‘Groaning in pain’: Fort Mill man and creator of world’s hottest pepper tries his newest invention

FORT MILL — The inventor of the Carolina Reaper has been sweating over his newest creation — literally.

“I was feeling the heat for three and a half hours, then the cramps came,” Eddie Currie said. “And those cramps are horrible.”

Currie says his newest zesty veggie tops the Carolina Reaper on the Scoville scale, the metric used to determine a pepper’s heat level.

The Carolina Reaper clocks in at 1.64 million units. The new “Pepper X” is a full million units hotter at 2.69 million.

For comparison, a bell pepper is the base comparison at 0 units and a jalapeño scores between 2500 – 8000 units.

“I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain,” Currie described.

Pepper X just got certification from the Guinness Book of World Records, officially making it the hottest pepper in the world.

Up until the certification, the Carolina Reaper held the title.

Currie owns Puckerbutt Pepper Company in Fort Mill where he grows his heat-packed peppers.

“I’m a creator. I have art. So when I get peppers and bring them together, it creates something new. And that’s like a baby to me, and I get to see that baby grow and flourish,” Currie said.

He says he plans on growing an even hotter pepper in the future.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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