Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Marlowe, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, Newsstand Studios in New York City. Joined as usual with John. How are you doing? Doing great.
Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Peachy. Loving it.
Loving it. Just loving it. Loving life. Just chewing it up and spitting it out. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's great. Yeah. Yeah.
Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How are you doing? I'm doing work, man. Not so sweaty today, huh? Even though it's muggy as heck.
Well, uh I'm gonna sprout more. Like I when you bike in, like my body's one of these things where it's like a delayed reaction kind of situation, so I'll probably continue to like spray liquids for the rest of the spray liquids all over the place. Anyway, uh in Switch positions today, we have Mr. Molecules in he's in Stanford now. You haven't switched yet?
Oh, you haven't switched in. Oh man. I get all my information wrong all the time. So you're still in LA? Why is it so exciting to you?
What, the switch? I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's something to talk to you guys about. Anastasia, you hate talking to me generally, you know, about food-related issues.
You'll talk for days about stuff that we probably shouldn't talk about. But yeah. Anyway. So it's something that it's something at least that you're, you know, talk about. Uh my foods.
Yeah. So unfortunately, Quinn will not be able to uh join us uh today. Hopefully, I mean he'll be back next time. Uh but uh I had a question and uh I I got Quinn's okay to talk about this, so I can talk about this. Uh so you guys familiar with Threads?
The new fake Twitter that's on Instagram? Yeah. Yeah. I haven't signed up for yet. Oh wow.
You've signed up for or you haven't. It's awful. Yeah. Well yeah, I have. It's terrible.
All right. Uh I also signed up for that. Oh, hey, my, my uh, my what's it called? My um it's my agent. That's my book agent.
Kim Witherspoon. Awesome. Kim Witherspoon, folks. Just fishbowled us. Amazing.
Uh anyway. So uh that's so funny. Yeah. Um I'll talk about the book in a minute. So Quinn, Nastasi and I had a ever since Quinn started, we've been pestering him to do what, Stas?
Get a cell phone. Get a cell phone. Because he doesn't have a cell didn't have a cell phone because he can't use them, right? So why have one if you can't use it? So he only used social media platforms that had browser uh what's it called?
Browser analogs, right? And but when he comes to work for us, we use platforms, things like texting, right? That you can't do from a browser and send images and have group text and stuff like that. So like we were riding them like a trick pony, right, Stas, about getting the you know uh I wouldn't call the text passive aggressive, more aggressive aggressive, right? Just like straight, straight aggro texting to try to like uh so I said this on the air before, he finally gets a phone, Android, of course.
No offense, Android people, but but come on. Why are you Android Jack? Yeah, you're Android, aren't you? No, no, no, no, no. All right.
Because the thing is is that like I I uh buy whatever phone you want. I'm not gonna yuck your yum. But when I see that green, I'm like, oh you know what I mean? Yep. I'm like, oh my god, it's someone like in another country.
Are they are they, you know, are they underwater getting squished like a submarine billionaire? Well, why is it green? Why isn't it blue? Anyway, so he gets an Android, fine, fine. And he sends us the text with a picture of uh, you know, a gif of Pinocchio dancing saying, now I'm a real boy.
Exciting, right? Except this. He is accessing the phone via his computer, right? So the phone exists, it's a real phone. And there's some sort of screen sharing thing that he can use with his computer so he can control it.
You with me? With you. All right. The problem is is that the people who have designed all of these things, like Instagram stories, like threads, uh, like some of these other applications, um, to make it usable on a phone, because they're all about the phone and their fingers all work, right? Are all about like uh the flick, right?
So there's no easy way for him to navigate through a timeline that's eight billion hours long because he can't like there's no mouse equivalent to flicking. So he can't make it flick. So what I said is there's gotta be some sort of human, uh, human, what was it called? H I D, human interface device or something like this. It anyway, it's a thing.
There's gotta be someone who has figured this out and has written a little piece of software to go in between the mouse and the fake telephone screen program to make it so that inputs that Quinn can do can make those applications function well in advance of those people understanding that not everyone can use the application the way that they want them to. So I was hoping that someone in Cooking Issues land has some sort of information and can get in touch with us. You know what I mean? Then we can, you know, do more stories and threads and all that stuff that people seem to care about. You know what I you know what I joined up?
Blue sky, haven't used it yet. What's that? It's another fake talk. Oh, you got the invite blue sky, huh? No, I'm so fancy.
Mm-hmm, fancy. Yeah. I don't really understand it. I never did that Mastodon thing. I don't do extinct animals unless I can eat them.
Would you would totally My favorite thing about threads is that like everybody everybody's so up in arms about Elon and these billionaires, and they're like, we need an alternative. And then Threats comes along and they're like, ooh, Zuckerberg, sure. Wow. Yeah. All right.
Oh my God. I mean, like, yeah. You know, I the my issue is is that um, and I said this to somebody, I was like, listen, my insights into the conversation are uninteresting. So I am not going to weigh in on a conversation about a conversation because my opinions on that are relatively worthless. You know what I mean?
So I prefer to just wait until I can talk about things like cooking or blowing things up. Things where my opinions are worthwhile. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah.
Um, dranks, you know, things like that. Uh all right. And you guys have anything uh oh, by the way, uh, should you be listening live? By the way, we're not here live in the studio next week, so I'll be at Tales of the Cocktail. So if you're gonna be in New Orleans, I kind of like this hot, crappy weather we're having here now because I think it's like New Orleans practice.
So you know how like when you get off the plane in New Orleans in the middle of the summer, you're like, oh yeah. Right. So uh, yeah, I'm trying to get some practice in. So so here's some things I want to do when I'm in uh New Orleans. Ready?
I want to meet with uh Turge, who runs uh specialty Turkish coffee, and have him do some actual Turkish coffee brewing with me so that I can have a world Turkish coffee barista champion next to me making the product while I taste it, which is, by the way, the way to tell whether you're doing a good job is to have the product made by a world expert. That is the gold standard to figure out whether you're doing a good job, is to taste the stuff being made by someone who everyone else thinks is doing a really good job. Don't you agree? Uh yes. Yeah, didn't think of that before, but yeah, that's a good point.
So then, so then, right, when I go home, I'm gonna be like, oh my god, I suck. Oh my god, I suck. But I can get better, right? Right? Yeah.
Uh so I hope to do that. Uh, and by the way, his his pots, which I can't pronounce the Turkish word for it, it starts with a C. Yeah. Right. Sedge.
I can't, I can't, I'm not even gonna try. But what I can say that, right? You know what I mean? His pots are so nuts. This they're like so heavy and nice.
