We grow, and carry, over 20 varieties of peppers each year. We have some staples that we always grow, as well as adding a few new varieties, customer requests and new-to-us varieties. It can be a lot to cipher through when trying to find what exactly you are looking for. Peppers are typically broken out into categories such as sweet, medium or hot...but it goes even deeper than that. The term "hot" has a very wide range, so we have compiled this list by scoville units for you. Also, if you have any request for the following year, please let us know and we will do our best to get seed!
A bit into Scoville Units: often shortened to just SHU – are simply a measurement of sugar-water. The Scoville Organoleptic Test measures chili heat by figuring out how much sugar-water needed to be diluted into a chili pepper mash to get to the point where you no longer feel the heat at all.
It’s all done in equal parts. For instance, say you have a teaspoon of jalapeño pepper. How many teaspoons of sugar-water do you need to dilute into it until you couldn’t taste any heat whatsoever? That’s the test. And the answer is your Scoville heat units. So, in other words, the higher the SHU, the hotter the pepper is.
Name Type Scoville Heat Units
Bell Peppers Sweet 0
Sweet Banana Sweet 0
Pimento Sweet 0
Gypsy Sweet 0
Pepperocini Mild 100-500
Anaheim Mild 500-2,500
Poblano Mild 1,000-2,000
TAM Jalapeno Medium 1,000-3,500
Garden Salsa Medium 1,000-5,000
Jalapeno Medium 2,500-5,000
Cayene Long Slim Medium 3,000-6,000
Hungarian Hot Wax Medium 5,000-10,000
Serrano Hot 15,000-30,000
Tabasco Hot 30,000-50,000
Super Chili Hot 40,000-50,000
Thai Dragon Very Hot 50,000-100,000
Habanero Extreme 100,000-300,000
Carribean Red Hot Extreme 300,000-445,000
Bhut jolokia "Ghost Pepper" EXTREME Over 1,000,000