Cocoa Loco - the #ChocoChallenge

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Flack
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Cocoa Loco - the #ChocoChallenge

Post by Flack »

Tuesday afternoon, I entered our computer lab and found a few of the guys staring at a small box. The box was roughly 6" square and black with a foil picture of a flaming skull and the words "Cocoa Loco" printed on the lid.

Inside the box was a single piece of chocolate. It was wrapped in foil, maybe an inch and a half squared, and no thicker than a Hersey's chocolate bar. It was the word "Scoville" that caught my attention. Cocoa Loco is a small chocolate bar mixed with a Black Reaper Pepper, which has a Scoville heat rating of 2.2 million units, making it currently the hottest pepper on the planet. (The Carolina Reaper is around 1.5 million. The hottest cayenne peppers are around 50,000.)

The $20 Cocoa Loco comes with a #CocoaChallenge, in which people are encouraged to film their reaction after eating the whole bar at once. No one in the lab was willing to eat the entire bar; instead, three of the lab techs had agreed to each eat a quarter of the bar, leaving the final fourth for others to sample. Based on my experience with eating super hot things, I was given a morsel roughly the size of a large freckle.

I put the tiny piece of chocolate (roughly the size of one pebble of meat from a taco) in my mouth and it took about two seconds for the heat to hit me. The roof of my mouth exploded. My piece of chocolate was so small that it immediately dissipated in my mouth; there was nothing to chew or swallow. The first time I swallowed, I felt the heat spread to the back of my throat as the spit went down. The only drink I had nearby was a piping hot cup of coffee, which I began to drink as fast as I could. It was easy to tell which parts of my lips, mouth, and throat the chocolate had touched, and which it had spared.

Meanwhile, the guys who had consumed the quarter-bars were in their own hells. The kid I felt the worst for said the top of his head and even his ears were burning. I didn't have enough to experience this, but many of them complained of their chests and backs burning. My physical symptoms were limited to sweating (head, face, sides, back) and tears, which lasted roughly 15 minutes. For the others, the heat lasted well over an hour. There were hiccups, lots of pacing, and multiple requests for someone (anyone) to "go get some milk."

If you're curious, search YouTube for #ChocoChallenge. Here's a clip of husband and wife Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard giving it a go. Fun starts around the 4 minute mark.

"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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AArdvark
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Re: Cocoa Loco - the #ChocoChallenge

Post by AArdvark »

Fuck that noise! There's no way I'd even smell something like that. I remember that video where pinback won something for eating those monster hot wings and his look of victory / pain still haunts me. I can handle maybe two medium wings and that's it. Chemical burns in the mouth do not sound like fun at all. Wrapping the pepper in chocolate is just plain evil.

THE
BURN BABY BURN
AARDVAK

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