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I'm Michael Ameco. From food talk you're listening to hurt edge Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn, if you like this program, visit heritage radio network.org for 1000s more.

Hello and welcome to cookie get used to stave on your hosts cookie issues coming to you live from Heritage Oreo network on Roberta's pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 A little bit late today, kind of as normal. Joining the studio with Natasha the hammer Lopez Hayden has done good good and good we got there the engineering we got Jack and Evan Evan dive rushed him so quickly because I was late that a lot of you know the weather must be changing because I saw a lot of signs of illicit love on the streets walking over here in Bushwick, do you really do you miss? Do you miss the the overnight detritus on the streets of Bushwick now that you've moved to Manhattan moving back, you're moving back to Bushwick,

no, Bed Stuy Oh,

as well. I noticed that you didn't change your, your Twitter, whatever the hell it's called. Whatever now, since Bushwick still says Bushwick makes slow. But wait, what's

the illicit love in the streets?

Oh, well, I'm just assuming that if you have to throw your Spence away on the streets that you're not, you know, you're not doing any Oh, yeah, gotcha. Yeah. Gross, real Gross. Gross. Anything good going on? Nope. Anything bad going on? Nice, man. Nothing to report here. Okay. Question is 278-497-2128 That's 718-497-2128 Johnny Kirk wrote in Hey, Dave, the call I guess last week Jack? We just missed him. Sorry, just missed the opportunity to call into cooking issues today. My question is about curing bellies for bacon. What is your take on vacuum packaging pork bellies in a dry care situation? Should I pull a full vacuum on a multi vac style chamber machine? Do anaerobic conditions speed the osmosis and denaturation process? What are the pros and cons and he gives you a secure mix here is two pounds of kosher salt. 16 ounces for that. So I guess to put two pounds kosher salt, one pound of brown sugar, and two ounces of sodium nitrate is his cure mix. Thanks for any advice. Okay. So look, the article that you know there's there's a couple of articles to look at. Okay, one there's an interesting series of articles on Spanish I've you know Iberico style and other Spanish cured hams written by Berat spanning last name for I don't know, if it's a man or woman, spanning from roughly 2002 to fairly recently, like 2010 2011 on a technique where they directly thought frozen ham. So a lot of these guys buy frozen product, I guess not for the really expensive stuff. But you know, there's a, obviously an economic advantage to buying frozen products, for instance, you can do it anytime of year independent of slaughter, you can get equal weights of hams together, especially if you're like a lower quantity producer, you can store them until you have a batch of similar properties to cure together, etc, etc. And so there's a lot of testing of throwing in a brine as opposed to throwing in a fridge and then grinding. And you know, the results as usual kind of mix, but they also test vacuum pulsing, but the one I think you should look at the article I think you should look at is called development of a modified dry curing process for beef by Hayes. And this is sometime in the in the early, early 2000s. I think it's like 2000 14,005, something like that I don't have the year written down. But what Hayes tested Hayes it all tested was taking a beef, lean beef muscles to do dry cures on another European study. And I think it's UK. And they tested normal dry curing, so salt, they tested salt in a vacuum bag, they tested salt, they tested salt in a vacuum tumble operation. And they tested I shouldn't say vacuum bags not packing bag, vacuum, tumble and tumble only. Now the interesting thing is is that all of the papers on this subject site have been bunch of literature saying that vacuum, the application of vacuum or what they call pulsed vacuum, increases the rate of cure penetration or increases the speed, there's a couple things look at their speed. There's also evenness, right of cure throughout the thing. So these and also they they test things like tenderness drip loss, all this stuff anyway. So a bunch of studies on this, however, these these folks are focused primarily on pulse vacuum. And what that means is what they're they're the what they expect to be the reason that things happen is that when you apply a vacuum, the meat expands for variety of reasons, the moisture inside, starts to vaporize and pushes it apart. And also any air trapped on the inside of the meat will start expanding and push apart any veins or any any vessels I should say, or any air gaps. Now anyone that's used a vacuum machine knows that if you vacuum meat that's warm, it blows up just like a marshmallow does, I've seen, you know, fish rip themselves apart, I've seen steaks like inflate to you know, 50% of their of their size, right? So then the theory being now that when you apply a vacuum like that, and the meat expands to whatever degree it does, or the air inside expands to whatever degree it does, the insides of the meat are somehow more available to the outside, when the air comes back in and the pressure is reapplied that the whatever is outside, right, the exogenous stuff