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What are they knowledgeable about then?

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Bunkers are always convenient. Especially because of the steady, low, ambient temps.

Actually I don’t take pics of the lab, and don’t even allow visitors. But here are two pics.

Some of the 300 tinctures.

A half liter of fresh squeezed orange juice, clarified in the centrifuge.

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Whew! Glad you got rid of the orange color, pulp and mouthfeel. What does the gas spectrometer tell you is ideal for OJ?

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Hi gearguy,
I live in Loveland, about 50 miles north. If I-25 is moving, it’s about an hour. :wink:

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[quote=“JMF, post:18, topic:7867”]
… My ground floor/basement is one huge food/beverage lab and office. … It’s filled with almost every type of equipment such a lab needs. …[/quote]
Holy Smokes! :astonished:
I have some nice copper pots … :slight_smile:

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Well, sarcasm is not necessary. Or whatever the point you are feebly trying to make.

But, to answer the question, it depends upon the purpose if you want the color, pulp, or mouthfeel. If want regular OJ to drink, then you have to squeeze juice oranges fresh to order, and drink it immediately, preferably, or else if kept chilled, within 3-6 hours, but flavor degrades rapidly. If you buy OJ from Tropicana, Florida Natural, etc. You are drinking OJ that has had the color, pulp, and mouthfeel removed. The pulp, color and most of the flavor is sent out to separate OJ industry flavor laboratories/factories where they make custom tailored “Flavor Paks”, a shelf stable product, with a specific flavor profile designed for each of the major “fresh” OJ producers. While the clear, almost flavorless, liquid, is kept chilled in 20-50,000 gallon tanks. Then when one of the big OJ companies needs to pack OJ to ship to market they mix the flavor packs and the clear liquid together to make so called fresh OJ. The pulp itself has been separated at the same earlier time and pasteurized, and added back as needed depending upon pulp level needed for the product.

If you want to find out the facts about the OJ industry, read “Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice (Yale Agrarian Studies Series 2009)” by Alissa Hamilton. Warning you may not ever drink commercial OJ again.

Otherwise, you can do interesting things when you can bring in flavors, but create different colors and textures, to a food of beverage. Hey, making fun and interesting things to eat and drink is… Fun. Personally I don’t like to eat a modernist menu or molecular cocktail all the time. Every now and then is ok. The great majority of the time I am more of a home style ethnic food lover. And cocktails based on classic techniques, using fresh and house made juices, tinctures, and syrups.

I see a use for cocktails and industrial food production. If you are researching and playing at that, Godspeed. Enfeebled as I am, I prefer fresh-squeezed OJ in its natural state, and consider 'fuging it a step away from food. But thanks for explaining why industrial OJ sucks.

I appreciate that you probably can also make deconstructed biscuit-and-gravy coffecake (a la mode with nicotine ice cream) to wash down with that high-RPM juice. I just don’t see the point.

[quote=“JMF, post:26, topic:7867”]
If want regular OJ to drink, then you have to squeeze juice oranges fresh to order, and drink it immediately, preferably, or else if kept chilled, within 3-6 hours, but flavor degrades rapidly. [/quote]
Is there a difference in the flavor stability (or even just the flavor) of clarified OJ?
And what do you do with the pulp/sediment of everything you spin?

[quote=“Eiron, post:28, topic:7867, full:true”]

Regular orange juice has a peak flavor profile of under three hours. Lemon, and lime juices the flavor improves for around six hours, then subsides over the next 6-12 hours. Grapefruit juice improves for up to 3 days to two weeks. All this is chilled juices.

Clarified citrus juices are much more stable than unclarified. They don’t have the full flavor profile, as one would expect since you are removing a large portion of what makes up the flavors. But kept chilled can be stable for several weeks at home, or even many months to a year in the case of commercial OJ producers.

The unused portions can end up being great, or horrible. With citrus juices they can be bitter and strong. I have used them as an added flavor boost when making marmalades. In other juices, the solids can be wonderful. I make a fresh quince syrup and the solids are basically Membrillo.

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As I have said upon occasion, I am a food & beverage consultant, so I am not doing this just for my home use. Although that can be fun. Mostly I don’t use any of this for home. But for bars, restaurants, and food/beverage production businesses; large and small.

