don't taste very pleasant.
The profile is indeed different in a bad way. Using the actual fruit gives you all those native oils and chemicals that add a lot to the flavour complexity, that get removed in the extraction process. Its a bit closer to what it's like to eat artificial cherry or grape flavoring versus just eating the actual fruit.
I try really hard to not purchase extract sauces unless it's mixing into a big batch of chili or something. Spot on though, I want pepper flavor - not bitter heat.
You might be surprised to hear this but that exact same Pepper X sauce was just tested and came back at 61,019 SHU. I'm not a chemist but I grow superhot peppers and there are some things that just don't add up about Pepper X and that sauce in particular. If you want a truly world class superhot pepper get a Chocolate Primotalii.
i suspected something like this, what a shame
Guinness records is a sham and has been for a while now. You pay them $50,000 and they come out with their little plaque and give you a record. As soon as I saw they were involved I assumed it was bs.
I was about to say something similar. I got the Xperience sauce I think just under a month after it came out and tried it for the first time on camera, and I knew something wasn't adding up because a spoonful of it wasn't any more spicier to me then a bottle of store-bought habanero sauces and I even called it out on video that I wouldn't be surprised if it was no more than 100K shu, and sure enough after getting lab tested recently it was barely over 60k so the claim on the label that the sauce contained 91% of a pepper that is supposed to be almost 2.7 million Shu average was complete BS. I feel really bad that this guy went through all of this trouble to make extract from a sauce that doesn't even average as high as a Thai pepper, in fact barely more than a cayenne pepper.
Likely one pepper was tested for the record and not all of them are that hot. If you grow hot peppers, you already know that they are not all equal, even from the same plant.
It makes sense that the nibble of the habanero was a lot hotter than the Last Dab XPERIENCE
The REAL science happens in the bathroom when that spice works through Zach's biology.
it's called dropping hot snakes.
My son when he was a toddler wanted to eat hot foods with dad, so nachos with excessive jalapeños was his starting point. A couple days later, his limited vocabulary produced "Dad do you get a Spicy butthole after nachos too?" Gawd damn son, yes, I get a spicy butthole too.😂 kids are the greatest thing ever man.
“I fell into a burning ring of fire…”
i would pray to god to strike me down at that point
Might be more religion than science at that point
When I was a kid in the late 60's, my Navy Dad claimed a friend of his won a bet (aboard their ship) by drinking a whole bottle of Tabasco Sauce. The Hot Sauce industry has now advanced beyond my wildest dreams. ❤
I drank a bottle of Tabasco on a bet in the mid 90s, it really wasn’t bad. Just a regular sized bottle though, you could do physical damage to yourself with a larger one, like how people have died drinking soy sauce.
props to him, I'd explode if I did that
I'd be more worried about the amount of acid in a bottle of tabasco, thatn the amount of heat.
@@Mp57navy it’s the salt that could hurt you
@@Mp57navy id be worried about both. the vinegar wearing down lining, and the spice getting direct contact with your intenstines. ouch.
Once back in the day, (sometime around 2006) I was working with some kids at a restaurant. One of them started to brag about how they could handle the hottest things period no problem. The next day, I went to the grocery store and purchased some fresh scotch bonnet peppers.
The next shift, after dinner rush, I brought the convo back to spicy hot foods. Just as I thought, the kid started his boasting and bragging about his hot tolerance.
That is when I busted out the scotch bonnets and offered him one. His eyes went wide but to his credit, he didn't back down. I set the condition that he has to chew it at least 10 times before swallowing. To the kids credit, he did it. Then promptly suffered miserably. Sweat, red face, tears, moaning while rocking back and forth. The works. I didn't tell him about the milk trick so he was guzzling water.
Once his ordeal was over. He admitted that he couldn't handle super hot.
He never boasted or even brought up spicey hot tolerances, ever again.
There is a very good and simple explanation for why that couple little bites from the red habanero was way spicier than that Xperience sauce. That's because the red habanero can get up to 500,000 shu, but the experience sauce was recently found to only test at 61k shu. Whoever put on the label that the Xperience sauce is 91% of a pepper the averages almost 2.7 million shu was fos...
it’s marketing buzzwords because their too scared to actually sell something at 2mil+ shu lol
I hate this gating bullshit. If your're going to be chicken out of selling it then don't get it publicly tested and waste all of our time.
