Ed Currie, grower and developer of the world's hottest pepper, has Michigan ties

Ed Currie, the chili pepper guru known as Smokin' Ed, has topped his own record for developing the world's hottest pepper.

This past week, Currie introduced the world to Pepper X, his latest super-sizzler averaging 2.6 million Scoville Heat Units, or SHUs. Pepper X out-seated Currie's famed Carolina Reaper pepper, which averages 1.6 million SHUs. By comparison, a jalapeno can range from 2,000 to 8,000, according to scovillescale.org.

Pepper X earned the official title of World's Hottest Pepper by Guinness World Records on Oct. 9.

And this world's hottest chili pepper has a Michigan connection in more ways than one.

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Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Currie lives and farms in Fort Mill, South Carolina, with wife Linda and two children. He grows a variety of peppers and owns the PuckerButt Pepper Co., also in Fort Mill, which sells pepper seeds, hot sauce, salsas and several snack foods.

Currie said he is originally from New York and Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. But around 1976-77, he said the family moved to the Orchard Lake area. Currie attended Andover High School.

He's lived all over Michigan, is a Central Michigan University graduate and also attended other colleges.  At a young age, he said, he became addicted to drugs and alcohol, which worsened as he got older. It was while he was at college that he began researching peppers and got into the business in the '80s and '90s.

At one time, he also worked in the distribution department for Detroit Newspapers at the Sterling Heights facility. He credits a former distribution manager for helping him get clean and sober in 1999 at Brighton Hospital.

Since then, "life has been nothing but uphill ever since," he said.

We caught up with Currie about his latest fiery fame and Pepper X.

Questions and answers have been lightly edited for brevity.QUESTION: Aside from spending living in Michigan and going to college here, what is the Michigan connection to Pepper X?

ANSWER: There is another Michigan pepper guru, who I will not name, who was known for bringing in a variety of pepper seeds and growing peppers in Michigan, including the Moruga scorpion pepper. He gave me a seed for a pepper and when we grew it out, it was gnarly. I didn’t expect it to be hotter than the Carolina Reaper. But as we were breeding this out, it kept on getting hotter and hotter.

Q: How long have you been growing peppers?

A: Since the early 2000s, along with my wife, Linda. We have been growing and breeding peppers in South Carolina, along with making hot sauce and salsa since 2003. And the rest is history.Q: You started out with pepper seeds. How many have you come across?

A: I've been collecting pepper seeds for a long time and probably have 7,000-8,000 different seeds. Some are probably the same peppers but called different names all over the world.

Q: What varieties of peppers do you grow?

A: This year, we have around 160 varieties growing. We use no herbicides or pesticides. We have 35 acres of chile de arbol. But the majority is nine varieties of all different heat levels. From and other products.

Q: How excited were you to learn about the Guinness World Records distinction?

A: I didn’t find out that we were getting it until the "Hot Ones" YouTube TV shoot. That event was filmed on Sept. 29. I didn't know until we were filming and my rep at Guinness let me know like 1½ hours before.

Q: How hot is Pepper X?

A: It’s brutally hot. When I ate it on "Hot Ones" (the YouTube show) ... I have a great poker face and I am just holding it together. But it was fight or flight and I am a fighter. It was brutally burning within seconds. Within 10 minutes I was happy they shut off the camera. I ate a banana and that didn’t help and a milkshake didn’t help. The heat didn’t subside for 2 hours. The cramps got so bad ....  I couldn’t move for an hour. I was curled over on a chair. But I rode out the pain.

Q: How long have you been eating them?

A: We’ve been eating for years, sliced up small and with food. You can do it that way if you can eat hot foods. It's not a pleasant experience. We are pushing the envelope as far as what’s tolerable. I use the Gator (hot) sauce in small quantities. (The Gator hot sauce is made with mashed Pepper X, according to the PuckerButt Pepper Co. website.)Q: When did you start PuckerButt Pepper Co.?

A: It started around 2008. And a lot of people don’t know but the majority of our profits go to hundreds of charities. We support food banks. I believe it’s a gift from God so we give the money to charity.

Contact Detroit Free Press food and restaurant writer Susan Selasky and send food and restaurant news and tips to: sselasky@freepress.com. Follow @SusanMariecooks on Twitter. Subscribe to the Free Press.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ed Currie, developer of Pepper X, lived in Michigan