Hello, everybody, and welcome to a brand new series on heritage radio network called the culinary call sheet where we give a peek into the back kitchen of culinary media. I'm your host, April Jones,

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Absolutely what was once niche or a little silly, as I'm sure you remember, Darren, when we started out, this man has now become such a massive playing field for so many creatives using food as the medium.

It's something that has driven us professionally and personally, for so many years. What excites me the most about this show is that we're going to sit down with some of the industry leaders to hear how they made it and what drew them into this industry.

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We'll be covering everything from how to style your food, to how to license IP, to developing your own ideas, and some tips from the masters of how to host your own show.

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Hello, Happy New Year. Welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave Earle your host of cooking nutrition coming to you live from Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick Brooklyn on the heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly one right on the Tuesdays join as usual with this Tasha the hammer. Good are You doing all right we got Jack. Oh, sorry. Oh, we didn't have we have no Jack Jack Hayes says we have today. I got you confused cuz you have a new haircut, Joe?

Yeah, actually, I've been called Jack several times now because I have short hair. Really? Yeah, a couple of times.

You know, I shouldn't say if a sense, Jack's not here. And I know. I know. He's not listening to the program because he's totally sick of us. Every time. Natasha sees someone with the roughly Jack facial hair and like that kind of like he has like, he has a beanie. Well, yeah, like a beanie ski cap kind of a thing with Jake whenever she sees that look, which is becoming ever more common. He's like, Yo, Jack. I'm like, like, you're so you're so racist against bread. He's a Manhattan guy now. Yeah. So you can't be you can't call him the Brooklyn like kind of the Brooklyn cool hipster look anymore because like he's now from Manhattan. Yeah. And since I feel like he's like, you know, like, Jack is the model for all that look like, you know, once he switches to Manhattan, like it's over. It's now it's now to Manhattan.

Soon everyone in Manhattan is gonna be dressing like Jack Yeah. Ragley little beard and everything. Whoa, scraggly. No, I mean, I mean that in a bad way. It really works for him. It really does. Yeah, all right.

So calling the questions to someone a 497249728 nacelle Columbia I'm gonna get fired scribe X listening that's my that should be your next band. Like when you do a side project should be called scraggly in a good way. Remember that's the album X listening album. Right like Jack's not listening. Yeah. Last time

hoping Jack calls in from the office. This would just be great.

