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For more information, visit Wild Alaska Seafood.com. I'm HRN's Executive Director, Katie Mosman Wadler, jumping in to tell you about this week's episode of Meet and Three, Heritage Radio Network's weekly food roundup. This week we're introducing you to some amazing women taking a stand. So often being sexually harassed feels like a loss of control. And so I wanted to have these very tangible guides to say, here's what you can do.
Others are pushing for more diversity at major food industry events. I still feel really determined to do, you know, whatever I can to help shift that and in a direction that's not just more diverse, but more equitable. We also have a report on that summer business staple, the lemonade stand. The lemonade stand might be the purest form of starting a business. Low overhead, easy to get into, and requires little experience or special equipment.
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This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from Roughly 12 to Roughly 1245 for Pizza Roberta Pizzeria and Bushwick. Oh we got Dave in the booth. Hi. And we because it is we're back to take your kid to work life, we have special guest, Booker Arnold. No school today.
Yeah, yeah. Why no school today, Booker? My teachers have a conference. Oh, I wanted to tell you I now have a job at Nastasia's pasta shop called Pasta Flyer. Oh, we've been talking about that.
Oh, yeah. So you should call all of your by the way, Nastasi Lopez attempting to uh overtake McDonald's as America's best first job. You don't like McDonald's? I like them fine. Nastassi has nothing negative to say about any quick service recipe.
The McDonald's website says our commitment to quality, but my mom says, yeah, right. They're just trying to sell you their food. So if we're right, no, we're never gonna get that McDonald's sponsorship. Yeah, yeah, because uh Heritage Foods was really pushing for that. My brother also says there's pink slime in the nuggets.
Well, your dad probably has stuff to say about it. Uh specifically, McDonald's has like McDonald's has hired and made fake uh what do you Dave? What do you call fake uh like those fake advertorial, like fake news things? What do you call those things where the company pays for it? Do you you guys do those, right?
You know what I'm saying? Where like a company will come in and be like, hey, make it look like you're a news correspondent, but really we're just gonna push our crap. What's that called? When do people do that? I have no idea.
Is there a word for that? Yeah, there is. Anyway, so like McDonald's has one of those where like a theoretical neutral person is interviewing someone at the on the McNuggets line at Tyson. So Booker does nothing but watch. Oh, like as if they're doing uh Yeah, as if it's a news story.
Tyson is cruel to their livestock. Okay, Booker, so like Booker is as, you know, just so you guys know, like, as most, I think probably 16 year olds is extremely susceptible to internet who ha. Now I'm not pro-Tyson, but what does that word mean? Who? No, susceptible or whatever.
Family show. Yeah, it's talking about who has to be. It means uh it means that you are likely to believe things that you hear on the internet. Tyson punches and throws their chickens. Okay, that's not the case.
Why would they do that? Why would you punch a chicken? Why? They also suffocated one by standing on its head. Okay, listen, this is not I don't believe this to be accurate.
But I I mean like Booker, you don't believe the earth is flat, do you? Um, no, it's round. Thank you. Yeah, because the internet tells him so. But the uh Well, half of it.
Yeah. Well, no, my point is is that uh, like I am not, you know, I have a lot to say. The earth is not flat. Yeah, correct. I have a lot to say.
Hey, hey, hey. Yes. I used to think we lived inside the planet. Well, I mean, if you count the atmosphere. We may someday excluding the atmosphere.
Someday sooner than later. Yeah. Uh so anyways, my point I have a lot to say negative about um, you know, completely integrated uh chicken farming, but it's a more complicated subject, and I do not believe that. First of all, you know, Booker Tyson doesn't actually raise the chickens. Did you know that?
Tyson's Tyson has farmers who make very like almost nothing per bird, and they raise him. Tyson owns the bird, but they don't raise the bird. Tyson's supply. Okay. Anyway.
Where'd you get that shirt? Didn't we get it together? Yeah, I like that shirt. Uh P.S. No one can see his shirt because this is the internet.
This is a radio-based podcast. Yeah, but you know, radio is the most visual of all mediums. Yeah. Branded shirt, but it says Cortal U New York. Courtel you.
Yeah. Well, no, in my family, it is CortalU. Yes. Yeah, and Cortal U does not mean the famous surveyor who made the first real maps of New York City, nor does it mean the stop. On the Q train.
Yes, no, it doesn't mean that. It is a uh synonym for a cluster, cluster F. You know, I used it in a I I got caught. I used it in a in a very important meeting, and everyone was like, what? No, but the thing is the word does it really mean that?