gets injected in now these guys who in the beef one are testing a dry cure. So not up not a brine. And I don't know whether or not their results they showed not that great a result for in terms of increase in amount of salt reaching the interior, and you know, by you know, by, by Association, also nitrites because they're also very diffusible things, trades and trades. And the so they showed not that big of a difference or not not a lot of benefit to doing what they call vacuum pulse alone. However, they're using a dry a dry thing. And my feeling is is that maybe you know, maybe another maybe in a wet wet your application it has more of a more of an advantage. They showed that tumbling increases any sort of tumbling, tumbling, and vacuum tumbling, increase substantially the rates of penetration and you know, the evenness of the cure and whatnot. Now, my feeling is is that what they're saying their proposed mechanism for why the vacuum works, right. And the reason by the way, the things I said things expand a because they're probably the meats not fully chilled, there's going to be moisture vaporization because when you plug it back into something, it decreases the boiling temperature, you get a lot of vaporization you can boil water at room temperature in a vacuum. Anyone that has a vacuum machine knows this. Anyone that does and is always shocking like when we boil water well, you reduce the pressure. As you reduce the pressure, it's easier for water molecules to flash off to vaporize, and so they do and so it boils at a lower temperature and that can cause the expansion to meet Anyways, if the actual thing is going on is that the real benefit of penetration is only at the moment that the vacuum presses this stuff into it. Then a vacuum pulse on a dry cured product is not going to have too much of an effect until a localized brine layer exists on the surface of the meat. And this is just speculation on my part. But my feeling is, is that a, like Intel, that liquid kind of forms in the dry here scenario, you're not going to get that much of a benefit from the vacuum. But, you know, I myself actually have noticed, like quite a benefit in in wet and semi wet things, right. But as the article points out, most of the benefits, they're not done by scientific studies, they're done empirically. And that's kind of a way of saying that cooks and, you know, r&d, folks at plants know how much vacuum to apply it and the fact that it increases the rate of curing it from an empirical standpoint, instead of from studies, they just know, because they know. So my feeling is maybe once it becomes a liquid, that you know that it's going to help a lot more. And another thing that's interesting that I hadn't thought about in the past is this. If it's the pulse, it's important, most of the procedures that I saw that these folks were using were single pulse things. In other words, they're only pulsing the vacuum one time, they're a plant, they're they're sucking a vacuum. And just by the way, that protocols that they're sucking is a 90% vacuum, they're moving, I don't know whether or not that's for, they think that's a better vacuum to suck versus what we normally suck in a chamber vacuum, which is much higher, you know, 9899 99 Nine. So, and you know, by the way, just so you know, like, oh, like an old timer sale seller of vacuum tumblers I spoke to like years ago, like seven, eight years ago. You know, I told him kind of the vacuums that we were applying in, you know, in kitchens, and he's like, nah, nah, no, he's like, You need to apply much less vacuum. He said, again, probably not backed up with science from an empirical thing that if you suck, too strong a vacuum, that in his words, the pool is closed back up again, I, at the time, I was like, I don't really understand what the hell, I really don't understand what the hell you're saying. But, and to this day, I still don't really understand what the hell he's saying. But it made sense to him. And what he's really trying to say is, regardless of any studies, he finds that vacuum tumbling works best at not intense vacuum levels, like in on the order of 90% of the air being removed, right. So 10% residual. And that is, in fact, what the studies all run at a single pulse, where they maintain 90% vacuum. So 10% air remaining, they they maintain that for a period of time, and then release back to atmosphere. But if it's the pulsing, that does it, why just do it once, when we're doing vacuum infusion of fruits, right, we put it in the bag, and then we suck a vacuum on it, bam, we infuse it, then we suck it, we leave it in the bag, because you don't want to volatilize a lot of aroma off, please, people don't really need that, whatever anyway, so then you apply another vacuum to the bag, right. And as you do that, the bag expands why? Because I told you that water vapor is going to be formed as the pressure reduces water vapor forms, the bag inflates again, then you can get the air back in, bam, you can do it again and again and again. So why pulse just once stars why just post this once, she's like, not only do I not know, I really don't care, I really just don't give a crap anyway. But the so that's my feeling. So maybe, maybe I'm a multiple pulse situation, but go take a look at that article. And I'm still gonna do a little more research to see whether I can figure out whether or not there is

