If you’re the kind of person who’s interested in getting a whole lot more spice in your life, a culinary thrill-seeker, then you may be interested in learning the secrets of how to make pure capsaicin. For the uninitiated, capsaicin is the active chemical ingredient in chili peppers that gives them their distinctive heat, that magic spark that makes them so fiery and makes people go crazy for spicy food.

So if that sounds like something that interests you, if you’re a bit of a daredevil and want to give it a try, then read right along with this article and learn all about how to make pure capsaicin with a little bit of alchemy and kitchen craftiness.

A Disclaimer

Before you dig into learning how to make pure capsaicin, it’s very much worth mentioning that some of the things you’ll be working with can, in fact, be a little on the dangerous side. For starters, it requires the use of highly flammable, occasionally toxic levels of alcohol for distillation purposes. Also, in learning how to make pure capsaicin, you’ll be working with incredibly potent chili peppers and extracting the chemical component which makes them spicy but can be considered toxic. It’s an incredibly potent irritant, and you are strongly advised to take proper safety precautions beforehand, including wearing gloves, goggles and possibly a facemask or respirator.

If you’re still on board for learning how to make pure capsaicin, then read on, adventurer.

What You’ll Need

Right off the bat in your mission to discover how to make pure capsaicin, you’re going to need to get your hands on some pure food-grade alcohol. This is necessary for the process of extracting the oils from the peppers and into an alcohol solution. It doesn’t really matter what kind of alcohol or where you get it from, so long as it’s the strong stuff: real grain alcohol.

Next in how to make pure capsaicin, you’ll need an assortment of dried peppers. Any capsaicin-bearing peppers of your choosing will do, so long as you’ve got a lot of them, depending on how much pure capsaicin you plan on making.

Once you’ve got all that ready, you’re good to go and are now ready to create pure capsaicin.

Down to Business

With your alcohol and your peppers ready, take your peppers and grind or chop them into as small of pieces as possible. Sometimes, it helps to use a food processor or chopper at this stage. Once that’s all done, fill the jar you’ll be using to make the pure capsaicin with the dried and chopped peppers, leaving about an inch or so up at the top. Give the jar a few shakes to settle everything in place, just in case.

Once you’ve got that done, pour your grain alcohol into the jar good and slow so as to make sure all the air rises up and out of the jar. Give it a few good thumps when you’re done, just to make sure there’s no air left down at the bottom. Now, take your lid and screw it on as tight as you can.

Ready for the fun part? All right, here it comes: time to wait

Seriously. No one ever said learning how to make pure capsaicin was going to be exciting. I suppose we could’ve warned you. Once you’ve got everything in a jar, the next step is to hide your concoction away from sunlight and heat for at least three days. While you’re waiting, though, give the jar a good shaking two or three times a day. Over the course of three or so days, you’ll notice something happening inside of the jar, though. You’ll begin to see it changing color, slowly taking on a dark red hue.

All right, you’ve got that part taken care of. Now comes what could potentially be the most dangerous step in learning how to make pure capsaicin. It cannot be stressed enough at this point that you should proceed with the utmost caution.

The Evaporation Process

Once you’ve allowed your chili pepper and alcohol mixture to settle for a few days, you’re ready to move along to the final stage of your capsaicin extract making process. Again, this is where things can get dangerous. The mixture you’ve created contains highly flammable alcohol, and the evaporation process will release flammable gasses. It’s recommended you wear gloves and glasses, along with a facemask. It never hurts to be too careful.

The easiest way to go about evaporating the alcohol from your chili mixture is going to involve getting your hands on a food steamer. There are other ways, but most of them are much more involved and include a ton more steps. Anyways, once you’ve got your food steamer setup and ready, you can transfer your alcohol and chili mixture to a container that will fit snugly into the top of the steamer.

Set the steamer to operate around 120F (50C), and whatever you do, don’t smoke around the thing. You’re working with a bomb for crying out loud. Just kidding, but seriously, take this stage super slowly and be careful. As the steamer does its work and evaporates the alcohol, it will rise up into the air in an incredibly flammable vapor.

Operating at around 120F, you should be evaporating roughly 1 ½ cups of alcohol an hour, but make sure to keep an eye on the process. You’ll know when it’s done when you’re left with a thick, sticky substance that somewhat resembles molasses. That’s your pure capsaicin right there. Once you’ve reached that point, you can turn off the steamer and give everything a little room and time to breathe and cool down.

Finishing Up

When everything is all said and done, take your extraction and scrape it out of your bowl and get it ready for storage. As an extra step, you can dilute it with a very small amount of white vinegar, which will also assist in neutralizing any remaining alcohol residue.

There you have it. You’re good to go and have learned everything you need to know about how to make pure capsaicin. Be careful, enjoy yourself, and have fun with your super hot and spicy extract.