Becoming that next creator of the Hottest Pepper in the World can mean big business. Many home growers swear their peppers are hotter than the Reaper.

Ever wanted to find out how your peppers officially rank? Good news! It’s actually not that difficult or expensive to find out for sure.

I wanted to share how hot peppers can be officially tested. And how easy it can be to get your own peppers tested.

I recently had a reader email me (shout out to Bob!) asking how he could get his hot peppers tested. He wanted to see how they might rank on the Scoville scale.

His questions were

Where is testing is done?

When is it done?

Is testing open to the public?

How to package & transport peppers for testing and

What are the costs involved in testing?

I honestly wasn’t clear on the entire process myself, but I knew the perfect person that could help. I contacted my friend Troy Primeaux, owner of Primo’s Peppers. He’s a horticulturist from Louisiana and the creator of the 7 Pot Primo.

I knew Troy had submitted his peppers to a few labs to be tested. Years prior he had sent me his official testing results, to ensure that I had his Primo pepper correctly ranked on my Big List of Hot Peppers!

Now, I’ll be honest, when Primo emailed me, and included the official testing documentation about where the Primo pepper should be ranked on my Big List of Hot Peppers, I was like “wow, how cool is that?”

So I knew Troy, who is always willing to help out and provide information, would be the perfect person to shed light on this subject.