Sunday, July 10, 2011

Carbonated Fluid Gel



So the other day I was looking at Blakes iSi Twist and Sparkle and thinking of things that would be cool to carbonate. I had an idea to carbonate a fluid gel. Now, I have put gels into iSi's (thermowhips, etc.) and charged them with Co2. When you do so, the gel airates with the combined pressure of the Co2. Though you do achieve carbonation, the resulting gel becomes more of a foam. I wanted to produce the same carbonation that you get with a thermowhip but did not want the gel to foam. I wanted the same viscosity you would have with a normal fluid gel. The Twist and Sparkle provided me with the ideal vehicle to achieve this result. I set a loose fluid gel using .5 % low acyl gellan and water as a control. I filled the Twist and sparkle with the water gel and carbonated it twice with Co2. The video below shows the 2nd charge of Co2 into the gel. You can see the suspension of Co2 within the gel. The resulting gel was effervescent and held its structure for about 10 minutes before the carbonation began to fizzle out. The picture below is of the carbonated gel about 5 minutes after being charged twice with Co2. Notice the Co2 bubbles suspended in the gel. I believe this technique could open up a lot of possiblities to create some pretty interesting fluid gels.






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