Pepperheads Hot Sauces

On Saturdays and Sundays, Pepperheads sets up a table in the mall so passersby can sample some of the store's 800 hot sauces.

Only mild to hot sauces are on the tasting table. Extremely hot sauces are kept inside the store, and if you want to purchase one, you'll be asked to sign a waiver that reads, in part, "I hereby disclaim, release and relinquish any and all claims . . . relating to any damage and/or injury that results . . . from the use, consumption, ingestion and/or contact of any bodily part or organ of or from [name of hot sauce here]."

Is all this really necessary? Bruce Passarelli, who owns the store with his son Bryan, said that it isn't. "But, No. 1, it's a great marketing tool. No. 2, when you sign it, a bell goes off - this is going to be really hot. And No. 3, it means that kids under 18 can't buy the stuff ."

The names of the very hot sauces usually refer to insanity, death or pain: Dave's Insanity Sauce, Blair's Pure Death, Black Mamba (Its Bite is Deadly). Right now, Pepperheads' hottest sauce is something called Mad Dog 357 Silver Edition, which rates 750,000 Scoville Units. (The Scoville scale measures the heat of a pepper or pepper sauce. For comparison's sake, Tabasco comes in at about 2,100.)

The store's most sought-after product is the Jolokia pepper (aka ghost pepper) from Assam in India, which was ranked by Guinness World Records in 2007 as the world's hottest. It cannot be purchased fresh in the United States, but it figures in some prepared sauces, and Pepperheads carries it dried, in a sampler of two for $3.99 or a pint (30 to 40 peppers) for $19.95.

--Erica Marcus