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Hey kids, are you bored with GWS lately?  Tired of the same old sous vide and pressure cooking and whippers gadgetry?  Well now we've got something new and exciting for you kids to gently caress around with in the kitchen!  Introducing Fugey the Centrifuge!  Fugey features state of the art technology, such as a metal toggle switch like your old 70's electronics!  This wobbly and possibly dangerous old lab equipment features stainless steel test tubes!  But wait that's not all! Fugey also comes with some mystery hair inside for some reason!  But wait there's more! Fugey also has a mystery prize inside!  Rubber thingamabobs! Maybe to hold glass test tubes without letting them break!  *ahem* So a friend of mine mailed me an old lab centrifuge to mess around with. All I can gather is that it's manufactured by Clay Adams, model 0181. I have no idea what RPMs it's capable of. http://www.wemed1.com/3/CEN-C-0181/CLAY%20ADAMS%20ANALYTICAL%20CENTRIFUGE Anyways I don't know poo poo about centrifugation so I'm not only posting this to share info but also to hear from other goons who might know stuff and want to share. One of the first things I want to centrifugate is blood. Something mentioned on the Hannibal TV series caught my attention: Hannibal talks about centrifugating pork blood to separate the liquid from the solids, and serving the clear liquid with tomatoes in suspension, boldly proclaiming that everyone will love the sweet taste. (He uses a Breville food processor as his centrifuge, which is probably bullshit) I literally can not find any information on the internet about the culinary uses of blood plasma or serum other than some Harvard lecture Chef Jose Andres did a few years ago where he just off-handedly mentioned that blood plasma is a fluid gel. Jose Andres is also the culinary consultant on the Hannibal TV series, which leads me to believe he's working on some blood plasma kitchen tests but hasn't released any information along those lines. So, well, why not just investigate for ourselves and see if we can share any useful information like a bunch of internet Prometheuses. This page will literally be the only source of information on the internet regarding the culinary uses of blood serum/plasma. Another friend of mine whose girlfriend is a nurse mentioned that plasma is probably sweet because it's what carries the simple sugars in our blood. This really piqued my interest as well. One interesting source for information on centrifuges in general is Dave Arnold's Cooking Issues website, which has a whole section on centrifugation: http://www.cookingissues.com/category/centrifuge/ He starts out not knowing anything either and shares whatever fumbles and discoveries he makes as well. He also has access to much more powerful centrifuges, capable of 48,000 G's of force. Anyways, anyone who has info is invited to share, and otherwise I'll keep posting here as I gently caress around. QUESTION 1: I intend to wash the steel test tubes in the washing machine and then use them to hold food. Is that acceptable procedure? QUESTION 2: Are the steel test tubes meant to hold glass test tubes inside them? Should I get glass test tubes? Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 21:46
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From my very minimal work at the health department...Steve Yun posted:QUESTION 1: I intend to wash the steel test tubes in the washing machine and then use them to hold food. Is that acceptable procedure? Steve Yun posted:QUESTION 2: Are the steel test tubes meant to hold glass test tubes inside them? Should I get glass test tubes?
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Sep 23, 2014 23:02
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God drat it Steve, you just couldn't be content with ICSA, you had to go and take the creep to whole new levels. You beautiful bastard. I'd boil the shields. Keep your load balanced! Here's a user manual from a similar model from the same company, which has cleaning instructions as well. https://www.bd.com/ds/technicalCenter/partslists/man-420101_420102_dynac.pdf
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Sep 23, 2014 23:04
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Test tubes are expensive. I see round bottoms and cone bottoms. I'm assuming because the rubber cushions inside the steel tubes are rounded I should be getting round bottom test tubes, right? Polystyrene or glass? Does it matter? Anyone able to recommend particular tubes on amazon for cheap?
