Barack Obama juice
in Random / Off-topic ·
Jose Miller3 said:A slightly improved version of this thread, posted on the forums and for everyone 😬
So, look—the recipes we have for elderberry juice are... well, they're hit or miss. But they all share one thing in common: they require an insane amount of sugar (we're talking 1 kg of sugar per liter of water; even Coca-Cola, which we all know is ridiculously sweet, only has 10g of sugar per 100ml—so healthy homemade elderberry juices actually have ten times more sugar than a Coca-Cola 😢). Honestly, I don't get why you need such a massive, terrible amount of sugar, but apparently, it's necessary because I can't find a single recipe where the ratio is any lower. The end result is this super syrupy mess 😢 and then people try to fix it by throwing in some citric acid (or lemon juice, which is basically the same thing), but the syrup stays way too sweet and just doesn't taste enough like elderberry.
Question for the folks here at PZ-ofce: what if we tried taking elderberry flowers and dissolving whatever-it-is-that-gives-juice-its-flavor in some organic solvent, evaporating the solvent to get a pure concentrate (either liquid or, more likely, solid), and then trying to dissolve that in a normal amount of water? Or maybe use it as a powder to make juice like how Nestlé does it? Would that be doable? Is there a talented chemist around here with access to a rotary evaporator, some organic solvent, and maybe thirty minutes to see what happens if we give this a shot? 🙂
Here’s a thought. You mix 99% isopropyl alcohol with the flowers and crush them up. Then you filter it and evaporate the alcohol at a low temperature.
Question: Does sugar actually prevent spoilage?
What if the juice was put into a stainless steel wine barrel and covered with oil? Would that stop it from spoiling?
By the way, the folks writing the recipes mention that the juice spoils easily, even with 5kg of sugar.