If you love hot and spicy foods, then visiting a hot sauce store is sure to be a wonderful experience. You'll enjoy browsing the aisles, reading about the different sauces, and selecting a few to take home and try. As you do so, though, you might come across a few terms you're unfamiliar with.

Knowing the meanings of these terms will help you shop more effectively.

Scoville: You may see hot sauces specify that they have a certain rank on the Scoville scale, or that they reach a certain number of Scoville units. This is just an indicator of hotness. Sometimes, Scoville Heat Units are abbreviated SHU — it's the same thing. The higher a hot sauce ranks on this scale, the hotter it is. The hottest sauces rank at more than 80,000 Scoville units. For reference, cayenne pepper is about 25,000 Scoville units. Many hot sauce stores use the Scoville scale to organize their sauces, placing those with lower SHU on the shelves closest to the door, and working their way towards the sauces with the highest SHU towards the back of the store.

Capsaicin: This is just the compound that makes hot sauces hot. The more capsaicin, the hotter the sauce. 

Pungency: If the hot sauce store advertises certain sauces as pungent or as having high pungency, this is different than saying they are hot. Pungency refers to how concentrated the flavor is. A really pungent sauce has a lot of flavor in just a few drops.

Pequin: This is a type of pepper. It's not as common as jalapenos or habaneros, but hot sauce manufacturers are beginning to use it more often, so some hot sauce stores may have an aisle or endcap dedicated to sauces made with pequin peppers. These peppers are only about 1/2 inch long, but they are really hot. The heat they release burns slowly and lasts a long time.

Red Savina: This is another type of pepper that hot sauce stores are featuring more often. It's a specific type of habanero but is even hotter. Some claim that it's the hottest pepper in the world.

Scotch Bonnet: Another increasingly common pepper, this one has its own fan club. Most hot sauce stores carry a wide range of Scotch Bonnet-based sauces. It's a relative of the habanero but seems to have a more complex flavor.

When you visit a hot sauce store, you should now have an easier time deciphering the bottles and signage. Enjoy your experience — it's sure to be hot!

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