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Sep 23, 2014 23:39
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For the love of God remember to offset the load. The position opposite to the one you are using needs to have an equally weighted tube, or else your tube is gonna fly out and go straight threw your skull (according to my 9th grade chemistry teacher). Don't let some Phineas Gage poo poo happen to you. A GIANT PARSNIP fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 00:21
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Yeah, first test run was wobbly and pretty worrisome, but then I found out that not only did the tubes have rubber cushions inside, but that one of them had two cushions. Just the weight of one extra piece of rubber, the size of half a marble, was enough to make the machine vibate to concerning levels.
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Sep 24, 2014 00:23
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Remember to cap the tubes before you spin them up. Not because there's any real risk of spilling (the g forces will keep things pinned to the bottom of the tube) - but because open tubes make a rather loud and annoying whistling noise.
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Sep 24, 2014 00:28
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GUYS. CENTRIFUGE SAFTEY. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhJNFGfsUus Let's also watch Chris Hadfeild, the Canadaest Man, talk about centrifuges and space. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAqa982j1a0 Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 03:19
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I also have a kitchen centrifuge and lab experience! Mine is an older (late 80s) refrigerated IEC that can spin 3 liters at a time at roughly 4-5000G Some good advice already shared in this thread. Balance loads is super important (although in all honesty I doubt you'll do much damage with that, do you know how fast it can spin? I make sure loads are balanced to a hundredth of a gram but that's likely overkill in modern machines. However, that thing looks old and it may not shut off if it becomes unbalanced like a modern one. Keep in mind density as well: if you're spinning a puree that's 70% water on one side and a puree thats 30% on the other they can become unbalanced as the dense materials unevenly separate. I strongly, strongly, strongly suggest you ditch those metal tubes and find new ones or suitable modern replacements. I cannot stress enough how loving dangerous it is to eat off of used lab equipment. Obviously disregard if you have a detailed history for the machine but that's uncommon in my experience. Clean everything on it and disinfect all you can, make sure you use something that can deal with pathogens, solvents, and fungals. Make sure whatever disinfectant you use won't deteriorate the metal (e.g. no bleach on aluminum). Used sample containers should be considered contaminated and not used. It may have spun solvents that are very much deadly to ingest, radioactive materials, blood and/or other bodily fluids, etc. The surfaces should be disinfected in case there was ever a container failure (granted it's unlikely with steel tubes but not impossible). Also, inspect the rotor as much as possible. any cracks that are visible means you're lucky to catch the damage and should retire it immediately. Your style of rotor adds the difficulty of having to inspect into the crevasse that the tube goes in versus a swinging bucket rotor (with the tradeoff of being able to generally go faster). I don't mean to poop on your parade but centrifuges can be stupid dangerous, especially unshielded ones like you have. Never leave it unattended, always stay present until it reaches speed (although honestly I would watch it from afar with some kind of remote disconnect even if it just mean an extension cord I unplug). Err on the side of caution, if something weird happens (new vibrations, new noises) stop it and try to figure out why. That all being said it's a great deal of fun and I highly encourage experimentation. I've been crazy busy lately so I haven't used mine as much lately but here's some pictures from when I was centrifuging lots of stuff:  Pea butter ala modernist cuisine  Watermelon puree after 12 hours at 4500G (note the deformation in the bottles, make sure your containers are properly rated! I bought some centrifuge bottles off of Amazon that were rated for 9000G but clearly could not handle anywhere near that. They've since been replaced with proper bottles direct from thermo-scientific; unfortunately proper bottles are not cheap at all!)  Juice from the watermelon, very interesting. Crystal clear, most people guessed it was either cucumber or some kind of melon. Sweet but not sickeningly so and just a very refreshing taste. Some tips I've picked up: Pectinex SP-L (used to be sold as smash) added at around 0.5-2% of total weight can dramatically increase separation of fruits and veggies. If you heat it even better, I generally mix it with the Vitamix which heats it sufficiently after a minute or two. If it's something I don't want to heat like lime juice I let the pectinex sit in the puree for 24-48 hours under refrigeration (although you may have to battle discoloration this way). It's also great to maximize yields on certain things; modernist cuisine has an excellent piece on using a centrifuge to get as much beef jus as possible from sous vide'd rib eye chunks and the carotene butter is also excellent. In addition to yields you can get excellent taste as the product is not necessarily cooked. In terms of separating blood my only concern would be one of food safety; the refrigeration on longer runs is absolutely essential for this reason. If you can get it to seperate in 2-4 hours you'll be fine but after that I would worry about the danger zone. The centrifugation will heat the food but most likely not to a safe level. If you want to refrigerate yours I've seen people throw similar sized centrifuges inside a mini fridge. It's not as precise but it allows you to safely do super long spins and provides some sort of failure protection.
