Drying habanero's

This is probably (HOPEfully) a dumb question, but you do only grind peppers with that grinder, right Scott??

If you want expert advise, send a pm to Mark. Then post what he tells you to do.

I dry mine in the airing cupboard.

I tie them in bunches on lengths of string and just hang them off the bottom shelf by the tank.

First off all, you should have brought the whole plant inside before the first hard freeze. Pepper plants are perennials, like trees. If the peppers are still bright orange it probably means they dried on the vine. Just finish drying what you have on the lowest setting in your oven untill they are no longer pliable.
If the peppers on the vine are NOT still bright orange, that means they have frozen on the vine. When you cut them open they will be mushy and there will be a lot of liquid because the cell walls have ruptured releasing the moisture. Unless its stayed below freezing there (which I doubt) your peppers still on the vine are in the process of decomposing (rotting).

Actually, it sounds like the peppers you brought in that turned brown were already frozen too. Thus, they rotted instead of dried.

If you do have salvagable peppers, once they are dried to a crisp, put them in a heavy duty freezer bag and crush them well with a rolling pin. Beware of the dust, Then just fill up empty spice jars.

Yeah, the oven. I personally wouldnt bother spending 8 hours (or more) smoke drying that small a batch. OTOH, Last Wednesday night I did smoke-dry a couple of trays of hot peppers while the turkey and pork tenderloins were smoking. So you could do something like that. But its so easy to go from non-pliable to char in a smoker that I actually prefer to finish-off in the oven. Be warned, anyone else in the house at the time might think they're being sprayed with mace.

PS.

I usually cut them in half to sped drying and remove stems.