Over the winter break we tried the self proclaimed “World’s Hottest Beef Jerky”.  It was bought in Van Buren, Arkansas at Keys Family Butcher Shop. The beef jerky is made in house and it contains a multitude of peppers including, carolina reaper, trinidad scorpion, and ghost pepper.  With all of these peppers the beef jerky rounds out at over 5 million scoville units. To put that into perspective, Tabasco is about 3,750 scoville heat units and pepper spray is 5.3 million scoville heat units.  On the 31st of December, 2019 we tried the “World’s Hottest Beef Jerky”, here’s our reviews.  

Jacob Jones:  “The World’s Hottest Beef Jerky” was not as hot as I expected it to be.  With it being over 5 million scoville heat units I assumed it would put my mouth ablaze.  It didn’t have that effect on me. Of course it burned, but I was expecting excruciating pain and the need for immediate relief, neither of which occurred.  There is a challenge that goes with the beef jerky and the challenge is as follows, go 6 minutes without eating ice cream, drinking milk, or getting any type of relief.  I made it my mission to try and complete this challenge, but I failed. I did however last over 2 minutes without relief. Afterwards, everything went downhill. The burn seemed to never go away and although it was very hot it didn’t seem to ever reach the point I thought it would.  The worst of the burn lasted about 15 minutes and even after the worst of it was gone it still burned, a lot. The flavor of the jerky was nonexistent. The jerky didn’t offer anything else besides pain. All in all, I expected the burn to be worse than it was, since it ranks about the same as pepper spray on the scoville heat scale.  If I had to give the jerky a rating it would be a 3/10 on the flavor scale. On the heat scale it’s definitely a 9/10. The experience was one I was glad to have and although I wouldn’t do it again, I am glad I got the chance to consume “The World’s Hottest Beef Jerky”.  

Jacob Horn: I took one bite of the World’s Hottest Beef Jerky and went numb for half an hour. This part of the review is going to be very different from Jacob Jones’ review so here we go. I bit into a piece of the beef jerky and didn’t really feel anything for the first couple of minutes, over the next 30 minutes I experienced the worst pain while eating ever and that is no lie. Once the pain started to set in I was in an all out frantic panic to get any kind of liquid or cold substance to erase the heat. I must’ve drank a quarter of a gallon of milk within the first 2 minutes of eating. I ate most of the tub of ice cream we had set out for us and when I ran out of drinks and cold things, I ran outside and breathed in as much cold air as I possibly could. I didn’t have a whole lot of expectations going into it, maybe a couple minutes of intolerable heat but nothing more, when the pain set in I thought it would never leave. The pain was excruciating and in that moment I wish I had never even considered eating the jerky. I can’t even describe how my mouth felt because after the heat set in my mouth started going numb. Needless to say, I failed the challenge fairly quickly. Overall, the heat is what I was here for and the heat is what I got, however, the jerky had little to no flavor it was just heat captured and turned into a rub that I swear could take down a small militia. The only way I would eat this jerky again is if it were the last thing to eat on Earth but I had fun looking back at the videos and pictures of me with tears streaming down my red face and sporadically going to chug milk with a scoop of ice cream in my mouth. 9/10 one time review, never doing it again.

Those were our thoughts on the “World’s Hottest Beef Jerky”. In the end, we had a great time eating this jerky, although we both agree that we would never do it again, we had fun watching each other and others who ate it with us suffer. We hope you enjoyed our thoughts on the “World’s Hottest Beef Jerky” and if you’re feeling brave, go out and try it for yourself! You may have an experience close to ours or have one that is completely different but if you are in the mood for some beef jerky that is so hot it shouldn’t be legal, Keys Family Butcher in Van Buren, Arkansas can hook you up.