Wow. So what what happened? We we haven't been back in in a long time because we hit on Christmas and then we hit on the New Year's. So what's been going on status? How is that worry in California? Over Christmas? Can I get for a New Year's? Yeah, that was that was okay. Yeah. It's okay. Yeah, that was yours. Good. You know, I made Oh, we haven't spoken ever spoken to people since this year's whole thing is done or No, no, no, no. Yeah, well Here's our thing is over for those of you that don't know don't you know first time listening we made a product called the Sears all and this actually hates us I'm going to make her do it justice DT does it see? Does it sear only some things did most things so everything all Sears all Sears all anyway so we had a Kickstarter for this and we we sold like something on the order of like 2800 of them and it was actually the eighth we looked this up yesterday the eighth largest food Kickstarter of all times food Kickstarter. Jack would have hit the applause but yeah, oh no game no game. And yeah, so we did well and and you know, I'm especially proud of what we raised considering that the individual donations it only costs like $65 to do it. So stop it for those of you that missed it. Natasha has set up a an online shop where you can buy at Costco shop starter some will announce it in a couple of days. So it didn't happen to me that correct? No, no, it's ready to go. Yeah, all right, whatever. So anyway, so here's the thing so I did the prime rib for for the for the Christmas my mom, right? I've said this before I love my mom mom's a great cook my mom is the reason why you know duh everyone's mom's the reason why they exist. She's also the reason kind of you know why I think I like to cook so much. But her kitchen is extremely poorly outfitted like so. I mean, this is gonna sound like I'm a complete like Jacquard, she has no low temperature, which is not part of the poor outfitting stars is giving me the Euro jerk look. But like if she shouldn't have a low temperature thing, so I'd say so I brought my low temperature rig which is a half Lex and I brought oh by the way, we got the Nomi queueing on the break. I haven't gotten a chance to use it yet. Anyway, so we got the low temperature rig. Well I cook some deer the other day. I don't have a New Year's resolution and not the intention but we'll talk about deer in a minute. So I so did the prime rib my mom bought the entire freaking prime rib which was so big it wouldn't fit in a half lexan so I had to and you know the butcher did that thing where they cut the bones off and they rolled the individual parent they rolled a prime rib and then retired to the bones and I'm talking about whatever old school technique so anywho I pulled up I cut I took I disassembled the butcher's work cut the bone into three plates cut two of the ribs sections off of the prime rib bag them separately bag the whole thing in one of those you know those zip locks that are intended not food great please no calls on this you know the ones that are meant to like roll up comforters and stuff for like camping that's the only thing she had big enough to hold this giant prime rib and I wanted to present it but basically hole so I did the whole sucker at 55 for like five hours five or six hours then dropped it then cooled it off cooled it off then threw it in a 500 degree oven to overcook the outside a little bit and give it that and then finished off with dual series all stars I put that I put that picture up you it'll be up on the site where you can buy as yours on and didn't do a series I gotta go gotta go you know did Ling Ling Ling Ling Ling Ling Ling dueling sizzles you know Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding Yeah, big dumb. Oh, also, it's a low temperature dear. Not the one Lucas said. Because that one is at the at the headquarters there. But we will do you know what cut he gave us. Do you remember? I think so. Yeah, I did loin, which is tough. But I did it. Low Temp worked. Worked great. So these are these two friends of DAX, his girlfriend, we're you know, we're over it. He's, he's eight. Anyway, so they were over in the cousins. So this 12 year old. It's her and her and her sister they're eating. And we thought that dad had shot the deer. They brought it from Illinois or from Southern Illinois, like near the border down there. And so like halfway through the meal, like so, you know, so who shot this deer? She's like, I did. I was like, Whoa, like this like, like, 13 year old girl shot this deer. I was like, that's awesome. How, you know what sizes? She's like, six pointer. I was like, Whoa, I love that. Love that. Anyway. We were getting some questions. We're never gonna finish this time. Although I have to say I don't know what made me think of this because it starts you were over yesterday because it was cold and you'd want to open the gate to the lab by yourself. So you're over at my house cuz I live near where I work. Thank God. I hate commute. Hate them anyway. Yeah, the commute. Well, hey, look, your choice, mister. She used to live down near where we worked. She was like, I hate it down here. I'm moving back to Hell's Kitchen. So two words, your choice, your choice, your choice. Anywho. So I moved apartments and I'm gonna talk later about because someone asked about a kitchen, but I moved and I used to have black floors and I have black lab dog. So I didn't think the dog shed so much. I'm moving to a place with gray floors. I was like, Oh, we're good third shift so much. And so like I bought a robotic vacuum cleaner and the room but the new one was pretty sweet and like here's the thing, right? It was like all Maybe that's ridiculous, whatever. I love this damn thing. I love this robotic vacuum. It's a little loud. No, it's much less loud than a normal vacuum cleaner. And you have to run it longer. Well, but yeah, but you can program it to run when you're not there. Anywho it runs around the house, and it plugged itself back in when it's done. And so it gets rid of all the dog hair, and I love it. And I was thinking, You know what, what reminded me of it. The reason I'm bringing it up today is that, you know, how we always get these questions about and whatever. Because we do we do technology and food, right? What about 3d printing food? What's the future of food future this future? That right? You know what I'm saying? Right? Start started, like a future this. Come on, it said they'd started doing the point, the jersey point. But the Oh, so she said. It's like, everyone always asks us questions. And, you know, what they fundamentally don't get is even though we use a lot of new techniques and technologies, like, you know, we like cooking, right? You know, we like human beings that make food that they think is delicious, that they are proud to serve to either their customers or their guests, or they're proud to make it they've created something. It's a product that comes from themselves. And that's, you know, why good cooks like to cook right. I mean, that's, that's really the the impetus is it you can make something that's high quality, you get to do it every day, you can constantly hone your skills, and it gives a little bit of yourself to someone else, right? Isn't that why we like to do it? So obviously, you don't want a robot making your freakin food? Like whatever fast food? Yes, yes, whatever. Fine industrial food. Yes. Great. Yes, we all love Twinkies. But like what I'm saying you don't want a robot making your food on a daily basis. I was thinking that, like the vacuum robot is perfect. And here's the crux of it. And this is why I don't want my food 3d printed regularly. I mean, there are applications right? But the vacuum cleaner is a good idea. It's no one says this. That thing does vacuuming just like my mom used to do. I can only find someone that can vacuum in the same way that my mom used to vacuum in life would be great. You know what I'm saying? It's a frequent vacuum. Nobody cares. They just wanted to run. They wanted to get underneath the dam. You're not a classroom, not for stellar Kickstarter. Christian from Denmark writes in on vacuum reduction. Hello. And Stacia hope this is the right place to send questions for cooking issues. It was because here it is. And so tell the whole crew from yet another fan from Denmark. We are we are another friend from Denmark. We are legion by Danish standards anyway and never been to Denmark. I was supposed to go to Denmark to Odense like, home of the home of the marzipan. Which, by the way, marzipan. Delicious. Delicious. Do you like marzipan? I don't really like it. Why? I don't like almond paste color. What? Alright, we'll get back to this question. Caller you're on the air. Hey, my name is Johnny. I'm from Madison, Wisconsin. Yeah, we have Madison. Just hold there. Oh, yeah. How cool is that right now?

