Yellow Ghost Pepper

Opens with lemon-zest citrus and tropical fruit, then the delayed, lingering ghost-pepper burn. Brighter and less earthy than red Bhut Jolokia, with the same slow-building heat.

Yellow Ghost Pepper is the yellow-ripe color line of Bhut Jolokia, the northeastern Indian landrace that first broke the one-million SHU mark. Plants produce pendant, wrinkled, tapered pods that mature from green to a bright golden yellow rather than red. Heat is typically cited at 800,000–1,000,000 SHU — still firmly superhot, and often described as a notch below the reddest record pods — with a delayed burn and a citrus-forward fruitiness that reads cleaner than the smokier red ghost. Growers treat it as a long-season Capsicum chinense: slow to germinate without warm soil, 120 or more days to ripe fruit, and best in full sun with even moisture. In the kitchen a little goes a long way in sauces, powders, pickles, and fruit pairings.

Bhut Jolokia — Assamese for ghost chili — is a farmer-maintained landrace from Assam, Nagaland, and Manipur. Yellow-ripe plants were pulled from that same variable population and stabilized by growers; the line is a color phenotype of the ghost pepper, not a separately invented hybrid.

How hot is Yellow Ghost Pepper?

Capsi’s sourced range is 300,000–1,041,427 SHU (Vendor Claim). Capsi uses a sourced range and a trust tier, not a single marketing number. How we verify heat: https://web.thecapsi.app/learn/heat-and-capsaicin/how-we-measure-heat

What does Yellow Ghost Pepper taste like?

Opens with lemon-zest citrus and tropical fruit, then the delayed, lingering ghost-pepper burn. Brighter and less earthy than red Bhut Jolokia, with the same slow-building heat.

How do I grow Yellow Ghost Pepper?

Yellow Ghost Pepper: about 120 days to maturity, subtropical climate, full sun, hardiness zones 9-11.

What can I substitute for Yellow Ghost Pepper?

Capsi does not have that recorded yet.