Major bonus points for running a column on this. I really wish it was more frequent in TH-cam chemistry videos.
This is a very similar process to what we currently use to extract morphine/ codeine/ thebaine and oripavin from poppy straw. (especially the chromatography)
Ive worked 15 years at a factory that can produce 1/3 of he worlds opioids.
This video explained more then almost all of the training at the average factory workers revived. the exception was the labs and R&D staff.
Well done.
Its worth mentioning that capsaicin isnt the only culprit responsible for a pepper's spice. There are quite a few other capsaicinoids that contribute. This is why different types of spiciness exist. Like, a jabanero isnt the same 'kind of heat' that you might get off of a pepper with a similar scoville rating, because different ratios of different capsaicinoids change the heat level and type of burn drastically. Not sure if your process was selectively extracting raw capsaicin, or if it was designed to pull all the lesser capsaicinoids out as well.
RIP your toilet
You’re a real one brah!
Always enjoy your videos❤
Your videos are becoming increasingly heroic. Bravo!
This guy’s credibility just went out the window after that sauce was tested. Ed has a lot of paid off players
Just found this channel and I love it! Thank you!
@2:26 forbidden fruit roll up.
😂😂😂
really enjoyed this video
Doesn't the vinegar in the sauce react with the aluminiumfoil during drying? A foodgrade silicone mat might be better?
It shouldn't considering how weak acetic acid is, but if it does, it wouldn't effect anything, since aluminum acetate doesn't typically dissolved in the organic solvents. So when I mixed the capsaicin with water for steam distillation and then extracted it with ethyl acetate, any salts should've remained in the water layer.
The column chromatography made this a next level extraction! This was definitely the coolest capsaicin video I’ve seen 🔥👏🏼
First video I’ve watched from start to end in ages! 🔥 super interesting & captivating. My mouth is salivating and I’m craving the burn 😅
Pretty hot topic!
You sir have some balls. Sub earned. Looking forward to more videos.
i'm always scared for you when your testing these things on yourself , like you said, it had a chemical taste of something you should be eating.
be careful
Just found your channel. Epic brother 🤘
Really cool science is also how they lab test for SHU rating. Like how the pepperX sauce tested only at 61,000. It’s good we can confirm stuff like this.
Excellent video
Thanks for not freaking out and pretending to be on the verge of tears over some hot sauce. Experience with spicy food means you are conscious of the pain and I hate watching people writhe around in pain for the camera. You handled it like a champ, to the detriment of family and friends who want to see you suffer lol
Right? I get that everybody has a different tolerance to spiciness and pain, but so many people just freak out, over the top and hyper.
LA Beast is kinda my baseline, even though what he consumed was kinda crazy, his own body told the whole story and to me, that really cant be faked.
5 years ago me and my two friends tried a whole ghost pepper, each. None of us ever had something spicier than store-bought chilli peppers up to that point.
We ended up laughing at one another for hickupping while drooling and tearing up super hard for loke 30 minutes, it was actually oddly satisfying.
There has been a test carried out on this sauce which you are using , and the scoville heat unit score is about 61,019
Accuracies of a SHU sample from a sauce are questionable.
The bottle states 91% pepper X .
Pepper X comes in around 2.7M SHU.... 91% pepper X.... Hmmm
I'm no mathematician but there's something wrong there.
Completely unrelated to the actual video content itself - I LOVE seeing the board games in the background. Ticket to Ride is such a wild bunch of fun with the right people.
As a board game geek my eyes immediately went to that shelf hahaha
pretty cool that Eds store is literally right down the street from me. The sauces are amazing, and the literal hottest you will try
Red savinas habanero is delicious, the real heat kicks in a few minutes after consuming but the initial flavor is very sweet and delicious but the heat is serious after it kicks in. Really cool video. I used to grow red habanero for cooking.
love it! that is some spiiiicyyyy stuff! --- now you need to take that extract and mix it with some everclear / acetic acid to carry it into the skin and make some unholy 'Pepper Spray' weaponized pepperX
Lol! "That was a bit of a mistake." Good video, Sir.