It's only like 14 below right now. It was yesterday, though.

See, here's what I love. Right. Like here in New York. We're like griping about this. Like, you know, whatever it is like five, five Fahrenheit or whatever. And you guys would be laughing at us like fake northern people as like a real northern person. If you weren't getting slammed so hard right now yourself. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I definitely. There's not much else to concentrate on.

Do you have good winter gear? I was once in Sweden and although I was wrecked, I was above the Arctic Circle. The dog sled lady was running that the musher she said there's no such thing as bad weather just bad coats. Oh, I was like

I do. I think there is like once you've lived there for a while. There's definitely that opinion like you just like don't complain. Just get a better setup.

Nice. All right. So what are you cooking today out there?

Well, I you actually interacted on Twitter because I sent you the picture to the broken centrifuge.

Oh, that's you holy crap. How much so for those of you that obviously, like I have this Twitter account at cooking issues, you want to go to it? And got got a question and like, you know, what, we're not really a question more just like a photo. I bought a centrifuge and the buckets broke and the inside of the thing got hosed. So I was I wanted to know what the damage was. So give us a bit of background on what's going on here.

So I'm there was a second photo that I sent you had the inside of the centrifuge, but yeah, basically got a centrifuge through the university. Pretty cheap. had it checked out it was a Beckman one a little bit older and had a glass had a glass cover, which is awesome, because you could see upside. Also terrifying. But anyway, so I got actually I ordered a new rotor that that I was using, I was using the old buckets, right. And the bucket broke and it flew into this island. Stop the centrifuge right away.

I bet And then I've never really in the room when it happened.

I wasn't but there was someone else in there. And he said it scared the living crap out of them.

How loud was it? Did they say? Yeah, they

said the dishwasher was like 30 feet away. And he said he felt the move. And it moved and moved through three feet.

Wow.

Wow, it was it was at about 4000 RPM. So

yes. Okay. For those of you that don't know, we're talking about a little background. So we're dealing with we're dealing with benchtop desktop center fuse. I think like so that was the Beckman Coulter with the with the plexi. Top is somewhere in the somewhere in the three liter range, right holds roughly three liters. Yep, three liters, swinging bucket centrifuge. And I've never dealt with a rotor failure, or even really seen pictures of rotor failures on the swinging buckets. But my point of contention has always been that these units, even when they fail, are much safer than the larger faster ones because the G forces involved are comparatively low. So it's very interesting for me to hear now the buckets that actually interestingly, your buckets were not aluminum right, doesn't it? Beckman, Coulter has stainless steel press buckets are now

yeah, these ones were stainless steel, I actually have aluminum as well, right.