No, no, it the Booker made this up. Like when he was. And everyone's like, everyone knows you mean cluster F. It's a little bit nicer. You know what I mean?
But I usually, I usually, when I'm using it in context in front of adults, will put the F beforehand. Oh, yeah. So that you cordal you. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
God damn Cordelieu. Like, go like, but I use it, but it's like no one has ever questioned the meaning because I got questions. What would they say? They were like, what did you say? And I said Cortal you, i.e.
cluster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? But it's like we gotta call her. We gotta call her, it looks like.
We have then we have two. Did uh do we have uh Jack and uh and Derek or no? Uh no, we just what? Hey, hey Derek, what's up? So waiting on number two.
Jack told me that she wanted to talk about the Thunder Nut. Alright, so I I as a test this morning uh said, you know, people can tweet in questions, and now I owe uh a person who's been you know listening for you know a long time whose uh Twitter hashtag or not hashtag Twitter handle is uh Blopins, right? Uh Ben. He uh he wants to know about the Thundernut. Now he has asked me this.
He in fact mailed me uh you know a couple of those flower beers from uh up uh you know Upper East Coast there to spin out in the spinzall to harvest the yeast, like the whole nine, and all this guy wants is the Thundernut specs. Now, for those of you that don't know what the hell I'm talking about, Thunder Nut is uh was a pistachio based rum beverage at uh Booker In Dax and it was a it was went on probably for the last what year? Yeah, R. I p right booker for the last year or so of the uh of of our run. Is that about right, Derek?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. Now the issue is is you know, Booker and Dax had a bunch of Orja specs, and Booker Index had a bunch of other specs, but the bartenders didn't make the actual pistachio rum. It wasn't an orja, it was a pistachio rum plus um Jack Jack was what what was the what was the bar spectrum?
Oh hey, Jack. So Derek, now at PDT was uh bartender and also at one point bar back at Booker Index, and Jack was the uh head bartender at at Booker Index. We have the two best people to discuss what was actually in the Thunder Nut. Now, when I received the specs this morning on how the stuff was made, I was um upset because it was a crazy freaking spec. I mean, it's freaking bananas, like nutty, I can't believe we made that spec spec, if it's to be believed.
Now, here's the other thing. Derek has tried to recreate this for the spinzole because I'm assuming that no one out there who's making it has the what we used in practice at BDX, which was a three-liter bench top juan refrigerated centrifuge. So this is everything kind of in in thing there. So, Jack, first give the drink spec once you have the pistachio rum. Okay.
So the the single drink spec was one and a half ounces of pistachio rum, a half ounce of Amaro Montenegro, uh, three-quarters of an ounce of pineapple syrup. Tell them how to make okay, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, finish, finish, finish. Yeah. And uh scant three-quarters acid adjusted orange juice.
Okay. And five drops of salt. So what you have there is a basic Booker Index sour spec. It's a little off because the Montenegro has sugar in it, but you got yourself roughly, you got yourself a two, three-quarter, three quarter, right? Theoretically, if everything was booze and everything was working normally, you got yourself a two, three, what?
You got yourself a two, three-quarter, three quarter right there, right? So so far, hunky dory. Now, acid adjusted OJ, very simple. Every liter of orange juice gets uh 32 grams of citric acid and 20 grams of malic acid, stirred toll dissolved, and boom. That's that's what makes warhead candy sour.
Malic acid. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, we could talk about warheads in a minute. Anyway, let's finish this one first, though.
So that's your acid OJ. Jack, what's our pineapple syrup syrup uh spec? We were low tech when making the pineapple syrup at Booker. It was just equal parts by weight, sugar and freshly juiced pineapple juice. That is a garbage spec.
That's too sweet. That's garbage spec. We're garbage people. We should be shot. Yes, I know.
We we added a small amount of uh citric acid. Citric acid to you. I think generally like I want to say it was like 10 to 15 milliliters of uh citric acid solution per pineapple. But we didn't adjust for the sugar that was in the pineapple juice? No, we used this was a mark set.
What? It was a McGuyan spec. Listen, in the future, I don't care who is working with us. I know about it. I want the stuff to be bricks right, not freaking taking something that has like 12 bricks already, like 11 or 12 bricks, and then adding another 50 bricks to it.
Well, this is becoming an episode of bar rescue. This is why everything in life is sucks. This is why everyone everywhere is garbage, because no one can keep their numbers and their stuff straight so that stuff swaps out. Nastasia, back me up on this. Booker, please stop touching the mic.
