Abetrujillo

Cold brewed coffee is a great way to enjoy your daily caffeine fix, but making it can often be a little fussy depending on the method. This technique is quick, easy, and uses items you likely already have at home—no added equipment necessary.

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(My six-year-old daughter is waiting for me to get home from work.)

Me: “Hey guys! I’m home!”

Daughter: *runs up to me and grabs me by the hand* “Daddy! Come look what I built!”

(She leads me to the living room, where there is a small Lego death star from ‘Star Wars’ sitting on the table.)

Daughter: “Look what I built all by myself!”

Me: *dropping my voice really low* “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of The Force!”

Daughter: “Daddy!” *giggles uncontrollably and gives me a big hug*

Boyfriend: “You’re adorable.”

Me: “You’re a door bell!”

Boyfriend: “You just say that because you like my ding dong.”

From Sweets

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

It's a step in every egg-based ice cream recipe: "chill base overnight and churn the next day." Every pastry chef worth their gram scale will tell you how important it is to age ice cream bases—i.e chill them down in the refrigerator—before churning them.

But as we've seen before, ice cream recipes are full of procedures and biases that don't pan out when put to the test. You don't need to scald dairy or temper eggs. Fancier dairy doesn't necessarily make better ice cream. Corn syrup isn't evil.

So if you're pressed for time and want to churn your ice cream the same day you make your base, do you really need to age it overnight, or just chill it down until it's cold enough to churn?*

* From this point on we're only talking about custard ice creams made with eggs, not Philly-style or other egg-free bases, which don't usually include big claims about the importance of aging.

Some Background

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

There's a bevy of conventional wisdom about why you should follow this step. Aging bases cools the base down, and the colder a base is before it goes into the churn, the creamier the resulting ice cream will be. Aged bases are noticeably thicker than freshly made, un-aged bases, and thicker bases tend to churn faster and creamier. Plenty of flavored liquids taste better the next day, or so it's said about every stew you've ever made.

More detailed science on the question is hard to come by, and there's plenty of pseudoscience, from "water evaporates overnight" [false] to "the milk proteins need to hydrate" [they're already in water!]. This ice cream blog—that cites scientific papers and technical books on ice cream—is the most convincing version of the scientific argument I've seen for aging your base:

First, the emulsifiers (lecithin from the egg yolks) absorb to the surface of the fat droplets....These fat globule clumps are responsible for stabilsing the air cells and creating a semi-continuous network of fat throughout the product resulting in a smooth texture and resistance to meltdown.

Second, cooling the mix to below 4°C [just under 40°F] causes the fat inside the droplets to begin to crystallise. Nearly complete crystallization is needed to promote coalescence of fat globules when the mix is frozen in an ice cream machine.

In essence, the argument goes that fat droplets in dairy need time and low temperatures to bind with emulsifiers in egg yolks and form themselves into crystals, which makes for smoother, creamier ice cream that doesn't melt as quickly. This would certainly explain why bases are thicker the next day.

But it doesn't account for any difference in ice cream's flavor, and it doesn't clarify if a home cook, with regular home equipment, would notice a difference between an aged and un-aged ice cream base once the ice cream is churned.

So in the words of Chico Powers, I decided to do some science kitchen and find out for myself.

The Test

[Photograph: Robyn Lee]

Early last week I made a big batch of standard vanilla bean ice cream base (in this case minus the whisky) and divided it into four containers. Three of them went into the refrigerator to age. The fourth was chilled down in a simple ice bath—a small bowl nestled in a larger bowl full of cold water and ice—until it cooled down to a refrigerated-base temperature: 39°F, which for a pint of base took about 2 1/2 hours. It was then churned immediately and left to harden in the freezer.

The next day I churned another batch of ice cream from one of the aged bases. Curious to see if even longer aging produced different results, I churned the other two batches 24 hours apart for a total of four ice cream samples aged zero to three days before eating. Once all the ice creams were firmed up to the same scoopable texture, the Serious Eats tasting panel sampled the ice creams in a blind taste test, scoring them for their vanilla flavor, creamy texture, and overall preference.*

* Astute readers may notice that this isn't a totally fair test, since some of the ice creams were sitting in the freezer for longer than others. But homemade ice cream lasts about a week before any real decline in quality, and if a little freezer time was enough to override any impact of aging on flavor or texture, well, the effect isn't very strong to begin with. Without a time machine that can bring the exact same batch of ice cream base into the future, this is the best we can do.