You hold it, you're like, oh, I want to make the coffee now. You know, because it's a really ritual-based thing anyway. Really, really, really ritual-based. So I want to do that. Uh on the Monday, if you're in town in New Orleans for Tales of the Cocktail, I'll be doing some sort of thing for Martell's master distiller.
I don't know, some sort of something. I think there'll be some sort of artificial intelligence hoo-ha there. I don't know. I don't know. On Tuesday, my seminar about daiquaries.
I don't know if there's still spaces left, but it's called Dacquari Deep Dive, wherein we will uh analyze the structure of what is one of the most simple cocktails with a bunch of cool people like Shannon Mustafer, uh Garrett Richard, uh and Julio Cabrera, uh, and so like the four. So we have one, you know, you know, Cuban from Miami who like follows the old Cuban style. We have, you know, Shannon who follows Shannon's style, me and Garrett, and we're all gonna get together and pound our heads together and you know, uh actually taste out samples of daiquiries made different ways and get this. You know, so when you're at a tasting for shaking cocktails, they're always bad. Did I mention this?
They're always bad. And the reason is is because you can't shake cocktails for like 80 people and then pour them into tiny cups and then serve them and do comparisons because there's no way that the one that on the left is gonna be poured the same amount of time ago or shaken the same amount of time ago as the one on the right. So we got uh, you know, AK at Bicardi to buy us so some of those little um what do you call them? Like aerator things. So what we're gonna do is is we're gonna give everyone the pre-diluted, not shaken, all poured flat, and then so they can fluff it up and taste it like apples and apples.
Apples and apples. Yeah. And then I do a book signing on the Wednesday. Yeah. Yeah, and then I'm back.
But maybe we could do a show live if we can wrangle it. Uh I can call in maybe with uh with a bartender of choice from uh New Orleans. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.
Because the week after that, the studio is closed. So we gotta try to do something, right? Yep. Right? Right.
Okay. Um on the way in, sorry, not cooking related. Okay, you know how when you're going down the street and you see like a lime green Lincoln stretch limo from the 80s and it's all dented, and you're like, all right. You're like, that's cool. You know what I mean?
It's like it's cool. Yeah. You know, a a limo that's 40 years old can be beaten up and it's fine. You know, like it gets cool again. Saw an idiot with a dirty Bentley today, like two blocks from this place.
Like two years old, early, you know, 30, 30. Like, no, that's incorrect flossing. If you're going to buy a Bentley, clean that thing. Yeah. Have some freaking self respect.
Yeah. If you're buying, how much do those things cost? What are those? Like three, $300,000 or something? Oh, yeah.
Ridiculous. Yeah. If you have the money to be able to take care of it, just do it. Yeah, this is like uh, you know, that's why Nastasia was hating on Bjork, her dirty white shoes. Come on.
You're Bjork. If you're gonna if you're gonna be Bjork, be Bjork. Don't be, you know, don't be Kareem Rashid. Be be Bjork, who famously dirty white clothes. Uh designer.
Catcher. Isn't that Kareem Rashid? Yeah, right? Designer. Uh am I am I inaccurate?
So am I inaccurately categorizing your response. No. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh all right. So I also have a question. So there's this lady whose name is out of my head. She died, and her son's gonna donate, uh, trying to donate her books to Mofed, right? We already have FCI's library, she donated her books.
So in it was a list of her favorite books in her collection. And so just to get a kind of flavor for her taste, I bought a couple of them, right? And one of them I'm like, no, no, thanks. You know what I mean? No, thank you.
But then one of them is the Pyromaniacs cookbook, which I can't believe I never owned. It's an amazing book. It's from 1968. And uh it's just like really well, really well written. It's a good, and you know, I haven't come across any horribly sexist or racist things yet, so I'm not saying they're not there.
I haven't finished the book. You know what I mean? But I haven't hit them yet. So I haven't had that, other than the the obvious use of he for all the third persons and stuff, which, you know, 68. Anywho.
Uh and it was written in New York City in 196. He wrote it in 1967 in New York City, so it's got that New York flair and all about lighting crap on fire. And he basically his premise is you can light anything on fire. But what I didn't know, uh it well, so he publishes what he says is one of the very original early Cocoa van recipes. And in his recipe, it's not the way we make it now.
So like the way that I've always made it is you add the wine relatively early in the process. And you know, he first of all, cook, right, is a male, and you don't use chicken for cocoa van, not technically, right? No. And so the original recipe was with not with an old rooster, but with a capin. So castrated young male rooster.
Don't we wish they were all young cast? And I've never done side-by-side taste of a chicken versus a castrated rooster. You know, a young castrated rooster, but I would like to do that taste test. I would like to do capon versus chicken. Same variety, same farm, right?
So it's not about husbandry. Yeah. It's about you know. How do you cut the balls off of a chicken? I I don't know.
I mean, they don't have external junk. How do you can someone look that up while we're doing this? How do you how do you I mean how do you I don't really want to look at the images or videos that might come up with uh you know just get get the Wikipedia? You don't have to get the video. You don't have to get the video of how you how you D D man a chicken.
You know what I mean? Rooster. Anyway. So estrogen implants. What was the f well how'd they do it in like 1820?
Oh, well, that I don't know. But yeah, surgically or uh probably crudely surgically in 1820. I mean, it just seems like so much easier to do it to like a pig or a or a cow, you know, with the rubber band. Shagoink, you know what I mean? Sh pink, and then, like, you know, that's it.
I used to have nightmares. I we used to, Nastasia used to threaten me with pictures of that rubber band gun back when we worked at the FCI. She would just flash a picture of the rubber band gun. I don't know if you remember that stuzz. Um.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because that's like the worst nightmare. Anyway, uh, so they flambe the cocoa van early and then cook the chicken almost all the way through and add the wine at the end, which seems back asswards to me. Yeah.
Have you ever tried it that way or heard of anyone trying that way? You're a mushroom and onions guy, right? Yes. Pearls, right? Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. Now, because you're gonna braise it, are you that fool that buys pearl onions that aren't pre-peeled and frozen? Oh no, always. Why wouldn't you do that?
Well, the pee peeled and frozen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the way to go. When someone told me, yeah, yeah. Someone once walked up to me and I'm sitting there over the sink, like, oh, you know, my back's hurting.
I'm like, you know, all like like piles of crap everywhere, like half an hour later. They let me do the whole thing, right? And then they're like, hey, jerk, you can buy those pee pre-peeled and frozen. I was like, what? What?