Nastasia, Nastasia backs me up 100% here, too. It's like if you're gonna work in a big team and your team has rules so this stuff can get swapped in from place to place, follow the rules. Yes? It's almost as if the rules changing when management continues to change in the space. No, but the rule's a rule.
It's like, look, human beings, we keep having new generations of human beings, and we keep on requiring oxygen. You know what I mean? It's like follow the rules. Yeah. Anyway, okay, so I have no idea.
So now the spec is even crazier to me because now all of a sudden it's a good bit sweeter than it was, but it's also a good bit more acidic. Because, first of all, the orange juice has sugar in it, because the orange juice is rocking at somewhere in the range of 10, right? 10 bricks or thereabouts, 11 maybe. We have pineapple, which is now clocking in roughly at 60 bricks, right? So right now we have a drink that's on the sweeter side, right?
The acid level is also a little higher than normal, and maybe this all washes out because it's gonna have a lot more texture when it's shaken because of the freaking pistachio, right? But now here, people is where it gets really ugly. Normally at Booker Index, we would make orjas for uh for nuts, but that would become the syrup. Notice from my uh loss of uh of mental stability a minute ago that we already have plenty more than enough sugar in this. So, how are we gonna get the nuts into the beverage?
And the answer is we're gonna put the nuts into the booze, which by the way, is why we had to charge so much and didn't make so much of this stuff because it was super expensive, even though Florida Canya, which is what we use, is an inexpensive rum. If you buy Florida Cagna, so slightly more expensive. What? Oh, we use the seven a little bit more, but still but still, like for an aged rum, it's on the so yeah, we use the seven. So before an aged rum, it's on the cheaper side, right?
Because here's what we're about to do. Now, Derek, how do you do this stuff? Uh so it's actually a three-day process, which again, I don't know if all this is necessary, but it's just the way it was done at the beginning. So it's the way we continue to do it. So the first step, first day, day one is you take 400 grams of pistachio, 650 grams of water.
So weigh it all out. Uh let that soak overnight uh in the refrigerator. Let me just add when you're using pistachios, please sort through them and remove the shriveled and or overly yellow or brown ones. They will ruin. Do not sample the pistachios.
There, they're maybe there, boys. You will die. Uh shut up. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so so go ahead.
Make sure you're make sure your pistachios are good. Soak them in water. Uh day two, take that mixture, blend it up. Um, it does get pretty thick. So um that mixture is per one bottle of Loracania.
Uh Jack, I think we were using 750 milliliter bottles. We're using 750s. Yeah. So here's where you've lost me entirely, Derek. You're taking how much water?
And you didn't drain the water. 600, no, 600 grams of water is going into that rum mixture. So yes, it's it's a little it's weird to me too, because you're adding the pistachio and the water. So the alcohol, the ABV on that whole pistachio rum is coming way, way down. It's in the it's it's in the low, low to mid-20s.
Yeah. Yeah. So that the thing that people didn't necessarily realize about that drink is that it's a pretty it's a low alcohol cocktail. All right. Alright, so I uh you know, you you're giving me heart palpitations here, Derek, but go ahead.
So you soak the nuts and you need to soak the nuts because you want the nuts to primarily absorb water and not booze because we can't afford to lose any more liquid, I mean any more alcohol. We also want to have the the kind of strongest extraction we're gonna get. So we want to soften these nuts up. So you blend the whole sucker together. Now here's where it gets even weirder.
You're blending in the ticloid before you spin. So uh I think it was after. So emulsify the cicloid, yeah, what would get added day three on the thing? So day two, you blend, you add the rum, uh, and then you since the rum is added in, you don't have to refrigerate it for that next overnight. So then the third day it's spun.
Uh add the ticaloid right before uh stir it up. Wait, you add the ticloid after you spin? Say that again. You add the ticloid after you spin, right? Because otherwise, what the hell are you doing, right?
You add the ticloid before you spin? Yeah, we uh the the spec that we had uh it would that we would add it before spinning. This is freaking bananas. Why? Look, maybe it works better.
And you say you did this in the spinzole. Uh yeah, so I recently did it with uh one of our Booker and Axe regulars. We tried it out because he he'd been wanting this back, and I recently got a stinzel. I wanted to try it out. And uh we didn't do the continuous, we just did it in batch mode.
We were a little nervous about all of the there's a lot of solid, a lot of the pistachio solids. We just did it in multiple batches. Uh cleaned out the rotor, and it seems to uh to work pretty well for us. Really? What kind of yield did you get?
Um I I didn't measure the yield. Uh he kind of finished off the last of the batch uh after after I had I had left. So I unfortunately I don't have the the yield. Well, I mean, like rough, rough, you know, rough. Like what kind of yield did you get?
