Scoville scale: The hottest chillies in the world– in pictures

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Do you dare to take on the burn of a fearsome Carolina Reaper? Here are some of the chillies to beware of – or confront – grown by the Clifton Chilli Club, Bristol and measured on the Wilbur Scoville’s scale of heat

• Read more about the Clifton Chilli Club and their taste for adventure
• Felicity Cloake’s top five chilli sauces

Simon Wroe

Fri 22 Jan 2016 04.44 EST First published on Mon 12 Jan 2015 09.00 EST

• Peach Ghost Scorpion:

  750,000+ Scoville heat units A cross between a Ghost Chilli (Bhut jolokia) and a Trinidad Scorpion. Fruity taste gives way to terrible suffering. The Scoville scale ranks foods in terms of heat units, measured per unit of dry mass.

  Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Guardian

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• Chocolate Habalokia:

  c800,000 SHU A cross between a Chocolate Habanero and a Ghost Chilli

  Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Guardian

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• Dorset Naga:

  923,000+ SHU The chilli that began the modern British obsession. First cultivated by Joy and Michael Michaud at Sea Spring Farm, Dorset, it was named the hottest chilli in the world in 2006

  Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Guardian

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• Seven-Pot Habanero:

  1,100,000 SHU Originally from the Caribbean, it is called the Seven Pot because each little pod can add fire to seven family-size pots of stew

  Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Guardian

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• Trinidad Moruga Scorpion:

  1,200,000+ SHU Another record hot chilli, the Moruga Scorpion (Capiscum chinense) is from the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. Adrian Sherratt for the Guardian

  Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Guardian

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• Naga Viper:

  1,382,118 SHU Briefly the world’s hottest chilli in 2011, the Viper is a hybrid of other super-hots, including the Ghost Chilli and the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion

  Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Guardian

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• Carolina Reaper:

  1,569,300 SHU As a rule, the hottest chillies are the ugliest, and the Carolina Reaper is one ugly so-and-so. Five hundred times hotter than Tabasco, if your mouth can do the maths.

  Photograph: The Oxfordshire Chilli Garden/Alamy

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