a benefit or a lot of articles on the dry on under post vacuum for dry versus post vacuum for wet. But you specifically care about dry. So it's interesting, you know, for that standpoint, but I didn't get a chance unfortunately, to go back and read the references. If you go to that paper that I mentioned, which is development of modified dry curing process for beef by AES, you can see that they they have a bunch of references for people that do think that vacuuming helps quite a bit. And so you can check those out. I didn't have a I didn't have time, but I'll read you a little chunk of this article just so you have a flavor for the kind of crap I read for you people. The salt content table one between the core and outer regions differed with a P of less than 0.001 for all treatments with the exception of the tumble only treatment which had similar salt content content in the outer and core regions. This result indicated before the tumble only treatment, there was a more even distribution of pure ingredients in the meat. Comparing core regions only the salt content for vacuum tumble and tumble only treatments were found to be different to the control that came tumbling tumble only treatments at high salt content for the quarter region are 3.3 and 3.1% compared to 2.1% for the control. This result indicated the potential of vacuum tumbling and tumbling only treatments and accelerating the curing process at the rate of diffusion of Korean veins to the core of the muscle. So the nettle here your vacuum is known to increase core absorption. Here's an IT paper you can look up Solomon at all 9080 as well as extraction of salt soluble proteins, Sharma Kumar, nada and Kumar to Kumar's in one paper 2002 This is interesting, you know, in my indexes class, right, he's in third grade now. I like Kumar Kumar. That's my next band, Kumar and Kumar. 2002. So, he has to to Sofia Lee's in his class, and check this out ready for this. They go by I'm not kidding here so Fili one. And Sophia Lee to who the hell wants to be Sophia Lee number two like player two all the time. It's not like they switch up. It's not like they're like this week. I'm Sophia Lee one and this time I'm Sophia Lee two and here's what you want to be more messed up. Ready for this? They're not the only two Sophia is in the class. There's a Sophia, there's another Sophia in the class. So they can't even just go by Sophia one and Sophia two. Because there's a Sophia three if you just use the first name. I forget what the what the third Sophia is. Last name is. But that's a boatload of Sophia is and one. I mean, it's not like it's not like DAX is in a class of 300 kids. And there's like, you know, three Sofia's and two of them miraculously, by the way, unrelated happened to be Sophia Lee. You know, at least unrelated far back as Adam and Eve even more important as well, who knows me? Well whatever, you know, my you get my point not not not closely related. So what the hell did you know Sophia was such a popular demo, or whatever it is nine years ago there was such a popular now. I don't think I've ever noticed Sofia. And we maybe have I don't know.