As I have also said previously, I prefer not to eat/drink this type of thing myself most of the time. I tend to be a bit of a classicist when it comes to dining. And prefer homestyle Asian, Latino, and Mediterranean foods, over nouveau and fusion, which suck much of the time. But some of the centrifuged syrups I have created are so much better than using a filter to remove the solids. And centrifuging is basically just very efficient filtering. A lot of the cocktails are fantastic. Basically modern versions of Old Fashioned’s where a filtered or centrifuged syrup is used as the sweetener, to modify the flavor profile.

Oh, and your example is plain silly and is just being used to belittle modernist techniques. Something like nicotine ice cream, is deadly. Many of the things that are being done by uneducated people in bars and restaurants have the possibility of being dangerous. Unsafe applications of dry ice, liquid nitrogen, fat washing, activated charcoal, tinctures of tobacco, leather, tonka beans, cinchona/quinine, and much more.

I don’t know why I never thought to check out local thrift stores for cutlery. There’s a Goodwill store near me and I’m adding a stop there to my To Do list. It’s near a very large retirement community, so the idea (expressed above) that people donate things from estate cleanouts could lead to a find or two.

Google took me to a website for Goodwill selling online and there were a few pages of cutlery items there. For some reason most of the interesting items were at locations in Oregon. Probably just because those locations are active in online sales, but it did make me wonder.

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Yay! :slight_smile: Just don’t get discouraged if you don’t find anything right away. I return regularly to my favorite thrifts (making a stop part of other errands in the area) & usually walk away empty-handed.

Modernist techniques have done an admirable job of belittling themseves, since my example is an actual prep.

Taking the OJ out of OJ, well, I hope your clients pay you well.

I don’t know why you have this angry and sarcastic attitude. So, what’s your beef?

But it is obvious that you don’t really have any first hand experience with the topic. Clarifying the OJ, isn’t taking the OJ out of OJ. It actually changes it in ways for the better for many applications, including a more intense orange flavor because many undesirable bitter compounds are partially removed. So you can actually taste MORE orange flavor.

And if your example is real, then the person making it is in idiot if they are using tobacco/nicotine. Just like in any field, there are people doing artistic things in a knowledgeable way. And folks who are just jumping on the bandwagon to make cash, or seeking notoriety, without the proper education to do it safely.

Quite a few of us in both the food and beverage sides of the industry are actually working on educating and trying to police the industry through a variety of venues.

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No anger or beef here.

Taking the OJ out of OJ changes it in ways for the worse, too. I and most people–other than industrial food purveyors–don’t need more intense orange flavor than an orange can provide. Again, I appreciate the preservation aspect here, as well as a narrow tincture application for bitters, cocktails and such.

So much of Modernist is about making something that doesn’t look like X taste like X, or making explosive little droplets, or gluing meat together. A lot of time, money and effort goes into something showy, but I’ve yet to have a “deconstructed” anything that floats my boat. I recently attended a museum exhibition of Mr. Myrhvold’s Modernist accomplishments, and wish I had asked for a refund.

As a winemaker, I’m familiar with the use of centrifuges for filtration and manipulation. It’s old technology at this point, and if wine is made correctly, offers little improvement. IMO.

I really do wish you well with your lab, and success with your clients.

Aloha,
Kaleo

I have to agree that many places doing modernist food/beverages are of the hammer/nail application. A limited number of tools, used poorly. Or used in anything, just because.

Again, as I have said, I am not a lover of modernist foods, the whole deconstructed thing leaves me bored, or fusion foods. I’m very traditional in many ways. Although I use some of my equipment a lot such as the vacuum chamber/sealer, centrifuge, and sous vide. But more for making things shelf or chilled stable, or for ease of use. Throwing carrots in butter or ginger syrup in the sous vide for two hours, then chilling and keeping the sealed vac bag in the fridge for days or weeks. I can then microwave for 30 seconds to a minute and have fantastic carrots instantly. The same for many foods. I also buy meats, poultry, and fish bulk and butcher myself, vac pack and deep freeze. Many can go right into the sous vide and then a one minute sear and serve. Or chilled like the above veggies and then just warmed and seared and served. Very convenient, and the flavor intensity due to no dilution by boiling is great. Although there are times, much more often for me, when a three hour covered braise in the oven, is what it’s all about. Or a quick stir fry.

