Cayenne Pepper Drops: a botanical guide

This is a six-botanical liquid, not a single-plant extract. Every species comes from a different genus, and the part used changes from plant to plant.

Cayenne pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) is a nightshade — family Solanaceae, alongside tomato, potato, aubergine and tobacco. The part used is the fruit, the pod. The species came out of Central and South America and was carried round the world after the fifteenth century. Commercial cayenne is farmed rather than wild-harvested, with large growing areas in India, China, Mexico and East Africa. The pungency comes from a group of compounds called capsaicinoids, of which capsaicin is the best known.

Hawthorn (Crataegus species, chiefly Crataegus monogyna Jacq. and Crataegus laevigata (Poir.) DC.) is a thorny tree or shrub in the rose family, Rosaceae, and one of the commonest hedgerow trees in Britain. It is native across Europe, North Africa and western Asia. We use a juice concentrate made from the fruit — the small red haw berry — rather than the leaf and flower. Fruit is gathered from wild and hedgerow trees as well as from planted stands, which makes hawthorn the one botanical in this blend that is routinely wild-collected rather than farmed.

Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) is a herbaceous perennial in the ginger family, Zingiberaceae. The part used is the rhizome — the swollen underground stem, not a true root. India grows the large majority of the world crop. The orange-yellow pigments are the curcuminoids, of which curcumin is the principal one.

Turmeric is not known in the wild as a distinct species. It exists only in cultivation.

Black ginger (Kaempferia parviflora Wall. ex Baker) shares the family, Zingiberaceae, but not the genus: it is not culinary ginger (Zingiber officinale) and it is not the same plant. The part used is the rhizome, whose flesh is a deep purple-black rather than yellow. It is native to mainland South East Asia — northern Thailand, Laos and Myanmar — and is cultivated there, mostly on smallholdings.

Beetroot (Beta vulgaris L.) belongs to the family Amaranthaceae; older references place it in Chenopodiaceae. The part used is the swollen root. It is a fully domesticated crop, bred from the wild sea beet of European coastlines, and grown across temperate Europe including the UK. The deep red colour comes from pigments called betalains, chiefly betanin.

Black pepper (Piper nigrum L.) is a woody climbing vine, family Piperaceae. The part used is the dried unripe fruit — the peppercorn. It is native to the Malabar coast of southern India and is cultivated in India, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil and Sri Lanka. Its pungency, and its best-studied constituent, is the alkaloid piperine.

Cayenne pepper

Capsicum annuum L. — Solanaceae — fruit — cultivated

Hawthorn

Crataegus spp. — Rosaceae — fruit (as juice concentrate) — wild-collected and planted

Turmeric

Curcuma longa L. — Zingiberaceae — rhizome — cultivated only

Black ginger

Kaempferia parviflora Wall. ex Baker — Zingiberaceae — rhizome — cultivated

Beetroot

Beta vulgaris L. — Amaranthaceae — root (as juice concentrate) — cultivated

Black pepper

Piper nigrum L. — Piperaceae — dried unripe fruit — cultivated

A liquid in a 60 ml dropper bottle. No capsules, so no capsule shell, no gelatin and no vegetarian HPMC casing to think about. The base is water and vegetable glycerine, and there is no alcohol in it.

Each 2 ml dose delivers 600 mg of botanicals in total, across all six extracts and concentrates. Our label declares the blend as a total rather than breaking the 600 mg down plant by plant, and it prints no per-botanical extract ratio. We will not quote one here. Stating a number we do not publish would be inventing it.

Extract ratios are worth understanding anyway, because you will meet them on other products. A ratio such as 10:1 is an input-to-output weight comparison during manufacture: 10 kg of dried raw plant material processed down to 1 kg of finished extract. So 100 mg of a 10:1 extract derives from 1,000 mg — one gram — of starting plant. A 4:1 extract is weaker: 100 mg of it comes from 400 mg of raw material. What the ratio describes is concentration during processing. It says nothing by itself about the level of any individual constituent, which is why some extracts also carry a standardisation figure, such as a stated percentage of curcuminoids. Two consequences. A bigger first number is not automatically better, and ratios from different manufacturers are not comparable unless the starting material and the solvent match.