So anyway, over that come from Kumar Kumar. Kindly knows what the hell's wrong with my brain. So anyway, so the vacuum tumbling by the way, if you want to know the, what's going on there, the theory is, is that the beating the crap out of the meat will change not only speeds the penetration of the cure to the core, but actually, like, reaches around and creates more extractable protein. That's part of what's going on there. So it also affects texture. So anyway, mildly interesting for people that find that sort of thing interesting, I guess, at class wrote in, which I guess hopefully everyone is listening, because that's the kind of crap we talk about all the time. Sounds like a no, at class wrote in equity issues, what is the useful range in microliters? For micropipettes? When doing cocktail work? I know you've mentioned it before, but I can't find it. Okay. So there's, there's a bunch of different to micropipette. As I've said, a billion times here, you know, in cocktail work is one of the few times when weighing by volume is what we do, as opposed to by weight. I mean, kitchens almost always run on weight by weight, weight basis, you know, if you're normal, they run our weight basis measurements. But and, you know, typically only water is the thing that translates easily back and forth between weight and volume. But in cocktail work, we almost exclusively work on, on a volume basis, for a number of reasons. One, because the most important thing in a cocktail is where the where the wash line hits, where the actual drink hits in the side of the glass. You know, I did a I judged a contest once. And the the bartender who was doing the contest news is somewhere else not in the US. And the bartender had radically different wash lines. So the two drinks they the guy poured, were totally different in the glass and one was higher and one was lower. How's it holy crap, the wash lines aren't the same. And the guy sitting next to me who was also from you know, not from here was like, so what we've had I remember you telling me this a couple times. Yeah, but it was because I still can't believe it. What would you feel like if you got the short glass and and and you know, your your whoever you were out drinking with? Got the tall glass? Good. Yeah. Especially if it was champagne, right? If you got the short glass of champagne that happened to me the other day, I got the short glass of champagne knows what, especially when you pay by the glass, you don't want the short How much do you hate it when you're playing by the glass and you get the short glass or a towel? And you feel obliged to order another one just so you catch up because you know, you're splitting the check. You know, I'm saying anyways, I don't know what the hell got me on that. So the wash lines are different. So that's why like a lot of things we do we do by volume. Also, it gets complicated with weights because the densities of our stuff is very different and really what we care about as Lyme also, it's, you know, inconvenient if you need to measure small volumes to do it by weight because you typically lose a lot so it a micropipette does is it allows you to very accurately very quickly and very repeatably measure out small volumes of liquids. So where does this come up? One it comes up in recipe development especially when you're working with things that are small in quantity so bitters, tinctures, salt solutions, sometimes acids depending on on what you what you do, but whenever you're doing centrifugation and you're using wind finding agents to to do clarify to be clarification aids which is what you know we do we typically use a peck next Ultra SPL, which is almost completely dose insensitive. You can just splash it in by it, it doesn't matter as long as you don't add so much that it affects the flavor or the concentration or anything like this. It's really fairly dose insensitive to OD on SPL unless you go crazy. SPL is the enzyme that I used to break down their cell walls of fruits and vegetables and olives and whatever else Um, so well so I sell everything breaks down packed and breaks down hemicellulose breaks now, I don't know it has some cellulase activity as well not a lot doesn't do lignin and whatever. So the so you know that one I don't necessarily need the micropipette for although some people use it what I use it for every day is Kiesel Saul and Kaita sand because wind finding agents that work on electrostatic charge as their basis for function right? They're there they're causing the flocking the agglomeration of chart opposite charged things right? Those if you overdose are under dose, that's useless, you've just ruined everything. So you really want to get an accurate repeatable dose, and you're dealing with quantities like two grams, two milliliters rather per liter of product. And so you need something that can measure in that range. Now, there are different kinds of micropipettes and pipettes with various degrees of difficulty of use. The ones I use are auto pipettors that are adjustable. So you sometimes you get them in their single range. And so you boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, you can only do one thing, the adjustable ones. And the ones I use are by psychologic. Psychological, I believe is the name are pretty awesome. And you buy them in a range of things. So the one that I use, and they're specified in microliters, right, the one I use is 1000 microliters, which is one milliliter all the way up to 5000 microliters, which is five milliliters, and I found that I very rarely need less than that, less than one mil per pop. And it's extremely accurate there. However, it says explicitly in the instructions to never turn the adjustment knob. And I think I paid under $100 For the one I have, or around there. never turned the adjustment knob past what they want, because it's going to ruin the calibration. And also it gets less accurate because the way it works is there's a piston that's very finely graduated, and you you push down until you feel the first stop that pushes the piston down a measurable amount and the amount that is pushed down is dependent upon how you set it up. There's a twist that goes click, click, click, click, click and you set in exactly how much you want. And it's got one of those old school like speedometer, click, click click things, which is pretty awesome. We're like italic counter. You push down until you feel the first day taunt, you stick it into the liquid, you lit release on the knob. It sucks up what you want, you put it into the vessel, you're going to push into you go push down to the detente position and then boom past it and it has an over travel that pushes out the extra, so you don't have anything left. And that's how it gets very high accuracy anyways, they specifically say do not turn this sucker below one milliliter or over five milliliters. Now I've never turned it over. I've never turned it over five. I have why shouldn't say I did a bartender wants crank this sucker down to half a milliliter. And I was like, Oh, you ruined it. And they didn't I tested I turned it back up to where it was supposed to be up to like two mils. And it was accurate book book book book book. And now it goes down to that book book book now goes down to half a milliliter so it works but that's the size I recommend. And if you need a different one for doing very highly accurate work. You can also get one that does like I think 200 microliters to 1000 and that'll get almost everything you need. I've very rarely used the second digit. I really care about milliliters and decimal milliliters and so you know the last the last digit you know I'm basically ignoring it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because mine reads the single digit for the 1000s and then of microliters then attends digit four tenths of well for 100 rather and then another digit for tenths it doesn't read the third digit at least I don't think it does. I can't in my head it doesn't and I don't really care if it does anyway. Right. You might take a break take a break come right back with cooking issues

this one's a song by my friend Herbert Stoker.

Today's program has been brought to you by s Wallace Edwards and sons, Edward Suriano hands are aged to perfection for no less than 400 days and hickory smoked to achieve a deep mahogany color. The Edwards name is well known for its world class aged and cured meats their exclusive carrying and aging recipe produces a unique flavor profile that enhances the quality characteristics of Berkshire pork. Optimum amounts of pure white fat marbling contribute to a flavor that's a delicate, perfect balance between sweet and salty. For more information, visit www dot Surry farms.com.