Going in, tasters didn't know what, if any, differences there were between the ice creams. In fact, I got more than one question asking if there was any difference between the samples. After scoring their results I understood why. See for yourself:

No pattern, no correlation between flavor and texture with overall preference, no trends of any kind. The results were all over the place, and if anything, the un-aged ice cream came out ahead.

So does aging an ice cream base make any difference once the ice cream is churned? If it does, we can't taste it. Should you want to churn your ice cream the same day you make your base, chill it down in an ice bath until it drops below 40°F, then go right ahead.

Reasons You Might Want To Age Your Base

[Photograph: Robyn Lee]

Aging your ice cream base may not necessary, but our tasting shows there's no downside to it either—we saw no trend between longer aging and decreased quality. And there are some reasons to consider it.

First and foremost, aging overnight ensures the base is very cold, and deep-chilled ice cream bases churn better than warmer ones. If you want to churn a base the same day you make it, you'll need to set up an ice bath to cool down your hot custard. Doing so is a big pain. You need lots of ice and two clean nesting bowls, there's a the risk of you slipping your base into the bowl of ice water, and it still takes appreciable time to chill a base down to refrigerator temperatures—upwards of a couple hours. Honestly, I'd rather cool my ice cream down in the fridge.

After tabulating the results of our tasting I reached out to some pastry chefs who make ice cream regularly. Though they all age their bases overnight, none were surprised by our results. They did, however, offer some other thoughts on aging bases.

For Stella Parks of Table Three Ten (you may know her as Bravetart), ice cream bases aged overnight spin up a little lighter and fluffier than when they're un-aged, giving her an extra scoop or so per [large] batch—handy when you're a pro pastry chef with a bottom line. This lends further empirical credence to the idea that aging bases allows fat droplets to firm up and network to form a more stable ice cream that holds air better.

[Photograph: Robyn Lee]

Ryan Butler of the Highlands thinks that most flavors intensify overnight (though some, like alcohol, dissipate), enough so that he withholds final seasoning of the base until it's aged. While I'd have to taste an aged and un-aged base side by side to see if that pans out for our vanilla, I'd definitely agree that aging a base gives you a chance to revisit an ice cream base after taking a break. Your palate is refreshed, the flavor has had time to chill down, and you can make any fine-tuning adjustments you'd like.

Tracy Obolsky of North End Grill offers another compelling reason to age your base: if you're steeping flavors into an ice cream, continuing to steep them overnight intensifies the flavor all the more. "With my toasted coconut ice cream, I used to steep the coconut and then strain it out. Now I leave the coconut in overnight and it's like a punch in the face of coconut." But take note that this is about direct contact between a base and a flavoring agent, not aging a base on its own; Obolsky imagines that "in a side by side comparison, the average person probably can't taste the difference between aged and un-aged bases."

Which brings us back to where we started. Do you need to age ice cream base before you churn it? Not really, or rather no longer than it takes to cool it down. Does it hurt? No way. So go forth, ice cream makers, unimpeded by science or tradition. Do what your schedule allows, keep cool, and your ice cream will turn out creamy and delicious.

More Ice Cream Science

The Easiest Way to Make Vanilla Ice Cream at Home »
Do I Need to Use Eggs in Ice Cream (and How Many?) »
Taste Test: Does Premium Dairy Make Better Homemade Ice Cream? »
Use Invert Sugars Like Corn Syrup for Smoother, Less Icy Sorbet »
What's the Difference Between Gelato and Ice Cream? »

About the author: Max Falkowitz is the New York editor at Serious Eats. You can follow him on Twitter at @maxfalkowitz.

Our Tasting Methodology: All taste tests are conducted completely blind and without discussion. Tasters taste samples in random order. For example, taster A may taste sample 1 first, while taster B will taste sample 6 first. This is to prevent palate fatigue from unfairly giving any one sample an advantage. Tasters are asked to fill out tasting sheets ranking the samples for various criteria that vary from sample to sample. All data is tabulated and results are calculated with no editorial input in order to give us the most impartial representation of actual results possible.

(Photo: unknown)

Rocket News 24 reports that this photo and others are circulating through Japanese-language Twitter feeds. Allegedly, they show one lucky Siberian husky who has a new friend: a tiny plush felted from his own hair. You can see more adorable photos here.

It looks much better than the one that Alex made from his own hair, which is more creepy than cute.

(Image: Eduardo Ferigato)

Traditionally, the Joker is Batman’s greatest foe and the focus of hundreds of Batman storylines. There's a common sequence of events: Batman captures the Joker and sends him to Arkham Asylum. The Joker escapes and commits terrible crimes. The cycle repeats.