Yeah. That's like the greatest tiny onion life hack. Really? You know what I mean? And I get it.
If you're gonna use it fresh or you were gonna like pickle or something, maybe not, I don't know, because of the free song, which we'll get into later. But I mean, in a braze, yeah. Come on. Totally fine. Yeah.
Anyway. Uh all right. So, um I have some updates on the spin's all. You want to hear them? Yeah.
All right. So the factory has finally given us some uh ways to tweak the program and the controls. So I've now tested the spinzall at an even higher speed than the one that we spec'd it at before. So now we can officially say that it is 25% more powerful. 25% more powerful.
And I'm also going to get them to tweak the program to see whether I can get it to accelerate faster. Because I figure maybe I can shake uh shave 30 seconds off the acceleration and maybe 15 seconds off the deceleration time to just crush the cycle times even lower. And hopefully with the 25%, I can get it the better mode on the continuous. So that's the that's the news. I'll be taking the prototype two tails of the cocktail.
So if you find me, I might have it on my back at any given time. Yeah, walking around like a turtle with my house on it on uh on its back. So anyway, that's good, right? Yeah, very good. Yeah.
Exciting. Uh all right. Also, updates on uh clarification and ginger. So Quinn's not here, so I can't talk to him about it. But you know, we're working with modernist pantry.
I think they have the magnesium carbonate online, which is what we use to clarify ginger juice, right? And things with uh starch. I found out the reason why the ginger, so I was having issues where the ginger juice was amazing, amazing. Uh, you know, I clarified it with with alcohol, right? So I did about a 50-50 mix of ginger and alcohol is what I've been using.
And the covings, by the way. Oh my God. Oh my god. This juicer. Okay, when I went when I was on my honeymoon, I went to the uh consortium Tutelo Parmigiano Reggiano, right?
And uh, and we missed the bus because there was no internet, so I didn't know when I had to show up. We made it early, like nine. He's like, the bus to the factories to where you could see the production left like half an hour ago. He's like, You there's no more tours. It was our only day in Parma.
So we we couldn't go. And I was I was dejected, even though it was, you know, my honeymoon. I was like, you know, almost crying. And so I told the guy, you know, in Italian, I forget I say it because I had my phrase book, you know, and I said, uh, I am in love with Parmigiano. And he goes, No, you love Parmigiano, you're in love with your wife.
And I said, No. I'm in love with Parmigiano and my wife. I have two mistresses. Anyway, so he gave us a whole, a whole just a whole bunch of uh of swag. I don't even know how I got on that.
What was I even talking about? I was talking about magnesium carbonate. Yep. Ginger. Anyway.
So uh I don't even know how I got onto that. Twin Tuesday, yeah. Oh, geez, Louise. And I don't even have Quinn to smack me back. I don't even remember what I was talking about, except for I was talking about ginger.
It was something about me. I can't allow that. Exactly. I'm gonna get sprayed out and like turned into a baby again. And 2001.
By the way, do you know that like kids these days don't watch any of the stuff we watched when I was? I was like, I I went to my kid and his friend, it was one of his best friends who wants to be a film major, right? Oh filmmaker, film major. Uh, but he wouldn't tell his old teachers because he was sick of them saying, You're never gonna get a job because it's Manhattan, whatever. Anyway, so I'm like, so you've seen the Brady Bunch?
No. So you've seen Gilligan's Island? No. So you've seen, and it's just any show, you name it, they haven't seen it. You know?
I was like, Night rider. He's like, No, but my uncle worked on Knight Rider. I'm like, and you still haven't seen it. I was like, sick, right? Worked on Night Rider.
None of these. Hasn't seen any of these things. Pathetic. And they were like, Well, I was like, Well, I saw shows that were not from my generation. Like, we all watched, you know, Honeymooners and I Love Lucy.
Anyway. Yeah. But what? Not that that's uh, oh yeah, bewitched, oh my god. Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle.
Yeah, but that's because they were like, that's because there were like 10 shows ever back then. Like and I love Jack. I'm with you, except for Dax and his crew watch almost exclusively Dross. What's what's that? Bull crap.
They just watch people like on a skateboard hitting their head against the wall, going, like that's what they're watching. So it's not like you know anyway. Yeah, yeah. Oh, three stooges. I heard like I heard Bill Hader and Conan O'Brien make their kids watch like old stuff.
Like um, what's his name? Hitchcock and that. That they understand. Well, uh, yeah. So I asked the I asked Nico, which is his dirtbag buddy.
I was like, are you at least watching the old films? And he's like, he's like, yeah. And he like, and instantly Dax was like Hitchcock. I'm like, Hitchcock is relatively late in the history of films, my man. You know what I mean?
But I was like, Yeah, but so they are watching stuff like that. So that's good. I mean, Bill Hader's cool. I mean, I don't know him personally, but I would guess he's cool. Hey, are we allowed to talk about the secrets about the band at Conan O'Brien that uh Amber Mattock told us?
No, why the Okay? Why would we do that? No. Okay, I won't. All right.
Anyway, uh good stuff. I wish I wish we were still in touch with Amber Maddic. Amber Maddock was the maybe still is, I don't know, the safety expert for NBC studios here in this building. And uh, or one of these buildings, I don't know, they're all the same to me. And uh he was one of the coolest folks.
Like, he was so cool. Remember? Oh my god. Ambromatic. What was his actual name?
You remember? I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, back to the ginger. So uh oh, the Kovings.
I love the Coovings. I'm in love with my Kovings juicer. Ah found it. Oh, found it, people. This juicer, so like in the first edition of the book, I wrote about the champion juicer and how much I love it.
And Stas, you know, we remember I wrote about it. You remember that time that we juiced so many apples that the champion melted, and like we were sticking wet towels over the champion and they were steaming. And then and the magnet went bad, so then it didn't have a safety anymore. You remember that? To me, that is the sign of an amazing product, right?
And so, like, you know, that's basically the only juicer I recommended because uh I don't really like centrifugal juicers, even though that's what uh the factory in China keeps calling the spinz all a centrifugal juicer, which it irritates me no end. But you know, I ran some tests with like the Breville juice fountain. Breville, good company, but the juice fountain throws a lot of pulp into the juice. So I'm assuming that most centrifugal juicers throw a lot of pulp into the juice. And since I spend most of my time trying to get the pulp out of juice, I'm like, no, thank you.
You know what I mean? No, thanks. Um but so I did not have too high expectations for this vertical auger juicer that Covings uh, you know, made. But I was just so quiet and don't have to do anything, you don't have to force. I mean, maybe as I'm getting older, I don't need to be as aggressive with my juicers.
