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,

and I'm your co host, Darren bresnitz. Part of why we started the show was to offer an unofficial mentorship for anyone who's interested in learning about all aspects of food and video, whether that's TV, social media online, or just something you want to do for fun.

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.

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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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Today's program is brought to you by fire cider, a health tonic based on the traditional New England cure all of raw apple cider vinegar and honey. For more information visit fire cider.com. Hey, what's up? This is Jack Inslee, host of full service radio. You're listening to heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn, if you'd like this show, visit heritage radio network.org for 1000s more.

Hello and welcome to cooking he says Dave Arnold, your host of cooking news coming to you live on the heritage radio network from Roberta's pizza we're in where Bushwick Brooklyn and says Bushwick can be the face of the Bushwick faced?

Can't anymore.

She's dead inside. Now this only takes me about stats. Once you get to a certain point she's just dead inside. You don't I mean, you're no longer even worth disdain like disdain takes energy people does call in your questions 278-497-2128 That 718-497-2128 Sadly, we are not joined today in the I don't

know where she is.

Oh UNAC and yes, Rebecca I don't know our our live tweeting Guru is is not here. He quit already. Wow. Strong. Wouldn't be the first time right and we the first time. But we have Liz in the booth today doing this.

I'm great. I'm just going to answer your first few calls here and get the get the show on the road. Man, you got so many fans so eager.

And so kind. We have a call right now. Yeah, so today, Anastasia and I are going to taste the cider that I made. Maybe if we have time talk about how you know how I made it how it's a little different from regular cider. Had some other things if we can get dig it if we have time to get to it. I have the new Pharaohs grinder from orphan espresso the coffee grinder and I can do a little on air review of that. Spoiler alert. I need to I needed to do some modifications to it to make it exactly kind of the way I want it to so we could talk about that later if we have time. But do we have a caller right now? We do. Alright caller you're on the air.

Hey Dave, Natasha, not Jack. Unfortunately, that is Antoine from Boca Raton.

He will be sad he missed your call.

Today's question is about simple syrups how to make them shell stable. And then also I took your origin recipe. And unfortunately, whenever I mix it with acid it like clumps up and I didn't know if you had any work around with that. Yeah.

So that usually when you get clumping on that and you're using it like in a shaking cocktail, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, usually what that means is you have kind of a high amount of nuts solids left in which by the way One of my favorite words, not solids like that one says it's kind of a good one that's on the that's a Nastasia proof term, not solids. But the. And there's a couple of work arounds on it. Like you put a tick Lloyd in? Yes, you can hit it with a little more. You can hit it with a little more Xanthan. I don't really think it's the I don't think the jacking the Arabic is going to help much. I mean, you could try just upping the level in the in the overall system. But usually it's the usually it's the Xanthan that you need to up a little bit but not a lot, right. So there's very little Xanthan and tickle Lloyd to 10 or 310. It's mostly Arabic. But I think a little bit more Xanthan might might help me maybe adding a little maybe upping the entire system might help a little bit but it's definitely a question of like high high high net solids trying to think of what we use to solve it just by post blending and writes does like so like in other words like when we originally made our like when Steve and I were doing like pecan bourbon sours we started originally with pure pecan oil pure pecan oil will not break at all. It will take a Lloyd but when we started adding pecan nut solids back we would start getting clumping it would unclamp if you just want to do and like hit it for a second but you can't really do that at a bar. So I would try to up the try to up it a little bit and see see whether you can see what you can get I'm trying to think of what else would stabilize it let me think on it if I think of anything else I'll get back to his is but try that let me know let me know how it works because I hate that cloudy look that puffy look on the inside of a drink. Yeah, I hate that so much. Do you hate that?

Yeah, like you. For instance, like in your recipe you call for like it's 1.75 ticklers and then point two grams exempt and how much more would you recommend? Like I guess going up?

What was the base was the water base?

Just just the water.

How much water for that much. Are you talking percentages? Yeah. So what

660 of water?

Yeah, I mean, look, try doubling the Xanthan and see what happens. It's still a very small amount in the finished drink. You just want the portability of the Orszag to remain high. And you know, obviously, like blend the crap out of the Orszag before you do it. How are you getting rid of the solids?