So why doesn’t Batman just kill the Joker and break the cycle? Quora members pondered this question recently. Jesse Richards, an artist and web designer, responded that Batman’s commitment to not killing intentionally—his self-control—is his superpower:

Because the Joker wins if Batman kills him. That's what the Joker wants. Everything he does is to taunt Batman into killing him. In fact, the interesting part of their relationship, the real conflict of each story, is not to see if Batman will stop him (he will), but to watch Batman struggle with not killing him, because anyone other than Batman would of course kill him. This self-control is Batman's superpower.  

The Joker and Batman are each trying to prove a point to society - and really to us, the readers. The Joker wants Batman to kill him because he perfectly embodies chaos and anarchy, and wants to prove a point to everyone that people are basically more chaotic than orderly. This is why he is so scary: we are worried he may be right. If the Joker is right, then civilization is a ruse and we are all truly monsters inside. If the Joker can prove that Batman - the most orderly and logical and self-controlled of all of us - is a monster inside, then we are all monsters inside, and that is terrifying. The Joker is terrifying because we fear that we are like him deep down - that he is us. Batman is what we (any average person) could be at our absolute best, and the Joker is what we could be at our absolute worst. The Joker's claim is that we are all terrible deep down, and it is only the law and our misplaced sense of justice that keeps us in line. Since Batman isn't confined by the law, he is a perfect test case to try to get him to "break". The Joker wants Batman to kill a person, any person, but knows that the only person Batman might ever even remotely consider killing would have to be a terrible monster, so is willing to do this himself and sacrifice himself to prove this macabre point. Batman needs to prove that it is not just laws that keep us in line, but basic human decency and our natural instinct NOT to kill. If Batman can prove this, then others will be inspired by his example (the citizens of Gotham, but again, also the readers), just as we are all inspired every day to keep civilization running smoothly and not descend into violence, anarchy, and chaos. This ability to be decent in the face of the horrors and temptations present all around us is humanity's superpower, the superpower of each of us. The struggle of Batman and the Joker is the internal struggle of each of us. But we are inspired by Batman's example, not the Joker's, because Batman always wins the argument, because he has not killed the Joker.

I’ve never found this view convincing. Batman has the reputation for striking terror into criminals, particularly while interrogating them. It’s not just that he’ll turn them in to the police and they’ll go to prison. They’re afraid that he’s going to kill them. But if Batman is widely known in underworld circles for his unwillingness to intentionally take a human life, then why would they be so afraid?

Criminals easily and frequently escape from Arkham Asylum. This, too, must be widely known. So when Batman refuses to kill the Joker, he knows—or must realize eventually—that the Joker will soon be free to commit terrible crimes again. The only reliable means of ending the menace that the Joker presents to the ordinary people of Gotham City is to kill him. So killing the Joker, far from being monstrous, is a civilized act. In fact, it’s the most civilized choice that Batman could make.

There are schools of pacifism that may disagree with me on that point, but I’d find it hard to place Batman within any pacifistic tradition.

The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.

by O. Hai, and I. B. Hakkenshit

Pseudoephedrine, active ingredient of Sudafed®, has long been the most popular nasal decongestant in the United States due to its effectiveness and relatively mild side effects¹. In recent years it has become increasingly difficult to obtain pseudoephedrine in many states because of its use as a precursor for the illegal drug N-methylamphetamine (also known under various names including crystal meth, meth, ice, etc.)^1,2. While in the past many stores were able to sell pseudoephedrine, new laws in the United States have restricted sales to pharmacies, with the medicine kept behind the counter. The pharmacies require signatures and examination of government issued ID in order to purchase pseudoephedrine. Because the hours of availability of such pharmacies are often limited, it would be of great interest to have a simple synthesis of pseudoephedrine from reagents which can be more readily procured.

A quick search of several neighborhoods of the United States revealed that while pseudoephedrine is difficult to obtain, N-methylamphetamine can be procured at almost any time on short notice and in quantities sufficient for synthesis of useful amounts of the desired material. Moreover, according to government maintained statistics, N-methylmphetamine is becoming an increasingly attractive starting material for pseudoephedrine, as the availability of N-methylmphetamine has remained high while prices have dropped and purity has increased². We present here a convenient series of transformations using reagents which can be found in most well stocked organic chemistry laboratories to produce psuedoephedrine from N-methylamphetamine.

While N-methylamphetamine itself is a powerful decongestant, it is less desirable in a medical setting because of its severe side effects and addictive properties³. Such side effects may include insomnia, agitation, irritability, dry mouth, sweating, and heart palpitations. Other side effects may include violent urges or, similarly, the urge to be successful in business or finance.