Nice!!!
Definitely right about total available capsaicin content lowering with processing of the chilis. I make hot sauces using mostly a reaper dragon cross I've been growing for a few years and eat the sauces regularly. Very hot sauces. Been a while, so decided to chew a whole chili while watching just to remember how much hotter it was than a sauce. So much hotter that I had to pause the video until I could recover. lol
What a champ. For science!
I knew when you started the tasting half way into the video we were in for a treat.
Okie Chemists rule! Great job Labcoatz!
Love your videos, super interesting! How the hell did you learn chemistry so well? I’ve always wanted to learn how people synthesize different chemicals p
Cool boardgame collection.
Wow, actual column chromatography on a chemtube video, you don't see that every day! I'm all about it. Columns are so tedious to run but also fun in a way.
I tried this extraction with habanero peppers and acetone as a solvent. The resulting orange oil was pretty spicy.
You Insane mad Scientist!!!!
Congrats, you made pepper spray.
The sacrifices you make for science!😅
As a Carolina eater, my personal theory as to why a fresh pepper is potentially more potent than a sauce or extract is as follows. The other ingredients in fresh peppers also stimulate different taste buds, so the brain receives a broader range of signals than from sauce or extract alone, where some components are lost in processing. The whole experience is therefore more intense, and the gut microbiome may be similarly affected.
Spicy
I'm not a huge fan of spicy foods, I like a little heat, but one day at Publix I saw Carolina Reaper cheese slices. It's pretty much Pepper Jack cheese with more Habanero and the inclusion of the Reaper, obviously. I had to buy it. Eating ONE SLICE kicked my ass, immediate burn that lasted a good 30-60 seconds...I wanted another though. I gave one to my friend and he was like "Whoa, yeah, that's spicy". I wash my hands after handling the slices just as a precaution. You can't really use it on anything without the inclusion of other cheeses because the burn just overpowers all other flavors.
After eating those for a while, I wanted to see how it compared to a Habanero, so I bought one (there are apparently many different species, the one I got was about 1/2-1/4 the size of the ones you have). I had the milk ready and took a bite, which was about 75% of the pepper. It was like someone lit a fire in my mouth, immediate full on firey pain. If the cheese was about a 4 or 5, then the pepper was about a 7 or 8.
Once me and my GF ate entire carolina reaper each... 3 years later I still think it was a mistake :P ~20 minutes of pure agony. You on the other hand just casualy sample pure capsaicin on the chicken wing. Impressive.
That pepper high kickin in...
19:26 the chicken nugget is going "oh, god! And I thought going through the oven was hot!!!! How does this burn soooo muuuuuuch?!?!?"
😂
Sohxlet extraction?
interesting I like these kinda vids. Watching this vs the backyard science of say, someone cramming a pvc pipe full of low grade cannabis material, and then putting pressurized solvent through it (usually butane lighter gas) to extract the plants oil in a very primitive way. OR other sketchy and unsafe backyard science... This really is interesting and informative.
7 pot is a good choice, go for the yellow next time, so nice smell
I think you should grow a set and try the extract intravenously
what does it feel like if it gets in your eyes?
Bro ur a fucken gangster just eating those superhots like they were nun ur awesome bro ❤ also offering samples your amazing and extremely intelligent really dig it 👌
I had a garden and used to grow different varieties of peppers and other vegetables, but I would always tell my friends how much hotter the peppers were if you just bit the pepper itself compared to being in a sauce. Needless to say one of my friends Chris, who thought he was the king of eating hot pepper sauce popped a whole Carolina Reaper in his mouth and started chewing it up. In a matter of seconds, Chris started sweating, crying, and eventually throwing up, he drank a whole gallon of milk, then threw that up, he couldn’t even stand upright and kept falling to the ground, this went on for a good 20 to 30 minutes when he finally asked us to call an ambulance. Once they arrived he was starting to feel some relief so he decided not to go to the hospital, but he was still billed an exuberant amount of money. Everyone that was there was on the floor laughing and crying so hard our sides hurt, which is what men do when their friends almost kill themselves. Whenever we get together now this story always comes up and Chris always gets mad and asks when are we going to stop bringing this story back up, which of course the answer is, we are never going to stop. So get over it Chris, now the whole internet knows.
