I just read the below “[FONT="]Peppers, keep the flavor, lose the heat” [/FONT][FONT="]thread[/FONT]
[FONT="]http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=230925[/FONT]
[FONT="]and thought I'd pass this along: [/FONT]
[FONT="]At the end of every garden season I take my remaining crop of hot peppers & preserve them for use during the winter by chopping them up & soaking in white vinegar for 24 hours then straining & packing in olive oil. Capsaicin is soluble in vinegar so most of the heat goes down the drain with the vinegar leaving very flavorful (but not hot) peppers behind, I love hot peppers but this is worth the trade off to have something home grown to use during the winter. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Fast forward to this winter where a pack of squirrels invaded my porch soffit & walls nesting, breading and generally ass slapping my property. First step was to seal it up, which I did with wire mesh: [/FONT]
there's 24 feet of this so it took some doing:
[FONT="]Successful in blocking their entry points they returned & commenced a campaign of ripping new areas of wood adjacent to the wire mesh in an effort to reenter ‘their’ home. I needed a deterrent. Having read of the distaste the tree rat has for hot pepper I decided to use them in defense so I made a small batch by dissolving some Dizzy Pig Ghost Pepper rub in vinegar & used a Windex bottle to spray it all around the perimeter. It worked but clogged the sprayer so I couldn’t re-use. To my dismay within a week they were back but now relocated their efforts to the center of the porch, random going nowhere spots were attacked & piles[/FONT][FONT="]of shredded wood were on the floor, here's a spot in the dead center of the porch where they attacked the support beam:[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]It was time to make a much larger super batch of highly toxic pepper juice from scratch.
One pound of fresh habaneros shredded in a food processor & steeping in 1.5 gallons of white vinegar, total cost $6.00:[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]let it go for 48 hours to be sure, then strained:[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]At this point I tasted it. To call it violent hot without any redeeming culinary application is an understatement.
Fully weaponized & bottled:[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]Into the delivery system, a 4 gallon Chapin Pump Sprayer[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]I put the goggles on & soaked every square inch of the ceiling & walls, twice; place smelled like a hoagie for about two days then went away but what was left behind was pure evenly distributed capscasin oil on every surface the rodent may taste.
It worked.
Shortly after this application I came out one morning to find 2 shreds of wood at a new attack point (only 2 rather than the usual giant pile). I speculate he ripped off the first shred & sometime after getting after the second the oil kicked in & that was that; that hot pepper delay is a bitch :clap:. This was a couple weeks ago & I haven't seen a sign of them since so I'm declaring victory. I made a new batch steeped a full 7 days & it sits bottled & ready to go, plan is to re-douse everything late summer when they're scrambling to nest; though probably overkill for another $6.00 it's worth it.
Conclusion, if you're trying to de-heat peppers for culinary reasons or to deter the tree rat from making your home his, this works well.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=230925[/FONT]
[FONT="]and thought I'd pass this along: [/FONT]
[FONT="]At the end of every garden season I take my remaining crop of hot peppers & preserve them for use during the winter by chopping them up & soaking in white vinegar for 24 hours then straining & packing in olive oil. Capsaicin is soluble in vinegar so most of the heat goes down the drain with the vinegar leaving very flavorful (but not hot) peppers behind, I love hot peppers but this is worth the trade off to have something home grown to use during the winter. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Fast forward to this winter where a pack of squirrels invaded my porch soffit & walls nesting, breading and generally ass slapping my property. First step was to seal it up, which I did with wire mesh: [/FONT]
there's 24 feet of this so it took some doing:
[FONT="]Successful in blocking their entry points they returned & commenced a campaign of ripping new areas of wood adjacent to the wire mesh in an effort to reenter ‘their’ home. I needed a deterrent. Having read of the distaste the tree rat has for hot pepper I decided to use them in defense so I made a small batch by dissolving some Dizzy Pig Ghost Pepper rub in vinegar & used a Windex bottle to spray it all around the perimeter. It worked but clogged the sprayer so I couldn’t re-use. To my dismay within a week they were back but now relocated their efforts to the center of the porch, random going nowhere spots were attacked & piles[/FONT][FONT="]of shredded wood were on the floor, here's a spot in the dead center of the porch where they attacked the support beam:[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]It was time to make a much larger super batch of highly toxic pepper juice from scratch.
One pound of fresh habaneros shredded in a food processor & steeping in 1.5 gallons of white vinegar, total cost $6.00:[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]let it go for 48 hours to be sure, then strained:[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]At this point I tasted it. To call it violent hot without any redeeming culinary application is an understatement.
Fully weaponized & bottled:[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]Into the delivery system, a 4 gallon Chapin Pump Sprayer[/FONT][FONT="]
[/FONT][FONT="]I put the goggles on & soaked every square inch of the ceiling & walls, twice; place smelled like a hoagie for about two days then went away but what was left behind was pure evenly distributed capscasin oil on every surface the rodent may taste.
It worked.
Shortly after this application I came out one morning to find 2 shreds of wood at a new attack point (only 2 rather than the usual giant pile). I speculate he ripped off the first shred & sometime after getting after the second the oil kicked in & that was that; that hot pepper delay is a bitch :clap:. This was a couple weeks ago & I haven't seen a sign of them since so I'm declaring victory. I made a new batch steeped a full 7 days & it sits bottled & ready to go, plan is to re-douse everything late summer when they're scrambling to nest; though probably overkill for another $6.00 it's worth it.
Conclusion, if you're trying to de-heat peppers for culinary reasons or to deter the tree rat from making your home his, this works well.
[/FONT]
