'allo

sometime in the distant past in a galaxy far far away, an adventurous pet snake boiled about 70g of P. Viri leaves for many many hours. He had some pure gelatin on hand, so he thought "lets add some of this gel and see if some nastiness comes out." This was a bold move since it was his first aya type of brew, but he figured in the worst case he'd end up with magical jello. These are the things he learned:

Adding gelatin to crudely filtered chacrun brew fogs the brew and starts a skin forming on the surface. This skin was easily removed periodically (every 45 mins or so) and separated. It hardened to a nearly black and very firm rubbery substance at room temp. Approx. the same amount of gelatin added in came out as black skin rubber. Unfortunately in the bustle the rubber was discarded and hopefully the magic was not in there.

The brew was essentially impossible to filter through coffee filters. The snake ended up:

cutting a small bit out of the corner of a large ziplock bag
putting in several cotton balls
pouring in brew
zipping bag with some extra air inside
squeezing bag to filter brew through cotton

for final filtering. In retrospect fine filtering should be done before any gelatin is added.

it was difficult to reduce the remaining brew below ~500 ml because it seemed to burn very easily. Maybe all of the suspensions and solutes increased the boiling point significantly? hopefully the temp did not get high enough to destroy any goodness.

Putting the result in a fridge created jello. Now for another interesting bit:

Putting this jello in a jar in a freezer overnight created a layer of what looks like ice on top, but the jello remained gel-like underneath. The gel re-absorbed the "ice" when thawed.

after the jar had been in the freezer a week, the "ice" thickened and formed all around the sides of the gel inside the jar, and the gel froze solid.

Now I wonder if this clear "ice" has more in it than just water. Specifically if it was separated from the gel (thawing upside down over another container perhaps?) would it be a super concentrated spice soln? Maybe refreezing in a large flat pan is in order to see just how much separation is possible. The "ice" layer could be lifted from the gel very easily before the gel froze solid.

Here is a thread I found that discusses gel precip and gel freezing teks for fining tomato juice and such:
http://forums.egullet.or...nd-broths-using-gelatin/

and I'm sure I've read some scientific abstracts that mention this in the past but I can't find them offhand.

Any input is welcome... any scientists out there know if a mole like spice will be trapped in the gelatin matrix upon thawing? When the snakes transmission arrives I'll let everyone know what effects half of the gel have along with some cielo.

ouro out

This would be similar to using egg whites to remove the tannins.
Gelatin is a protein and will bind to the tannins, allowing you to filter it out.

I don't believe you've pulled the goodies, but you have pulled some of the nasties. This will alleviate the bitter taste and stomach pains.

thanks for the reassurance on keeping the goodness intact, brot. But, I am still wondering about a possible gelatin freeze tek. I think gel freeze distillation is a more accurate term.... the idea being that the gel forms a matrix trapping large molecules and the rest leak out as the mass freezes and thaws. Does anyone have any expertise or experience with this? I'm mainly curious what type of moles will leak out and how completely they will leak out. Some experiments are in order.. I'll post back on them if I get any new results. Most likely, the snake will just eat this batch tho.

ouro

yes proteins like albumines are used to bind tannins and vice versa. i think it's the main characterisrtic of tannins and they're used in tanning process hence the name