So I mean, aluminum buckets, aluminum when you're in so centrifuge again, for those you it they spin and they separate things based on density. However, usually the in a swinging bucket rotor, the buckets there, they swing and their buckets, hence swinging bucket rotor. And this is what we use mostly in the kitchen, because they have a much larger capacity for their size, then what's called a fixed angle rotor, which normally uses tubes or bottles. And the problem is most buckets are made out of aluminum and aluminum tends to fatigue over time with flex and so you get cracks and then they can catastrophically fail. And when they do so, think of this if you have a swinging bucket rotor, each rotor has its own each bucket has its own weight plus an extra, you know, 750 grams of product in it. That's 750 grams. If you're doing 4000 G's, it has the equivalent weight of of like 3000 kilos or something like this. So it's no joke. So when that thing flies off, it's it's really no joke. I'm very surprised that the Beckman Coulter stainless steel buckets broke because they don't typically show fatigue failures the way aluminum does, what was the failure mode of the bucket? Do you know?

I can't It's like 7000 1000. I, I have to look at it. But I remember just taking a peek at it.

Never what happened? How did the bucket actually break? Like what part of it bro?

At the top? Right? I mean, exactly where you would think it is. It's kind of like at the point where you latch it onto the rotor,

right? So yeah, so in a normal in a normal aluminum bucket, that's probably machine right. And then there's these two like big things where these pins these fat pins from the rotor fit in and the buckets slip onto them. And in the stainless one, it looks like it's made out of sheet metal, right? I've never used the stainless ones. I'm frankly, is it possible that those the stainless ones are meant to only work with inserts and that they kind of flexed in under the force and popped out? I mean, that can be the only thing I could think of did it actually tear at the pin? Or did it flex and pop out at the pin?

Have no idea? Literally like is like broke off? I'll send you another photo.

Yeah, get a close up. I'd like to see a close up of where you think the failure started. So. Okay, so onto your question, enough, enough of peppering you with questions. What's your what's your question?

Well, okay, so I had a bunch of questions. I mean, we started using it, and it's been pretty useful. And I figured out quite a bit. But yeah, I was one of the questions was, what we talked about right now is like, do different buckets need to use the Insert? You know, so? Maybe we don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I've never used this the one of the reasons I've stayed away from the Beckman Coulter's specifically is that the insides of their buckets are square right? These are round or they're round insides Okay, so some of them have the square buckets and I don't like square. I don't like square buckets. Without inserts the reason being that if you if you were to if you were to take a attack a stroke tack, which you can buy I've done it with mine which Terrible idea and but you put a because I don't have a glass top on mine. And you put a in fact, I think with someone but quilter Beckman Coulter is someone who makes one that's meant to do this and you just fire a stroke tack at it you can you can get it to fire correctly either by tuning it by hand with a strobe tack or by putting a little reflective piece of tape on to trigger the attack. And with an external signal, you can freeze it when you freeze it you'll see that as the thing is spinning the liquids inside are rotating and scouring on the inside of the bucket. Some My feeling has always been that in a square bucket where you have those side seams that as it slows down, rather than settling any like kind of less well formed parts of the pocket, the bottom of the of the thing are gonna are gonna get re fluffed up to the top, you know what I'm saying? So that's why I've always thought around bottoms were good anyway. So go ahead.

