Here I show how I made gassified candy
(eg Pop Rocks) in my home shop. The
basic procedure is to heat sugar water up to 280*F, carbonate it with 600 psi
CO2 and vigorous mixing, then cool the mixture while it is still under
pressure. After the mixture has solidified, rapid depressurization causes the
candy to burst apart into small fragments. Each fragment has lots of tiny CO2
bubbles embedded in it. When placed on the tongue, the bubbles burst open as
the candy dissolves and a popping sensation is felt.
The main difficulty is building a
high-pressure chamber that allows precise temperature control as well as
thorough mixing of its contents while under pressure. I've built something that
meets these requirements, and I've finally made a batch of candy that would
pass as Pop Rocks, but they are pretty weak. I still need to adjust the
temperature and mixing times to get a better product.
hey everyone so I
was finally successful
in making pop rocks candy I've been
working on this project for a while and
believe it or not this turned out to be
more difficult than aerogel or
supercritical caffeine extraction or a
number of my other projects even though
in theory making pop rocks candy is
simpler it the Devils in the details and
figuring out all the right times and
mixing rates and all that stuff turned
out to be pretty challenging so let me
tell you about pop rocks and how I made
it
pop rocks candy is carbonated sugar
candy so it's really just high
temperature sugar water that's been
carbonated and then cooled with the
carbonation still in the candy so when
the pressure is released on the chamber
you end up with little hard candies that
have gas bubbles co2 bubbles in the
candy and then when you put the candy on
your tongue the bubbles are dissolved
away and the co2 escapes making the
popping sensation
so first I'll tell you how I s Phyllida
this and then at the end of the video
talk about all the things I did that
didn't work and you can just stop
watching if it gets boring Midway so I
start by making a melt of sugar on the
stove and I followed a recipe that the
Exploratorium published for making
lollipops so it's mostly sugar in water
but there's a few notable additions corn
syrup and cream of tartar which serve as
interfering agents as they're called so
by making this high temperature candy
situation when it cools down we actually
don't want crystals to form we wanted to
maintain a smooth glassy feel so the
corn syrup and the cream of tartar
prevent sugar crystals from forming I
also added a little bit of coloring and
raspberry flavor so this one will be a a
blue raspberry sugar candy so you might
have heard about candy thermometers the
reason that temperature is so important
when making sugar candy is that it's
related to the water content of the
mixture so if you start off with a sugar
solution it's mostly water and start to
boil it it will boil higher than 212 F
because you've got a mixture of sugar
and water
and as the mixture boils if you keep
adding heat to it more water will boil
away and the boiling temperature will
continue to increase so by measuring the
temperature what you're actually
measuring is the water content of the of
the sugar mixture and the the higher the
temperature the lower the water content
so by stopping the mixture at a specific
temperature you can get exactly the
right water content which will tell you
how flexible the resulting candy is so
for example if you heat up to 280
degrees F and then cool that mixture
down you'll end up with a candy that's
pretty rigid whereas if you only heat it
up to 260 degrees F the resulting candy
will be fairly flexible as usual I got a
lot of my information for this project
from patents and one particular patent
had a chart that showed the desirable
temperature and mixing time for making
high-quality pop rocks candy so I knew
what temperature I was shooting for
about 280 degrees at 4 to 90 and the
description in the patent was also quite
helpful so after I had my molten candy
at 280 degrees F I poured it into a
preheated mixing chamber and then
inserted the mixer into it with the cap
on top and proceeded to mix it with an
electric drill for about three or four
minutes and meanwhile I attached the co2
tank to this chamber and increased the
pressure to about 600 psi and then after
the mixing time is done it's the
Chamber's just allowed to cool down
after that I opened the chamber up and
as the pressure has actually first I
depressurize the chamber and I could
hear the candy cracking inside so after
opening the chamber up I hit it with a
hammer and all the little broken pieces
came out and this is what pop rocks
looks like it's fragments of sugar candy
that have very small co2 bubbles
embedded in them so admittedly this this
