But the experience also became the unexpected origin story for Breville's invention, Dr. B’s Elixir Cooling Mouth Spray.
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Breville’s childhood revolved around caring for his paraplegic father, which made him a consummate problem solver, he says. He became unwilling to accept the status quo, and constantly worked to find opportunities to improve his father’s quality of life with small and practical changes, such as tying kitchen towels together to make it easier for his father to open the refrigerator door so he could be more self-sufficient.
Breville moved to Kansas City to pursue his undergraduate degree and ended up staying in the area for two decades, working as an IT professional for France-based software company Hi-Stor Technologies. In 2008, the company asked him to relocate to Denver, so Breville, his wife and their three children made the move.
Inspired by his father’s wine-making hobby, Breville is also a passionate home brewer. Since age 21, he has dabbled as an amateur chemist, obsessing over the flavor profile of his beers. He's been a member of various home-brewing clubs since the early ’90s; is a member of the American Homebrewers Association; and has volunteered at the Great American Beer Festival for thirteen years.
Something someone casually mentioned during one of those home-brew club meetings spurred Breville to action when his daughter’s friend was suffering after the One Chip Challenge. The person claimed that pairing fiery chicken wings with a hop-forward beer toned down the spiciness.
So “I went and opened up some [hops] and put them in his hands and told him to rub his hands together to activate some of the oils and push it against his lips, which were burning,” Breville remembers. “And it wasn’t ten seconds later, he said the pain was gone. So a lightbulb goes off in my head — I should start looking into the science behind it.”
Breville still had access to the University of Phoenix’s library of academic journals from when he had gotten his practitioner doctorate there. (That degree is the "Dr." in Dr. B's.) He used his skills to systematically conduct academic research on the science of spiciness and cooling.
Curtis Breville filed a patent for the spray just a month after being inspired to create it.
Curtis Breville
He learned that the heat of a chile pepper is not actually a taste. Instead, the burning sensation you experience after eating something spicy comes from your body’s pain response. An oil-based compound inside chile peppers, capsaicin, activates the TRPV1 protein in the glands of your mouth. Once triggered, this protein alerts your brain, which responds by making you feel pain in the affected part of the body.
It’s a nifty defense mechanism that pepper plants evolved to keep certain animals from eating their fruit. The most common advice to calm the burning sensation is to chug water, milk or other fluids in an attempt to flush out the capsaicin.
But what Breville discovered was that hops contain certain compounds (humulene and myrcene) that work together to bind to a different protein, TRPM8, which is often referred to as the cold and menthol receptor. “Everything else that’s ever been around has been trying to flush the capsaicin off of our tongue and out of our mouth,” he explains. “[Mr. B’s Elixir] doesn’t do that. It just adapts to a different receptor and sends a signal that confuses our brain into not feeling the pain of the capsaicin.” This makes it a more effective product than anything currently on the market, and Breville immediately saw its potential.
He identified a certain variety of hops that has high concentrations of humulene and myrcene. His experimentation focused around stabilizing those compounds in a liquid, as well as making the spray palatable using mint and honey. As he experimented, he and his family became spice-tolerance guinea pigs. “My wife is an admitted wimp when it comes to spicy food. Now, when I make a batch, she tests it by taking a spoonful of ghost pepper sauce and then spraying my elixir in her mouth,” Breville says, laughing.
Less than a month after the One Chip Challenge incident, Breville filed a patent on his proprietary blend. He was able to move that fast because this isn’t his first venture into consumer packaged goods. A few years ago, Breville invented the Original Daddy Caddy (which has since been discontinued). “It’s a product made to help new dads better engage with their children when they’re born,” explains Breville. “It’s a large garment that you throw on with five deep pockets on each side, filled with diapers and wipes and onesies and aspirator bulbs — everything you might need when taking care of a baby.”
In 2021, Breville even appeared on the television show America's Big Deal to showcase the Original Daddy Caddy. That experience gave him familiarity with creating packaging, Kickstarter campaigns, marketing and filing patents.
The operation remains scrappy — manufacturing and assembling happens in the Brevilles’ kitchen. “If somebody wants to get into home brewing, you have to love to sanitize and clean; 75 to 80 percent of your time is sanitation,” Breville says. It’s the same for his elixir. “Making sure that everything that touches the elixir is fully sanitized and the bottles and the caps are clean is a top priority here. People want to make sure that their product isn’t tainted or contaminated.”
As for the packaging, Breville decided to go with an old-fashioned apothecary feel. “I kept coming back to this word, ‘elixir,’ as a unique term that used to be used years ago, so I wanted something that when you saw it, it almost had a pharmacy type of look to it,” he explains. “We wanted to make sure that the product was trustworthy. It’s new; there’s never been anything like it, so for people to give it a try, they need to trust the brand.”
To that end, Breville has been making the rounds, handing out free samples of his elixir at various events and festivals. At the 15th Annual Chile Festival at Lulu’s Farm in Brighton, he captured a video of a vendor trying out his spray. “She sprayed it in her mouth, put a jalapeño in her mouth, and was just amazed there was no pain at all. That’s the most common response — that it works right away — and I think that’s the big surprise, because there’s just never been anything that immediately took away that pain,” Breville says.
There has also been some unexpected but welcome customer feedback about the spray also helping with what Breville politely describes as the “exit burn.” The same TRPM8 receptors are also in your glands "down there," so as spray passes through your system, it also binds to those and helps with the after-burn consequences.
In addition to selling directly to consumers, Breville hopes to convince restaurants to stock his elixir as a proactive way to offer customers relief, or to be advertised as a safety net for customers wary of trying spicy dishes. He’s also in talks with universities to conduct medical studies around the efficacy of his spray for applications in medicine. He thinking about expanding the line of products to include lip balms, hand creams and wet wipes, as well.
“If somebody would have told me two months ago I would be waking up and chopping raw habaneros and other hot peppers and making a breakfast omelet, I would have told them they were crazy — I’m just not a spicy food eater," he admits. "But that was yesterday's breakfast. I spray Dr. B’s in my mouth before I eat it, and I can tell there’s heat, but there’s no pain associated with those peppers. That’s amazing to me."
For more information about Dr. B’s Elixir Cooling Mouth Spray, visit drbselixir.com. You can also meet Breville and get free samples of his product at the 34th Annual Denver Firefighters Chili Cook-Off in McGregor Square on October 6 and the Golden Beer Tasting & Chili Cook-Off on October 14.
