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Formulating a 55-gallon brine for banana peppers using capsicum

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rgiuliano137

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Posted 21 April 2021 - 02:47 PM

Hello, I am trying to formulate a 55 gallon brine for banana peppers using capsicum at 1 million scoville units, however I am trying to establish a baseline on how much I should use to make it hot, any ideas on where to start? Thank you for your time.

 



Scampi

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Posted 21 April 2021 - 03:07 PM

to be clear, your trying to make banana peppers hotter?

 

Trial and error

 

What is the scoville your trying to acheive?

What is the scoville of a banana pepper naturally

how does the capsium absorb? How fast/show does overall salinity help/hinder   what % acetic acid are you using for the brine?


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rgiuliano137

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Posted 21 April 2021 - 03:40 PM

Scampi as always thank you, Sweet Banana peppers range from 100 to 500 on the Scoville Heat Unit Scale, trying to achieve the heat of a hot giardiniera which has Serranos and Jalapenos which are usually in the range of 8500-22000 shu, I know we use 5 gallons vinegar to every 55 gallon barrel of water



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Posted 21 April 2021 - 06:11 PM

from my time in pickling, pickled foods don't reach full heat dispersal until abut 6 months

 

If i were you, I would think about adding scotch bonnets in cheesecloth to the brine that you can remove once you've reached desired heat

 

The brine is going to get hot alot faster than the banana pepper, then you can remove the chessecloth and use the brine

 

As not two peppers are the same, you'd probably just have to keep checking the scoville rating on the brine until you were in the right area.  If you're wanting to land at ~15000 units, scotch bonnets between 100000 and 350000 should get your brine up around 20000 very quickly (like 24 hours or so quickly---faster if its all in a steam kettle)


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rgiuliano137

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Posted 21 April 2021 - 06:23 PM

Thank you Scampi, amazing as always, only problem is that our customer wants a hot brine and supplied us with the 1 million shu capsicum so kind of stuck



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Posted 21 April 2021 - 08:06 PM

OMG be so very careful with that!  Proper PPE for the employees handling it

 

Powder or Oil?

 

I would start really small and keep testing until you get there  

look what i found!

"First, 1 habanero (seeds and all) is approximately 1 teaspoon of ground habanero powder accourding to this spice company (we have to get a volume measurement before we do anything), so I will assume that 1 teaspoon of powder is about equal to the actual pepper on the Scoville scale (200,000 in your case).

5 gallons of beer is 3,840 teaspoons, so would dilute 1 habanero to about 196,160 Scoville units.

That way overshoots your target of 75,000, so lets try it with half a habanero (about 100,000 Scoville units).

5 gallons of beer is 7,680 half-teaspoons, so would dilute 1 habanero to about 92,320 Scoville units. This gets pretty close to your target of 75,000, and since the heat of your exact pepper is unknown, I would say it's a pretty good approximation.

Maybe that 92,320 will get down in the 70,000-80,000 target range when you account for the capsaicin that you can't extract.

I'm, not sure how you were planning on incorporating it, but I would slice it half-wise vertically to accurately get half of the pepper, then crush the half you want to use with a mortar and pestle and stir the habanero paste in.


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rgiuliano137

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Posted 23 April 2021 - 02:50 PM

Scampi

 

i am being directed to use Liquid capsicum to add into the 55 gallon drum of brine, so not too sure how much to start using



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Posted 23 April 2021 - 03:11 PM

does the product moniker tell you what 1 ounce is equal too in scoville units? You need that to do the calculation first


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Posted 23 April 2021 - 03:21 PM

I think i've got it

 

if you add 70 ounces of the concentrate  to a 55 gallon drum, you will have added 0.0099% of the total volume, which should mean you've diluted the heat by 900000 times to get you to a finished HU of ~100000

 

 

Does that make sense to you?

 

Scoville units are how many times the heat needs diluted in sugar water to be undetectable as heat to humans. So you need to dilute the concentrate 9000000 times to leave 100000 heat units


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