Well, you have to dry out your chiles somehow in order to make powder. There are a few options. You can dry them in the sun, in a dehydrator, in an oven on low heat, or cook or smoke them in some way, but usually if you cook them, you still need to get the rest of the water out by another method. Since you are in Florida, you might have a hard time drying chiles in the sun, especially medium to thick-walled chiles, because of high humidity. Your chiles would spoil before they dried. Some people have posted here about how they "juiced" their chiles and turned the leftover mush into powder. I suppose you could grind them to get the mush, and then dry out the mush and then grind it again to get the powder.

I just realized that they are already dry. If they are already dry, you can just grind them. Roasting/smoking would just give the powder a different flavor, but I think roasting/smoking is usually only done on fresh chiles before they are dried.

Not necessary & am unaware of the practice. However, roasting a fresh pepper before dehydrating can be rewarding.

Perhaps is like toasting dried cumin seeds before grinding for powder?

Just might be something that I have missed out on.

jt

Smoking dried peppers is something that does work and often worth the effort.

jt

Thanks...maybe I'll experiment a bit and see which I like best...toasted or un-toasted.