I'm straightening them like five different times

yeah, it's kind of whatever then I can send a few she's really good at this but I'm just saying

I'm holding out for a good one I've heard is on the way

yeah, we're even though we haven't officially announced what it is yet. We're still we're already kind of taking suggestions on names to check out this one. I don't really like Okay, so like the obvious name is clears all right, right that's the obvious name clears all but the problem is is that unlike a Sears all which literally Sears all like if it's a foodstuff It is terrible, right with a Sears all I mean this isn't going to clear everything it just gonna do like a lot of the stuff that we need done so I wouldn't call it like a clear as all because I'm a truth in advertising sort of a fellow even though it does make a certain sort of you know what I mean? Anyway, so I will try to stabilize eventually I should try to stabilize eventually some just plain strained. nut milk gorgeous, but it's got to be just upping the Xanthan a little more, try upping the Xanthan in the batch you already have and see what happens and just tweet on back let me know what happens or if anyone else in the Twitter universe there has had experience adding some more stabilization to it. Just let us let us know.

Also how do you recommend doing like stabilizing just other simple syrups that I might make as well? Oh yeah. affecting the flavor

that depends on well okay, so like you mean stabilize them look like shelf stabilizing right the main the main problem in simple syrups is the is a is kind of yeast and mold formations. Right? So you know, it's all a question of what you want to add like a little bit of benzo it will kill like most of the yeasty stuff and stop that from happening. But you know, how long do you want them to last?

Few months at least.

But like, like make them like what are we talking like? How like can they take heat? Can you throw them in like a VAC bag and just like poach them at a low temperature to kill the yeast and then keep them in your fridge. Nothing dangerous is going to grow at 50% sugar. Do you know what I'm saying? So like so like what I would do is like throw them into a into a bag like circum at a relatively low temperature that's not going to mess with the with the flavor but is enough to kill you know, any kind of yeast kind of stuff like you know, mid 50s Somewhere Celsius and then throw that in the fridge and then refrigerated. You know, once it's been pasteurized, it should last you know I don't think I mean someone can get back and tell me I'm wrong but nothing bad should grow and I know molds will grow after you do that, because they're not going to survive that and no yeasts are going to grow. And I've never had, I've never been contaminated with any sort of like vile bacteria, it's all been kind of yeasts and molds, and that little bit of heat will do it. Or you could just hit it with something like, benzo it, but then you've added benzyl it to it, you know what I mean? So then, like, you know, some people will say they can taste it, or some people will think that you're an evil human being for doing it. So they, you know, just, you know, go the other way, what

do you think about adding like, the tablespoon of vodka?

Oh, I don't know if that's enough. If other people had good luck with that.

I haven't tried it

out yet. I didn't, I didn't want to.

I mean, I mean, I don't think it's gonna ruin it. I just don't know if it's enough, you know what I mean? Like, you're looking for hurdles. And so if you figure, I mean, you have to figure out how much of your I mean, half of this syrup by weight is by weight is water, but that you got to calculate how much water is in it, because the density of a regular simple syrup is roughly one 1.2 1.23, roughly. And so like a leader of that, a liter of the product will be will weigh 1.23 kilos, half of which is water. So there's roughly 600 and change mils, 615 mils of water, in every liter of simple syrup. Okay, and so then then you'll know what your alcohol content is. And so like, you know, a couple of tablespoons and you know, is not ever going to get you to high up, but the question is, is, is, is a little bit of alcohol enough to kill, or to prevent yeast and mold from growing so long as the sugar content is so high? And that I don't know, because I don't know how close you are to the threshold. Now you could, you could make rich simples, right? And those those are even more stable, but mold as anyone who has stored maple syrup for long periods of time, not in the fridge will tell you. mold will grow on the top of maple syrup. Okay, so and it makes it better. Had you ever had multiple maple syrup? I have sucrose. Maple syrup. No moldy maple syrup. Oh, no, I've never had moldy maple syrup. It's like worst it you know, as good as maple syrup is. That's how bad moldy maple syrup is. I would say like I would say here's how I think I would I would rank these kinds of things. Rotten pistachios the top right. That's the worst thing in the world. The rotten pistachio stuff. You agree? I've never had one of those bad pine nuts that wipes out your palate for a million years but rotten pistachios wait way up there. Maples? Like moldy maple syrup. Not that bad, but pretty damn bad. Especially considering how good you think it's going to be Liz, what's your least favorite bad thing

I would have to go with when you when you get like the bad pistachios. Yeah, that's like disgusting. It ruins your whole day.