I mean it it looked it looked pretty similar, very similar to uh the pucks that we had at uh and uh the spinning bucket centrifuge. All right. Everything the the taste consistency uh seemed to be very similar from to what I can remember doing uh a year or two ago. Yeah, so for those of you that don't have ticaloid powder, I forgot to call into the bar. In the copy of Liquid Intelligence that is at the bar, I have handwritten in the substitute for Tickoloid.
Because Ticoloid is just gum Arabic and Xanthan gum. And I forget Jack, you're not at the bar right now, are you? No, I'm not. I'll have to I'll have to get that back or I'll I'll on the next show if someone asks me, I'll get you a substitute. You know, ticaloids, some people have trouble getting tickaloid powder now, but it's just a mixture of gum Arabic and Xanthan.
The Xanthan is acting as the um uh you know, as the uh stabilizer, right? So there's emulsifiers, emulsifiers are like marriage counselors, they help oil and water live close to each other, and uh stabilizers are like traffic cops, they keep stuff from moving. So it's like it's both. The gum Arabic is the is the emulsifier is the marriage counselor, and the xanthan is the traffic cop. So that's how, you know, that's how it works.
But uh, you know, I have a mixture that I made of of you need to use the really good powdered gum arabic and try to get a fast dissolving xanthan gum. Uh but it's it's something like three quarters uh three quarters uh of it is uh is is uh Arabic and one quarter of it is Xanthan. It's something like that. And you have to use a little more of of that mix than you would have tickoloid, but don't give it a shot. But why the heck would you mix it beforehand, Derek?
To make it harder to settle out yeah I I just followed the spec that's probably not the best answer I should answer I should give um but yeah it it's it seems to work well it and you know it uh stabilized you could definitely tell when you didn't add uh it's gloid because it it would separate but I mean it's solved by just kind of shaking it up um you know before you pour out the ounce and a half into the cocktail. Yeah well I I know you need Ticaloid the question is do you add it before or after you spin that's the key. Now the other thing we yeah yeah we always added it before before we spun your uh your yeah okay uh shut it down this is a lot to process uh speaking of process how long did you have to spin it in a spinzall per batch uh we did a normal 15 minute spin. Okay. So when you're spinning in a spinzall with liquor that long make sure you have the the lid the you know the the inner rotor lid on and it's also keep the cap on the top and also I plug up the uh drain hole just so that you don't have uh too much evaporation out of the unit because especially because you've already gotten rid of so much alcohol you might want to keep the rest of it in there.
So uh it's a good if you like sweet creamy nut drinks it's a good session drink to have because it doesn't have that much alcohol in it. And uh I'm learning more about the old bar every day. Every day. This is a s this this example is particularly egregious. This is uh the nut rum ingredient just sort of appeared on the bar one day.
D came up with it, said, here, use this. And then one spec later, we had this incredible cocktail. It's like, all right, we're gonna make this the same way that you made this every time because this is delicious. So it's just like so happened. Yeah.
To have been made in an after exactly. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well hey, look at it.
And I mean you can't you can't argue with the success of the drink. I mean people love that cocktail. I'm not as illustrated by this this guy's uh persistence in trying to get the spec for it. Yeah look I'm not like here's the thing right talking about it on the radio yeah I'm not yeah right I mean like I'm not like opposed to I mean I'm mentally here's the here's the real issue. Here's what really is kind of like you know burning me up right now is that you know I think it's always good if you're running tests that go outside of what you normally do, right?
And you get a good result, this is good. But if it's all black boxed and just oh here's a weird spec, nobody investigates it when by that I mean tells me to investigate it, right? Because you know yeah so like then I can't discover whether or not we need to revise the way we do every freaking thing or whether or not this just is a one off or boo boop or boob beep or boobop because I don't have the information. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
It's like this yeah it's like it's like the weirdest out there spec that at the bar. But maybe we could take that knowledge look everything we do right milk syrup, milk washing all this stuff is because we had some weird effect by doing it wrong or doing it weird and we investigated it but if it's just kept in a little cloistered box and you can't investigate it, this same thing happens, like, like for any of you that are gonna run a program or going to start a program out there. Like the worst is when you like do development and it's like a multi. I love multi-person team-based efforts because I think the results are better and everyone gets buy-in. But then when stuff gets changed, you've got to remember to send information up and down the chain so that everybody knows what's going on.
Otherwise, you know, like we were in a situation situation where you try to recreate a spec based on my knowledge of the chain, which is clearly deficient, then we're never gonna get the result because I would never do it that way unless I knew it was done that way. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, whatever.