Yeah. But mostly what our questions were is just about using clarifying components like, obviously, the Technics is pretty useful. But do you find that if it's for a day, that it gets cloudy again, or stuff like that, I thought, like I did banana juice and onion juice, they both got cloudy,

right? So here's what happens. So you use the pectin X. And typically, especially on onion juice, I've noticed this, you're like, well, we'll do a double spin on it. Because it doesn't knock out. The PEC next doesn't get rid. And I don't even know, frankly, whether it's all pectin, or there's other kinds of suspended hydrocolloids there. But what you'll do is you'll do an initial clarification run, and a sucker will look clear. The same thing happens by the way, when you do a quick ag or clarification and things like this. So it looks pretty clear. And then you let it sit in the fridge. And then all of a sudden, it kind of gets these wispy things and sometimes even goes full cloudy, or sometimes you get a precipitator settle out. And what's happening is is that over time, you know, the these things that are are soluble are in solution, and therefore not making it cloudy, will agglomerate together, coalesce and then become large enough to partially drop out a solution and make it cloudy again. So the solution there is just to, or the answer, I should say, is to re spin. And we do we do that a lot. And I what I what I don't know, because I've never done a lot of testing on it, because I just haven't had the time to really sit down and do it is like, Okay, if you do the onion juice, and you just let it sit for two days before you do your first spin. Would you still need to do a second spin? I don't know. You know, I don't know whether or not like removing all of that massive stuff, is what allows these other things to the or the other pectins whatever to to agglomerate together or whether or not you would get a better or a simpler result if you just let it sit for a couple of days before you spun it out. I don't know. But it's fairly common phenomenon to get some flock out and have to do a re spin.

Okay, so if I restart it, I'm not going to see the cloudy again.

Now you're done. Yeah. And so I noticed that you

do it for about 15 minutes normally on a lot of stuff is, is there a benefit to do it longer or shorter or?

Well, I mean, the longer you go, so again, when you turn on, if you were to if you were to get a strobe tack, which I would if I were you by the way for I'm talking about guys is a it's a strobe light, that's that you can adjust how the rate of firing and it allows you to freeze things like centrifuge buckets, like visually freeze them, so you can see what's going on. And if you were to if you fire up the centrifuge, and you look at it with a strobe you, what you see is is that the juice clarifies very, very quickly. And then once you once it's settling out, now there are some things that take a long time to clarify out, and you have to spin for a long, long time. But in general, most of the products that we use are clarifying relatively quickly, but what you need to do is run it long enough to compress the puck so that it doesn't resuspend as it starts coming back as the speed starts slowing back down. So you know, a lot of times I'm doing, you know, for events, we're doing a lot of product and so I try to get my spin times down as low as possible without compromising quality. And so usually 15 is good enough. And so I don't try to go longer. Sometimes if I'm really in a bind, I'll I'll you know, cut it to 10 Anything below 10 And I have a lot of times I'll have a lot of resuspension problems. I mean, some things are easier than others. But Nan has dropped like a rock you know what I mean? Like once you hit him with pectin X banana pulp, just like slam to the bottom of your of your thing. And it's not not a problem. Whereas other things, you know, they take a little more spinning, like tomato usually throws a flock, if you want to also reduce your problems with that deaeration Before you spin makes it settle a lot faster because you don't have as many problems with air bubbles having to pop before it goes down. surprising fact. You know 4000 G is not enough to pop kind of the micro air bubbles. And that's why a lot of times you'll get especially on something like tomatoes where you're blending it in a blender and it traps so much hope you get a mat on the top. And I don't think that mat is caused by things that are inherently less dense like oil. I'm pretty sure that that mat is just a trapped air mat.

Do you cook the bananas first or do you do

no quote wonder no cook but you have to make sure to use right bananas because raw bananas contain starch and starch will not settle out on a centrifuge to get us to in our centrifuges anyway. Like to get it to settle out you need to use wait a long, long time the start will eventually settle out or you can probably eat the starch with an amylase. But the issue is I am not sure whether the amylase starch can withstand the alcohol environment that we do in a typical kind of banana whose dinos situation, you know, I mean,

we, we I pressure cook them first with some baking soda and like carmelize them and it turned out really good. I was that was my favorite thing they did.

Nice, nice.

