Thread: Paprika
View Single Post
Old March 20, 2017   #52
Zeedman
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Wisconsin
Posts: 313
Default

Grew Alma Paprika last year. Sets an incredible amount of peppers on a very compact plant. Flowers early (and low on the plant) but the peppers take a long time to go from their immature white form, to fully ripe. The fully ripe peppers, when dried, make a rich, deep red paprika with a sweet flavor. SSE seems to think it is a 'hot' pepper, but it has been completely sweet for me. If there is a down side, it is that the sugar content was so high that the powder tended to cake up... I threw a couple large plastic buttons in the bottle to help break it up before use. Blending with a hotter pepper might reduce the caking, I'll have to try that the next time I grow it.

I grew another pepper last year (Pelso) that was very similar to Alma, in its compact growth habit, white color immature, and dense fruit set. The peppers were conical, thick walled, and had a moderate amount of heat. Most of the heat was in the placenta, so I preserved as much of that as I could when drying. It made a pleasantly warm powder, just a little stronger than store-bought paprika. This will probably be my main choice for paprika in the future. It might be interesting if dried in the immature white stage (an experiment for this year).

A purple jalapeno that I grew several years ago, when dried in the fully ripened stage, also made a sweet powder with mild heat, and a deep maroon color.

Tried growing some Leutschauer in 2015 (received in a trade several years ago), but in spite of being sent two commercial packets of seed (!!) none of the seed was viable. Based upon the numerous recommendations in this thread, I'll try it again in the future.
Zeedman is offline   Reply With Quote