You know what I mean? Like, uh, I feel like, you know, uh, you know, when I was in my 30s and you know, even 40s, it's like I needed to like I needed to smash some apples into a champion to make to to kind of get rid of some steam, right, Stas? Yeah, yeah. Yep. Remember at Booker and Dax when uh they weren't juicing the stuff as fast as I wanted, and we ran in there and I just obliterated all those apples in the champion.
Wait, do you have the whole juicer model? I I have the Revo 830. The the Cadillac of them, the Bentley. There I am. Is it no, no?
Well, okay, so uh yeah. So that I heard that the Bentley was that basically the reason for Bentley as opposed to Rolls-Royce was that if it was too gauche to have a fancier car than your boss, you bought a Bentley. So your boss has a rolls and it's gauche for you to buy a rule, so you buy a car of equal quality, but it's got the Bentley marquee on it. How douchey is that? So douchey.
So douchey. Uh so anyways, this juicer, oh my God, it just eats ginger and spits out juice. Like cold, no, no nothing, no foam. Oh my God. Every once in a while, I don't cut the ginger, I just break off big pieces and throw it in.
Every once in a while it goes, oh, but you just hit the reverse button and it goes and keeps going. So far, I've only done like a kilo and a half at one crack without without, you know, I'm gonna do more. I'm gonna do more, I'm gonna do more because I'm doing ginger uh at tails of the cocktail. I'm gonna make it here, and that's a segue into this. I uh so magnesium carbonate is what we use to clarify uh these things with starch.
Now you can clarify starch by cooking it, thereby breaking the starch granules, then hitting it with an amylase, which will turn it to sugar, but then you've cooked it, right? So that's not cool for what I like to do. Uh now, I was having this issue where I clarify with magnesium carbonate. The ginger was amazing, fantastic. And then in a day it would be dead.
In a day, dead. And so then when I was running all these tests, I was pressure cooking it. I was doing it with acids. I was bop ba poop ba beep ba-bop. So in my one of my recent tests, I realized, oh, oh, magnesium carbonate is highly basic.
It it is alkaline, right? And I noticed this because I pre-acidified the juice. Because one of the things is that you straight ginger juice is hard to clarify because it is um it's not acidic. And uh Pectinx X uh ultra SPL doesn't like to break down things unless there's some acid. That's why carrot juice is hard to clarify without apple juice in it.
Yeah, unless or you dope it with acid, and that's fine. So I added about a percent of acid to the uh ginger juice and some of the alcohol to like lighten it up a little bit. And I spun it, I'm sorry, I let it sit for 10 minutes or so, then I added the mag carb instead of adding it all at once, and it foamed like a bastard. And I realized, oh, carbon dioxide's coming off. Magnesium carbonate is a base, and it's making the entire solution basic.
And so you're adding a bunch of magnesium carbonate to it because you're actually not using a chem, well, it's not totally chemical reaction, it's settling out, taking the stuff with it. So the reason that everything was going bad was that it was coming out of the of the clarification process at a pH of about eight, right? High, eight, nine, you know, somewhere between eight and nine. I measured it. And so then you have to then add a little bit of acid to neutralize the mag carb after you clarify it, and then you add acid for ginger stability because ginger is very the flavors of ginger are very unstable in neutral and basic environments.
You wanna you want to have it uh a little bit acidic. So I'm gonna get you some numbers, I'm gonna do some titration um before we have our next show, and I'll let you know exactly how much uh of like citric acid I'll either choose citric or malic how much citric or malic acid it takes to balance out uh spun mag carb stuff so that the ginger is stable. Yeah yeah yeah and now my stuff's stable and my ginger is loving it which means I don't have to make the ginger in in New Orleans I can make the ginger in the comfort of my own house with the comfort of my own Bentley of juicers. So if I have the Bentley like what is my what does my boss have? Might even be the Rolls Royce rolls.
Yeah yeah when you think of Worlds Royce now you still think of cars or you think of jet engines cars yeah I've always thought of I mean I know they do engines too but yeah cars not just engines jet engines yes yes yeah no cars ours yeah well we have a collar sweet caller you're on the air is this a jet engine question or a food or beverage question hey we have a collar quicker how uh uh are are you feeling okay how you feeling yeah I'm feeling a little better you know two doses of antibiotics and I'm full of piss and vinegar no nice a little extra hopefully more vinegar hopefully more vinegar and less pits I have to save the show because you haven't even mentioned where you are using the ginger which is a second event on Tuesday. At the Campari event. Yeah I mean about I probably danced around it. I danced around it. No you said seminar Tuesday books and Wednesday.
No mention. True, true. So we're doing something related to messing with your senses, like uh loosely synesthesia adjacent uh thing with comparian. Don Lee will be there, uh I will be there, Monica Berg will be there, uh, and uh you know, the Kampari team will be there, and I'll be slinging uh Sky Mules uh until I can't be slinging them no more. So should be fun.
Although it's gonna be a nightmare of a day because I have to prep for both the seminar and for uh the thing. Do the seminar, and I have what is it, Quinn? Like 10 minutes to get from one event to the next. Something stupid. Yeah.
Something like that. Give him five minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Sweet.
Uh all right. So uh, oh, by the way, I looked up for uh Alexander some of the papers uh on amygdalene, and because what happened, remember I told you last week? Uh so look for amygdalin uh toxicity anti-cancer activity analytical procedures for its determination in plant seeds and uh the amygdalain content of seeds, kernels, and food products commercially available in the UK by uh Bularinwa. And uh that should be good. I mean, if you want, you can also look up analyzing the effects of hydrothermal treatment on the anti-nutritional factor content of plum kernel grits by using response surface methodology if you really want to, but I don't think it's necessary.
It wasn't a very good paper. Uh I mean it wasn't interesting to me. You know what I mean? The title like that, that's shocking to hear. Can you imagine how fast I said it?
Oh, and I spoke to my editor, not my agent who just fish build us, but my editor. And she says, I can tell people that I may or may not be working on a 10th anniversary of liquid intelligence, but you should still just buy the book now because it's gonna be like a long time. Still buy the book. Don't bankrupt me, people buy the book now. Seriously.
It's gonna be different. I'm taking stuff out, maybe. Anyway, uh, I'm supposed to be asking, so like it's kind of like you know, what on food and cooking, right? Where like, you know, you gotta get the old one and you gotta get the new one. You know, you know what I mean?