candy is not very high-quality on it
this these these pop rocks are not all
that fizzy but I think I'll do a few
more batch
see if I can get the quality a little
bit better but I'm fairly satisfied with
how this is going now like I say this
project took a lot of time I probably
did 10 or 20 batches of these things
trying different things and the major
problem is sort of stirring high
temperature high pressure mixture stuff
so originally I machined a nice little
aluminum reaction chamber that I thought
was going to work really well and you
know did a high temperature silicone
o-ring and my plan was to put the sugar
mixture inside here and close it up and
then heat it over a you know a blowtorch
basically and then to mix it I was just
going to invert the the chamber back and
forth a few times thinking that well
it's such a small volume of melt and
there it it'll probably carbonate just
fine
but no actually it doesn't it doesn't
carbonate just fine the mixing needs to
be much more vigorous and the
temperature control needs to be much
tighter as well I thought that by doing
a thick-walled aluminum chamber I
wouldn't have any problems with
temperature control but as it happens I
measuring the temperature of the sugar
itself is quite difficult because the
wall of the chamber is so thick and the
volume of liquid in there so small it
it's really hard to know the exact
temperature of the sugar mixture so the
next thing I try just use my trusty
steel pipe thing that I've used for you
know the supercritical stuff and that
and the pressure rating is quite high
and it's convenient because it has a
screw top so I can open it up and close
it pretty easily and to this I added a
thermo well which is just a compression
fitting that I modified by drilling it
out and then putting a piece of copper
pipe eighth inch copper tube through
there and I saw at the end of the tube
closed with lead-free solder and put it
through the compression fitting so that
I had a thermo well and then inserted a
thermocouple into the well so this way I
could monitor the temperature of the
melt as it was going on I wouldn't have
to worry about measuring the wall of the
chamber or anything like that and then
for stirring what I did is I I got a
fairly low cost water valve from the
hardware
store and took it apart and made a shaft
for it that would fit through the seal
the gland at the top so that I could
stir the mixture just by turning the rod
and hopefully the valve gland would seal
everything in and this actually worked
really well I was surprised it leaks a
tiny bit at 600 psi of it it's really
quite manageable and then I just made a
another brass plug and just soldered up
the valve output which I didn't want
originally I thought it was going to
work best to put the mixture the raw
sugar ingredients into the reaction
vessel and seal it up and then just use
it on the hot plate and this you know
kind of worked but again the problem is
stirring and I can't really see what's
going on in there even though my
stirring device works pretty well it
doesn't work well enough to stir the
entire contents of the thing so what I
would end up with is burned sugar on the
walls and the chambering and uncooked
sugar in the middle of the chamber so it
all it really works a lot better to cook
everything in a saucepan on the stove
and then preheat the reaction chamber
and then put it all together and just
stir it in the reaction chamber which is
actually what was suggested in the
patent so I should have just followed
its advice from the start so let's try
one of these candies it's pretty good I
mean it's it's definitely carbonated
candy and it has that sort of sort of
sour taste that you get from co2 on your
tongue which is the carbonic acid that
forms on your tongue but it's really
nothing like commercial pop rocks so
there's more experimenting to be done
it's still pretty good and the taste is
actually not bad that raspberry
flavoring works pretty well
most of the failures that I had were
just candied it wasn't carbonated so I
had you know 19 batches up until now
that were just solid candy or is that
the amount of carbonation was so low
that when I opened the chamber after
having it pressurized the candy didn't
even break apart into pieces it was
really just kind of a solid mass and
then I had plenty of batches that were
overheated and ended up just being
carbonized or caramelized sugar not as
useless other batches were kind of
liquidy at the end for some reason it
really just temperature control and
stirring is the main problem making sure
that everything is exactly the same
temperature and being mixed quite evenly
all right
well I hope you enjoyed that see you
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