Caribbean Beat — May/June 2018 (#151)

Some of the world’s hottest peppers originate in
Trinidad. Websites for hot pepper specialists like
Pepperhead.com and Pepperscale.com have listed
the Moruga Scorpion, Seven-Pot Barrackpore,
Seven-Pot Jonah, Seven-Pot Brain Strain, and
Seven-Pot Douglah (a.k.a. Chocolate Seven-Pot)
varieties as among the world’s fiercest. Many of
these peppers are not sold to the public, as they’re
used as components of products like pepper spray
and barnacle-resistant paints for the marine
industry.
But Trinidad’s peppers are also a huge draw
for pepper sauce makers in other countries,
like the UK.
Hot and spicy peppers have been a longtime
obsession for Mark Gevaux, the East
Londoner known as “The Ribman.” I first met
Gevaux in London around 2010, on a trip to
Brick Lane in search of the legendary Jewishstyle
bagel filled with hot salt beef. I got my bagel,
but I also discovered Gevaux’s stall, where he sells
pulled pork sandwiches and tasty ribs every Sunday.
What I wasn’t prepared for was his exceptional
pepper sauce, with the cheeky name Holy F*ck. It
was one of the best I’d ever tasted.
Some of the world’s hottest
peppers originate in
Trinidad. Websites for hot
pepper specialists have
listed the Moruga Scorpion
and other varieties as
among the world’s fiercest
“Most of the time I felt like I was born in the
wrong country,” says Gevaux of his hot pepper
obsession. “I’ve always liked hot stuff, but when I
was growing up thirty-five years ago, there wasn’t
that much around. You had to go to an Indian
restaurant to get your spice kick.”
Gevaux started his business after being let
go from his butchery job. He started selling his
slow-cooked ribs at farmers’ markets, and began
making hot sauces when he couldn’t find a good
store-bought option. He disliked what he describes
as the overuse of vinegar in most of the sauces on
the shelf, and the taste he was after was simple:
pepper and spices.
By trial and error, he eventually found the right
formula, and the perfect combination of peppers.
That was the product he called Holy F*ck, named
because Gevaux noticed it was “one of the first
How hot is hot?
The Scoville Scale is a measure, named after Wilbur
L. Scoville, of the chilli pepper’s heat. Put simply,
it measures the concentration of the chemical
compound capsaicin. Capsaicin is the beautiful
natural chemical that brings the heat and makes
your forehead sweat, your tongue burn, and your
stomach ache. To measure the concentration of
capsaicin, a solution of a chilli pepper’s extract is
diluted in sugar water until the “heat” is no longer
detectable to a panel of tasters. A rating of zero
Scoville Heat Units (SHUs) means there is no heat
detectable.
To illustrate how hot some peppers are, pure
capsaicin is 16,000,000 SHU. Relative to that, the
Moruga Scorpion measures 2,009,231 SHU and the
Scotch Bonnet comes in with a rating of 325,000 SHU.
things customers would say after tasting it for the first time.”
As his popularity grew, Gevaux needed to quickly find an alternative venue
for making his sauce. “I used to make it at home, about twenty or thirty bottles
at a time. I had to stop, because my neighbours would complain — they’d be
coughing up their lungs in the lift, the pepper was so strong,” he says with a
laugh.
Over the years, The Ribman has produced three more pepper sauces,
Christ on a Bike, Holy Mother of God, and Judas Is Scary Hot — the latter
two eliciting raised eyebrows from his Roman Catholic wife. And, of course,
Gevaux uses Caribbean peppers as the base for his sauces.
“The best peppers for many sauces are Scotch Bonnets, because of the
fruity heat. It’s just amazing, I love it,” he says. “I think most people can tolerate
it if cooked right. Scotch Bonnets are a fantastic and beautiful pepper.” He
also uses Trinidad’s Moruga Scorpions, Dorset Nagas, and Carolina Reapers.
Gevaux says a lot of his customers are from pepper-loving cultures —
Indians, Africans, and West Indians. He hopes to reach a wider audience, as
his sauces will soon be distributed to butchers’ shops all across the UK.
Servicing the diaspora is a tempting prospect for the folks at Bertie’s also,
but at the moment they have enough of a challenge to keep the domestic
market satisfied.
In 2017, the supply of fresh peppers in Trinidad was compromised by flooding
caused by Tropical Storm Bret in June and other freak flooding incidents
later in the year. There is also a shortage of foreign exchange that has affected
glass bottle manufacturers.
“If we were lucky enough to get into another market, and they said they
liked the product and wanted a container a month, it’s not only the peppers —
where are we getting the bottles, the caps? We would now have to buy years’
supplies of that,” Allana Steuart says. “We have to organise ourselves within
this small territory to make sure we have it covered, and start working more
closely with farmers when we see the opportunity.”
So for now, foreign-based pepper sauce connoisseurs will just have to ask
for someone to throw a couple of bottles in their suitcase if they want their
Bertie’s fix. n
34
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