*Subjective claims ;)
I grow peppers on our (small) family farm in Florida… mostly Ghost, Trinidad Scorpion and Carolina Reaper. I chose them for their heat, flavor, reputation, appearance and for how they compliment each other when blended.
The graph in the image is from our website (https://firecracker.farm/super-hot-peppers/) and illustrates my subjective perception of the peppers we grow. It’s marketing but I think it’s true. Friends and family so far seem to agree about the flavor profiles and they way that they traverse the palette but it’s no controlled study ;)
My flavor and progression assessments:
Ghost: Robust, fruity heat that spreads quickly then rests evenly on the palette, accentuating flavors and textures while incinerating tension away into the ether.
Scorpion: Sweet, earthy flavor with saturated depth, and a swelling, relentless sting that builds steadily, then smolders and chars throughout the body, bringing agony induced euphoria.
Reaper: Pungent floral aroma strikes immediately and drives stabbing, sharp heat to its violent peak intensity in an instant and then quietly tapers into a crucible of delirium.
Do you agree? I’d love to know what everyone thinks of the opinion.
Backstory:
I’ve recently embarked on a hot pepper venture growing three varieties of superhot pepper for use in hot salts and other seasonings/sauces/treats. My company, Firecracker Farm consists of myself, my wife and our 5 children and is a bootstrapped adventure that is one part completely new to us (farming and making a physical product) and one part extension of what I do to pay the bills (design, web-dev and media production). We do everything from planning and building out irrigation, to experimenting with growing/pruning and container types, to designing logos, designing packaging prototypes, sourcing manufacturers for packaging, harvest, prep and production of the products, developing an e-commerce website, taking photos and videos , social media (yuck, I have a hard time with this one).
On here, I mostly post about growing and the peppers or lurk on r/Battlecars or r/dadjokesI begrudgingly started to use instagram ultrahotpeppers for the more shallow, short attention span stuff and more edgy marketing oriented stuff because I think I need to get traction. There is some overlap though with pepper photos :).
I don’t have a blog on our site. No one will ever read it…
Since I’m an open book this evening, here is a quick note on market position: I have deliberately priced our stuff (very) high. All aspects of the process and materials are time consuming, expensive, done by hand by me with occasional assistance from my kids. It’s a craft product in high end packaging that is intended to be and feel special. Making something exclusive and refined is something I always wanted to do. I think it may offend some would be customers but I’m ok with that. I don’t have to please everyone or make a product for everyone. Doing it this way enables me to give it away to friends and offer discounts at my discretion. Plus, it alleviates the need to mass produce or scale up at this time which is great, because I love the hands on aspect of growing, making, documenting, experimenting, learning etc… it’s challenging and it’s fun.
If I don’t get flamed to oblivion for this post, I’ll share more about design, packaging, processing, increasing yields (I’m new to agriculture so my advice here may not be the best!)
This sub has been so cool, friendly, informative and encouraging. I hope you’ll root for me out there in the bare knuckle brawl that is marketing and e-commerce. If you want to help me out, give me a follow on IG and a like or comment, it would be a huge help in getting the ball rolling and getting some exposure.
Also, if any of you are on a similar path, let me know and I’ll return the favor. I’m also very happy to connect to offer my experience.
If you got this far, please let me know what you think regarding the graph.
Thank you!
Alex