funny that it seems only a seasoned veteran WSJ staff member would rise to this challenge. well, my hat’s off to him – that didn’t seem like an easy undertaking, yet he pulled it off with finess, without expletives, squirming or even leaving the chair. facial expressions are great, and at one point you wonder if this triggered some prior hallucinogenic experience. a brave soul indeed.

Last year (2007), I witnessed to men on seperate occasions chew and down an entire Bhut Jolokia. It was both their birthdays and I suppose they wanted to do something crazy. I grow Bhut’s and Hab’s both.

The first victim was probably 19-20 years old. Within minutes of consuming the Bhut his face and eyes were the same color red. Naturally vomitting ensued. We gave him milk, crackers, etc. etc. to help him out. After 20 minutes he was recovering….but get this. 10 minutes after it looked like he was going to pull thru, he relapsed. Puking again along with his eyes and face turning the same color red again.

It took him at least an hour to get back to a controlable state. I saw him 2 weeks later and asked how he was. He said it took nearly a full week to get over that Bhut.

The 2nd fella that ate a Bhut. Man or MAN!!!! This guy did it like a true PRO. I’m guessing he was in his young 20′s. Definetly grew up with a farming family. It tore him up for maybe 15 minutes at best, and he was fine after that. A true Bhut Jolokia Champion in my book.

This is my 2nd year growing Bhuts, I’ve only had small pieces of them. I’ve never taken a full chomp out of one. I’ll chomp a habañero, even the Red Savina’s, but not the Bhut’s.

I grew both Bhut’s and Red Savina’s this year. I have 50+ of each pepper.

I had to sample the Bhut, bad boy, and yes this is one hot mo-fo. I only took a cross-sectional slice. It starts out with a very sweet pepper flavor, tasty. Then it grabs you by the back of the throat, nearly shutting down your breathing. This intense feeling lasted about 15 minutes, but the heat lingered for another 30. I plan to make hot sauce out of this, but will leave out the seeds and pulp.

After that, I took it to my chile-head pal, and we ate one between us over the span of an hour with beer and bean tacos. There were other hot peppers involved at this tasting, as we tasted all seven varieties I grew (Serrano-2, Aji, Piquin, tabasco, red savina and bhut), in varying combinations. Actually that was fun.