Whatever. You can't argue with people liking the drink, as Dave uh Dave in the booth says, but I mean I wasn't the one who said that. Oh, who is Derek said that? Yeah, that was me. Anyway, all right.
All right. Do you want to take a break and cool off, Dave? Or what do you think? Yeah, I'll cool down. Thanks, guys.
Thanks for calling in. I'll be right back. More cooking issues. I'll see you at the bar. Think about what it takes to swim a coastline longer than the entire eastern seaboard and leap tall waterfalls in a single bound.
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So Booker, did you uh absorb anything? The microphone's pointed in the wrong direction, P.S. You don't have your earphones on. So yeah, Booker's uh Booker's really taking this seriously. Yeah.
How you doing, Books? Good. Yeah. Yeah. What?
I wished I could stay in bed for longer because like it's off school. Sometimes you have to wake up. Um, well, I my I I was woken up to walk the dogs. Uh-huh. Yeah.
Well, want dogs, gotta walk them. Uh, I mean, that's just the way it works. You know what I'm saying? Uh all right. Patrick O'Sullivan uh wrote in and said, uh, would like your thoughts on a seltzer system with a corny keg in a fridge as a cold reservoir of still water, then plumb to a mechan or similar carbonator for on demand.
And this is what he wrote. Keg would always have flesh water coming in. And then he corrects and he goes, in the next one, he's like, that is to say, fresh water. Flesh water would not be good. Although now I have this twisted flesh water.
Well, now you gotta think about that. Would it be good? So flesh water is what happens like when you're like uh like those who rinse chicken, that like that kind of like with that scum on the top, or flesh water is when you're in a not uh properly cleaned public pool and there's that like skim of human fat on the top of it when those hot indoor pools. You know what I'm talking about, Sadger? I don't do public pools.
Nastasia will not get in a public pool specifically because she does not enjoy the flesh water. Well, now I'm having second thoughts. Hey man. Uh, you know, that that's not soap in the hot tub. That's human oil.
Yeah, I know. Yeah, all right. Anyways. So back to the back off of the gross stuff and on to onto the question. So basically, what uh Patrick wants to do is he wants does not want to do a cold plate with ice, which is you know what I typically do.
Would rather have a corny keg. So corny kegs are Cornelius kegs. They used to use them for uh, they use them for homebrew now. They used to use them for soda, and some people use them for uh kegged cocktails and whatnot, but they're relatively cheap, relatively available. They hold the standard one holds five gallons, right?
Everyone, five gallons. Then you need a carbonator, right? The problem here is is that in a standard commercial carbonation system, like we have at the bar. By the way, the new bars carbonation system, pretty good, right, Stas? You didn't eat, I gave you water.
Terrible person. You are you uh anyway. You are mean to me. You are mean to me. That's when Nastasia calls me on the phone, it says, You are mean to me, you are mean to me.
And of course, you know, because uh someone uh one of our listeners made me a ringtone when Booker calls me, it says, Shut up, Dad. Hey Booker, can you give him another live shut up, Dad? No. What? Come on, Booker.
Lean in. Think about how shut up, Dad! Yeah, yeah, nice. I'm isolating that. Yeah.
Uh so yeah, I love it. You know what I mean? What'd you have to think about before you said that? Well, I I had to think I had to try to copy the voice. It's because he was saying annoying stuff.
What was he saying? Um, I don't know, Dad. What could you have been saying? What couldn't he have been saying? Booker is annoyed by pretty much everything I say, so that's why his ringtone like is is shut up, Dad.
He booker also like will occasionally Booker has kind of stock responses to certain things. So if you apply the brakes or turn too hard in the car, he used to have a very specific Do do not get to this, please. All right, but he changed his specific reaction, and so it he, you know, it's interesting. He's got you know what is the reaction? He doesn't want to talk about it.
He doesn't want to talk about it. That's why I don't like cars. It's what makes the Subaru a lemon. Yeah, he doesn't like our Subaru, but like anyway. The other thing is, oh Nastasi, do you like that story about Booker with the amulet?
Well, we don't have it we'll get it. Let's finish your time. Yeah, lady's like, you're never gonna see me again. This is a nice gift. Booker's like, takes it, looks at her, she goes, Buddhist, and lay and leaves.
Leaves the subway. Where is it in a special place? Yes. He's not gonna tell you where it is. Doesn't want you to go steal his endless.
I don't know. I don't think he looked it up. But he does it, you know, Booker, when he's in the subway, has a zen look. He's got that kind of like far-off zen look in his eye. Anyway, okay, so we're back to this.