In creating cocktails for a place, out of let’s say a dozen on the menu, I may have 1-3 that use some modernist technique, and usually don’t even state so. And if there is a modernist application, it is for only one ingredient in the cocktail. If something doesn’t improve the cocktail significantly, I don’t use it. Also the ingredients have to be simple for the place to make in house. Or else ones that I can make and sell to them, and have to be simple and easy in that regard as well, using the tools and equipment I have. I prefer to use organic substances to synthetic. By organic I don’t mean like organic produce. I mean if I need an acid I use a fresh citrus juice. A centrifuge doesn’t have to be run at full speed. It can be run longer at slower speeds, thereby removing visual solids to produce a relatively clear syrup, with all the flavor. Using these tools isn’t all about taking an item apart and rebuilding it. Sometimes it’s just to improve flavors, colors, mouthfeel, etc. You would filter a cinnamon syrup before using otherwise it would be gritty and have a terrible mouthfeel. You can try and filter with a chinois or coffee filters and it is very slow and small quantities, and very messy. Or a superbag and it’s slow but you can do larger quantities. Or a centrifuge and it’s small to medium quantities and it’s quick, and you can control exactly how much filtering, easily. Without filtering multiple times.

All I am saying is these tools and techniques can be used as better ways to get the results of more traditional preparations.

Or to do something for fun and wow factor, which is sometimes an end in itself. Much of what I do in my lab is not for retail/the consumer, but for a food/beverage business, where having a large tool chest means I can provide them with more knowledge and insight in creating a quality product.

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So, being the way I am, I decided to modify the Messermeister DN-1011 Chinese cleaver. Not much; just enough to make it a bit more comfortable.

The first thing I wanted to do was contour the handle near the back end, where my last two fingers wrap around it. It was a bit fat for me, so I carved out some swoopy countours on the underside. In this picture you can see I removed material from just under the middle rivet back to the hook at the butt of the handle:

Then, I decided to round the corner at the front/top of the blade, as it was annoyingly pointy:

While I was doing that, I also decided to take the edges off of the spine and choil. Since I’ll be using this as a prep knife (as opposed to a meat cleaver), I’ll use it with a pinch grip. Now I don’t have those sharp edges digging into my fingers.

So I guess I made it kinda personal. :slight_smile:

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Another recent find: This All Clad Copper Core 8 qt Stock Pot:

As you can tell from the picture, this is a failed production piece. They didn’t cut the outer band around the base, polish the exterior, or etch anything onto the bottom! Why?? Because the laminated layers have extra aluminum!

Here’s a picture of the lamination, where you can see the outer section (where they would normally cut thru to make their silly decorative band) has a lot of extra aluminum:

And here’s a picture from a normal Copper Core lamination (in this case their 3 qt “saucier”):

Normal laminate thickness is 2mm total (SS, Al, Cu, Al, SS). This pot measures out at 3.1mm. The Cu layer looks to be the same thickness (about 1mm), so I’ve got an extra mm of Al wrapped around the outside. My feeling is that this will provide an improvement in cooking, but I don’t know. Anyone want to estimate the thermal properties for me? :smiley:

Regular price for a 1st-quality pot is $460.
Regular price for a “2nd” manufacturing error pot is $330.
I got this one at Marshall’s. It had been clearance marked down twice, and was $150 when I found it.

Oh god. You got a better pot than the standard pot (assuming you don’t mind the slightly extra weight). Geez. People would ask to custom make that pot.

The Messermeister Chinese cleaver look fairly nicely kept. Have you tried it? I was told that it is a nice knife and a little thinner than the typical Chinese vegetable cleaver. The steel is also slightly harder around 57-58 HRC (instead of the many 55-56 HRC)

I don’t know if I could tell the weight difference of only 1mm of aluminum skin on a pot that size. Funny thing, when I bought it the clerk asked what else I had inside the pot. She opened the lid and exclaimed how heavy the empty pot was! :smile:

Yes, the cleaver looks barely used at all.

Yes, I tried it out on a small amount of onion. The blade is about twice as tall as the two other knives I use most often, so it kinda felt like I was trying to chop with a guillotine! :fearful:

But it sharpened up well (it now easily falls thru a single sheet of newsprint at cross-grain), so I just need to get more practice with it.