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Sep 24, 2014 04:54
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Can I call you dad
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Sep 24, 2014 04:56
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The tubes are stainless steel. I've boiled the tubes. Is a vinegar soak enough for disinfection? ****** As far as I've read about blood, it takes 15-30 minutes to separate for lab work, at relatively low rpms. ***** I can't find any literature on how fast this machine is. I'm on the fence between buying an optical tachyometer or just making a rough guess based on how quickly it separates stuff compared to the ones in internet articles. ***** I'm guessing mine isn't strong enough to do pea butter though. Your machine has buckets! So jealous... Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 04:58
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I would assume that yours does roughly 1000g as it was probably a physician style centrifuge (back when your pcp would take blood and process it in the office!). Good news is that it will absolutely separate blood if that's the case, just gotta make sure it happens in a time frame that keeps it safe for consumption. The low g force will likely help with keeping temp down as well so the blood doesn't coagulate. In terms of pea butter and other recipes you could probably do it. I can't remember the math offhand but you can (somewhat) compensate for lack of g with added time (although this gets significant). For example mine maxes out at 5k g and i can pretty much do anything in modernist cuisine and their machine did 24,000g. It just takes me 12 hours to do what theirs does in one. Pectinex will also help. Smaller particles won't separate without higher g so your yield won't be as high as mine (just like mine doesn't approach theirs and theirs doesn't approach what you can do with a crazy 50-75,000g ultracentrifuge) but it will mostly work. For things like pea butter your issue will be getting the stuff out; even with an excellent machine the yield is low and comes off as a coating on the puck of starchy solids. I've seen it done with machines similar to yours though. On the plus your machine probably will just wreck a room/break bones if it fails. When you go bigger serious property damage and death are a much larger concern. Not many (if any?) people have died from centrifuge accidents but home use is really uncommon and in a lab not following safety procedure can get you sacked quickly (at least in the ones I was in, definitely heard horror stories from other people) In terms of cleaning I would go harder than that. I bought mine surplus from a lab I used to work at so I had a reasonable idea of what went through it. Even with that I autoclaved the rotor and buckets, got all new sample containers, cleaned the rest with a fungicide and 10% bleach solution, and checked the machine with a Geiger counter. I dunno if the Geiger counter was useful or even necessary; there were radioactive samples in one of the labs but this machine wasn't marked like those were and I never worked with that material so I'm not too sure how it's dealt with in terms of disinfection outside of what I've read online. Again, I don't want to discourage you as the culinary applications are truly inspiring but I'd hate to see anyone get hurt/sick/poisoned/killed. Finally: try all kinds of stuff in it! Apples are awesome, you get a kind of applesauce that tastes lousy and insanely crisp apple juice. Strawberries similarly give you a weird tasting mush but an incredibly translucent strawberry juice that is just a gorgeous color and just thick enough that it coats your mouth really well. Raspberries yield an excellent juice and jelly like substance. Pea butter is neat but the pea water is gorgeous and a great addition for soups or on its own (although the color dulls quickly). Tomato water is also excellent; I've used it to make hydrocolloid noodles and for a caprese salad shot which admittedly was better in my head than in execution! Barbecue sauce yields interesting results as well but I haven't done that in awhile. Experiment!
