Third Eye Piper provides a mix of sweet and heat
Ask Preston Luttrell of Holton and he’ll tell you how hot peppers saved his life.
The Virginia native and U.S. Army veteran picked up a love of peppers about five years ago after a co-worker shared some “super hot” peppers with him — ghost peppers, Carolina Reapers and the like.
“This was the first time I’d ever tried super hot peppers, and I was enjoying the adrenaline rush,” said Luttrell, who’s been channeling that love of hot stuff into making pepper-based jams under the Third Eye Piper banner.
Luttrell’s jams combine fruits and peppers into a combination that has a kick to it without sacrificing flavor in favor of heat. Take, for example, his Pineapple Rush jam, which combines pineapples with Sugar Rush peppers — a pepper that, by itself, packs as much heat as the habanero — but won’t burn the tastebuds off your tongue.
“That’s probably my mildest jam,” he says.
Since then, Luttrell has been selling his pepper-based creations at area farmer’s markets and at such events as Pride of Hoyt Days, where he got rave reviews and “a lot of repeat customers” last year. Now, he’ll be opening a storefront just off Holton’s Town Square next week to sell his hot-but-sweet creations, which are more than just flavorful additions to his customers’ pantries.
To Luttrell, they’re also a kind of salvation.
“The Army brought me here, to Kansas,” he said. “Alcoholism kind of took over me, and peppers saved my life.”
Luttrell was attempting to overcome alcoholism five years ago when his co-worker first shared the hot peppers with him, including the aforementioned ghosts and Carolina Reapers, as well as “some peppers he would cross-breed and didn’t even know what they were called.”
Not long after that, Luttrell made friends with another man who shared “hundreds” of peppers with him and others in a recovery support group.
“He just gave them to me, and I fell in love with them — the color, the taste and the burn,” Luttrell said. “We joked around with each other, and we started saying we should call ourselves ‘Pepperheads Anonymous.’”
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