Although, wow, 10 years, like pictures before and pictures after. Holy, it's been a rough 10 years on me, my friends. Anyway, uh, I'm supposed to ask if there's anything you think uh I should add that wasn't in the uh original anyway, there's that. Um I mean, I've been working on so much stuff. So, for instance, um remember that remember that Pepsi thing we did, Stas?
Yeah, yeah. Uh do you drink soda? Yeah. Are you a Coke or a Pepsi? Pepsi.
Really? Are you just saying that? Or really? See, I'm really I'm a diet soda drinker, and all diet soda drinkers are Diet Coke people. Yeah.
Why are you a diet soda drinker? Do you uh is it uh is it for the health reasons, or do you some people like that taste? I grew up drinking it. I don't drink diet soda anymore. I drink seltzer only, right?
Uh so I weaned myself off of diet soda, like uh, you know, in college and grad school and moved exclusively to seltzer, right? Um, but it's just because, and I think this is the case of with most diet soda drinkers, it's not a treat. It is my only form of hydration, you know? So I didn't used to drink coffee, but the only liquid that would enter my body was either uh wine or diet coke. Those were the two things I drank, you know what I mean?
And then whiskey, you know what I mean? Uh then gin. You know what I'm saying? But in other words, like non-alcoholic beverages, it was diet coke or bust. That's not true.
Sometimes diet seven up or diet sprite. Uh, but yeah, and so like diet soda drinkers, if you were to drink as much soda as I drank, it's just an unconscionable amount of sugar. You can't do it. You know what I mean? So I think that's most diet soda drinkers, which is why I think that people have the whole idea of I think people m who don't drink diet soda completely mischaracterize how diet soda drink drinkers drink, right?
You know what I'm saying? It's not like a diet soda drinker would drink that equivalent amount in regular soda. Anyway, my uh my 35 cents. Um sorry, Dave. I can't allow that.
Are you not a diet soda drinker, my man? No. No, sir. Do you know there's a new study I haven't read it yet? Uh I don't know whether I believe it's crud or a good study on uh on uh new uh Nutri-Sweet aspartame.
I haven't read it yet. So I have nothing to say about it one way or to other. But people do are people even using aspartame anymore? Isn't everyone on the splendid train? Everyone's riding that splendid train.
Remember the Quad City DJs? Come on ride the train and ride it. Great lyrics. Anyway. Yeah, yeah.
Uh all right, so I'm working on syrups that were based on that Pepsi uh thing that we did. Remember that caramel syrup, how good that was? Yeah. Yeah. So I'll give I'll give you guys some uh some syrups that I'm working on because why not?
Why not give you people some syrups that I've been working on? So uh the problem with making a caramel syrup is that uh it's very if you're gonna make caramel syrup the old-fashioned way by cooking sugar until it's brown and then praying you can catch it at the right moment before it burns, and then trying to figure out how to dilute it back after all the stuff you went, i this way is painful. This way is not gonna make a consistent caramel product from day to day. Would you agree with that, John? Yeah.
Yeah. So what I used to do was uh I'd use the pressure cleaner to make it. So what you do is is you I would do a two to one syrup and I would add base to it. And when you add base, getting ready to roll base, then you would uh it would brown at a much lower temperature. So you seal the, you make a syrup, like a two-to-one syrup, and I was using uh I did like let's just say as a batch recipe, 150 of uh sugar and 75 of water.
I added two and a half grams of sodium carbonate. So sodium carbonate is the more basic version of baking soda. So you bake baking soda at 300 Fahrenheit for like an hour or two, it should lose about a third of its weight, and now it's sodium carbonate, washing soda. So it's less basic than lye, but more basic than um more basic than baking soda by a lot. So two and a half uh uh grams of that, cooked it 75 minutes at 15 psi, you get this gorgeous, gorgeous dark brown caramel syrup out.
I'm gonna test it with one-to-one to see if I can get it as dark with one to one, because then I could use more of it, right? Yeah, so that I'm gonna test on that. But then here's the secret, right? You wanna wanna add malic acid. I chose malloc acid because uh I felt like it.
Uh 1.58 grams. You get that? 1.58 grams should neutralize that amount of cal of uh of uh sodium carbonate, and then you have a neutral syrup that doesn't taste really salty from the acid-base reaction, like sometimes you can get with baking soda when you neutralize it, and is not basic anymore and is stable. It'll lighten up a bit when you add the acid to it. Strangely, it's weird, right?
It goes gets lighter. Can I tell you a story when I was trying to develop it? I was trying to develop it, right? This recipe, trying to make it like, you know, trying to dial it in. And I'm still dialing it because I told you I'm gonna do one-to-one.
So I'm like, hey, if I get hydrochloric acid, right, which is HCL, and I and and I get uh uh sodium hydroxide, which is lye, right? Those add to table salt, right? And I only have to use a tiny amount of it because uh it's so you know, it's so strong. So I was like, okay. So I was doing I was doing four syrups.
One that you put acid in to invert it and caramelize it, one you put base into to caramelize it, and uh one that you add protein to to do an actual myard reaction, right? So I'll talk about this in a second. So anyway, so first of all, the lie that I had was like two years old, and lie is so hydroscopic, hygroscopic that it just sucks water out of the air. And my lie numbers were totally inaccurate. I know this because when I tried to neutralize it with the hydrochloric acid, it went way acidic on me.
So I threw it out. So now if you buy lie, pro tip, if you buy lie, make solution with it's okay for pretzels, but if you need the concentration to be relatively stable, and don't put a desiccant packet in your lie because the lie is actually more of a desiccant than the desiccant is, and it will suck the moisture out of your desiccant and ruin the lie. So uh make a solution with the lie right away, but wear gloves and all this. So anyway, I buy hydrochloric acid. I'm like, how bad can concentrated hydrochloric acid be?
You know what the answer to that is? Really bad. Really, really, really bad. Don't buy it, don't have it in your house. I I bought this like high grade stuff, and you know, I'm in the kitchen like an idiot, and I haven't used high proof, you know, whatever you call it, like you know, very concentrated hydrochloric acid since I was a high schooler, right?
And back then we were in a science room, right? So I get my gloves on, I have my face, you know, I have my glasses, my safety glasses, and it, and as soon as I open it up, I'm like, oh, this shit needs to be on stuff. Sorry. This stuff needs to be under a hood. Instantly I'm like, oh from the fumes, it starts melting.
