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cdh

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Posts posted by cdh

    SodaStream CO2 bomb

    in Spirits & Cocktails

    Posted

    46 minutes ago, jimb0 said:

    The fire safety shops are also a good place to get gas, as they refill fire extinguishers. Our local ones now carry homebrew-specifics for that purpose.

     

    @cdh brew anything interesting lately?

     

    Recently I've been fermenting last fall's pear pickings and some Chilean grape juice... their fall harvest got shipped up here mid May.  Beer wise, I've got a lot of space taken up with a few iterations of flemish reds... need to drink through that and blend them down into fewer kegs so I have some space.  

    • Like 2

    SodaStream CO2 bomb

    in Spirits & Cocktails

    Posted · Edited by cdh (log)

    On 5/28/2020 at 9:18 PM, jimb0 said:

    Additionally, carbonating a half bottle means there's a much bigger head space of compressible air to fill, which means you could potentially fit much more CO2 into the bottle that's only partially filled with liquid.

     

    If you have the floor space and wherewithal, I recommend neither the SodaStream or the iSI (for carbonation, that is) as both are expensive in terms of ongoing costs. We converted a chest freezer (although you could also just use a refrigerator) with a tap. 10- or 20-lb tank of CO2 --> regulator --> corny keg filled with water == 5 gallons of fizzy water on tap at a time. We have two kegs for water, so that when one is emptied, we just pop the hose over (simple ball joint so it takes five seconds) and refill the other tank. It will carbonate on its own in a day or two, and there's never any kind of risk. 

     

    A 5-gallon keg full of water is heavy, though, so that's a consideration. If strength is an issue, you can use 1- or 3- gallon kegs, as well, or even just buy a carbonator cap and carb your own 2L bottles of cold water.

     

    More expensive (but still lower TCO) would be to install a used carbonator. This whole setup is worth it for us because we drink, like, obscene amounts of fizzy water. At least 5 gallons a week or so.

     

    I have been doing the keg method myself for a decade... last year finally got a nice tap handle plumbed in to the bar so the fizzy water line from the basement terminates into something nice looking where I make drinks rather than a cheapy looking black  cobra tap.  Amazing how cheap a nice tap handle was on ebay... something like $30.  It helps that the "bar" is actually an Ikea press-board bookcase that I had zero compunctions about drilling through... 

     

    I've also found that delivery of fizzy water is much smoother when I have 2 kegs in series hooked up to the tap line... service keg out-port hooked to tap line, service keg gas port connected to a jumper attached to aux keg's out line... Also makes it much less likely that I'll run out of fizzy water... 

     

    With some careful shopping and good luck, you could probably get a reg/keg setup going for less than the cost of a SodaStream thingy... presuming you rent your CO2 tank... But that would require diving down the homebrewing rabbit hole in a very serious way, as this equipment and info about it is not commonplace... then you'd have to figure out where your local welding shop is and make friends with them too, to keep you in gas... and that opens the door to thoughts of playing with liquid nitrogen and dry ice too (since the welding shop will also sell them)...   which may be more temptation than most people are ready to resist... 

     

    • Like 2
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    SodaStream CO2 bomb

    in Spirits & Cocktails

    Posted · Edited by cdh (log)

    Doing what you described sounds like you put a whole lot of gas into the bottle, and it didn't have a chance to dissolve into the liquid.  Surface area of the liquid vs surface area of the gas are big factors in how quickly it will dissolve.  If the gas was not bubbling through the liquid because it was only a half bottle and the gas injector was shooting into the airspace and not the liquid,  the surface area is only the area of the disc of liquid at the top of the column made by the bottle. If the gas bubbles through the liquid, it forms spheres, lots of spheres with a massively greater surface area contacting the liquid.  If the liquid was warm... or not as cold as possible to make it, the amount of gas that could be dissolved is lessened... 

     

    So, for an appliance that does not allow you to do stuff that could encourage gas dissolution in sub-optimal circumstances (like chilling it for a long time before opening the bottle, and shaking the hell out of it), you have to just follow the directions. 

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

    F .BLUMLEIN Steam Convection Oven

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    1 hour ago, TdeV said:

     

    Thank you for the experiment. Not the best use of the steam oven, why? Because of the time it took to get the tea hot? (Water boils in my microwave before 2:22 minutes/seconds).

    IF you want quick water heating for tea, get a dedicated kettle.  If you don't have counterspace to devote to a kettle, get one of these  and store it in your tea mug when it is not in use. 

    • Like 2

    Alternative acids

    in Cooking

    Posted

    Some spring ramps have come my way, and ramp vinegar is always a yummy way to put them to use...  It occurred to me that I've got a mountain of pure citric acid sitting around...  so why not make up a 6% solution of that and drop a ramp leaf in and see what happens.  

     

    Anybody else replaced acetic with citric in culinary preparations?  I think that a citric ramp preserve might be tastier as the acid in a rampy mayonnaise.... the acetic twang just doesn't work for me in mayo... makes it seem like miracle whip... 

     

    I'll report back after the ramps have pickled for a week.  

    Access to to-the-trade purveyors during quarantine

    in Kitchen Consumer

    Posted

    So with most restaurants operating in a totally different mode (if at all) and many more people at home cooking, to-the-trade purveyors seem to be opening their doors to the public.  I'd like this thread to explore our experiences with this new option being presented to us. 

     

    A week or two ago my local metro's paper published an article about food distributors opening their inventories to the public... none of the options looked all that enticing, ranging from inflexible boxes of stuff that didn't trigger my Want! reflexes, to $200 minimum orders, to curbside pickup at warehouses an hour away.  More recently, one of the big South Philly fish warehouses publicized that they were getting into the to-the-public side more seriously than they had. That sounded interesting.  So, having been a subscriber to their email blasts (so I'd know when to start looking for seasonal stuff), I've dropped the $50 to join their "club" which theoretically entitles me to their to-the-trade special prices, and to delivery to my house (which will be a real winner since I live just outside the Instacart zone, where they'll say they will deliver to my ZIP code, just not to my house).  I see it like a sort of Costco for fish (but with delivery)sort of proposition.  I'll report back with updates on my experience. 

     

    Share any adventures like this that you've got... if you've got any.

    • Like 2
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    French Press coffee. What's special about it?

    in Cooking

    Posted

    Wouldn't a soak in peroxide bubble out the junk you want to clean out of the press screen?  Use coffee oil remover first like Urnex or Joe Glow... then any organic junk left over would get bubbled out by peroxide, no?  I use a french press to ferment water kefir, so when organic slime turns up in the screen, a soak in H2O2 seems to do the trick for that purpose. 

    French Press coffee. What's special about it?

    in Cooking

    Posted

    French presses are about the aesthetics of the press... they look really spiffy served to the table.  They introduce customer interactivity... you get left to press the plunger yourself when you feel like it.  They don't require expensive grinders to work right... a French Press will do OK brewing the output of a whirly blade grinder. 

    • Thanks 1

    Crazy Good e-Book Bargains

    in Cookbooks & References

    Posted

    I'll third the motion and suggest there's no need to insert a disclaimer in every post.  Amazon pricing is hit or miss sometimes dependent on which browser you're using (and what cookies are set and visible).  No need to explain that to everybody every time. 

    • Like 4

    Tea Shopping

    in Coffee & Tea

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