And then just I, I picked up two centrifuges you might contact the University had it, but the other one is a pretty not as quite as fast as about 2000 G's, right? Is there much I can do with that? Are

you gonna have to probably is it fixed angle or swinging bucket are fixed angle. Okay, so the good news for you is that fixed angle, fixed angle rotors tend to get a better level of clarification at lower G forces and a swinging bucket does. So you can get good results with a fixed angle running at 2000 G's, you're going to probably have to spin a little longer. And obviously, you know, you probably don't have the same capacity in it. But if you look at a fixed angle rotor a fixed angle rotor is holding the tubes at a relatively steep angle. And what that means is, is that the average particle that you need to clarify out of solution needs to only travel a very short distance before it hits the side of the tube. And then it's scoured down towards the bottom where it pellets and forms a puck. But they have very strong pelleting capabilities, which means that you can do the kind of work that we're doing at relatively lower speeds and still get good results. So I'd say it should work for a lot of the recipes, not all of them.

And then I must use the wine clarifying chemicals as well. Do you? Is that helpful? Or is it I mean, obviously helpful, but how helpful?

Oh, incredibly helpful, like so you know, when I'm doing lime juice or grapefruit juice, I usually use it on citrus products. You know, it this stuff almost auto clarifies if you let lime juice sit around and you do the Kiesel salt and kind of sandwich the two wine finding agents, I use it in conjunction with SPL it'll settle just like apple juice will. And the only reason I sent a few is increased my yield. I mean, I probably only get without a centrifuge. I've only someone asked me this question later, I'm going to get to it, hopefully, but you only get a yield of about 50%. Whereas with a centrifuge, I get something like 98% yield off of lime juice.

Very good. All right. Well, I think the thing, I'm glad that it broke in some ways, because now I know like your worst case scenario,

that is the worst, you have experienced the worst case scenario. It's all uphill from here.

But great. All right. Well, thanks so much.