So like once you open the foil, it got to the top of the foil and melted the foil into the into the acid. So I was like, I can't have this in the house. So then I ran outside, because you know, I can't have it in the house. So I run outside, and this is where I found out that my lie was clumping too, because I'm like, well, I'm just gonna neutralize this with lye. So I like, you know, I'm trying to make a uh uh uh uh um a what's it called uh uh a dilute enough acid solution in my bathtub in a lexan, right?
So that I can then neutralize it and pour it down the drain without destroying my drains, right? So or or etching the tub, right? Because it also like muriatic acid is an etchant, right? So like if it touches the concrete, I'm hosed. If it touches me, I'm hosed.
If it splashes on me, I'm any way you slice it, I'm hosed. And if Jen comes home before I get this stuff down the drain, or you know, God forbid Booker comes in and is like, why can't I touch, or whatever? You know, I mean it's not that nightmare, bad news. So I throw all my lye into it. It's getting hot as hell.
I'm like trying to get it down the drain, and like anytime there's a splash on me, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. It turns out that sodium carbonate and malic acid or citric acid as your acid-based thing is just fine. It's just fine.
Just don't play with the hydrochloric. The other thing that's effed up is that with the hydrochloric acid, and then I found this out later because I have a pH meter, uh minute incorrect uh amounts that you add, right? So, like I told you, my lye was had a little too much water in it. So, you know, and we're talking like half a gram total, less, you know what I mean? And uh all of a sudden it goes and goes like super acidic, like super acidic, super low pH.
And I think I just must also done my calculations wrong by like a factor of two or something like this, because the the hydrochloric acid syrup that I made to try to do inversion, then I was gonna add my base to it and have it just be like, you know, fully inverted syrup. The acid was so strong that it ripped apart the sugar molecules in the uh in the solution and turned them to carbon. I had a big chunk of carbon floating in the middle of my mason jars. Oh, another thing I did, I don't know if I mentioned this. You know how they tell you to put your uh mason jars, especially if they're not fully full, put your mason jars into cold water and then turn the temperature up.
You know, this like when you're canning something. So I'm like, well, this is a ginger test actually, not a seri test. So I'm like, well, I want the ginger to be hot right away. I don't want it to go through that weird zone because I want to know what the heat is doing, not what like a ramping heat is doing. So I boil the water, I stick all my mason jars in and boom bottom blue right off of them.
I was like, I'm a jerk. So if any of you can remember that and not have that happen to you, God bless. Uh so anyway, so the caramel syrup is good. I also did a yeast, uh, you know, uh what's it, diamonium phosphate, which is a protein, so you actually make a mired reaction in the syrup. And for that, I used I had the yeast nutrient, which also has uh food grade urea in it.
Uh, but I used uh a lot. No, eight, not 86, has to be eight point. Oh, yeah, 2.5. I added 2.5 um grams of yeast nutrient to the same uh base, did the same 77 minutes at 15 PSI, and you get a dark brown syrup and it's bready, tastes like cooked bread. But the problem is is that it gets lost in old fashioned.
So I'm trying to figure out a way to amp the breadiness or get this. I want to maybe make a like uh like a wheat or a barley syrup and then add the uh the uh the yeast nutrient to it to make that kind of cooked myart to make like a toasted bread syrup that doesn't involve toasted bread. So that's what I'm working on, syrup wise. Yeah? Yeah?
Yeah? All right. Hey John, why don't you promote the Patreon membership? Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh lots of great reasons to join, as we always mention.
Uh, you know, mainly the the Discord that we've got going on, a lot of great access to other listeners, recipes, troubleshooting, dish ideas, all sorts of great things, book recommendations. You also get uh discounts at Kitchen Arts and Letters when we have uh certain authors come on, discounts at uh with partners like Ed's Edwards Aged Meats and really just a great bunch of other people. So yeah, uh join cooking or patreon.com slash cooking issues. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh oh. Hey, do you have the the Dolby one? We literally know what I'm talking about? Yes.
Yeah, yeah. I love that one. You mean THX? Is that S T H X? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. It's sweet though, right? When you're in the theater and you're like your chest is going. To me, I know that uh I'm uh what's it called? A uh uh a brute, but like if I'm gonna spend a billion dollars to see a movie, I want to hear some rumbling.
I want to see some, I want to see some crap blowing up on that screen. Even if it's like a tear jerker, can they just have some sort of major explosion and loud thing so that's something I can't experience at home? You know anyway. I guess that's what the previews are for. Uh although they don't play the previews as loud as they pre play real movies, do they?
No. Oh wait. I don't think so. So that sounds like uh remember V'Ger? Of course you do.
Um so are you guys Oh Star Trek? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The original Star Trek. The the thunder drums. Yeah.
You can make those at home. They're pretty fun. Really? Uh are you guys pro preview or anti-preview? Are you the people who are sick of previews?
I like previews. You like previews? Yeah. What about what about you? What about you guys uh out there on the coastal areas?
Previews, yes, or previews no. Yeah, I do. Yeah. If you're paying for the movie, I want to see the previews. You know what I'm saying?
Anyway. Uh if you're gonna go really early to an Alamo Draft House movie, they have awesome like uh old movie clips from the 60s and stuff. I like going early. What movie? Movie theater, Alamo Draft House.
Like in Alamo Draft House. It's usually themed and it's it's good. I don't know if it's still there, but it was there like eight years ago in Well Fleet. There's still a drive-in that you can go to, and they still play the intermission crap from the 60s. Yeah, yeah, with like the oil slides and uh yeah, it's pretty sweet.
It's pretty sweet. Uh and they they've updated. When I was a kid, that place used to have the the little the weird things that look like giant CB radio microphones. You know what I'm talking about? That would hang on your mirror, but now you just, you know, turn on.
Well, I'm sure now it's not your car radio anymore. It's probably streaming on your iPhone or some garbage. I don't know. But uh yeah, I like a drive-in. Although the second movie always sucked.
The first movie was the good movie, and the second movie was just something that they had for free that they could throw in. Like not Parasite. Uh, what's that one? There was one called Parasite from like the 80s that was like a schlock B horror film that's not the Parasite that's great movie. Tremors?
Maybe. It's been a long time since I've been to a drive-in. Um, all right. Uh Lord Nabu writes in, uh, what schnapps did Dave drink at uh Tolok Schnapps? Did he stick with Linny or did he go for something Danish?
So uh I went there the day after I was at Noma, and uh if I was gonna tell you that I wasn't feeling the amount of alcohol I had had at NOMA the next day, I'd be lying. You know what I mean? So I said to the uh the waiter, I said, uh, if I could have only one schnapps, what should I have? And he goes, have our house schnapps. So I had whatever their house schnaps was.