So a corny keg holds about five gallons. It has a um a gas in port, which is at the top, and then it has a liquid out port, which is at the bottom of a long tube. So you can feed stuff into the top and you remove stuff from the bottom. In a commercial carbonation system, you have a carbonator. The carbonator has uh is plumbed with filtered water straight from the supply at roughly 45 to 65 psi.
You then it's at room temperature. You then have your CO2 tank plumbed onto it at like a like I do. The reason my the sparkling water is so ripping where I am is because I do it at 110 psi and then feed it through, and so that's at room temperature. It needs to be that high because you're doing it at room temperature. It then comes out of the carbonator as carbonated water, goes, and by the way, if you ever set up a commercial carbonator, and I'll tell you this, uh Patrick, no matter how you do it, no one tells you how to properly set up a carbonator, right?
Nobody tells you how to properly set up a carbonator. Even the McCann people, the people who make it, do not tell you how to properly set it up. Here I will tell you all now. Here is how you properly set up a carbonator. You fill it with cold water, turn off your gas, no gas.
Fill it with carbon with uh cold, regular cold filtered water. There is a uh a vent valve on the top of it that's a flip valve, right? An overpressure and release valve. Open that, flow it until it comes out of that, then close it, open up your taps, run it until just with just with plain water, no gas. Run it until your taps run full of water, then burp that vent valve a couple times.
Now you have gotten rid of all of the air in your system because I want you to mentally repeat air is the enemy of carbonation. Air is the enemy of carbonation. So now you have all the air out of the system. Now, here's the important part. Unplug your carbonator and or disconnect the uh the float switch on it.
Unplug it. I don't want any more water coming into it, right? You can leave the water on, but unplug it. Now turn your uh your gas on, turn the gas on, right? Turn it up to whatever you want.
Now, open up your valve and bleed all of the water out, all of it, until it sputters, and then stop. Now your system is 100% full of carbon dioxide. 100% full. All right? Now, uh, then you just plug it back in and the pump will turn on and inject water into your carbonator, and that stuff will be fully carbonated.
If you're carbonating at room temperature, I do. You can't really go over about 120. It's it's not, you can't. But I do it about 110, which is super ripping. Most people are gonna be down closer to 100 psi, right?
Then after that, it comes up out of the carbonator and goes into a cold plate. Now, most jerks who hate quality, don't appreciate their customers or their own dignity, only pass it through one channel of a cold plate. A cold plate is just a bunch of stainless steel tubing. By the way, make sure you never have any copper after the carbonation setup. No copper at all.
They have nickel plated brass, works, stainless works, never copper, never. Uh, and also I had to buy tube. I bought tube uh for the bar. How do you say tube? Turb turb.
I bought tube from uh a reputable supplier. I will not mention their name because I'm so freaking angry with them, and they recommended I buy vinyl tube. They recommended I buy vinyl tube that was braid reinforced. Why? Because they said it was more flexible, right?
And I said to myself, you know what, Dave? Your whole life, you know, decades, you've used uh braid reinforced polyethylene tubing, polyethylene tubing with EVA jacket, right? First of all, the hose has never failed, never failed, never failed. Secondly, it has never, ever, ever, ever imparted an off taste to any liquid I have ever put through it, ever, right? Because polyethylene doesn't have all those nasty plasticizers that vinyl does, right?
So this guy swears on a freaking stack of Bibles. I don't know why the hell I listened, but he swore on a stack of freaking Bibles that this vinyl tube, everyone's using this vinyl tube now, and that it's not going to impart any taste to the water. And so I plumbed it, and sure as shooting, the water tasted like death plastic. And we would have to run the water for like 30 seconds at a time. And you could see it foam and get nasty, right?
As it was getting the plastic uh stuff out. Did you taste that, Saz when you came over? Garbage. I was so angry because I was, you know, Jack and I were on our backs underneath our stations, like trying to like fit into these cold plates, which were way the heck underneath our stuff. And I was I was hype, I was displeased.
I was displeased. And we ripped it all out, wasted another day, ripped it all out, and replaced it all with the stuff that God wants you to use, which is polyethylene tube, braid reinforced with an EVA jacket, and our water tastes great now. I do use and do recommend the vinyl, the braid reinforced uh vinyl, you know, food grade vinyl tubing for gas lines because it is more flexible and will allow you to do things like carbonate and shake better. Okay, so back. So remember, most people run through one thing of a of uh a cold plate.
