Scorpion pepper IPA. Am I insane?

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Yep, I looked into that myself. Amazon has a few vendors selling whole dried pods (seeds and all) and ebay has a few people selling whole fresh peppers. There's even a guy selling young seedling plants on ebay for about $10 a pop. Apparently, they're a relatively undemanding pepper plant and grow quite well in the southern latitudes. The only recommended advice i've seen for their care is a slightly acidic soil with good drainage and the use of worm castings for fertilizer additions. Apparently, the worm castings really bring out the heat in the peppers (and other peppers) of this type.

For reference, the pepper I used weighed about eight grams. What's tricky about working with these peppers is that the scoville heat level can vary, even with peppers on the same plant. You might get one that hovers around 900,000 scoville units and one that eclipses 2,000,000 on the same plant.

I'm assuming what this is going to mean is, with every extract made, you'll have to gauge the heat level manually much in the same way that i'm doing now.
 
Here's what pure evil looks like. Kinda looks like devil pee. Don't mind the dusty counters, we're having the kitchen floor replaced with new tiles.

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Taste tested tonight at the local bottle share. Seven drops in a four ounce pour of Sculpin confirms my tasting notes. It seemed to be the consensus for a drinkable amount of heat.
 
Ok.....this sound crazy and awesome at the same time. I'm a pepper head, and a beer nut, but I'm not sure about combining them. I've had peppered beers, but scorpion sounds brutal.

I've got to do it.:rockin:

Guess I'll have to find some seeds.
 
Just buy some whole pods/peppers off of Amazon or Ebay.

Just ordered some seeds....2.99+free shipping for 25 seeds. If I get 5 or 6 plants out of that, I'll be good. For 3 bucks, it's worth a shot. I can get em started a while since planting season in PA isn't for a couple months yet.
 
A little heat works in a number of different styles. There are pepper porters, IPA's, stouts, old ales, APA's, etc..

I'm using a Sculpin clone as the base beer, which is a reserved IPA.
 
Just ordered some seeds....2.99+free shipping for 25 seeds. If I get 5 or 6 plants out of that, I'll be good. For 3 bucks, it's worth a shot. I can get em started a while since planting season in PA isn't for a couple months yet.

Sounds good. Give them plenty of magnesium and worm castings.
 
Just ordered some seeds....2.99+free shipping for 25 seeds. If I get 5 or 6 plants out of that, I'll be good. For 3 bucks, it's worth a shot. I can get em started a while since planting season in PA isn't for a couple months yet.

Have you ever grown peppers from seed? It can be a pain in the arse! If planting season is two months away, I'd recommend starting them inside, in a seed starter kit (mini green house). If you can get em to germinate by the time the weather cooperates, you'll have a better shot..... Were about one month away here, and I started my peppers about a month ago (habanero, jalapeno, cayenne, hot and mild bananas) and now thinking about attempting some scorpions too.
 
Have you ever grown peppers from seed? It can be a pain in the arse! If planting season is two months away, I'd recommend starting them inside, in a seed starter kit (mini green house). If you can get em to germinate by the time the weather cooperates, you'll have a better shot..... Were about one month away here, and I started my peppers about a month ago (habanero, jalapeno, cayenne, hot and mild bananas) and now thinking about attempting some scorpions too.

Yep....Farmed about 400 acres for a number of years. That's why I figured if I get 5 or 6 good plants from 25 seeds I'll be doing ok. I don't think I'll need a bushel of these things, a few should do the trick, plus give me plenty of seeds for future growing.
 
Yep....Farmed about 400 acres for a number of years. That's why I figured if I get 5 or 6 good plants from 25 seeds I'll be doing ok. I don't think I'll need a bushel of these things, a few should do the trick, plus give me plenty of seeds for future growing.

Sorry, guess I should have caught the 5-6 reference. I'd imagine your right about the number "needed". I usually grow 3-4 of one really hot pepper of some kind each year, and end up asking myself towards the end of the season why I grew THAT many.... (tomatoes are easier to give away surplus:D)
 
Sorry, guess I should have caught the 5-6 reference. I'd imagine your right about the number "needed". I usually grow 3-4 of one really hot pepper of some kind each year, and end up asking myself towards the end of the season why I grew THAT many.... (tomatoes are easier to give away surplus:D)

Yea, 5 or 6 is probably 4 or 5 more than I'll really need, but I'll get to have fun with some friends who think they're real pepper heads, and a local pub near me prides themselves on making all their own wing sauces and likes to experiment (they have a mango Habanero that's awesome). They would take some too I'm sure.
PA's not the best pepper growing region by far, but I have acidic sandy soil,and I've had some good success in the past so even if the conditions aren't optimal I'm sure they'll be hotter than anything else I've grown.
 
We eat them at work and yes you are insane

Insane like us eh?;)

Yeah, a superhot beer is a novelty. A beer is what you want when you are eating superhots.