I'd never dare to eat a whole hot pepper...I like the flavor and experience, not hurting myself, lol. Although, on the day of the chili cookoff I mentioned, I did bring the rest of the Reaper peppers, and a little girl I knew actually popped a whole one in her mouth and ate it! She said it wasn't fun, but that was about the extent of her suffering. Seriously impressive, my reaction probably would've been more like Chris, haha!
isnt the scoville scale based on somebodies tastebud at the end of the day the way i understand it? So how accurate can it possibly be
Not at all.
Dude bit into the habanero like an apple
When you came back after spitting out the chicken I could hear "This was when he knew he fucked up" in my head.
Hey, I really liked the video! I'm just wondering why you didn't try to recrystallize the capsaicin to see, might have helped with the taste. Anyway, cool experiment you made as always, and very brave to try the pure stuff!
Glad you liked the video! I didn't recrystallize the capsaicin because capsaicin doesn't usually crystallize. Typically, it just produces a waxy semi-solid or an oil, as seen in the acid/base extraction. It is certainly possible to get solid white crystals of capsaicin, but I have no clue how...maybe supercritical CO2 extraction?
What's the point if the sauce chokes and punches you ruthlessly beyond comfort? Spicy is good.
Would be a bit fun to see how hot you got the extract ive tested 13m shu extract havent tried the crystals yet 13m was enough 😅 did rise 20min
Conc H2SO4 has a bit of a bite as well.
❤
Pepper spray with pure capsaicin (16 million+). That would be devastating. Lmao.
That can cause instant blindness
I watched this while slowly eating pickled jalapeños. I feel weak
The movie Perfume, which I’m sure you’ve seen, could be made into a modern day film with your channel as an influence.
IME eating raw hot peppers hits _way_ harder than any hot sauce or spicy cooked dish. Like, I have no problem eating Indian hot or Thai hot food; it can push the bounds of my tolerance, but it's doable. But eating neat jalapeños feels way burnier.
So, capsaicin is less soluble in acid than in base. Doesn’t that mean that with a slightly acidic sauce it will take longer to get an effect since there’s less capsaicin in solution, ready to activate the nerves….? And hence, that raw pepper will have a faster onset and higher peak of effect than a sauce? That could explain why the raw habanero feels spicier than the (on paper) stronger sauce.
Ed is free to show his test results !
❤❤
That was awesome, you may get more people seeing this vid if you have the thumbnail of that scene where you hold the wing with the extract and title it, I make and eat the worlds hottest hot sauce (way hotter than pepper x!)
I've noticed if you do a shot, like jagermeister or just vodka and have a bite of raw onion just before enhances the heat. The ethanol in the shot is obvious, but why do you think a raw onion?
Onions also contains a few chemicals that trigger the TRPV1 receptor like capsaicin, so it have a compounding effect. I've noticed that can happen with capsaicin alone: the first bite of hot sauce isn't too bad, but the second bite can really start to hurt! Ethanol is similar, although it's hard to say if its effects are due to the dissolution of capsaicin or ethanol's own TRPV1 activity!
Scoville rating.. hmm just messaged my local hot chicken place to see what they rate it at. Or I go there and do science. Even their hush pupplies are spicy. (Voodoo Chicken, Tennessee.. ) although it seems like normal chickens)
The Fire Rises
I took a spoonful of carolina reaper sauce for my 50 subscriber video... but I didnt know that pepper x had been made by then. I have eaten a carolina reaper and it was hell.
I'm going to work with resiniferatoxin since it grows near me
The C R U N C H of those chicken wings makes me want some! Did you make them at home or buy them frozen? If it’s the latter, then which ones did you get?
What do we call it? Mad Moose 497 Polonium No. 84?
Lol you did do safrole I remember!!!
watching you try scrape it off the foil with a knife.. why did you not just ball up the foil, crush it tightly and then unfold it?