Thank you stay warm. All right. So back to Chrisann Hall from Denmark. Thanks so much for your hugely inspirational radio show and blog. Very nice. We'd like to hear comments, right. So I have university background in philosophy and literature. Why philosophy of literature? Yep. Yeah. Me. I don't read fiction because I'm a jerk. I miss fiction. I'm gonna start reading again. Yeah, you know, my wife who is editing edited my, well, I haven't edited her Maria Guerra, Shelley, but who looked my wife is like, you know, read and it's the reason why I'm considered a writer is because my wife reads all this stuff. She goes, Dave, you need to read fiction so that your writing. That's my wife's philosophy, literature and learning about a analytical approach to cooking that's at the center of the modernist movement. Viewing a dish as a series of problems to be understood and solved was what convinced me there might be a point to putting my 30 year old self through cooking school. And today, four years later, I'm running my own catering company. We've got versions of your jelly and ice cream on the menu at least once a week, and are running our centrifuge based on your recommendations every day. Nice. I like that. And you know, like I said before, I've never been to Denmark someday. Actually, it's not true. I flew into Denmark to go to Sweden, but that doesn't count. That's like saying I was in blah, blah. I was in the airport. No, you weren't there. Alright. Here are my questions. For a while now, I've been experimenting with vacuum reductions using the aspirator slash during hot plate method outlined in Modernist Cuisine, but I'm finding that running the aspirator is too much of a hassle for us to really start making proper use of it. Could I switch to a diaphragm pump instead? And if so, what were some of the advantages disadvantages be? I've also been toying with the idea of adding a cool finger, cold finger I love that word. cofactor. Don't you cool finger, cool finger condenser and receiving flask in between the boiling flask and the pump to try out distillations. Would this work even remotely Well, or should I just hold off until we can afford a proper roto Vapp aka rotary evaporator Keep up the great work looking forward to getting my series All thanks Christian Hall. Okay. So for those of you that have no idea what we're just talking about, here's the thing. So when you want to do reductions of things, let's just say port wine because everyone wants to reduce port wine. Right. So you'd like to Port Wine we're done. Yeah. Yeah. She So, the problem doing normal reductions is obviously they happen at high temperature. So by putting something under under a vacuum like in a rotary evap render a vacuum still, you can do reductions at low temperatures, so you get very, very fresh, punchy flavors that haven't been altered by high high heat. Now the average bartender so in rotary evaporator, that's one of the things you can do. So the average bartender cares mostly about the distillate, right. And so this aspirator thing that we're talking about, which I'll explain in a second, doesn't really help help with that. But the average cook cares mostly about the reductions what's in the reduction flask and so for that is the aspirator. So Chris Young and Nathan Myhrvold, you know, and Maxine when they were writing the monitors because he and one of the things they said, hey, look, it's not just for rich people as they bought an aspirator than aspirator is used as a kind of like a Venturi effect, you blow water doesn't have to be water, actually, it could be anything else, but they use water out of a faucet as it goes through that entrained air and blasts it down and it creates a vacuum. And this is how, you know in high school used to make me I'd because I didn't do in college, you know, this is how you'd make a vacuum in the lab, you'd have these water aspirators. And you'd run they'd run water into the sink. And, and they work now the advantage of this kind of a pot. And so then what he did is he hooked this up to an Erlenmeyer flask, which is square, flat bottomed flask with a neck, the neck went to the aspirator pump, and then you have your product in there you have a stir plate to keep it stirred so it doesn't bubble over. And you heat it a little bit. Because if you don't heat it at all, it'll just get colder and colder as stuff evaporates, it's evaporative cooling, so you have to heat it even if you're doing room temperature distillation, and you suck the vacuum and there you go, you get your reductions at low temperature. Now theoretically, this is going to work however, aspirators have two fundamental problems. First problem, they don't suck a very good vacuum period, because the amount of vacuum you can suck is dependent upon the vapor pressure of water at whatever temperature you're using. So if you're heating your product up, right, you know up to a reasonable level, then you have a good deal of difference between the boiling point of your product and the current vapor pressure of water at your cold water temp. One of the ways to solve that is to recirculate the water in the aspirator and put ice into it. This lowers the vapor pressure of the water and allows you to get higher vacuums. The other disadvantage of aspirators is they have abysmal, abysmal pump rates. So you can pump very little actual volume of air regardless of how good you're you're you know that the ultimate vacuum you can attain. Now one way to get around this is to gang multiple aspirators together like and I've said this many times, but you know, you know 10 years ago when I was first looking at it, or whatever, eight years, whatever it is, looking into doing vacuum distillation, I turned to whoever you know the people who you know, need vacuum distillation and can't go to normal channels and don't have money. Meth producers and so meth producers online they used to enter where they still haven't had a bunch of websites on how to basically set up a meth meth labs at home. And one of the things they're concerned with this vacuum, vacuum distillation. And so they would take what's called a float, they would go to Home Depot, they would buy a Flojet garden pump, which is like you know, like to pump water, and they would pump it through multiple ganged aspirators hooked up to PVC pipe, and I tried it, and it wasn't making meth was not making meth. And but they, you know, it worked. Okay, but still it chokes up, it's not the best thing for it for doing a vacuum reduction. So I really, you know, if you're gonna be doing a lot of it, I think you can play around with the aspirator. But Matt, now if you're gonna switch to a diaphragm pump diaphragm, so the two pain pumps once you throw the aspirator out, the two main pumps that you're going to be dealing with are either a rotary vane pump oil pump, and the only really affordable ones you can get are the styles for refrigeration. So Robin air, you know, Yellow Jacket, things like that, JB these are refrigeration pumps, and they make a boatload of them because every refrigeration tech in the country probably in the world, I'm sure it's done the same way everywhere. They take this refrigeration pumps, and they pump the old refrigerant out of your of your refrigerator, and they have to suck in like an amazing vacuum to completely dry down and get all the contaminants out of the refrigeration system before they recharge it. So there's a lot of them out there and they're relatively inexpensive. And they have a relatively high pump rate and they have a relatively good ultimate vacuum down in the you know, like you know, a couple of millibars you can get down to which is pretty damn good and more than you need. They also have a fairly decent toleration of entrained moisture now your problem now if you're going to diaphragm pumps, they don't get nearly as good a vacuum. They're a lot more expensive, but they don't volatilize or put oil or smells into your kitchen and they're a lot cleaner than and they're a lot quieter than the rotary vane pumps. So that's the kind of the trade offs neither one of them is designed to hit. handle large quantities of vapor. That's the only advantage of the aspirator is that the aspirator can handle as much vapor as it can pump out it can handle because it's not getting contaminated by the vapor, it's just shooting the vapor out into whatever your, your, you know, whatever the trough is that you're putting it into. So, in order to use either a diaphragm pump or a rotary vane pump, you will need a cold trap of some sort. So, in order to do this at all, this is a long answer to your question, you're going to need the coal finger to condense your product back because the secret of distillation which is what you're doing whether or not you think of it as reduction or not, what you're actually doing in a closed system, which is what you're going to need to do to get your vacuum to not choke on you is to do actual distillation and you need to supply as much cooling power to re condense your vapor as you supplied to. To boil it off in the first place. There are pumps you know, like BOC Edwards makes a drive vane pump that I'm here can handle large amounts of vapor, but you're talking like 343 4000 bucks. So, is it worth trying to do distillations that way before you get a road of that let me put it this way. I did it I got products I thought tasted good and but all it did was whet my appetite to buy a roadmap which I eventually did. And so I think it's kind of you know, it's worth doing as a gateway and as soon as you start playing around with it, you're gonna say to yourself Damn, I need to go buy myself a road map and you probably will let me know anyway Do you think so? Is that reasonable answer that answer the question Yeah. All right, let's go to a commercial break on cooking issues?

