Tiny Bubbles ...
Jan. 6th, 2014 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyMy sister says she loves the way I collect hobbies. I got a new one for Xmas, too! Dad was having so much fun making wine that I decided I wanted to have some fun too, of the nonalcoholic kind.
So I got me some soda-brewing stuff!
Mostly I got it on the principle of Why The Hell Not. Brewing always seemed like it'd be a lot of fun, but you may remember that I am not terribly fond of alcohol, what with the way it mixes with my Fukitol and makes me fall down.* Plus, I always wanted to see for myself how you get the bubbles into the soda. (I can't have been the only kid who wondered this.)
So I have been testing it out! So far I have only been working with the ready-made extracts of ginger and sarsaparilla** and such, because they're quick to make and it's less disappointing to fuck 'em up. And since I'm just starting, I'm fucking up some, though I think I'm doing it on a precisely calibrated learning curve. The mixtures seem okay, but I am not getting the carbonation I want from it. Partly that's because I have yet to form any frame of reference for how carbonated to get it, and partly it's because, as I realized only after I had started to bottle the first batch, that I have one rather awkward hangup that might become a liability to this hobby: I am terrified of balloons.
No, really. I have no idea why, of all the traumatic events in my life, a half-remembered, possibly unreal incident would be the one to burn its way into my autonomic nervous systerm. That terrible car crash when I was six? Eh. The time I had the police looking for me and failed at Stranger Danger? Traumatically embarrassing, but hey, I was seven and anyway it all turned out fine. The day I watched Dad staple Mom's big scary head wound back together? I thought that was pretty entertaining. But ONE ill-advised attempt to carry a balloon in my teeth at age two, and ever after that I'm doomed to have physical anxiety attacks around the stupid things.
And, as it turns out, my fear of loud pressurized bangs extends to the possibility of exploding soda bottles. (Especially the plastic ones--for some reason I'm LESS afraid of shards of glass erupting all over the place, because this is not a rational fear. But I don't have any glass bottles. Yet.) So I've been extremely conservative about when to turn off the yeast, which has so far resulted in undercarbonated beverages. (Mom pronounces them to be just fine, but since Mom likes lukewarm flat soda, that means I've got a long way to go.)
But! I'm continuing on, because learning through experimentation is FUN, (like I did with pizza!) and anyway soda is delicious. I've ordered some more complicated ingredients to try when I get this carbonation thing figured out, and now that my sister has left again, we can use her bathtub to store the bottles so that if they DO explode, they will be 1) contained, and 2) upstairs, far away from my Bat Cave, where they will only scare OTHER members of the family. This is an improvement.
Anyway, I'll let you guys know how it goes! And if you hear loud bangs from my house, don't worry. It's just exploding sody pop.
*This is a handy excuse, but the truth is I just don't like alcohol very much.
**One problem with this hobby is that I really hate the words "sarsaparilla" and "sassafras." What the hell, Spanish? Why you gotta make it sound like people's mouths are full of marbles? Maybe I can start referring to the sassafras as saxifrage, because that's slightly less annoying to say and also reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's fun character Sax Russell.
So I got me some soda-brewing stuff!
Mostly I got it on the principle of Why The Hell Not. Brewing always seemed like it'd be a lot of fun, but you may remember that I am not terribly fond of alcohol, what with the way it mixes with my Fukitol and makes me fall down.* Plus, I always wanted to see for myself how you get the bubbles into the soda. (I can't have been the only kid who wondered this.)
So I have been testing it out! So far I have only been working with the ready-made extracts of ginger and sarsaparilla** and such, because they're quick to make and it's less disappointing to fuck 'em up. And since I'm just starting, I'm fucking up some, though I think I'm doing it on a precisely calibrated learning curve. The mixtures seem okay, but I am not getting the carbonation I want from it. Partly that's because I have yet to form any frame of reference for how carbonated to get it, and partly it's because, as I realized only after I had started to bottle the first batch, that I have one rather awkward hangup that might become a liability to this hobby: I am terrified of balloons.
No, really. I have no idea why, of all the traumatic events in my life, a half-remembered, possibly unreal incident would be the one to burn its way into my autonomic nervous systerm. That terrible car crash when I was six? Eh. The time I had the police looking for me and failed at Stranger Danger? Traumatically embarrassing, but hey, I was seven and anyway it all turned out fine. The day I watched Dad staple Mom's big scary head wound back together? I thought that was pretty entertaining. But ONE ill-advised attempt to carry a balloon in my teeth at age two, and ever after that I'm doomed to have physical anxiety attacks around the stupid things.
And, as it turns out, my fear of loud pressurized bangs extends to the possibility of exploding soda bottles. (Especially the plastic ones--for some reason I'm LESS afraid of shards of glass erupting all over the place, because this is not a rational fear. But I don't have any glass bottles. Yet.) So I've been extremely conservative about when to turn off the yeast, which has so far resulted in undercarbonated beverages. (Mom pronounces them to be just fine, but since Mom likes lukewarm flat soda, that means I've got a long way to go.)
But! I'm continuing on, because learning through experimentation is FUN, (like I did with pizza!) and anyway soda is delicious. I've ordered some more complicated ingredients to try when I get this carbonation thing figured out, and now that my sister has left again, we can use her bathtub to store the bottles so that if they DO explode, they will be 1) contained, and 2) upstairs, far away from my Bat Cave, where they will only scare OTHER members of the family. This is an improvement.
Anyway, I'll let you guys know how it goes! And if you hear loud bangs from my house, don't worry. It's just exploding sody pop.
*This is a handy excuse, but the truth is I just don't like alcohol very much.
**One problem with this hobby is that I really hate the words "sarsaparilla" and "sassafras." What the hell, Spanish? Why you gotta make it sound like people's mouths are full of marbles? Maybe I can start referring to the sassafras as saxifrage, because that's slightly less annoying to say and also reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's fun character Sax Russell.
