Why is Da Bomb so hot, despite the low Scoville rating

When people ask us what the hottest sauce is that we sell, we always immediately think of Da Bomb. The guests of the YouTube show Hot Ones will believe us right away, because it’s an incredibly painful/hot sauce that pretty much destroys every Hot Ones guest. And that’s while the Scoville score is ‘only’ 135,600. Much lower than, for example, the Hellfire Fear This (almost 700k) and The Last Dab (2 million+). But how is it possible that Da Bomb feels hotter and more painful?

Why Da Bomb is so hot

The most obvious reason is that chili extract is used in Da Bomb and that it just hits harder. That’s incorrect, because all capsicum molecules are the same. The reason why Da Bomb is so hot despite the ‘low Scoville score’ is because Da Bomb actually scores 135,000 Scoville Heat Units. The other sauces claim to be hotter, but that’s incorrect. We’re going to explain that with the help of Reddit user hamstringstring.

The Scoville scores that pretty much everyone (including Hot Ones) uses are based on the dry weight of peppers, while that’s not entirely fair, because most peppers are 85% water. The Scoville score is actually multiplied by 10. Take the Carolina Reaper, for example. The former hottest pepper scores about 2.2 million SHU, while the fresh Scoville rating would actually be only 2.2 million x 0.15 (15%) = 330,000. Those peppers are then combined with a lot of other ingredients in the sauce, resulting in a much lower Scoville score and thus feeling much less hot. This is clarified below.

The big difference with chili extract sauces like Da Bomb is that the Scoville rating of an extract is indeed precisely correct and therefore hotter than most with higher Scoville scores. Other much-feared hot sauces with extract are Mad Dog 357, Blair’s Mega Death (with Liquid Rage), and Dave’s Gourmet Ghost Pepper. Here you can find all our extremely hot sauces, including those with extract.

Are you now curious about how they make Da Bomb, with that mysterious extract? In this article, you can check out how Da Bomb hot sauce is made.