So it wasn't Linny. Although, you know what? I didn't buy because I uh my hands were full. There's all these like uh other linnies uh in I should have I should have stocked up when I was in the uh in Copenhagen's airport on all the other like linnies and stuff, but I didn't because as we all know, stupid. Stupid stupid.
Uh all right. Uh Ian uh writes in uh uh but spelled differently, so it's a different Ian. Uh I'd love to hear Dave's thoughts on Ian McPherson's suppression technique as well as free switching. So I did more uh whatever research uh into this uh kind of at Quinn's behest. You still you still with us, Quinn?
Yeah, I'm and uh so here's the deal. So first of all, on uh on free switching. Now, as far as I can tell, this is just freeze concentration, where you then put a different liquid in other words, where you you take it back to proof or whatever with a liquid that isn't the water that you froze out. Am I inaccurate about that? That's basically what that is, right?
Yeah. So, you know, uh, and you know, I yeah, I think it's pretty much true that a lot of bartenders are doing it because you know, because Ian came up with this term and this takes some that's true. However, the people at cuisine solutions have been selling equipment to do it for a number of years, you know what I mean. I don't I don't know what first year he started doing it or calling that stuff was, but and you know, it is a known technique and it works. You know, I don't know much more I can say about that.
Like that's the way, you know, people you freeze concentration is like old farmers' way of of of increasing alcohol content, and then you can do with it what you want. So I guess the the difference is the I the conceptual idea is to do it on purpose with the uh purpose of making a liquid back with different flavors, composing a liquor, right, which you then use in cocktail. So that's different, right? That's interesting. Uh I used to use it more for freeze concentration, more for doing low temperature, zero zero uh heat reductions, right?
So like we would make like uh grape juice concentrate or you know, or alcohol uh concentrates like that that way. Um so you know, I think if it works for you, fan tiddly dastic, right? No? Is that a okay now? So supression now, on the other hand, I need to.
So I saw Kevin Coss's uh uh what's it called? U YouTube on that, uh, where he you know interviews or or or quotes, you know, Ian has pick you know videos of Ian talking about it. So this is an I think an unfortunate term. And uh I I'm you know not one to throw a stone since I live in a glass house. I've come up with so many unfortunate terms.
I think milkwashing is an unfortunate term, Houstino is an unfortunate term. Uh I think even acid and bricks adjusting is a kind of an unfortunate term. I think uh, you know, basically any term I've ever come up with, I think is unfortunate. But you know, I think the I think it suppression, what they're doing is freezing. What you're doing is freezing something, and the theory is is that as you freeze it, the pressure builds up and infuses product uh infuses the liquid into things like fruit, and then you thaw it and the stuff comes out, right?
So it's supposed to be a flip on sous vide, because sous vide's under vacuum. So it's that however the couple issues with that. One, it doesn't make sense to me, and two, um you're conflating, and in fact, in the recipes, they're conflating the idea of sous vide where you put something in a vacuum bag and heat it, right? So sous vide has a heating or cooking process, right, which I've always hated. I've always hated that.
I lost, I lost that battle. I've lost. You did, yeah. Lost. I'm a loser, right?
But uh right, so it's conflating those ideas of cooking and just the effect of manipulating the pressure, which I think is awful, right? So, okay, so fine. So then the core of the idea is that you take something like a fruit, let's just say a strawberry, because it's got a lot of air in it, right? You throw it into a full container. So it's all the way full.
Am I my portraying this accurately, Quinn? Yeah. So let's just say a keg or or an ISI whipper, right? Or EC whipper, right? Okay.
So it's all the way full. And the theory is, right, that as this stuff freezes, you all know that uh when water freezes, it expands. One of the very few things on Earth that as it freezes, it expands. There are a couple metal alloys that do that actually, and they're used for casting. Look up sero bismuth.
Cerro bismuth alloys. Aside from the fact that most of them are highly toxic, they're interesting in that they melt close to body temperature. So medical people used to use them for custom uh anti-radiation weights, and they would like mold these serobismuth alloys like around, they're also expensive. I was gonna do an art project with them. You want to hear what the art project was?
Yeah. So I was gonna make a figurine. So have you ever seen my video of the elves jumping into a wood chipper? Yep. Yeah.
So I was gonna do uh something that molded things out of sero bismuth, and then almost like a chocolate mold of that, and then just dumped it into a metal pile and had it just keep recycling, melting these uh things. So the other interesting property about serabismuth alloys, and they're used for um very high detail uh uh castings that don't require any sort of temperature stuff, is they expand. So you get extremely high accuracy details out of these metal casts. Anyway, I I digress again. Uh but I do love a serabism alloy.
I even bought a chunk of it that's so expensive, but it's got all sorts of nasty heavy metals in it. You don't want to like a lot of stuff. You don't want that stuff. No. Uh anyway, so the idea here is that the water that's in your cocktail plus fruit is going to expand.
And the idea is that because the container is full, it has no place to go. And then the theory goes that uh the liquid that is left over will get forced into the fruit as it's freezing because of the tremendous pressure. I don't know whether I believe that that's the case. I would have to do a side by side uh test because here's the truth. If you actually filled up the thing, and if there was actually nowhere to go, uh you'd be looking at pressures on the order of 30 to 100,000 PSI.
So you would just shatter it. I don't care. Kegs are only designed to do like a hundred PSI, like maybe burst at like 180 PSI. You know what I mean? Working pressure like 100.
Uh an ISI not designed to hold tens of thousands of psi, right? Now, not dangerous because there's no uh gas in there. So, you know, when it ruptures, it's just gonna go pump, and that's why water pipes burst. That's why, you know, my crazy now dead racist grandpa, he used to be able to just, you know, drill, he would take a hand star drill and a hammer and drill holes into rocks in upstate New York in the in the 40s, 30s and 40s, and then fill them with water in the winter, and then that would freeze, and the pressure of that freeze is so high that it would just cleave off huge pieces of rock, right? Well known, you know, tech you know, old time, oldie timey rock breaking technique.
And uh, and then he used to tell me that all the time because his main point was I was lazy. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yeah, that was his main point in anything. Grandpa's main point in anything was that I was either lazy or stupid.
Yeah, or too liberal. Those are the three things that he would always uh had against me. Uh that and and that I was a uh uh a guy and he didn't really like guys. Anyway, um I digress again. So the pressure, if you were actually gonna have it be so full that that was gonna be an issue, you would also invariably shatter the thing.
So there's gotta be space left. There's just gots to be, right? Because there's no way that you could actually keep it in there under that pressure of freezing. It's just there's nothing made that would do that. So I don't know.