I would agree. I would agree. And you know what? It's always like you've eaten a lot of pistachios and then you get that one and you're happy. You get in that kind of choo choo. Train rhythm of eating pistachio, pistachio nuts. And then you get that one you're like, ah, but you know, the thing is, is that you can kind of look at them and know so like we used to buy, like the canned shelled pistachio nuts. And always our serums were never like as good as they could be. And so then we like would dump I mean, this way, one of the reasons everyone hates me is I would say okay, now from now on, you're dumping every pistachio nut onto a sheet tray, and you're putting eyeballs on every last pistachio nut because you can look at them. They look first of all the colors not right. A lot of them get a little yellow and oxidized and whatever. They're still okay. But the you know, the wrinkly it's the wrinkly ones. When you're showing them yourself and you look down you see that wrinkly pistachio nuts. Don't eat it. Don't eat that not.

You know what I'm saying? I just want to blindly shovel them in my mouth though. So

I appreciate that. So what you need to do, what you need to do is you need to become rich enough that you can have someone who precice your pistachios for you. And then you can blindly shuffle them into your art Do you feel the compulsion to break them open? Or do you can you just have shells pistachio nuts in your Okay, I think I'm okay the shell mean nobody need to do you don't mind having someone pre shell them for you? But no,

I wouldn't mind that either. I mean, it's life goals right here.

Right? Right means for me there's something about like sitting there and like cracking open the things that I kind of enjoy. Do you know the Stasi never watched this? Have you ever watched James Bond movies? Sure. Yeah. So there was Topo the guy who was in the one of the federal on the roof movie Topo was one of the good guys in one of the James Bond movies where they had to climb up some monastery I think in Greece, and he had the habit of being able to throw pistachio nuts into his here's a life goal for him. He could throw a pistachio nut in the shell in his mouth. Eat the pistachio and spit the shells out that that my friends skill. Wow skill movie factor? Yeah, I called me the factor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so we should all We shall work

much. I wanted to just let you know that Jeremiah Bullfrog sends his regards and he would love to get You're down here.

Oh my God. He was. He was in New York. But the museum exhibit wasn't open yet. So he sent me a picture of the outside. I didn't get to talk to him. So hopefully you got to go inside hopefully the machines were running this by the way, the museum opens tomorrow people Museum of food and drink 62 Bay art in Brooklyn. Jeremiah bullfrog. Excellent, excellent man, as we all know, museum opens in Brooklyn tomorrow complete with a novel I have to tell you about everything in it. Check this out. We have a it's about the flavor industry was talked about a million times, right the birth of flavor industries. We have these machines called like smell sense that let you play like an arcade game where you mix smells in an arcade game fashion, like an early arcade game, like I don't know, like, like Space Invaders like Space Invaders. It's good game Space Invaders, but you're not shooting anything. It's not a first person shooter. It's not a first person shooter but literally runs off of arcade buttons and it's got LEDs, no noises gonna be fun. Anyway. All right.

So Jack Davis in the chatroom likes spin DAX. As a name for this interview.

Spin DAX. But what about Booker Booker will be so upset. I don't think Do you think they'll care? Do I think Booker will care? I mean, I think maybe later in life. You're here right now. He obviously doesn't care. Maybe. Maybe? Maybe. Alright. Okay, we don't wait. We like okay, let me get into some questions. And let's we have a caller. We're getting some questions. This from Brian in Seattle. Hi, Dave. Natasha, Jack and Rebecca. Well, Jack and Rebecca. Rebecca don't like it. Oh, Rebecca is here. Yes. Oh, nice. All right, and Liz leadless to the list here. I remember reading and liquid intelligence that Dave uses 200 proof alcohol for some cocktail ingredients. Like who knows? But it wasn't generally oil. That's what stars thought the good name was writing the who's seen ever before? Yeah, because 54 eldritch was our lab and Cristino is like a Cristino we should at least just informally referred to that was actually