And Oh, welcome back to the cooking issues. So we had a note in from in this it makes sense we see here at a squiddy.com and then a there was a cephalopod but you know, separate cephalopods for those of you that you know, aren't hip to your nomenclature. cephalopods, which means foot head are the kind of most advanced mollusks in the world. So we got your you got your squid, you got your you know, squids are awesome, right? You got your your octopus octopi the my personal favorites. By the way, the Giant Pacific Octopus baller love the Giant Pacific Octopus. I've said many times, I will say it again. The well okay, you got your you got your chambered nautilus, you got your cuttlefish, master of camouflage, they're all really good at camouflage. They're like endlessly fascinating. And, and for the most part, delicious creatures. I've never had a nautilus I don't really know what the hell it tastes like or anything. And they're kind of the most, you know, the Nautilus in the most primitive kind, because they still have their shell and they sit there like, you know, booted a little like Nautilus is kind of floating around in that weird shell that's upside down. But yeah, the trick is, is that so cephalopods, extraordinarily smart, but in a way that is very hard for us to get a grip on because they're sort of brain power developed entirely differently from you know, it's entirely different from looking at the way our brain works, for instance, versus the way a dog's brain works. Because we're, you know, infinitely closer related, right? You gotta remember that, you know, you know, we split off from mollusks, you know, back before the spinal cord was invented, you know, what I'm saying? And so, you know, we're talking about these guys evolved from the same kind of crew that are like clams and things like this, right? So it's, you know, I, like almost all of them are big, big, dumb, you know, I mean, like, I think very few of us have a problem, thinking mechanistically about clams, and mussels, whereas you should have a problem thinking mechanistically, about the kind of brain functioning of or the neural functioning wherever you want to call it, of the of octopus and octopus. Anyway, and as I've said a zillion times before, I will say, again, this time, I'll actually get to it before I go off on a tangent. The problem with them, is they don't live very long at all, as a group. cephalopods are short lived creatures. So even, you know, our Toothless or however you pronounce it, the giant squid that they've recently captured on camera, you know, you're talking at the end, you're talking something that is freegan, big of friggin big squid is only living for, you know, a couple a couple of years, five, six years, you know what I mean? Like, Giant Pacific Octopus, I think it gets like three to five years out of its life. And then it because as soon as like the woman, or whatever, you know, the female as soon as she lays her eggs and they hatch, she goes senile and dies, and then doesn't eat by the way, the entire time that she's fanning her eggs there. And then the male as soon as it does, it's, it's it's business with with the ladies just starts wandering around on the floor of the ocean until it gets eaten apart goes goes, goes see No. So it's there. Interesting. So in other words, like the only thing stopping them from either killing us and taking over the world or else us, you know, using them as, as you know, Butler's and little aquariums that can like wheel around with joysticks, is the fact that they don't they don't live very long. So I know clearly at squiddy a cephalopod has an interest in this because the Twitter name, but he says or she? I don't know, because we don't know whether it's whether

anyway, we do have a caller, I just want to let the caller know we'll get to finish this. Alright,

we'll get there. We'll get there. Right. Yeah. Okay. So he writes, lobsters feel pain or something. There's a Washington Post article out that just came out about it. And it details a lot of the research that's being done that I've mentioned a lot of times on pain and nociception what the difference between pain and nociception is in other words, how can you measure that an animal feels pain versus just responds to noxious stimulus and noxious stimuli. And a lot of the work was done in hermit crabs and Decapod crustaceans, which were completely unrelated to cephalopods. But the research is being extended into cephalopods. And it's an interesting thing to look at. So go take a look at that. Thanks to askwoody for that caller, you're on the air.

Yeah, I've got a question. Hi to everybody. I'm just a new listener. But I've got a question. I've found some old corny kegs that a farmer had they were like 20 years old, right? and some of them had one of them was like three quarters full of Mountain Dew. And it still held pressure and everything. And I mean, I had to believe the pressure off. And so I tasted it and it tasted like Mountain Dew. And I was, you know, wild hair, try to make just a little bit of wine out of this out of this old mountain dew, right. So. But my Yeastar so I was wondering if you knew of any way to remove sodium benzoate from a solution?

Yeah. So that's your problem, right there is that there is? Yeah, no, I don't know of any way to on poison the Mountain Dew. Specifically, that's what they were worried about. You know what I'm saying? Like the door. Yeah, that's this specifically they they had a sugary product. And they knew yeast was going to grow in it. And so they put, you know, some preservative probably that time benzoate into it. So I don't know of any way to thwart that. I can. I can try to look it up. But I don't.

I did look it up. And I saw that HCl will, but then that'll just make it inedible again, right. I mean,

me hydrochloric acid. Well, wow. That's how much did they say to add?

Well, they didn't they didn't that was kind of the problem. They said, You know, you can you can precipitate it out with with HCl, it should turn to what a salt I guess, because it's already a salt. But

so you get so I mean,

I just don't know, I don't know that process. I just didn't know if maybe you you would ever come across something like that.

So you're putting in HCl? So presumably, you're getting NaCl. And then and then whatever, hydrogen? benzo it is right. I don't even know what that is they saying it turns into a gas and floats off. They say what are they? I don't have no,

I have no clue because it was just on a couple of homebrew websites. And they were like, you know, how do I get rid of sodium benzoate. And the guy just said ACL. Nothing else. So I just Yeah,

I don't even know what Benza wit is. You know what I mean? I don't know. I don't know the structure of it. So and the website, they said that it precipitates out? Hmm. My guess is that it's that the benzoate is something fairly large compared to normal things, you know what I'm saying? Right. But clearly, it's soluble, you know? Right.

