If you’ve ever choked down a piece of Carolina Reaper pepper or sweated your way through a splash of Carolina Reaper hot sauce because it was “the hottest pepper in the world,” we hate to break it to you, but that’s not the case anymore. Ed Currie, the South Carolina hot pepper grower (and apparently a full-time spice masochist), has just claimed a Guinness World Record for Pepper X, a fiery hot pepper that is so spicy, it makes his Carolina Reapers look borderline harmless.
According to Guinness, Pepper X, which, like the Carolina Reaper, was developed by Currie and his PuckerButt Pepper Company, has an average rating of 2,693,000 Scoville Heat Units (SHU). That absolutely incinerates the Reaper, which has an average rating of 1.64 million SHU. (By comparison, a jalapeno can have a Scoville rating of between 3,000 to 8,000 SHU, while hotter habaneros typically clock in at around 100,000 SHU.)
Currie unleashed the Carolina Reaper on the world a decade ago, and he told the Washington Post that he had been working on Pepper X even longer than that. He wanted this pepper — a crossbreed between a Carolina Reaper and one he only described as “brutally hot” — ready in case another pepper breeder developed something hot enough to dethrone the Reaper. That never happened, so he decided that he’d have to be the man who broke his own record.
Pepper X was revealed (and Currie was presented with the Guinness Record) during a recent episode of the YouTube series “Hot Ones.” During the program, Currie said “a lot of people” deserved credit for the pepper’s development. “People said it couldn’t be done, they called us liars, and we proved to them that Pepper X is actually the hottest pepper in the world, officially from Guinness,” he continued.
Until Currie brought his peppers to the “Hot Ones” set, he was the only person on earth who had eaten an entire Pepper X. So how bad is it? VERY, VERY BAD. “I was feeling the heat for three-and-a-half hours,” he admitted to the Associated Press. “Then the cramps came. Those cramps are horrible. I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain.”
So, how can you get your hands on Pepper X? For now, you can’t. When Currie released the Carolina Reaper, he did not protect his intellectual property, allowing thousands of people to grow — and profit from — the pepper he developed. He is not (currently) releasing any Pepper X seeds, and a scrolling warning on the PuckerButt Pepper Company website further emphasizes that. “Pepper X seeds and plants are a patented variety,” the bright red text reads. “It is not available for purchase or use by the general public.”
For now, you can only try the record-setting pepper by purchasing one of PuckerButt’s Pepper X-infused hot sauces, wing sauce, or salsa. “Everybody else made their money off the Reaper,” he told the AP. “It’s time for us to reap the benefits of the hard work I do.”