where I like woke up in the morning and it was like

Justina 54,000 Yeah, like that. Anyway, but I think hoogsteen was 5000 RPM because ah, but it's not that we could just call up China and be like, Yo, China. I know that we I know that we said it was gonna run more like you know, like 5000 rpm but how about 5400 to like Baba No, no, no, no, no, it's a marketing thing. Believe me, believe me. I think it's good right anyway Cristino Yeah, cuz he like who's Dino like 4958 is not such a good number. Right 5400 Like that. Now we'll we'll cover like after we get off the air we'll go we'll call China okay, that will wake them up, wake them up and see what's wrong. Be like nothing we needed to go 5400 rpm. will tell you later. Okay. Like who knows, but that it wasn't generally available to the public. In looking for some I stumbled across a California product called Clean extract, K L E N extract. And there are a clean extract icon apparently which purports to be 200 Proof foodgrade ethyl alcohol and available for shipping to the public in many states. It seems like the product is geared towards making tinctures of various herbs, anything but the word tinctures does. And it's kind of gross word, tincture. tincture, not as bad as spooler. Or tinctures of various herbs, herbs and quotes. By that we mean we mean marijuana. When someone says herb in quotes, it means pot. Did you know that?

Yeah, probably.

Me, me me. I don't know these things. So it comes in large sizes like one gallon plus, would there be any problem using any cocktails? And if not, and interesting doors it opens up? That 190 Proof Everclear does not. I've heard that pure alcohol is hygroscopic which it is it absorbs water out of the air with this just with this just extract water from the air until it hits 190 making it no better than Everclear love the show. Keep up the awesome work. Brian from Seattle. Well, look, once you're up at 190 versus 200 The proof isn't really making that much of a difference anymore. That little bit of water isn't making a lot lot of difference in terms of the flavors you're getting. What the reason I hate Everclear and no offense to the manufacturers of the product. Everclear it sucks. It's just a rancid, awful, poorly made product. That no matter how I mean, we've all been to college you've had Everclear dumped into Kool Aid, right? sighs I didn't go to parties. What about you, Liz and Rebecca, did you have Everclear in in kool aid situation,

I went to the University of Missouri and we held Everclear in high regard. So yes, yeah. Okay,

