Using materials and techniques available to the average Joe, and in conditions found in the average home kitchen, is it possible to isolate pure capsaicin? Or does it require laboratory conditions and/or specialized equipment only available to professional chemists?
Also, how much chili (fruit) does it take to make, say, a gram of pure capsaicin? Assume you’re using potent chilis like habaneros.
I can readily see that this would be a hazardous procedure requiring respirator, goggles, avoiding exposed skin etc (remembering the time I tried to make a hot pepper insect repellent, mixed up hot peppers in the blender and created gaseous fumes that drove Mrs. J. and me coughing from the kitchen).
What I can’t see is why any cook would need to extract pure capsaicin.
Yes, you can do it however the term “home chemist” doesn’t mean much and there are differing definitions of “purity”. People make it in their basement all the time usually because of the ongoing hot sauce wars. In my opinion, it is pointless because anything over 200,000 Scoville Units is overly painful and inedible. Somewhat pure capsaicin extracts go well into the low to mid millions of Scoville units for comparison. Once you get into those ranges, you are basically producing a weapon rather than a food additive even though there is nothing illegal about it.
I say this as someone who has a higher heat tolerance than 99.9% of the population. I eat at least 7 habaneros a day and can drink Tabasco like water. However, there is some stuff that is too hot even for me and it starts well before the pure capsaicin levels. I keep a bottle of Mad Dog Inferno in my refrigerator for people that like to brag that they can eat any hot food. It is only 90,000 Scoville Units but giving someone some on a cracker is a quick way to get anyone to shut up. They aren’t going to be saying much of anything other than coughing and choking for at least 10 minutes.
I suggest you try something like that before you go any higher. Still, the procedure to refine capsaicin is fairly straightforward if you really want to.
Oh hell no, I’m just asking academically. Taco Bell Medium sauce is my upper limit.
I watched a YouTube video some time ago of some guy who, like Shagnasty, loved him some hot chilis. He’d scored some chemically pure capsaicin and made a big-ass pot of tomato soup - as in, enough to feed two adults and probably three or four children. Then, he put a piece of pure capsaicin that, to me anyway, appeared to be about the size of a grain of sand. He stirred it up, poured himself a bowl of soup, and… it almost killed him, he was gasping and coughing so hard.
No, it is not a toy. However, extreme hot sauces are not toxic. They just hurt you really badly for a while. Don’t ask me why that is a feature but some people like them. We aren’t talking about Tabasco here. That is very mild in these terms.
If you want to hurt yourself, Mad Dog Inferno was once labeled as the hottest sauce in the world and it actually has taste but be careful with it because you can ruin an entire pot of chili with just a few drops. For full effect, eat it on a cracker but have a couch available. There are even hotter hot sauces available now but there is no point to those unless your other hobbies include being horse whipped by angry leather clad feminists with PMS.
I can eat a habanero like an apple but there are some hot sauces on the market now that I will not touch because they are so insanely hot. The arms race has gotten too much for human consumption at the higher end.
Backing up Shagnasty: I grew up on spicy Indian food. Super-spicy is completely my thing. I rarely meet anyone with higher heat tolerance.
Once, in high school, a friend had scored some pure capsaicin from God knows where. I put a drop on a piece of bread at lunchtime and gave it a shot, thinking I could handle anything. I was wrong. First of all, it wasn’t even tasty (I realize everything is chemicals, but the best I could describe the taste as is that “it tasted merely chemical…”). But also, shortly thereafter, as soon as I could drop my macho face, I rushed out of the cafeteria and just sat hunched over in the bathroom in pain, praying for death, missing my next class. It wasn’t an enjoyable experience. I realized I enjoy heat, but as a component of flavor, not as masochism in place of flavor.
I think at this point, breeders are breeding higher capsaicin-content peppers strictly for bragging rights and a can-do attitude more than for eating. At a certain point the human digestive system just has to give up and day “enough’s enough.”
I’m fine with Mad Dog Inferno and sauces in that range. They’re hot, but not insane (IMHO). On the other hand, I was growing Trinidad Scorpions and when I finally got one fully ripened, I tried it on an empty stomach. Ate the whole thing. Had the same reaction as yours (no class, for me, but I thought I needed to call myself into the ER, but just was so doubled over in pain about a half hour to two hours after ingestion that I couldn’t. Worst hot pepper experience in my life.)
People always say that about spicy food, and I’ve not really had that experience, I guess. I definitely had some reaction where I soon had to defecate in that instance, and of course my throat was in major pain the whole time, but I don’t really remember significant exit pain. Maybe there was exit pain and I don’t remember it. It wasn’t so much as to be memorable, anyway.
On edit: Oh, I guess I wouldn’t be defecating out the capsaicin right away anyway, right? It would just have been some kind of gastrocolic effect where I defecated right away, but was defecating food I’d eaten earlier. And, no, there definitely wasn’t any painful defecation later; by the time I came home, everything was great again, and I would’ve remembered if there was some suddenly painful second wave of pain later. So, yeah.
Probably no cheaper to make it than to buy it. (Unless you are willing to pay an extra $950 for a nicer bottle.)
But it isn’t something you should conciser buying casually. This isn’t in the “gosh, that’s warm” category, this is in the “gosh, that’s an expensive hospital bill” category.
AFAICT the people who say that kind of thing happens to them have hemorroids, and whatever they’re blaming for their pains isn’t necessarily the actual culprit.
Are you saying that the hemorroids are irritated by the capsaicin, or that there’s no connection at all?
Because I’m talking about capsicum -type burning sensations, the day after consuming exceptionally spicy dishes (e.g. The time I decided to go one level hotter than vindaloo)
I’m saying that the hemorroids are irritated, but what irritated them may or may not be the capsaicin. The capsaicin is just what the person thought of.
Nope. I don’t have that issue. (And, in my case, it doesn’t have to do with having hemorrhoids or not.) I should amend this, because as a kid hot food did occasionally feel a bit toasty on the way out–pickled jalapenos for some reason did that to me, but nothing as an adult, and I eat much higher into the Scovilles than I used to.
While it’s highly unlikely that adults could seriously harm themselves by eating hot peppers (even the super-hot varieties), it may be a different matter for children (there are case reports of fatalities, some stemming from the use of hot peppers for “discipline” (i.e. child abuse). It’s another level of danger to keep pure capsaicin around the house.
I’m having trouble linking for whatever reason, but first Google return for:
Scoville mg/g
is from some Nigerians reporting 9.2 mg/g dry weight capsaicin in a 147k SCU pepper, which is in habanero range. Keep in mind they’re probably like 90% water. So if I’m not misplacing a decimal that’s about a kilo of wet fruit for a gram of capsaicin.