Why is the sauce red?
Through the urethra
I was half expecting him to drink the entire bottle of pepper-X just to calm the extract down! 😉😂
Video idea - bitter compounds. Is there a "most bitter" chemical?
Denatonium benzoate is the most bitter compound, but NileRed already made it year ago
they put it in 'computer air dusters' -- i'm sure everyone has turned the can 'upside down' and slowly sprayed it to release the liquid which comes out and boils immediately.. i was dripping it on my had many years back and some time later at lunch my fingers touched my lips and the most acrid bitter taste took over everything it took some thinking but finally put 2 and 2 together and realized it was the air duster and found denatonium benzoate is what they use to keep people from 'abusing' the stuff.. absolutely AWFUL in a very impressive way hours later by just the slightest cross contact of my hand to lips at lunch ,,, stuff is NASTY@@LabCoatz_Science
Ah. What about Sour compounds then?
@@koga7349 pure protons would be the most acidic
Instead of the xylene blend, using a food grade heptane might get better tasting product. Maybe something to play with. Here we can get fda grade butane everywhere. You can always redo videos for a better end product.
I've made poppers from habaneros
Here is the problem, The last dab Xperience has actually been tested in a lab and it's only 61,019 SHU not even close to the 2.6 million everyone assumes it to be. Don't believe me? Have it tested yourself.
I just watched Chase the heat episode and he concluded that the last dab pepper x is not 2.5 million. It's 61,000 so I I'm wondering they can prove that and then take away his Guinness record. I guess the record is for the pepper not for the hot sauce but the hot sauce claims that it's 2 million scoville units but chase the heat sent it to a lab and it came back only 61,000
Finally, the answer to the question "Has Mad Science gone too far?"... :D
Not until I make fluoroantimonic acid...or chlorine trifluoride!
My theory is sauces are more mile than peppers because it's suspended in other stuff and not all of it comes into contact like peppers do
If Y'all expected the pepper x sauce to be over two million in SHU's, then, one. It would never sell without a ton of lawsuits. Two, it would not be monetarily feasable because nobody would purchase it because you would not be able to eat it. And Three, the peppers which are not as hot do to the water content along with the other ingredients in the sauce which lower the SHU measurements of the pepper in its dried state. Hope this helps.
Your offer is tempting. I've done the one chip challenge and that was hot. But this one picks my curiosity for my spiciness. Now, for anybody that is tempting to do this. Do not do it. Do not do it if you cannot handle high levels of capsaicin you will regret it afterwards
You should shake the bottle of sauce before pouring
As soon as you cook any pepper the spiciness cooks away.
The sauce is only about 3% of the 2 million scoville johnny Scoville on youtube has videos up on it its basically a scam
That man is a legend and freak of nature. The stuff he eats daily would at least hospitalize most people.
yes, because if they made a true pepper sauce of even the carolina reaper or pure pepper X in any kind of concentration (as in just the pepper mash without much else) -- no one would even be able to eat the stuff or use it as a sauce, so they wouldn't be able to sell any bottles of inedible hot sauce.
😋
Science is awesome
Please check out Johnny Scoville and his video that he got the pepper x sauce lab tested and it came back at not much more than 66000 shu. I would like to understand the science behind the labs reading and what the bottle claims it should be by using over 91% pepper x. Wouldn't common sense say that the sauce should come back with a much higher shu.
I don't know what was up with Johnny's bottle, but mine was hotter than the sauce I made that was almost entirely Carolina Reaper and ghost pepper, and that should've been at least on the upper end of the hundred-thousands in Scoville. I don't see how the capsaicin could go anywhere...maybe the people who ran his SHU tests messed something up.
Cunty Kurt Miller “Johnny Scoville” is just a hater… even it is 61,000 who cares? He just wants to stir the pot and make Ed look bad cause he’s jealous and envious of his accomplishments and wants the spotlight more on himself… he’s a joke and will never reach Ed’s level regardless of how he tries to bash his products… dude sells mother of pearl spoons for $30 when you can buy them for under $10 on eBay.. dude is a complete clown.