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Sep 24, 2014 06:12
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Okay, maybe I'll get glass tubes then. Are the steel test tubes in mine typically larger and meant to hold glass tubes, or will glass tubes be replacing the steel tubes? Is there a standard size I should be looking for? Edit: are polypropylene tubes suitable? Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 06:17
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Yeah clean it with at least a bleach solution if the materials are bleachable. If equipment was used for radioactive materials it should have been labeled as such and/or disinfected before disposal so you're probably okay on that end. Spinning coagulated blood at 2700 RPM for ~10 minutes should be sufficient to separate out serum. Blood treated with an anticoagulant at 2700 RPM for ~30 minutes for plasma. Don't put your materials you are spinning directly into the metal tubes. They should be designed to hold a tube and should fit a glass blood tube or maybe a 15 mL centrifuge tube (not sure if those might be too tall). A lot of them have a conical bottom but with plastic it doesn't matter if you have the round rubber thing at the bottom of the metal tube instead. 
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Sep 24, 2014 08:39
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I got a bag of sterile 15 mL tubes somewhere around here. I've been wanting to do some centrifugation for food purposes myself, so I'll just say you're a lucky bum and I'm totes jelly.
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Sep 24, 2014 08:47
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Okay, so it looks like my steel tubes hold 25ml so a 15ml glass tube should be about the right size to go in there. Does this one look good? http://www.amazon.com/United-Scient...centrifuge+tube Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 09:02
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Yeah, that's the size that will fit.
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Sep 24, 2014 15:12
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We used to 'test' cockroaches using one of those in 7th grade science. Perhaps we should have spread the ones on toast that failed the test.
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Sep 24, 2014 15:27
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It wasn't owned by Karen Wetterhahn was it?
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Sep 24, 2014 17:20
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Croatoan posted:It wasn't owned by Karen Wetterhahn was it? Stuff like this is why I stress the danger of used lab equipment in the kitchen. Organometallic compounds, hexanes, benzene, God knows what else could've been in there.
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Sep 24, 2014 18:43
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According to the friend, the company used it for onsite physicals for commercial drivers license tests, at peoples' homes. Can't confirm that that's the only thing it was used for, but mostly sure. So I guess bleach? I could be wrong, but I have a feeling if it was anything more dangerous and exotic than blood testing the laboratory would've been using a more expensive centrifuge anyways. This thing goes for $100 used on eBay.
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Sep 24, 2014 19:29
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If anything on this centrifuge was dangerous enough to kill you even after washing it with soap and bleach you would already be dead. If your "food" only touches clean/sterile tubes you are golden.
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Sep 24, 2014 20:41
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Okay, ordered polypropylene test tubes, a test tube brush, some pectinex and a scale that can do tenths of a gram. Gonna be about a week before the fun begins.
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Sep 24, 2014 20:47
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Steve Yun posted:According to the friend, the company used it for onsite physicals for commercial drivers license tests, at peoples' homes. Can't confirm that that's the only thing it was used for, but mostly sure. bleach is most likely fine. If that's accurate you're most likely dealing with blood and possibly urine. Fresh sample tubes and a clean with 10% bleach solution (spritz it all over with a spray bottle, let air dry, rinse thoroughly) will most likely be sufficient. Any blood borne pathogens would likely be dead at this point any way but better safe than sorry. Pectinex has a lot of other neat non-centrifuge uses too: you can bathe citrus supremes in a bath of water overnight (or gently cook in a water bath for an hour or two) and pectinex and it will remove the membranes giving you a beautiful and super sweet supreme with no pith. You can also clarify some juices but I've never done this; it's covered in modernist cuisine though. What are you planning to spin first?