In our search for sources of N-methylamphetamine we have found that, similar to research grade chemicals purchased from the major chemical supply houses, the purity of the reagent varies greatly between suppliers and even between batches despite the above cited overall increase in purity. Unfortunately, and again similar to suppliers of fine chemicals, relative cost is not strongly correlated to sample quality. We therefore found it necessary to purify the starting material before use. This may be accomplished by precipitating the amphetamine from isopropanol with HCl followed by deprotonation with sodium hydroxide and extraction into chloroform, which after removal of the solvent in vacuo yields N-methylamphetamine, 1. In the majority of the samples obtained for this study, 1 was greater than 95% enantiomerically pure, with the S enantiomer being the major isomer present. This is consistent with reduction of commercially available ephedrine or pseudoephedrine as the origin of the casually procured material used in this study.

The synthetic procedure is shown in scheme 1. The chromium tricarbonyl coordination compound 2 was formed in 96% yield by heating the purified starting material and chromium hexacarbonyl in dibutyl ether solution according to the procedure described by Blagg and Davies⁴. While in the cited work a single equivalent of nBuLi was used to deprotonate a similar chromium complex, in the case of 2 two equivalents of nBuLi were required due to the presence of the relatively acidic amine proton. After successful formation of the dianion 3, which was not isolated but taken on immediately in the same reaction vessel, a single hydroxy group was introduced at the alpha position by addition of one equivalent of oxodiperoxymolybdenum(pyridine) (HMPA), commonly known as MoOPH. The series of transformations producing 4 from 2 went in 87% yield overall. Chromium was de-complexed from the newly formed alcohol 4 by exposing the reaction mixture to air. After washing the resulting solution with dilute NaOH and DI water crude pseudoephedrine 5 was obtained. Purification was accomplished by recrystallization of the material from toluene followed by precipitation from isopropanol with HCl to obtain the final product 5*HCl in 93% yield from 4. The hydrochloride and sulfate salts are the most commonly encountered forms of pseudoephedrine in pharmaceutical preparations and thus 5*HCl can be used as-obtained from the precipitation.

This synthesis follows that of Blagg and Davies, who used N,N-dimethylamphetamine as the starting material and produced the (1S,2S)-diasteromer of N,N-dimethyl pseudoephedrine exclusively. This, as discussed in their publication, is likely due to coordination of lithium in the intermediate complex by the nitrogen atom. In the current study both the alpha carbon and the nitrogen atom are deprotonated and it was thought that charge repulsion may decrease, or even reverse, the diastereoselectivity of the reaction. On the contrary, the selectivity was retained in this reaction, resulting in pure (1S,2S)-pseudoephedrine.

We have demonstrated here a simple series of transformations which allow pseudoephedrine to be obtained in a more straightforward manner than is the current norm. We expect that the simultaneous trends of restricting pseudoephedrine sales while N-methylamphetamine becomes less expensive and of higher purity will make the methods presented here increasingly attractive. Future work will focus on increasing yields and decreasing reaction times. It was also suggested to one of us that a "green chemistry" approach, that is, elimination of toxic and environmentally detrimental solvents and reagents, should be a high priority⁵. We agree and plan to look for alternative reagents to replace the chromium based material as well as the ether solvents.

Notes

1. "Oral Phenylephrine: An Ineffective Replacement for Pseudoephedrine?" L. Hendeles and R.C. Hatton, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, vol. 118, 2006, pp. 279--80.

2. http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs38/38661/meth.htm accessed Feb. 23rd 2012.

3. "Clinical Effects and Management of Methamphetamine Abuse," F. Romanelli and K.M. Smith, Pharmacotherapy, vol. 26, no. 8, August 2006, pp. 1148-56.

4. "Stereospecific Conversion of N,N-dimethylamphetamine into N-methylpseudoephedrine," Julian Blagg and Stephen G. Davies, Journal of the Chemical Society, Chemical Communications, vol. 10, 1985, pp. 653-4.

5. Private communication.

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the May-June 2013 of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can purchase back issues of the magazine or subscribe to receive future issues, in printed or in ebook form. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift! Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

Image: Tumblr - via Kotaku

The zoos is closed, Federal employees deemed unessential are furloughed, and the US in in the brink of defaulting on its loan, but the US Federal Government shutdown is now in SERIOUS mode after messin' with Pokemon.

According to Go Nintendo website, shipment of Pokemon X and Pokemon Y games to military bases is now delayed, thanks to the shutdown.