So you're coming from your tube, which please use uh polyethylene with braid reinforcement and EVA jacket. Please use that type of uh tube for your liquid. Now, uh, I'm sure, you know, he was like a lot of people when they're running beer and soda, they can't taste it. I don't care. Just use the good stuff.
So uh you're running it through, most people run it through one circuit of a cold plate, which is just a length of aluminum tube, uh, sorry, a length of stainless steel tube that is embedded typically in an aluminum block. You have ice on that. As the ice melts, it very rapidly heats the aluminum, uh, cools the aluminum block and gets your water down because the water's going through a quarter inch kind of a tube, so it has you know a lot of surface area for its volume and it chills very rapidly, not rapidly enough. Put it through two. So you're feeding into one, you take the out of that circuit, put it into the in of another, and then out of two.
And that is the way to get good seltzer. You also have to get a good seltzer uh dispensing gun. I use only Cornelius and Becker post-mix soda valves. Post-mix soda valves, right? Not those nasty, like Wonder Bar guns, not beer guns, they're different, they have a different compensator, it's not the same, it's not as good.
All right, now back to what you're having here. You want to put a Cornelius keg in your fridge, right? Plumb your water supply into the Cornelius keg into the top, into the gas port. You then want to have uh draw water out of the bottom through the product port and have it go into your carbonator. Your carbonator must also live in this fridge that you're using to chill your stuff because uh it needs to stay cold.
If it doesn't stay cold, you're not gonna have a good result. Now, your pressure on this is gonna have to be uh lower, like 45 psi, 40 to 45 psi in that range. I have never run a carbonator where the gas pressure was below the input the inlet pressure of uh the city mains. So if you're flowing from uh your city water through a filter into the corny keg in the fridge, you might have to put a regulator on it to dumb your pressure down to below the pressure of uh your gas. I don't know, you might have to run some tests, but here's the main problem you're gonna have.
One, I don't know whether the carbonator is going to enjoy being in the fridge for long periods of time because of condensation. I have done it before, uh, but you know, your results may vary, I can't guarantee because it you might get moist on the inside of the thing. The other problem that you're gonna have is this. Let's say you have a five-gallon Cornelius keg and it's totally full with 640 uh ounces of water. Let's say you leave that water in there long enough to get down to four degrees uh centigrade.
Okay. Every 32 ounces you draw uh out of that is gonna replace uh about 32 ounces of the water in the corny keg with uh water that's at room temperature, roughly 25 degrees Celsius. 25 degrees Celsius, th a 32 ounce draw of 25 uh degrees Celsius water into the corny keg will raise the temperature of the whole keg one degree. So if you're at four if you're at four degrees and you draw 32 ounces, you now have a five degree keg. Uh if you this is at these numbers.
I mean as the temperature varies widely, so so will these numbers. But then when you draw another 32, now you're at a six degree keg, okay? Uh and so you have to make sure that if you're drawing more than like a liter an hour, that your fridge is adequate enough to keep the temperature down, or you're gonna get creep, creep, creep, creepity creep, creep, creep up in temperature. One way to get around this would be to instead of plumbing it to your city is to have a valve and to push like 20 PSI of CO2 into the top, let the whole thing cool down five gallons, and then just refill the whole thing, wait for the whole thing to come back down to temperature and do it again. So if you're only drinking like a gallon a day of seltzer, like once a week, you could vent you could if you only have 20 PSI on the tank, you could just throw ice and water in and then have that thing rock for the rest of the time.
And that's maybe the way I would do it if you start to see that uh your water's getting too cold as it comes out, too warm as it comes out. Does that make any sense at all in the stats? I don't really care. I don't care. And also, like if you ever want to send Dave an email and want him to read it, just write subject carbonation question.
That is not even the case. That is not that is 100%. That is not true. Not true. Um that was fun.
Yeah. Well, look, do people want the real freaking answer? I think that's a good idea. Like, are we a niche freakish show or not? This is a real freaking answer.
Everything about carbonation on a website that's called like carbonation by Dave Arnold.com. And like every single who's gonna who's gonna write it? You? Well, you could just transcribe everything. Any carbonation question that has ever been asked should be transcribed and put on that page with links to the things.
Links to the diatribes? No, links to the equipment that they need to buy. But who's gonna do that? I mean, who's literally who would do that? If we had a competent uh intern.
Booker you up for it. Up for what? Wow, he's just you're just harshing on uh everyone now. It's harshing on everyone. All right.
Uh hey Dave and the gang. This is from uh PH tenant. Okay. Uh love the show. I'm planning on devising an extracurricular for school.
I want to get these questions from. I said tweet your questions in or call them. Oh. Did you see the other ones? Text?
