Distiller magazine a publication of the American Distilling Institute, the Voice of Artisan Distilling; devoted to the craft spirits industry: vendors and distillers alike.
Issue link: http://distilling.uberflip.com/i/1306663
112 distiller SHU when ripe. Fairy lights are dainty, small and rather hot at 47,000 SHU, and immature fruits start purple and ripen to red. Vampire chilies, moderately hot at 14,000 SHU, are red when ripe but when unripe they are black. Most of the flavor of a chili resides in the flesh of the fruit, while most capsaicin heat is contained within its seeds and the pale membrane the seeds are attached to. By cutting fresh chilies open and removing seeds and mem- brane, the ratio of flavor to heat can be altered. Make sure that people processing chilies aren't left with hands that pass heat to anything they touch. Standard food prepa- ration gloves are suitable for milder chilies, but handling hotter chilies is best done with double-strength, thicker gloves. It can also be helpful to wear an apron and goggles to keep stray chili juice and seeds away from eyes and getting stuck on clothes. Dried chilies contain heat but a lot of their flavor is lost in the drying process, except in the case of smoke-dried chilies, where smoke becomes an added flavor. For this reason, in most cases chilies are best used fresh, or stored for out-of-season use by freezing them. Conditions in which chilies grow influence their heat. Low-water stress causes chili plants to respond by increas- ing the levels of capsaicin in their fruits. In conditions of abundance, where plants have plenty of water and fertil- izer, yields are higher in terms of weight of harvest, but chili peppers are less hot with capsaicin than when grown under more stressful conditions. Although they require heat for seed germination and grow in hot conditions, drought can reduce and destroy chili crops. Likewise the increasing number of unusual weather events like summer floods and hurricanes in chili-growing regions can have an impact on supply. Some growers combat hot grow- ing conditions by planting chilies in shade. Being able to attend to crops quickly after extreme weather events can help to reduce damage to yield. In order to have consis- tent chilies to work with, it helps to develop a long-term relationship with a grower or to grow your own. With so much diversity in terms of heat, color and provenance attached to different types of chili, a key fac- tor in choosing chilies as an ingredient is taking time to consider which ones to use. END Cheiro roxa chilies Low-water stress causes chili plants to respond by increasing the levels of capsaicin in their fruits.