The word "concentrate" on the hawthorn and beetroot lines means something different again. Juice is pressed from the fruit or root and water is removed to concentrate it. No solvent extraction is involved.

Format

Liquid drops in a dropper bottle. No capsules, no tablets.

Bottle size

60 ml

Dose

2 ml

Botanicals per 2 ml dose

600 mg total across the six-extract blend

Doses per bottle

30 (60 ml divided by 2 ml). At one dose a day, a bottle lasts around a month.

Botanical ingredients

Cayenne Pepper Extract, Turmeric Root Extract, Black Ginger Extract, Hawthorn Juice Concentrate, Black Pepper Extract, Beetroot Juice Concentrate

Other ingredients

Purified water, vegetable glycerine, sodium alginate, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate

Alcohol

None. This is an alcohol-free liquid, not a tincture.

Suitable for vegans

Yes. 100% vegan and non-GMO.

Allergens

Free from gluten, soy, dairy and common allergens. Note that cayenne is a nightshade (Solanaceae) and both turmeric and black ginger are in the ginger family — relevant if you have a known plant allergy.

Manufacture

Produced in a facility adhering to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP).

Category

Food supplement. Not a medicine.

The two preservatives, potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate, are standard permitted preservatives in liquid supplements and soft drinks. A water-based botanical liquid with no alcohol in it needs protecting once opened. Sodium alginate, derived from brown seaweed, is a thickener and suspending agent: it holds the botanical solids in even suspension instead of letting them settle into a layer at the bottom.

The label direction is 2 ml. Take it straight into the mouth from the dropper, or add it to water, juice or coffee and stir well.

Using the dropper: squeeze the rubber bulb, release it with the glass tube in the liquid to draw the dose up, then check the graduation marks on the pipette before dispensing. Squeeze again to release. Wipe the pipette and replace the cap firmly. Taking it directly, keep the pipette off your mouth and tongue — otherwise saliva goes back into the bottle.

Diluting in a glass of water is the gentler option, and the one to choose first if you have never taken a capsaicin-containing product before. Stir it. This is a suspension, and left standing in a glass it separates.

Timing. The label does not specify a time of day. Pick one you will actually remember and keep to it.

With or without food. The label does not specify this either. In practice many people find capsaicin-containing preparations sit better taken with or just after food rather than on an empty stomach. If you get burning or discomfort in the stomach, the sensible first adjustment is food plus more dilution. If that does not settle it, stop.

Do not exceed the stated dose. With a capsaicin-containing product, going past 2 ml mainly increases the chance of gastric irritation.

Storage. Keep the bottle tightly closed, cool, dry and out of direct sunlight. Not above a hob, not on a sunny windowsill, not in a steamy bathroom cabinet. Keep it out of the sight and reach of children — a dropper bottle of red liquid is exactly the sort of thing a child will investigate. Use by the best-before date printed on the pack.

An honest description rather than a sales one. Neat, it is warm and peppery. The heat is real — capsaicin from the cayenne, piperine from the black pepper — and it arrives a second or two after swallowing, at the back of the throat rather than instantly on the tongue. At 2 ml it is not chilli-sauce hot. It is noticeably hot, and if you dislike spice you will notice it.

Under the heat sits earthiness from the turmeric and black ginger, and a sweet, mineral, slightly muddy note from the beetroot. Hawthorn fruit concentrate adds mild tartness. The vegetable glycerine base gives the liquid a syrupy body and a background sweetness that takes some of the edge off. No ethanol burn, because there is no ethanol.

The smell is mild, mostly warm spice and beetroot. The colour is a deep red-brown.

Turmeric and beetroot both stain. Keep the dropper off worktops, tea towels, light-coloured clothing and grouting, and rinse the glass fairly promptly rather than leaving it to dry. Mixed into coffee, the flavour reads as spiced rather than neutral; juice masks it better than water does, particularly something acidic like orange or apple.

This blend exists only as drops. There is no capsule version, so the usual capsule questions — shell material, swallowing size, how many per serving — never arise. Drops suit people who dislike swallowing capsules, and they let you dilute the dose. Against that: liquid is more awkward to carry, the cap has to be closed properly, and the taste is unavoidable.