Things heat up at Jelly Belly Candy Company
How hot was the Carolina Reaper on a 1 to 10 scale, like the one a doctor asks about to get an idea of a patient’s pain level?
“Nine,” said Kathleen Wire, who said her mouth was burning after taste-testing five new jelly beans, all flavored with actual chile puree, on Tuesday morning at the Jelly Belly Candy Company in Fairfield.
Her friend since childhood, Megan Patton, 33, of Suisun City, summed up the progressively hotter of the new flavored beans — sriracha, jalapeno, cayenne, habanero and Carolina Reaper — as “eight.”
As they spoke outside the tasting room on the second floor of the mammoth, family-owned factory, store and tourist attraction on Jelly Belly Lane, they cooled down the inside of the mouths with ice cream provided by company employees.
“The left side of my tongue is numb,” said Patton. “Even with the ice cream, it (the heat from the capsaicinoid, the chemical make chile peppers spicy) is not going away.”
“I normally don’t do spicy food in general,” noted Wire, 31 and a Los Angeles resident. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.”
“It take a special kind of person to prefer this over the fruit flavors,” she added. “Juicy pear is my favorite.
And Patton said she would recommend the hot new jelly beans, which will be for sale beginning in January, to friends.
“It’s fricking cold outside — why not?” she said, smiling and referring to air temperatures barely climbing out of the 50s during the fall season’s first anticipated rain after a nearly seven-month dry spell.
In a press release, company spokeswoman Jana Sanders Perry said the new line of beans, the BeanBoozled® Fiery Five™, will be available at www.jellybelly.com on Jan. 2 and at retailers nationwide shortly thereafter in a variety of packages.
The taste test was another of the candy company’s marketing efforts before a new bean flavor or flavors is launched, said Julia Severson, a product marketing manager who, on Tuesday, was part of a team that help to record on video reactions to the spicy new flavors for distribution of the company’s social media platforms. Patton and Wire, along with some company employees, were among the first.
Sanders Perry, in the prepared statement, noted that each flavor is appropriately hot for its placement in this progressive tasting menu, with sriracha leaving tasters with a light burn similar to the sauce and Carolina Reaper packing a Tabasco-like punch.
Through “focus group testing,” she added, company employees noticed that some consumers could handle the heat, but others could not. Because of this varying sensitivity, the company placed warnings on packages that recommend BeanBoozled Fiery Five only for healthy individuals over the age of 13.
Fans know of the company’s BeanBoozled line know it is “a game of risk, but Fiery Five is a whole new take on the game,” said Rob Swaigen, vice president of global marketing for Jelly Belly. “Fiery Five is the evolution of the BeanBoozled brand as it continues to push the boundaries of flavor and bravery. We want everyone to have a good time with BeanBoozled Fiery Five, but we recognize that some people may need to tap out as they move through the menu.”
For the company known for the accuracy of its flavors, packing Jelly Belly jelly beans with actual chile puree was not enough.
“The Jelly Belly way is to wow you with flavors,” said Irena Miles, director of research and development and quality assurance at the company, which has been making jelly beans since 1976. “So for Fiery Five, we knew it wouldn’t be enough to just knock your socks off with the heat; the candy also has to taste like the actual pepper or sauce. Our goal was to capture the right flavor notes while simultaneously building an appropriate level of heat.”
“The element of heat added a unique challenge for our flavor team to solve,” added Luz Osbun, research and development manager. “We had to consider not only how to balance the vegetative notes in the flavor with the heat, but also how that heat presents itself and builds over time.”
Jalapeño has a “sharp build and a quick fade,” while Carolina Reaper “builds quickly and stays hot for a while after,” she added. “Our jelly bean versions for Fiery Five had to act like the real thing.”
They passed the test, according to Patton and Wire, who have visited the candy manufacturer many times over the years, beginning in elementary school. During their taste testing, they spun a wheel atop a special gift box that featured a random assortment of 3.5 ounces of the five new flavors.
Trying one after the other, they furrowed their brows as they ate each spicy new jelly bean, with Patton, at one point, saying the sriracha was “too smoky.” Wire chimed in, fanning herself with one hand to cool herself down, that the cayenne was, well, worthy of an “Oh, my God!”
For more information visit www.jellybelly.com or call 800-522-3267. Merchants can call 800-3239380. On social media, visit Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and LinkedIn.