Uh, the ones Matthew sent. No, I didn't get a chance to look at them because I was looking at my Twitter feed. Is if there's one that's important, take a look. Alright, we'll do it next week. Uh I was planning on devising an extracurricular for school.
I want, you know, kids, Booker, do you like extracurricular activities? Like what? I don't know. What's your favorite extracurricular activity? No, yeah, standing at home is his favorite one.
Like, like uh right. Like something you do outside of school. Do you like do you is there anything that you like to do? Taking the subway. Okay, other than that, because that's a fun thing.
Is there anything else working? Okay. Oh, nice. Yeah, all right. Nastasia, uh, Booker might be the only person in the world who thinks you're a good boss.
Uh I got some insight into Nastasia's management strategy earlier. Why did Tyree quit pasta flyer? You can't talk about individual people's issues on the air. So, what was the insight into the management style, Dave? Uh I can't really say on air.
You can't talk about people's individual issues. I'm thinking about how Tyree quit. Okay. Okay, this is you shouldn't talk about that because he has his own life and we don't want to get sued, Booker, okay. Why he quit is his own business.
Uh okay. I want to teach kids 10 to 19 years old a little more about cooking, basics or more advanced stuff, whatever's fun, engaging, and beneficial. Do you have any ideas for a syllabus, syllabus, syllabus syllabus? Uh love from Germany, Lucas. Well, that's why he likes extracurricular.
That's why what? He likes extracurricular stuff. Uh well, yeah, we Americans like it because now if you apply to college these days, if you don't have extracurriculars, you can't get in at all. Yeah. You know what I mean?
It's like, you know, if you haven't cured cancer, by the time you're 18, you can't, you know. Yeah. You're you're SOL, as we say. Uh if you come from a good family, you're okay. Well there's a lot, no, but the thing is like there's so many people from like everywhere that like I mean it's just like the the numbers on like uh stuff like the Ivies, it's just it's just stupid.
I don't even understand it. This is crazy. That's what I'm saying. You gotta have like the inside track to get into an I think that uh that doesn't always work. I don't even know if that yeah, I don't even know if that would work.
Although I don't I don't know, what the heck. This is not like it's not college issues. Although I did just go to my uh I haven't talked since I went to my reunion. Does that have any interesting food stories? I don't have time.
Anyway, we're talking about extracurriculars and food. Um Heston Blumenthal, uh, I don't know, like maybe 10, 12 years ago, did a um a kitchen science series for uh like uh secondary schools in England that you can probably get a hand on uh uh get a hand on that manual uh where it sets up a lot of interesting um it sets up a lot of interesting uh experiments for uh teaching uh teaching observation and scientific method through cooking. I happen to think that a lot of what they said is wrong in terms of like the conclusions they drew from their experiments, but uh in general, I am a rather curmudgeonly hard to get along with individual, and so I tend to say I tend to disagree with almost everything that almost everybody does, including myself. So I would take a look at uh Heston Blumenthal's kitchen science um syllabus. But that's not a syllabus for kids, although thanks for the plug, Stas.
But oh by the way, yesterday wait, wait, wait, so uh also look at what Harvard does, because even though uh what Harvard does is aimed at college uh kids, um they do some interesting experiments and they have open courseware uh online. Are you doing that again this year? I am doing that again this year, but we're not doing the first one, we're doing the second lecture this year. Uh which I don't even know what that means. But um, yeah, and I, you know, anyone on the chat room, and I'll I can think more about what would be a good uh a good set of things.
Cause you know, I like when I do it, I do more demos for kids, and so usually with if it's gonna be an extracurricular, you want to do more hands-on. Uh, and then the question is you are you're teaching more the science of it, which is what I've normally had to do, or are you teaching more just like the basics of cooking? If you're teaching the basics of cooking, um, you know, I would also look at you know, kind of what places like the FCI, now the ICC does in their kind of law techniques class. It's kind of like the basic core competency of what they're of what you need to teach people to cook because I think they did a good job and they've been doing it for like decades and decades. But these are all, you know, kind of curricula that you can look at uh online and get a handle on what you think.
What? All right, they're cutting me off, skip. So uh yesterday I sh uh I was on uh taped me for an episode of the burger show, Chef Alvin. So we I had to do the science of burgers, uh, which you know I may or may not disagree with. I had to baby, we'll talk about it later.
We'll talk about it later. If you want to know about the science of burgers and what we talked about on uh I can't really reveal too much because the episode's not available yet, but hit us back, we'll talk more cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content and to hear about exclusive events, subscribe to our newsletter.
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