so, okay, so let me ask you this. You even when even when it's diluted in large amounts of a grape Kool Aid, you can still smell the Everclear from miles away? Yeah. Why? Because Everclear is a poorly made product. Yeah, well, well, yeah. Purell. Yeah, bold. That's basically what Purell Purell is like poorly made actually like like poisonous they denatured Purell? I think anywho so, I think it's just poorly made. I think that's that's the issue. So that's my main gripe with it, not the proof. So if this clean extract is good to go, it's good to go but you do not require back Got the bar now we use something called technical reserve that's made right here in Brooklyn. And it's 190 and that's what we use for everything just because you know, it's pretty clean. You want clean, clean aroma. You could also like if you get crappy Everclear you could put it through 18 million runs a bit of like a Britain to try and strip out all the nasties. Remember when we used to put like, we used to be so cheap that we would buy like, you know, smearing off and pop off vodka and we would just sit there putting it through Britta time and time again Beretta after Britain after Britta until the stank went away so that we used it when we were roadmapping at the school back when we were allowed to roadmap alcohol not allowed me the government said it was illegal, but no one was stopping me from teaching people distillation. Yes, anyways, okay. Hey, you guys want to taste you guys in the booth? wine taste cider. We need some glasses for us. Ooh, yes. Let's taste some of the cider that I made from my very own tree. We need glasses for us anyway. Okay, let's see we got here truffles got an interesting question in from Arnie Olson. I found a couple of small truffles in the forest near my home in Bergen, Norway. I'm sure Bergen Norway. No offense to New Jersey but it's the county where I used to live is Bergen County. And I don't have it looks the same. It's probably just the same probably just as nice now Now. Now. No offense to Bergen hey look you know we are Bergen with a gateway to New York we got the we got the George Washington Bridge so we got there and Bergen anyway. Bergen is a fine county no offense to us you know their newspapers the Bergen record the Bergen record okay. Not Norway but not Norway. Okay. They're left so my C's granulomatous known as deer balls hearts balls heart meaning dear not heart me heart like H AR t not hard like you know cortisone harsh truffles. Oh, or, like hyper DOM nuts. That's from Wikipedia, and not regarded as particularly high quality still, I would like to make the most of them and my question is Would rapid infusion work to make a truffle oil? I'm not very fond of truffle oil. But I can't think of any better way to use them and they're not super aromatic and the texture isn't great. Great either best articles No, listen, I tried to look these suckers up and by all accounts everyone's like you know maybe they're edible. Barely maybe they're poisonous mildly. So like nobody seems to know but I'm reminded back of when Paul Adams, our friend from Popular Science came up to Connecticut and found some bitter barley which doesn't taste that that good and he made a bullied butter member he brought it into the to the radio program. And it was good. So I would try rather than doing oil which you know, if I would maybe do maybe do a deer ball butter, right deer ball butter. By the way, the light like hope or Dawn is a puff ball and the Wikipedia if you look that up actually says that that word comes literally from the I think Latin meaning will farts will farts ever eaten puff balls? No. You can eat puff balls you know, you just have to make sure you have to cut through and make sure that they're not an immature form of another mushroom that could kill you but puffballs wasn't there, okay? They're not the you know, not the not the greatest thing. Oh, you know what? Went to a Polish store yesterday. And I what I've learned we need to I need to talk to Luke Kashi a friend of the show that the polls have forgotten more about mushrooms and we're ever going to know so many different pickled mushroom varieties. You know, like we just have like pickled like you know like the like the like the regular pickled mushrooms and you like that this is like I didn't bring with me because they need to be chilled but like you're going like this one slippery Jack mushrooms slippery Jack mushrooms honey measure Jack Yeah, when Jack as well. I'm glad I didn't bring it because Jack's not here to have slippery Jack mushrooms. But I was gonna give him some anyway. I need to learn more about Polish mushrooms. Okay. On the truffle oil thing I look the whole point apparently, and I was doing some research there is a book not for the not for Europe, but for America called that I didn't get chance to order because it destroys Christians last night but it's actually on the list now things I want to order called truffle Field Guide to truffles of North America and this truffle is included in it because it comes from North America. And the reason that truffles apparently and this is interesting to me have aroma is because they want you to if by you You mean small mammals find you dig you up, eat you and crap out the spores. So that's why they have aroma. So perhaps one of the one of the problems with the particular truffle that you have the deer bowl is maybe it's not at its best, because at its best, it should have an aroma but they have a longer persistence than like tuber melanosporum or things like this. And so they're going to remain findable in the ground. Well past or before the point when they actually have their aroma so they don't have much aroma. I don't think they're gonna have much of anything but try making a butter because I can't tell you want to try the you want to. You want to go to commercial break and then look He's got a commercial break and I just come back from COMMERCIAL BREAK Well, we'll try some cider on cooking issues

today's program was brought to you by fire cider. Did your grandmother ever tell you to drink raw apple cider vinegar? It's good advice and more common than you may think. For generations of New Englanders, a top of vinegar was a morning ritual taken daily, a tablespoon of unfiltered apple cider vinegar can help support immune function and digestive functions. To the base of certified organic apple cider vinegar fire cider added whole raw certified organic oranges, lemons, onions, ginger, horseradish habanero pepper, garlic and tumeric. They let this mixture steep for six weeks at room temperature to preserve the living vinegar, culture and delicate flavors of the ingredients. Lastly, they blend a generous helping of raw wildflower honey into the mix. The result is potent but balance offering layers of sweet tart and spice, fireside or taste great on its own or as an addition to tea juice or salad, fireside or ships direct from their online store and is available at over 500 locations nationwide. Use their store locator to find one near you and ask for a free sample for more information visit fireside or.com.

fireside or huh? Do we have any of that stuff in house, we could try lives we actually own that product.

