The new hottest chili in the world comes in hot sauce form

There was a time not that long ago when few of us knew what the Scoville scale even was, but years and years of unbearably hot chili peppers have changed all that.

If you were unaware, the scale measures how hot a pepper is. As a guide, most regular Jalapeños come in at up to 10,000 Scoville heat units and a Scotch Bonnet can be as high as 350,000, but it gets even hotter.

Some six years ago, we were introduced to the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, which at the time was the hottest chili on the planet, with a Scoville rating reaching 1.2 million.

Others to hit seven figures include the Naga Infinity chili and the Carolina Reaper, but now we have a new hottest chili in the world – and it’s so potent we daren’t even give it a proper name.

‘Pepper X’ is the active ingredient in ‘The Last Dab’, which claims to be the hottest hot sauce on the planet.

According to First We Feast, the pepper – which might not ever earn itself a name rather than a letter – was developed by Smokin’ Ed Currie of Puckerbutt Pepper Co. close to a decade ago.

It has been claimed that it is twice as hot as many varieties of the Guinness record-holding Carolina Reaper, and even hotter than the Dragon’s Breath chili, which was grown in Wales and is also reportedly even hotter than the Reaper.

According to Currie, the sauce alone contains 2.4 million Scoville units, but the pepper itself – according to initial tests – is hitting 3.18 million.

“Pepper X is three times hotter than any of the other peppers that are out there commercially,” Currie told First We Feast.

He confirmed the pepper has been submitted to the Guinness World Record judges, and could become the official new record-holder as soon as November

“We always wanted to have that hottest sauce, so when we were discussing how we could possibly make a new hottest sauce without extracts, there was only one man to talk to,” Noah Chaimberg of hot sauce sellers Heatonist explained.

“I knew through the grapevine that Ed had in his back pocket something really special, and that something turned out to be Pepper X.”

‘The Last Dab’ is available exclusively from Heatonist for US$20 (£14.94), and there’s a two-bottle limit per customer - that’s how you know it’s hot. 

(Images: YouTube/First We Feast)