does anyone know how the heat unit of a pepper is determined?

Question

we recieved two jars of dried peppers for x'mas. the indian style crushed red pepper have a rating of 40,000 heat units and the cali crushed jalapeno have a rating of 25,000 heat units. is there an equation/formula they use to figure it out?

Answer 1

Scoville (may be spelled wrong) units are how many units of water it takes to totally get rid of the heat of one unit of the pepper.

Answer 2

It basic goes like this; If you took that pepper and blended it to a liquid, how many 8 ounce glasses of water it would take before the average person could not detect the presence of heat in a pepper. E.G., a green pepper is a zero.Ancho peppers are pretty low with only 3000 heat units, etc.The hottest that I know of is habenero peppers at 200,000 units I think.

Answer 3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale

There's two ways. In the Scoville method, essentially some of the pepper extract is diluted in sugar water until a panel of judges can no longer tell it's spicy anymore. A scoville rating of 40,000 would mean it had to be diluted 40,000 times until it was undetectable.

That rating is probably the ASTA rating. In that one they take out the chemicals in the pepper that produce the sensation of heat, and use a mathematical formula to judge how hot it is.

Answer 4

The hottest is the Red Savina habanero at 577,000 Scoville. The Naga Jolokia is supposed to be 800,000 but this is actually not a solid claim.
Pure capsaicin is 16 million SU, or about 30 times hotter than the Red Savina.