The silence the silence means no sounds.

We'll get it in we're we'll try it we'll talk about but while we're on cider. So what we have here is look, in the back of the of this house that I acquired in Connecticut, there is a standard size, what looks to be similar to a golden delicious, but it's not it doesn't taste exactly a golden delicious, but it's super high. So you can't get the apples out of it very easily. But I got one of those 12 foot pool poles with a little picker on the end of it and got enough off to make some you know, like like eight gallons of cider, and I wanted to make a very kind of particular kind of cider. So here's what I did. That's that's different from normal. First of all, I don't have a cider press. So I juiced it all in a Champion juicer, yes, because I'm that much of a masochist and an idiot. So I'd use it on a masticating juicer. Also, I didn't want to have like a typical kind of oxidized cider taste. So I hit this cider with ascorbic I hit the juice with ascorbic acid as soon as it was juiced. I did not add pectinase to the enzyme because SPL to it before fermentation because I knew that apples like this typically lose a lot of their character when they're spun out. They're not like a high high like flavor Apple like an ash meets kernel where the juice is delicious, even after all the solids are out of it. So I wanted to ferment it on its solids. So I dumped it with yeast. I added a small amount of sugar because they were fairly low Brix and put them in five gallon buckets and did a primary fermentation for a couple of weeks at them at relatively cool temperatures because the house is relatively cool. And then here's where I different after the primary, I added SPO and swirl them around to drop the stuff out. Then I put the I put the entire batch through the fusino 5400 5400 to get rid of like a lot of the flock and new sediment in it that was left and got a pre cleared thing. But here is another trick I use people that I think is the you know, I don't know whether anyone else does this but because I was introducing an oxygen there. I didn't want a high vinegar note on it. I wanted the acidity to stay what it was and I didn't want it to oxidize so what I did is I immediately semi carbonated it while it was warm. I didn't want to highly carbonate it but i semi carbonated it in two liter bottles using a carbonation rig, you could do it in a keg if you had one. poured them semi carbonated into bottles that I had added the dosage to cap them and then let them bottle condition for a couple of weeks. So here we have it. Yes. Cheers. Cheers folks in the booth. Rebecca, Liz. We like It's good, right?

Yep. Yeah, yeah. Very tasty for all you listeners out there. Oh, my chat room friend. Yeah.

So this is like still very, very tart. Because it's a fairly high acid, I was able to literally beat another batch of apples off the tree that are lower in acid. So I'm gonna try to make kind of a less tart one. But the idea here is like for this kind of cider, a minimal amount of oxidation, right? Yeah, not bad. Yeah. And the answer, my friends is ascorbic acid and a little pre carbonation before the bottle conditioning. I wish I had some cheddar cheese. It'd be good when they'd be good. Some really super sharp cheddar cheese. Crackers. Oh my god. Oh my god. You know what? We're simple people I can good I don't even need like hyper expensive I just need nice sharp like, like what I what I taste if someone like parachuted in here with like a wheel of Montgomery's, you know, cheddar from Neal's Yard, like would we turn them down? No, we would kill them and steal the cheese needed but you know, I don't even need that say that high quality.

And on that note, we have another caller.

Oh yeah. Caller you are what are they gonna talk about killing people? Caller you're on the air.

Hey, Dave, this is Colin down in DC How you doin? Just calling in because you got a guy calling this Alex G fellow calling in last week, asking about some sweet potato caramel syrup. Right. And it was me that called in about that about I don't know, two or three years ago. Alright, so what happened was, must have been remembering back to so just figured I could call in and give him and everyone else was like just real fast update on that stuff. Do it this, the syrup, right that I've been able to reproduce pretty successfully. The biggest key really is start with a really high Brix sweet potato. If you can get heart of gold, those are your best option. Otherwise, just try whatever you can get locally, just experiment, see what works but you get best yields out of Heart of Gold because they're high Brix

easy work with I cannot believe you just put that song in my head. I'm so angry that songs in my head. It's like, it's never gonna leave now. It's gonna be there like,

man. But I mean, I had the benefit. There's just some retired guy, retired professor in Maryland, who's got a, you know, one acre two acres sweet potato farm and he put like 14 tons of potatoes in. So I got him there. I don't know where anyone else will get them. But experiment beyond that. And you'll still get a good product.