Right. Yeah, I just, you know, it was just just one of those questions, I got the cake last fall. And I just, I worked with it a little bit with these little one gallon batches. And it just never, nothing ever took off with it. So I knew what it was it just was trying to see if I could get around that.

Well, if it's if it's HCl, right, if HCl, there's two things that could be going on, right? It's an acid attack, or it's some sort of like you say, some sort of precipitations going on, you're somehow causing, you know, something bends with to precipitate out, although I don't really I don't really, I don't know the chemistry of it, right? If it's an acid attack, and you're just and you're just, you know, destroying the sucker with acid, then you can just dope back NaOH. And you know, it will have a saltier version of, and I've done that, with. I've done that with stocks before. Now I had problems because I made soap, you know what I mean, with the fats that were in the stocks, but you know, you're not getting any problems with, with excess HCL on board, you know, if you have the ability to do that, but if it's a precipitation thing, I don't know, if someone has to know or I know I have. I have a bunch of old soda references from the 70s and 70s and 80s from the old Avi tech series, maybe they mentioned something about it, and I could try to do something. It's interesting problem. It's an interesting problem. How to get rid of the Benjamin hmm, yeah. And

you know, I'm not even I don't even know that Mountain Dew wine would be that good. It was just kind of a curious type thing. You know, how does it taste? But the Mountain Dew tastes fine. It just, you know, just never, never started? Never started working? Penny changed at all? Not, not really. I mean, I couldn't tell that it changed at all. And the guy put it in there and like 1994 is when he got those kegs. It blew my mind that they were still even holding pressure that the that the O rings hadn't gone.

Yeah, well, they're pretty good. I mean, like, like, you know, like, they're pretty good. I would bet that I would bet that you should change those O rings.

Short. That's already been done. But yeah, I just kept some of the stuff back. You know, I just, I just, I just siphoned it out and kept some of it out. You know,

those tags are great. You know what I mean? They're awesome. Yeah,

about 10 of them. And I mean, they're, they're just super, do you? Well, how long would you buy him? Last fall? Like October?

Yeah. You know, like, it's like, been a couple of years now. But like, you know, five, eight to 10 years ago, when I was buying a lot of them, they were free. You know what I mean? Yeah. During the changeover from premix. And I think a lot depends on what part of the country you're in. Because, you know, the premix post mix happened at different times depending on you know, obviously if your local water is really bad, you tend to stay with premix a lot of the time but you I'm not bad, but not, you know, not tasting good, you know? So they're much more expensive than they then they should be. It's crazy. Well,

I heard something this is a little the side that India still uses the corny kegs a whole lot and that the demand over there was pulling was putting the price up.

Oh, really welcome. Well, first of all, you know, all the homebrewers are buying them. A lot of the cocktail folks who are doing kegging are buying them and I guess you know, they're being shipped over. But it got so bad that I think that they're making them again. So in other words, like the ones that eat a lot of the ones people are buying now aren't actually surplus, you know, they're new. Yeah,

you can you can still buy the new ones. I mean, there are a whole lot higher. You know, I think I paid like 20 bucks apiece for these things. And you know, I bought every one that I could

Oh, yeah. And it used to be, you know, I shop for a lot of my soda gear at Mark power and vintage still Alabama. And they used to have them like almost for nothing just for the price. And then they would recondition them. I don't even know how to heck that they were able to sell them, but they stopped selling them a number of years ago, but they're awesome. I've never played around. A lot of chefs nowadays are buying I think the smaller ones. They're really expensive the three gallon guys, because they're doing smaller batches and stuff. But oh, yeah. Oh, I know what I wanted to ask was the color change at all in the Mountain Dew?

Well, it changed a little bit, but but not really. I mean, you know, not not as much as you would think. And there's actually two kegs that I didn't clean yet. And they're about half full, but I don't know what they're full of. One says one has a tag for Pepsi is pre mixed, which I didn't understand, I didn't understand why they would have tagged a pre mix, you know, and shipped it all over the place, you know, with just five gallons worth of worth of Pepsi.

Well, I mean, they probably mean why they shipped it to you that way instead of venting it. What

why it didn't come as as as concentrate and then mixed into the water. But your your comment earlier makes more sense that the water probably is not great. And, and they wanted to control the water.

Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of the I mean, I've never, you know, I never actually worked commercially with premix. But I think that a lot of the houses would show up with the kegs and swap them out. I don't know how much mixing was done in house. Or you know what I'm saying? I think people would bring the five gallon charge stuff. And then and then put it down. I had one more question for you about the Mountain Dew, but it's since left in my head. Anyway, well, I'll try and look up for that. If I can find anything. I'll I'll I'll we'll talk about getting rid of benzoate and making Mountain Dew wine. That's a that's a hilarious idea.

Just a wild rule, you know, just just came to me, you know, but yeah, I appreciate you answering my question. I love the show. I'm just trying to work through the backlog. So great.

Well, thanks for calling in talk to you. Have a good day. You too. That was awesome. Yeah, right. Mountain Dew wine. As like, well, you know, I know what I meant to say like that. What's interesting is sugar sodas are fairly stable, but you guys never stopped doesn't ever drink diet soda. So she doesn't know. But if you have diet soda, the aspartame can break down into salts and it loses its sweetness. So if you've ever had even canned soda, it's stored at extremely high temperatures, like you know in a laundry room for a long time. Like it can taste weird and salty. So like if you made the wine, it would be very, it'd be weird because it would be all the sugar would be gone. mentioned. Interesting idea. Speaking of soda, Tony Heron from

Brazil real quick, though, just to finish up the cephalopod stuff. Yeah, on the cephalopod. page.org you can buy in like a crazy amount of cephalopods. As a hobbyist.

I mean, like, I mean, like different, like octopus varieties and stuff. Yeah, they're rather difficult to keep I think

it's crazy. Just this list is insane. Some of them say like, deadly not recommended, but apparently you can still buy Well, one

of the deadliest creatures on a on a weight basis is the blue ring octopus. Yeah, you know, and they're really pretty mean like, they're freakin amazing. Like, you know, they like they change colors that mean they're also it's the