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It's a match made Haven't you? I think we've been using that one a little bit, but maybe it's a new mix. Jack had to make a new ad. So yeah, maybe the harmonica stands out a little bit more. Yeah.

Well, yeah, it was not, you know, I had never associated Sam Edwards his hands with harmonica, but I guess now now I will. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, we like we like to we like their product. Maybe they make an excellent product. But you have to eat it to enjoy it. All right. Yeah. Oh, it color. We have a caller caller, you're on the

air. Hey, Dave, Natasha, Happy New Year. Happy New Year. I have a question about koji. And I bought some of the Cold Mountain koji. And I used it to make my own Shio koji and to make Amazake successfully, and I was wanting to experiment and get into making some miso and some other things. But instead of, you know, buying the tubs of the Cold Mountain or one from online, what I want to do is make my own you know, coaching sports. So if I let the rice go to Spore, I was reading that there might be some risk of creating some, some toxins, if it goes too far. So I'm wondering if you have any advice on on doing this at home? And how to how to get good results, and then I can culture all kinds of things that aren't aren't aren't just rice.

Right? Okay. So, first of all, how was the Amazon? It was a good, oh, it's

delicious, really sweet. You take it put it actually makes a great ice cream. Really, I've been, it's already sick and just just blend it up and in the blender and stick it in the freezer. It's got great texture.

That's really amazing idea. I don't know why I never thought of that as a good idea. I might try that. We should have it's a good idea. So not not today. Otherwise, you could just walk outside with it right now just like turn on the blender and make it skinny. So for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, Koji is fundamentally you. You have an Aspergillus, I forget which which Aspergillus, it's an Aspergillus mold that's grown on, on things like rice. And you use that to instead of a malting thing as a base to break down carbohydrates for them for their fermentation, right. And so you start with a koji base for things like suck a for Amazake for or for things like me, SOS or other fun things like this. And it's the problem being and this is, you know, the question here is there are Aspergillus strains that are that do produce toxins. I unfortunately, you're the real guys to ask on this are the Momofuku, the Momofuku lab guys, because they, you know, they're the ones doing all their own kind of musos. And they do all their own koji work and all their own sporulation if you were to take a something that you had, it was already inoculated, and then just keep that one and keep reevaluating. Based on that, I would think your odds of contamination was something that's nasty is pretty low, but I don't have enough experience for me to go out on on a limb. And so you know, ask like having me say something I would just be respecting stuff from shirt leaves me so book and from Sandra Katz's fermentation book. So I, you know, my hesitate to give you my own kind of advice on it, you know,