But we'll just get the procedure really quickly just get the procedure.

Yeah, so procedure is twosome out in a cube up to summon Champion juicer, kind of, you're gonna end up with a kind of starchy juice, add some pectin next to that. And some analysts, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head,

which families do you use regular, regular Beerhouse. I just

get the whatever they get it through shops, okay, and just use a bunch of it, and it helps it out. So check that out at maybe 65 or 70. See for a day. And you'll see that you'll get a kind of clear liquid on the top. And a lot of the starch will settle out at the bottom. And a real key here is you can't that clear liquid, reduce it down into a caramel syrup or just a carrot like actual CANDY CARAMEL, as you would normally. The key here is like not getting any starch in the to get starch in it just sort of turns more into like a pudding, which is also awesome. But not what you're going for if you're trying to the caramel. I think that's about it. If there's if anyone else, I guess has questions that can follow him up and he could tweet it out or whatever. But I just wanted to take the opportunity to clear that up.

Are you are you a part of our chat room? You should leave because people might ask you questions right now, if you were to log into the chat and people might ask you questions, like right now.

Yeah, I'm on it. I can, they can ask questions. I'm out and about for like another 20 minutes, but I'll be back. If that stays live.

At least does it stay live?

Yeah, it's always live. It's ever lively. Make it we'll do it.

I'm on it. And do it. Cool. I'll sign off and yeah.

Liz Are you saying it's like Tinkerbell and you just have to keep believing in it and it stays alive?

Yeah, I mean, minus the whole dust thing. But we don't have we don't have dust we have pixie dust. If only Jack were here, he would know man we

just like you know like we always we get close. We don't quite make it there. We all all we just, hey, I could buy the pixie dust. It's available on Amazon Prime. But no, I'm not gonna buy it. Right. We just get so close. Hey, can

I give a shout out to a listener? Yeah, Anthony Scardino. I made his life.

What was that?

He was he's missing a clamp. Screw. Oh, and you sent the class? Well, no, I just responded to his email.

Oh, nice. Well, that's quite nice. Oh, by the way, I loved when you insulted one.

I loved that tweet.

I tweeted at him. Oh my god. Yeah. So he tweeted back his Christmas list to us the picture of it. And the fifth thing on the Christmas list was get insulted by the co host of his favorite podcast and he's like, check number five off that was perhaps the greatest tweet that I've ever received in my whole life. Like I was on the floor. My wife was on the floor. By the way stars and Jack are gonna try to get my wife into the into the progress. I don't know. Like, for any of you out there that want to I don't know why you would want to ask my wife for Christmas special. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway. Okay. Question and would Dave use equal libre equilibrium brining chicken fingers. In other words, brining them, I presume, from Joan, I presume that what's meant here is brining the chicken fingers until they are in equilibrium with the Brian around them. I have never done that. That would take a think quite quite a while. And then And then the question is, is there a refractometer? That I would recommend? I'm enjoying the show Best regards? I don't know, I've never done it that way. Like, I mean, definitely, that's the way when you're pickling. When you're doing like Brian, soak on meats over a long period of time, you know, you definitely what you, you, you make your Brian based on the total weight of Brian and meat. And then you check it with, you can check it either with, you know, what are the density based things like, you know, the floating guys, or you can get a refractometer I don't know, because I've never measured salinity with a refractometer. I don't know how accurate they are over the range of interest for meats, because it's not going to be high. Remember, you're you're going probably fairly if you're going to Brian to an equilibrium point, you're down low, like you know, 3% or less two to 3% in that range. So it's going to be relatively tiny amounts. And so I don't know whether I don't know how accurate reflectometer irregular refractometer is going to be for solidity at those levels. But I can look into it. I didn't get a chance to look into it, but I can look into it. But you know, in general, what I do is, you know, I only am brining for a couple of hours I don't do on chicken fingers. They Brian relatively quickly, and I don't really do an equal equilibrium thing. You guys okay. Yes. Okay. Randy writes in what someone when we know we do have a caller. Interesting. I'm totally interested caller you're on the air.