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Sep 24, 2014 22:07
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Might as well start with a bang, so I'm going to start with pork blood. I have a quart of it in the freezer, organic, raw, and untreated. Going to spin a pint of it in several half-hour shifts, keeping any blood that's not being spun in the fridge. With the serum I'm going to split it into several batches, leaving one batch raw and sous-videing the other batches to 130, 140, 150, 160 and 180 to see what differences there are. Going to taste test the different batches to see what difference the temps make. Blood serum contains albumin and globulin, similar to the protein of egg whites. How much will it coagulate at different temps? I guess we'll find out. After that I'm going to put them in small mason jars and let them pasteurize so I can store them for a few days in the fridge while I think about what the culinary possibilities are. Does this process seem kosher? Is taste-testing raw serum a bad idea?
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Sep 24, 2014 22:55
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Steve Yun posted:Might as well start with a bang, so I'm going to start with pork blood. I have a quart of it in the freezer, organic, raw, and untreated. from a centrifuge safety standpoint absolutely. No idea about the food safety for blood but as long as you treat it with the same precautions you would for any other protein I don't know what the problem would be. What will be interesting is that in addition to the serum you will also get some lipids (albeit probably a small amount similar to pea butter). I would be interested to render this and see how it tastes (i'd imagine iron-ish or mineral-ish but I have no clue. Take a bunch of pictures! One bonus of using the plastic tubes (aside from safety) versus the steel carriers is that you'll be able to see how much separation is occurring and spin longer if necessary.
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Sep 24, 2014 23:11
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My tube shields/cushions are green rubber. Is vinegar or bleach fine for cleaning them or will they melt
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Sep 26, 2014 06:55
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Steve Yun posted:My tube shields/cushions are green rubber. Is vinegar or bleach fine for cleaning them or will they melt Vinegar should be fine, dunno about bleach on them though? I don't think it would hurt it but I don't know that to be true. This thread got me all excited about my centrifuge again so I spun stuff tonight. I was making a pumpkin pie and had an extra pie pumpkin so I figured why not! unseasoned pumpkin puree with 2% Pectinex SP-L loaded up, cooked at 183F in water bath then quickly pureed in vitamix  Post spin - this didn't separate as well as I would've liked but I only did like 4 hours at 4200G/42F. Slight deformation in the bottle is likely due to a small ridge in the carrier, this happens from time to time and actually goes away if I let the bottle sit for a while which is worrying. I tend to retire them after 40 or so hours, no failures yet.  I didn't get a picture of the juice because I'm dumb. It's actually really similar to tang in color and I thought it was delicious seasoned with a bit of salt but my girlfriend thought it tasted awful. It's a heavy squash flavor but very sweet since the starch was mostly gone. Solids separated; It's difficult to see in the picture but there is a clear separation in the bottle. left is mostly starches and tastes as such. Not tasty and very dry. Right is (I'm assuming) lipids, small yield similar to pea butter. I thought this was interesting, similar taste to the juice but completely different mouthfeel. More pudding than butter. 
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Sep 27, 2014 03:40
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While centrifuged pork blood as a "food" item is certainly the weirdest thing I have ever heard, I am intrigued to read what it tastes like. However, I am fairly sure sampling raw pork blood is probably not a good idea.
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Sep 27, 2014 06:32
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thread reminded me of this  recipe from modernist cuisine at home that made me do a spit take when i first saw itoh this seems simple enough, i'll definitely give it a shot  seems straightforward, now let's check how he does the consomme, can't be anything diffi-    gently caress you myhrvold
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Sep 27, 2014 13:57
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You got science in my cold fruit soup! Well, you got cold fruit soup in my science! THEY'RE WAITING FOR YOU GORDON. IN THE TEST CHAMBEEERRR
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Sep 28, 2014 01:54
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That strawberry consommé is pretty insane though. TBH it's one of my favorite things from the centrifuge
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Sep 28, 2014 02:01
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I want to take that separated pumpkin starch and make it into mochi, or dumplings, or noodles, or something. I look forward to seeing how this thread develops! And now I want a centrifuge for kitchen use.
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Sep 28, 2014 07:37
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having read this thread;;;; nope, still no desire to centrifuge food, idgi
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Sep 28, 2014 18:06
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I like this thread because I thought the "DIY/Hack/Modification" was already nuts and this is like an entirely new dimension of crazy beyond that.