one here it says one of the most dangerous creatures on earth. Yeah,

man, you know, because like, but very rare to get to get stuck by, you know, your, you know, hit with one of those, they, first of all, they flash they flash at you when they're pissed, you know what I mean? So that it's not like, it's not like you're shaking hands with a blue ring octopus, and all of a sudden, exactly. But you know, I've read a bunch of books on cephalopod behavior, because I said like, I liked them and all the researchers all the octopus, researchers will say that they definitely have a, like a sense when you're dealing with them that they're dealing with an intelligence right, that that the cephalopod when it when it looks at you is actually looking at you and not just you know, some sort of like dumb gaze and they can perform amazing tasks. Like you know, solving, solving puzzles, doing things get reaching out of the tank leave, you know, to get things undoing jars to get inside of them things like this. But what's strange is the stuff that they can't do. This is what like when you when you research them, it's it's amazing. They have such intense abilities and some, in some ways, like they're there, like a lot of their neurons have to do with the coloring and texture of their skin. Their skin is much more highly tweaked than ours is much more. But they don't have certain things that we would think it are completely normal, like, like the ability to know exactly where their tentacle is in space, because I guess they're they don't have a structure like we have internal structure. And so they don't have the same proprioception kind of things that we do. So things that we take for granted. They they they have very difficult abilities with things that we would never think that they could do, they can do with ease. So it's there. Yeah, they're fascinating. Love Myself some cephalopod. All right. So Tony Harrison wrote in from Brazil, hello cooking issues and the Hrn team. By the way, this fits in nicely with the Mountain Dew because it's a question about soda and premix specifically, Hope everyone's doing well. I've got a question for Dave concerning two very beloved subjects of ours, soda and cocktails. I'm designing a cocktails on tap system and was wondering about the tap vows. Dave has mentioned a couple of times about the Ibis tower slash Becker, which is cm Becker a corporation valve he uses for his soda system. That is true. They get it from Fox equipment here in the US. That is what I was aiming for, to dispense the drinks at least until I looked up the price tag for that tower. Almost $400 for the two faucet tower and $350 for the single on Fox 2x is like red fox. Remember it funds remember San Franssen one of the great theme songs of all time. Fox I'm being told that I can't talk about how awesome the Sanford and Son theme song is. Even though that is an amazing theme song. Fox equipment two x's dot com. Wow, that wow was about the price. In fact, my biggest surprise was how much you guys love your soda even more than I do. Or was it eBay? Kung Fu your no duct tape. New Year's resolution from a while back must be tremendously effective. Jokes aside, in my case, throw a 95% import tax and shipping to Brazil. You know that like people in Brazil when they ordered stuff from here have to pay like double like the taxes like some intense, intense stuff. I don't know how they're allowed to get away with it. Because we don't tax the crap out of Brazilian stuff when it comes here doing. I don't know, I don't know that. I could almost buy 2200 liters of outstanding bottled sparkling water around here. Instead, I was recommended the Perlick 545 PC flow control faucet for much less to help control foaming and you link a homebrew thing here right I assume from pictures and schematics that the compensatory mechanism is pretty different from the two. Do you believe that the Perlick will fit well for cocktails dispense from a corny keg system? Could the Ibis really do that much different for this application? And what alternatives could you recommend? My main concerns as they should be, are excessive foaming and loss of carbonation. I appreciate your insights. Keep up the good work. Tony heron. Okay, here's the deal. The Ibis tower with the Becker premix on it is expensive, because they're taking a premix valve, a nice one, and they're retrofitting it onto a beer tower. And they're charging you an exorbitant rate. And it looks really nice. So you're paying for a lot of chrome, you're paying for the fact that nobody uses these damn things anymore. By the way, the tower is nice because it's got a chilling line as well to chill the tower. Because it's, you know, similar to like a cobra head, but it's called ibis, because it's thinner than the Cobra heads anyways. It's expensive because of all the chrome and because nobody wants it, right. The problem with soda is, everybody knows that the that the soda guns, the ones that they use in post mix, suck, we all know they suck, right? The Wonder bar and all their variants. We all know that they, they totally rob you of carbonation, that, in general, they're not clean enough. And they make horrible tasting. So everybody knows this, right? But whenever anyone tries to go back to a single valve dispensing, that's the way to do it, they always go to the beer style valves like the one that you recommend. And the problem is this beer is put through a much lower pressure than any of the stuff we're dealing with because it has a lower alcohol content than cocktails do. And it also has less carbonation than either soda does or that cocktails do. So you're never going to get good results out of a beer system with what you're never going to get very highly carbonated results without foaming out of a beer system. The only choice you have is to get a soda a premix soda thing because they are designed to compensate much larger pressure differences than you can get than are can be compensated through a beer style. Now, the good news for you is you don't have to buy the expensive stuff. If you don't need the tower. You can go to see em Becker. That's Charles Mary Becker is a corporation and by the way, the people who pick up the phone there don't know a freaking thing about it because they happen to make these things. They don't care about it because it's not really good business anymore. But you can go on their website and look up premix valves and the standard wall mount valves that can be mounted on a piece of stainless steel right with a width and they just have a hose attachment on the back and you take it down to like a quarter or three eighths hose and put it through your cold plate. Those things will work just as well as the fancy one that I have, they just don't look nice coming out of a deck mounted sink deck mounted application. For my home application, I required the A it look nice because my wife's an architect be I'm not using duct tape anymore, remember, and see, I need I couldn't wall mount like I had before I needed to deck mount it. And so to have all of that I needed to go with that expensive system, if you can walk them out, you can get them much less expensive on the order of I think they're like 30 bucks, maybe for one of these premix valves and just mounted into the wall and you can get 234 of them and line them up and they were great. The other thing that you need to realize with cocktails, cocktails foam a lot more a lot more than soda does a lot more. And because alcohol has a lower surface tension than water does. And also it has a higher viscosity. So you're dealing with a higher viscosity to hold bubbles and a lower surface tension which it which increases the rate of bubble formation in the liquid. And what you have therefore is a nightmare. Also, you have typically for a given level of carbonation, a feeling in your mouth more co2 in alcoholic products and cocktails are more alcoholic than beer and then a lot of wines and so therefore you have excess foaming as well, coupled with the fact that you can never get stuff that cold with a cold plate because you're only going down to ice temperatures. And I'm typically serving a good five, six degrees below that when I'm serving cocktails, problems, problems problems. But to get around it, you want a very long flow so that as something comes out of your keg system, it has a long time to calm down before it comes through the compensator. And out of the tap right and you're not getting as much pressure because you get a pressure, bigger pressure, drop it along a long line. But also you're gonna want to run through two channels of your cold plate not one two channels of your cold plate so that it has a longer time it can get colder and a lot colder good five degrees colder typically, if you want you to versus through one running through more than two doesn't really give you an advantage. Another thing you might want to take a look at if you're only running cocktail through it and not regular liquids is using it's gonna ruin anything but stainless. It'll ruin the aluminum that most cold plates is made out of eventually, but you could look at using a salt solution eutectic solution usually potassium chloride something like this. Depending on the alcohol content you're running through, you might be able to get hyper cold stuff if you calculate it wrong. You'll freeze your line solid and you know it won't burst the least it has never when I've missed made mistakes burst my cold plate, but it does suck and then you have to throw out the cold plate to get it to work. So anyways because we have we have we have to get off right anyway. So hopefully that gave you some information next week. I was going to get to Kenji had written on the Twitter about shrimp and baking soda. Maybe we'll have time to talk about the next one more question. I was that because me in