Hey, Dave, how's it going? All right. This is Chris from the Green Zone in DC. I do. Good, good. Good. So I can't wait for the mosquito 5400 directly related to my question. I called back a while ago about keeping, you know mint from turning green and also clarifying and filters versus whatever else. I made another batch of my herbal liqueur and I did it two ways, I did a different thing for the fresh. And for the dry ingredients. For the fresh, I just put it in an SD like fresh mints and other herbs. And it came out bright electric green, it was awesome. It was relatively clear. All the gunk that was in there settled out immediately, I could just rack it off fantastic. And then for the dried stuff to both spices and herbs, I did it in a circulator in the back. And it came out to be a very dark green, it was a bit cloudy, and I spent a while filtering it in paper towels and coffee filters. Eventually got it pretty clear dark green, I forgot to mix the two, mix them together got the same, you know, halfway point in the green colors. And then since I'm going I'm sort of making my own version of structures, which I've heard of sweetened with honey. I added I made a honey syrup and slowly added it in. It instantly went cloudy and disgusting Brown and I thought that maybe it had loose or something the way like an absence or an ouzo would be, but then I left it overnight. And all the stuff that was still making it slightly green has settled on the bottom. And what I got was the pure brown clear liquid on top. So in these green infusions and liquors and stuff isn't as good as the chlorophyll dissolved in the alcohol or is it just really tiny little particles floating around?

In? Well, Chartreuse is colored with purified chlorophyll from spinach. Sure, after after it's made because they're doing a distillation, right, then an age down. And then they're just doping it back with the with. You know, it depends on whether you're talking green or yellow. Right? Yellow is obviously, honey. Did you did you try doping it with regular sugar? I mean, I wonder what was going on? Yeah,

I'm not sure I did. I did it with sugar, the last batch I made and it still ended up being really brown.

Like it went from being a green and stable went from being green and stable to brown instantly. But what was the original proof before you added the syrup?

Oh, I mean, it was it was ever clear. So it was one you know, close to 190

Oh, so it really? Yeah. Ha ha. So you said you were adding a good amount of liquid to it much more. In other words like so it's not like you were dealing with something that was relatively low improve like 50% and then you're

the leader or a bit more actually more than a leader of the Everclear strength stuff. And then I added almost a liter of honey syrup.

So there's something in there that is oxidizable that I mean it couldn't it wouldn't be enzymatic because To like mostly like poly phenol oxidase enzymes are going to be inactivated at that super high at that super high proof, like when I say inactivated, destroyed. The other thing,

the stuff that's settled out eventually was actually green.

Hmm, yeah. Hmm. So

now I've got a layer of green floods. I've got a layer of brown clear liquid.

Okay, so the brown is probably what color it it always probably had that brown in it, and it was just overwhelmed by the green. I'm pretty sure that like that, that's what's going on there. So then the question is, why did it suddenly flock? Have you tried doing the reverse? Have you tried adding a small amount of the green to a large amount of water just to see whether or not it stays or whether it flocks together? Like you might as you go through this small stage where it's still relatively high proof, but now there's some water, like all this stuff might instantly aggregate? You know what I mean?

Right, right. No, I haven't tried it like that.

I would try it and see what happens. Does the brown stuff tastes delicious? Or does not taste the same either?

No, it's pretty. Just look very attractive.

Have you tried, especially with the name green zone? Have you tried? Have you tried? You have you added any to water as though it was a bitters before you add any sweetener to it? What's the water? Have you ever? Have you ever used it like as a bitterness? Just adding a little bit to water before it? Whoa, no, I haven't I haven't tried. But I'd be interested to see what happens whether it stays clear whether it flops together and someone else in the in the on the chat room maybe has some ideas on this. But yeah, this is a it's some sort of weird thing that's happening as you're adding water to this system. So I would try going in the other direction and see whether or not you can prevent it from happening. Yeah, but something is going from I don't know, it could either be going from soluble to knot or it could be going from stable to all of a sudden flocking, it sounds like this does flocking together. Most most of it.