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Sep 30, 2014 01:12
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Hopper posted:While centrifuged pork blood as a "food" item is certainly the weirdest thing I have ever heard, I am intrigued to read what it tastes like. However, I am fairly sure sampling raw pork blood is probably not a good idea. Porkin' Across America You can thank me later...
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Sep 30, 2014 20:15
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While I wait for my test tubes and other poo poo to arrive, let's gently caress around with this Pectinex that came in the mail Pectinex is some enzyme that naturally occurs in certain species of fungus that use it to break down fruit and feed off the nutritious mush that results. 1% solution of Pectinex in water + equal amount of fruit (4 grams Pectinex, 400 grams water, and ten add 400 grams fruit)  Bathed in 104°F water for 2 hours  Orange supremes came out super tender and soft  Unfortunately the peels were still pithy. Scraped off all the loose scum.  Gave the peels a second run, and they came out almost completely enzyme-anized. Unfortunately, this process doesn't make the peels enjoyable to eat. They're still very bitter. I think that's by design though, I think citrus peel oils are supposed to be an evolutionary repellent to bugs/animals.  Maybe they'd be good to candy though, or as a garnish Steve Yun fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Oct 3, 2014 |
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Oct 3, 2014 00:36
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Steve Yun posted:While I wait for my test tubes and other poo poo to arrive, let's gently caress around with this Pectinex that came in the mail Who has time to digest their own food any more? Question though, why's it called PectinEX? I read that and thought Sure-Jell had scienced it's way into some new and powerful direction. Pectinex, make jams and jellies with the POWER OF YOUR MIND. edit: I mean, I once made butter with wishful thinking, but that's more serendipity then science.
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Oct 3, 2014 04:10
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Suspect Bucket posted:Who has time to digest their own food any more? Question though, why's it called PectinEX? I read that and thought Sure-Jell had scienced it's way into some new and powerful direction. Pectinex, make jams and jellies with the POWER OF YOUR MIND. Trademark name, it's a proprietary blend of enzymes from Novozymes. There are actually tons of different preparations besides SPL but SPL is the easiest to get in reasonable amounts and works fine for increasing yields and removing pith from citrus (although some citrus gets kind of wrecked in the process). The research suggests some of the other formulations may be better for one task or the other but minimum orders from Novozymes are for like 25 liters which is absurd for a home cook. The best name was the old standard formulation that has since been discontinued: Pectinex Smash-XXL. Pectinex Smash was really great at clarifying juices, I haven't tried it with SPL. With smash you could add a really small amount (like half a percent by weight) to certain juices and just refrigerate for a day or two and all the sediment and pulp would settle to the bottom giving crazy clear juices. Apple and Orange juice work really well. I've heard pectinase has similar results and has the added benefit of being available at most home brew shops as "pectic enzyme". Steve Yun, I had an idea based on your centrifuge. I've been itching for a rotovap but am super sketched out with buying one used since they are typically used with things I would not want to ingest at all and buying one new or even buying a used one and replacing all the glassware is insanely costly. However, I was thinking about centrifugal evaporation (such as the Genevac Rocket: http://genevac.com/en/ProductList1.asp?S=3&V=1&G=15) and was thinking it may be possible to make a ghetto centrifugal evap with something like what you've got. If you could find a chamber big enough to hold it that you could rig some sort of gentle heating device in you could probably make it happen. You would need a big enough vacuum pump and a cold trap setup to collect the volatiles but it should work if you can get 500 or so G out of that thing. I'm not sure what the yield of volatiles would be compared to a rotovap but you would be able to do vacuum concentration.
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Oct 3, 2014 04:48
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granpa yum posted:
Would that work for wine as well? I have a friend that experiments with making wine with basically everything that grows on his farm, but it's always cloudy as heck. He ferments whole smashed fruits and leaves and stuff, not mash.
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Oct 3, 2014 17:15
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