Turning up the heat: Carolina Reaper pepper inventor makes new creation

FORT MILL, N.C. — If you think the Carolina Reaper is hot — or not hot enough — wait until you get a taste of the new pepper created by the Reaper’s maker.

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Eddie Currie, the man who created the Carolina Reaper — a pepper that registers 1.64 million units on the Scoville Scale that measures how hot something is — has made something that is a million units hotter, WSOC-TV reported.

A bell pepper is zero on the scale. A jalapeño is between 2,500-8,000.

Pepper X is 2.69 million and was certified the hottest pepper in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records, beating out the Carolina Reaper for the crown.

Currie is an expert in peppers, as he owns a pepper company in Fort Mill, North Carolina.

“I’m a creator. I have art. So when I get peppers and bring them together, it creates something new. And that’s like a baby to me, and I get to see that baby grow and flourish,” Currie said, according to WSOC.

Currie crossed two peppers that he loved the taste of but were not hot enough. He kept trying, and it took 10 years to get a perfect piquant pepper, he explained in a “First We Feast” video, according to Guinness.

He said the pepper was so hot that it took him down for hours.

“I was feeling the heat for three and a half hours, then the cramps came,” Currie said, according to WSOC. “And those cramps are horrible.”

It’s not the seeds of the pepper that makes them fiery. It’s the capsaicin that is in the placenta, the tissue that holds the seeds, that provides the spice. Pepper X has curves and ridges so there’s more room inside for the pepper placenta to form.

But don’t think that the torture that Currie experienced after eating Pepper X was enough for him to stop pursuing a new record.

He said that he is planning on creating an even hotter pepper, WSOC reported.

But it will take a while. Currie cross breeds more than 100 peppers every year, all to get one or two that could make it through the 10-year development cycle for them to stabilize and make a consistent fruit, Guinness World Records reported.