Harald Zoschke on German Superhot Testing - Fiery Foods & Barbecue Central

Harald Zoschke, our key chilehead correspondent in Europe, reports:

Our Calabrian-grown ‘Bhut Jolokia’ tested at 818,386 SHU (twice the result of Assam-grown ‘Bhut’ analyzed at the same lab in Hamburg, btw.!)
The Indians’ superhot ‘Chocolate Bhut’ that I had tested gave only 417,888 SHU at the Hamburg lab.
This year, red ‘Bhut’ powder from Assam (directly from the grower/producer) traded to Germany as having “850,000 SHU,” was tested in Hamburg and it delivered only 373,821 SHU – even some Chocolate Habaneros are almost that hot.
Harald also notes: “Returning to my ‘Fatalii’ theory… A customer who purchased original Assamese ‘Bhut’ seeds from our shop complained that the pods weren’t red but yellow. He was kind enough to send me some of those pods, and here’s a red pod from my test plant, and his yellow mutant (both grown from from the same seed batch). While red is a dominant gene, obviously this (recessive) yellow gene came through on that other plant. Looks quite ‘Fatalii’, doesn’t it? So who knows…. A friend of mine from Italy also reported about a yellow Bhut just a few weeks ago. I sent our customer a replacement pack of seeds, but I’ll sure test-grow seeds from that yellow pod next year. When comparing Scoville results, it is important which HPLC standard is used. Our food lab in Hamburg, Germany uses the defacto standard ASTA 21.3.”