I guess you could eat plain tortilla chips and drink liquid death.....

All superhots from habanero on up are tough to sprout. they want it warm and wet but not moldy....a fine line.

Watering with chamomile is supposed to suppress mold.

They take nearly a month to sprout too.

Cayenne and jalapeno sprout when you sneeze on them, not so for superhots.

I start mine in NOVEMBER under flourescent grow bulbs.
 
We eat them at work and yes you are insane

I think i've reached a comfortable heat level with the extract. It's hot enough to enjoy the whole beer but not so hot that you scream in pain with the first sip. Again, I wanted this experiment to be a drinkable, hot IPA but not something useful in mortal combat against the huns.
 
I made a habanero ale that was awesome. I simply cut out the veins and seeds and it cut the heat a lot. Totally drinkable and delish.
 
I'm doing it mainly to grow some, but I'll make a tea to try out in a beer or two. I don't think I'd dedicate a whole batch to this.
 
I'm thinking about a small "30 drop" batch to keep around for those yahoo's that like to stop over to have a couple beers, and end up drinking half my pipeline. I think a label like "Miller Light Clone" should do the trick......(keep those at the front!)
 
I grow a few different types of "super hots" but don't have any of the scorpions. For anyone looking for some this seller has a pretty good reputation on TheHotPepper.com. http://ghostpepperstore.3dcartstores.com/

There is also a good classifieds forum on TheHotPepper as well. I'm a member there also, same user name as here.

I was wondering about using super hots in beer and am glad I found this topic. Keep us updated! Once I have some ripe pods I might have to try it out!
 
Brewing it up now. Missed my window of opportunity due to baby fatigue last evening. And yea, the scorpion pepper idea was based on AZ's success with Habanero Sculpin. :)
 
Brewing it up now. Missed my window of opportunity due to baby fatigue last evening. And yea, the scorpion pepper idea was based on AZ's success with Habanero Sculpin. :)

I'm starting in an hour or so.

I may pick up some scorpion pepper seedlings, though ky growing season sucks for peppers.
 
All done and in the primary. I had to add an extra half pound of amber DME to the beer as I fell short on my estimate for remaining extra light DME (5 lbs. 1 oz). I pitched the S05 and have the drop freezer set to 60 degrees. I did add yeast nutes and a one minute blast of pure oxygen after topping off to the 5 gallon mark with filtered water.

And.... of course, I forgot to take an OG reading. Pffft. :p

I decided to do a hops burst instead of a dry hop, so the dry hops got a 45 minute whirlpool at flameout before chilling the wort to pitching temp. I was squeezing wort out of what felt like ten pounds of hops trub from my BIAB bag. What a freaking sponge all those hops are.

Scorpion brew day.jpg
 
I've got two cases primed with the scorpion pepper everclear extract. To test for potency, I put the equal amount of drops in a zombie dust 12 oz just now. Fecking delicious and the perfect amount of heat. Enough burn so that it reaches all four corners of your mouth yet not hot enough to completely melt your face. The sculpin has completed fermenting having just spent three weeks, three days in the primary. I allowed it to warm up to room temps for the diacetyl rest over the past week and it's ready for bottling tonight.
 
Hate to say it, but I didn't use Butch T scorpion peppers, I used Moruga, which eclipse over 2,000,000 million scoville units.

Currently still the hottest ranking pepper on the planet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_Moruga_Scorpion

Any hot pepper will work fine. The phenotype of that pepper in your link looks a lot like a Trinidad Scorpion, so I wouldn't be surprised if they had the same Asian hot pepper ancestry. I wish you luck, because messing with peppers of this heat intensity is tricky.

I would highly advise you to make an extract/tincture of the pepper and work with that. Don't just dump your beer on peppers like this and pray it turns out. Some friends of mine did just that at Pinglehead Brewing to make their Mind Drive Porter aged on Bhut Jolokia. The consensus is that it was way too hot and wound up being a novelty beer. They sent a keg down to Cigar City Brewing during Hunahpu Day last Saturday, and just about everyone I spoke with that tried it concurred. Way too hot to enjoy as a beer.
 
The Butch T trinidad? Sounds like BS. And the pic looks like a trinidad scorpion. Not convinced. Stressing a plant can yield hotter peppers but who TF needs it any hotter?

I got seeds from trinidad and tobago. The real deal. 7 pot is hotter than the scorpion.
 
Wow, after one week in the bottle, good carbonation level already. This beer is going to have a great creamy head on it after two more weeks. Very complex hops presence with plenty of citrus/grapefruit up front. As a young beer, it's drinking more like a green flash palate wrecker than a sculpin but we'll see after another few weeks of aging when the hops fade slightly. The heat dials in perfectly as a background note. Aftertaste is malty hop complexity with floral fruit notes and a soft warmth from the mouth to the esophagus to the stomach.
 
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