What I think is happening is that if that when you're freezing something, especially if you're freezing it in a large volume, you're gonna freeze it relatively slowly. You with me? This is what I think is actually happening. Uh so I think the effect might be real. So when you're freezing something large, it's gonna freeze slowly.
And the slower something freezes, what? Anyone? Larger the ice crystals. The larger the ice cream ice crystals bing ding ding. So a larger ice crystal that grows, right, uh is gonna cause more damage to the uh product than uh a fast freeze.
And so I think that this very slow freezing that you're getting inside of this uh, and also probably only partial freezing because there's alcohol involved. I think that is what the main thing is. Because we've all got a bag of fruit, especially if you pre slice it, right? Don't keep the fruit whole, right? You pre slice it, you throw it in, strawberries again.
Take strawberries, take frozen strawberries, full blueberries, even worse. You let them thaw, what do you have? You have a pile of juice. You have a pile of juice and a bunch of bags of uh of like like right? Yeah.
So I think that's the main effect. I think it's mainly a freeze-thaw effect and not so much about the pressure. That's what I think. Uh I mean, have I run the test on having it be fully full versus partially full? I have not.
One thing about it being fully full is it'll take longer to freeze. Another thing about it being fully full is that you're guaranteed that everything is submerged, right? And so there could be some effect of the freezing being submerged versus not. I don't know, but I haven't run the test. Um there's a theory that just freezing cocktails can also uh change them, like once they're diluted.
Um again, uh, you know, uh Kevin ran the test and he did a Manhattan, and he wasn't sure whether he saw an effect from freezing to Manhattan and letting it thaw again. I've run tests of Manhattans that have been almost frozen, and I haven't noticed much of a difference over the short term. Maybe it's oxidation because you're allowing the Manhattan to be exposed to uh air and you're not purging it before you freeze it. Um so that could be the change that you're looking at. I'd have to do a bunch of side-by-side tests.
The only way I could think of it being true is if uh something were to drop out of solution during the freezing, let's say the wood, and then not get resuspended again or not get you know resolubilized again when it thaws, that I could see. That would be akin to freeze concentration, but I would have to see it to believe it. Uh Roro feeds. Uh I was listening to the Tropical Standard episode and bought the book hoping for some greater clarity on banana juice, pun intended. Uh, but I'm left wanting a little more.
A centrifuge does not fit my glorified hobbyist budget, so I've been relying on time infiltration. My two enemies time filtration. Current recipe, uh I SUV banana puree with an amylase at 144. We talked about that a little bit, three to five hours. Squeeze out the juice, add pectin X, and then let it sit for an hour before filtering it again.
I end up with about 60 to 70% juice by banana puree weight, but I'd like to improve it. That's pretty good, actually. You know, banana is not the most liquidy of things. That's pretty good. I'd like to improve it.
Sometimes it comes out with a hint of bitterness, and sometimes the flavor profile is too short. Am I doing something wrong? Could I use alcohol extraction that you use in a center fusion use my current uh strategy of time plus filtration? Well, you could definitely use alcohol, but it's gonna dilute the flavor even more because you're putting alcohol into it. Also, the stuff that's left over uh holds on to the the when you mix fruit and alcohol, and uh, you know, this is one of the things they claim for suppression, but really it works anytime you're doing this, is when you mix fruit and alcohol and you put them together for a long time, the fruit tends to absorb some of the wood and other kind of nasty things that are in the alcohol.
Uh so there's a liquor, it's all remain nameless, it's actually gone out of business, and I hated the taste of it. And I had I hated it. It's always a terrible product. And uh, but at the French Culinary Institute, we were getting paid to use it. So I had to use it.
And I discovered that uh pears are relatively neutral. So they wouldn't add, you know, not great pears. Talking like, you know, supermarket, medium, you know, medium ripe. I'm not talking like, you know, I'm not talking like, you know, comese pears, like freegan, like high-end floral pear. I'm talking like supermarket, like green unripe bartlets.
You stick the pear in, you hit it with a vacuum, infuse that stuff in, and the pear absorbed a lot of the poison out of this liquor and made it completely usable. The pears were unusable because they tasted like the poison. But it was relatively easy for me to get pears from the storeroom, make this liquor not taste terrible. And then everyone I was working with was like, Dave, you're gonna splip, you're gonna slip, you're gonna say something during the thing about how you hate the flavor of it. I'm like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.
So I don't know what the bitterness is, but we'll we'll look at it. All right. Uh we had another question, which I think I have time for. I have a minute and 51 seconds. Uh O'Killion writes, I finally saved up enough to look at buying my own roto vap, having experimented a bit uh thanks to a friendly chemistry professor over the last few years.
I seem to recall Dave having some negative comments towards the IKA, which might be ECA brand roto vaps in the past. Their automation seems pretty tight and in general looks to be an impressive product in my price range and relatively local. I'm based in Europe. Uh what is specifically wrong with them and what alternatives would you recommend? Well, Nastasi and I flew over to London at the behest of uh was it Oxley?
What was that gent, Stas? The rotovap gen. Yeah. Yeah. And so yeah, so we we get flown over there, which was beautiful, first class, right?
Nice. And uh, and so we we show up and they've spent all this money first class flying us out there, and they have this uh IKA rota vap. Now, Stas and I, we're used to exactly two kinds of roto vaps. Uh the one I buy on eBay and I keep together with uh like literally sealing it with butter and prayers and like you know, you know, sugar and all this kind of stuff, and like the brand new one that uh that uh Robert Crotchfeld got us to go on Jimmy Fallon with, right? So we show up, it's not our rota vap, the cooler wasn't adequate, and just leaked like a mother.
It just leaked, and it just was just garbage. Remember, Stas, it was just just a garbage piece of machinery. It was just trash. Yeah, yeah, it just sucked. Even this, you know, like we were both like, this is trash.
So uh that was my experience, but that was like 10 years ago. So uh, you know, maybe they got their house in order. In terms of control, when you're buying a roto vap, unless you want to spend, you know, a couple hundred hours learning to be good at roto vaping, get one that controls the distillation based on the distillation vapor temperature in the condenser. Is that clear what I'm saying? You want it to drive the vacuum level based on the temperature delta between the distillation flask and the condenser.
That is the only way to automate roto vap work so that you don't have to sit there and keep tweaking the vacuum level over time if you want to have uh a good product. And that is the difference between good roto vapping and bad rova roto vapping. Uh I'll get to the other questions uh later. Uh and uh cooking issues.
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