Whats a Scoville Heat Unit?
Mr. Scoville’s test has become the industry standard for determining just how hot hot really is. Today, you will often find the Scoville Heat Unit rating on a jar of salsa or a bottle of hot sauce. A jalapeno falls in at roughly 4000 heat units while the habanero rates an easy 250,000. But what does it all mean? Heat units are actually determined by how many parts of sugar water it takes to dilute a sample so that the heat of a chile can no longer be detected. The chile sample is provided in the form of an extract. The original tests were performed by assembling a large panel of human testers who would taste each sample in increments. Time consuming to say the least. Even though Scoville’s name is still associated with the results, it’s all done by machine these days. Laboratories employ High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) testing. The generally accepted ratings are: 0-5000—Mild 5000-20,000—Medium 20,000-70,000—Hot 70,000-300,000—Extreme These ratings are handy but be
