The Great Debate! Capsaicin Crystal or Pure Extract?

On my website "Hot Sauces From A to Z" (www.hotsaucesfromatoz.com), I make the comment that fans of hot sauce have a tendency of being a little extreme. After all, it takes a fairly over-the-top personality to blindly try a product that claims it'll burn your face off (i.e. - Big Dawg's Burn Ur Face Off Salsa). I've found another common attribute of hot sauce fanatics is a natural passion for debating which hot sauce (or pepper, or salsa, etc.) is the best. Or, as if often the case - which is the HOTTEST! So, the purpose of this post is to distinguish why I acknowledge The Source Hot Sauce as being the hottest sauce available in the U.S. First of all, The Source registers a whopping 7.1 million Scoville Units (S.U.), and that's nothing to sneeze at, in fact, you need to use extreme caution when using this sauce. Hold on! Before all you Pepper Heads race to your computer to argue your case that hotter sauces exist, let me offer further explanation for my choice. There is a product on the market call Blair's 16 Million Reserve that tops the charts at, you guessed it, 16 million S.U. Now, I might not be a mathematicien, but 16 million is a far cry bigger than 7.1 million. However, after much deliberation I chose not to heap the "Hottest Sauce" honors on this product because by definition, it's not a sauce. Blair's 16 Million Reserve is pure capsaicin - in otherwords, it doesn't get any hotter than this. But, I repeat, it is not a sauce, it's pure capsaicin in crystal form. Now let's examine The Source Hot Sauce. I suppose technically one could make the assertion that it is not a sauce either. The Source is a pure pepper concentrate extract - that's all it is, nothing else is added. Without actually referring to Mr. Webster, in my opinion, the number one prerequisite for something to referred to as a "sauce" is that it be a liquid. Therein lies my reason for giving the dubious honor to The Source as the hottest hot sauce in the U.S. To be fair though, a more detailed definition of "sauce" might require that it be a combination of ingredients in liquid form. If I were to have gone by this definition I'd have given props to Mad Dog 357 Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce. This is an incredibly hot sauce (500,000 S.U.) made with Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper), Habanero peppers, Peri Peri peppers, chile extract, garlic, onions, vinegar, evaporated cane juice, and spices. Mmmm! Tasty! Stay tuned for my next post which will offer a more detailed examination of the Naga Bhut Jolokia - the hottest pepper in the world! Until then - "Pepper Power".