Arts & Life

Fear the Reaper: Delirium and indigestion at the First California Hot Sauce Expo

Soon after arriving at the First Hot Sauce Expo, I’m drawn to a group of people circling a pingpong table. There, two men square off in what looks to be an innocent game of beer pong. As I get to the front, the winning shot falls in. Cheers all around. The losing squad scrunch up their faces in defeat—and for good reason.

The red plastic cups don’t contain lager or even liquor. They contained hot sauce—habanero hot sauce.

But while the habanero might take the stuffing out of your average pepperhead, I’d come in search of something much more sinister: the fabled HP22B pepper. Otherwise known as the Carolina Reaper— infamous for the ravage it wrecks on the innards of those foolish enough to take a bite.

To find it, all I had to do was follow the peppers’ path of destruction, which wouldn’t be hard.

Poor Tautis Skorka suffers after eating a ghost pepper, a Carolina Reaper Pepper and playing hot sauce pong the First Annual Hot Sauce Expo in Long Beach.
Nicholas Jones
Poor Tautis Skorka suffers after eating a ghost pepper, a Carolina Reaper Pepper and playing hot sauce pong the First Annual Hot Sauce Expo in Long Beach.

I quickly spot a sweat-spattered attendee panting in the shade of a tree. Tautis Skorka had eaten a Carolina Reaper not 30 minutes before and was still suffering from the ensuing dragon breath.

“It burns from your face all the way to your hands,” he says.

First bred by Ed Harris, mad scientist of the pepper world and founder of the Puckerbutt Pepper Company, the Carolina Reaper is not your garden-variety capsicum. It packs a hundred times the heat of a jalapeno and double that of its granddaddy, the ghost pepper.

Peaking at 2.2 million Scoville heat units, a measure of spiciness, this little hell-spawn is the world’s hottest pepper, according to The Guinness Book of World Records.

To give you a quick reference point: Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce registers a measly score of 2,500 on the Scoville heat scale. Weak sauce compared to the Carolina Reaper.

As I made my way through the expo, I ran into Steve Seabury, a longtime fire-eater and New York native. He organized the expo and said he runs a similar event back home, which draws over 11,000 people.

I tell him about my plans to eat a Carolina Reaper.

“That pepper will destroy you. It is sold to the United States military for military-grade pepper spray,” he says.

With that, the first wisps of doubt began to gather in the back of my mind.

Seabury points me in the direction of a black tent on the far side of the concourse and tells me I’ll find what I’m looking for there.

Approaching the ominous black tent, I see them. They’re little things, prune-sized chili peppers with a fiercely red completion and the skin texture of a leper. From one end of their body a small pointed projection sticks out like Lucifer’s tail.

I find Harris behind the booth, and he asks me if I’d like to sample a pepper. Before I know it, he’s holding out a knife with a quarter Reaper speared through the tip. I look at it tentatively. His devilish grin looms beyond the outstretched knife.

Ed Currie, creator of the Carolina Reaper pepper, mischievously offers one of his tongue-scorchers at the First Annual Hot Sauce Expo in Long Beach.
Nicholas Jones
Ed Currie, creator of the Carolina Reaper pepper, mischievously offers one of his tongue-scorchers at the First Annual Hot Sauce Expo in Long Beach.

In one motion, I take the slice in my fingers and pop the whole thing in my mouth with a purposeful show of abandon. There. Done.

“Make sure you don’t touch your face with your hands,” Harris says.

I chew down a few times. The fruit had a coarse texture. The initial rush of flavor is sweet and pungent, pretty close to a bell pepper. “This ain’t so bad,” I think.

Then a clutch of panic seizes my jaw. Out of nowhere the heat comes on strong and fast. Fire alarms ring in my head.

“Your body goes into fight or flight mode. It’s the people who go into flight who can’t handle it and run to the hospital,” Harris says.

Hospital?

I close my eyes and begrudgingly swallow the half-masticated pepper. In an instant, the pepper-turned-fireball makes me acutely aware of my throat’s anatomy as it goes down the shoot. My esophagus and tonsils pulse in pain from the pepper’s oily residue. My immune system has been summoned full-force.

“Eating one of these peppers is the equivalent to the endorphin rush of taking two grams of heroin, medically. You get that high,” Harris says.

But instead the heat seers at full force. I’m cinching my mouth in pain. I give Harris a lip smile, a farewell wave, and head off to suffer in private.

I see a bar and stagger toward it like a castaway toward an oasis. A beer never sounded more refreshing. However, moving my swollen mouthparts to order poses a challenge.

I try to speak—nothing. My lips are enraged, my sinuses are dripping, and the welling saliva in my mouth might as well be hot sauce. I surely look like a mess. I purse my lips and point at a tap. Luckily, the bartender seems understanding.

Steve Seabury, organizer of the First Annual Hot Sauce Expo in Long Beach, contemplates his love of hot sauce behind the booth of his own brand, High River Sauces.
Nicholas Jones
Steve Seabury, organizer of the First Annual Hot Sauce Expo in Long Beach, contemplates his love of hot sauce behind the booth of his own brand, High River Sauces.

Beer gone, the burn begins to subside. But now the pepper has reached my stomach, which feels like a molten planet dangling by a hook from my insides. And it was only going to get worse.

Harris had said that once the pepper made it to the intestines, the cramps would begin. And later that night I’d curse the pepper as I wriggled in pain, my guts a twisting into a pretzel. But for now, there was nothing left to do but wait.

I pull out Harris’s business card and notice the words are blurry. My body is buzzing and tingling. The endorphins have kicked in, and I have the uncontrollable urge to laugh—especially because the event’s stage is being transformed into The Stage of Doom where contestants will be attempting to scarf down as many of the Carolina Reaper peppers as possible in the span of a minute. I let out a booming chuckle; relieved I’m not the biggest sucker at the event.

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