I was neither a Cub, Brownie or chocolate gateau so apologies if I got the terminology wrong. ![]()
I was a Cub and a Scout, but I skipped the Brownies. Which incidentally, was what they were doing at the time. ![]()
By the way, what was Akela in the Jungle Book, can’t remember?
He’s your long lost cousin - he uses grams as the base.
Now why didn’t I think of calling grams "ratios " and publishing a book about it?
IIRC Akela was a wolf who oversaw Mowgli’s upbringing and protected him.
Thank you, I had forgotten.
I just learnt something new.
If you mix 100 grams of water with 100 grams of alcohol the resulting mixture weighs 200 grams BUT if you mix 100 ml of water with 100 ml of alcohol the resulting mixture is NOT 200 ml
and how did you get on with the “taste test” ![]()
What is it then? And why?
Depends on Alcohol type, temp, etc but typically 190 grams. The alcohol molecules are bigger than water molecules so pack in tighter in the gaps.
Who would have thought it.?
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190ml
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Basically the alcohol “dissolves” in the water, or maybe the other way round though there are more water molecules in the mix than alcohol ones as 100ml water = 100g water = 5.55 moles vs 100ml ethanol which is 78.9g or 1.7 moles so there are just over 3x as many water molecules in the mix as ethanol molecules.
But the water molecules can squeeze in between the ethanol to an extent - the actual arrangements are surprisingly complex.
Thanks for the correction. It was needed to make sense of my scientific explanation.
I was at a party on Monday having a scintillating chat about the relative merits of measuring in grams or millilitres with a retired university prof. (we know how to party in this part of France)
He explained that the small water molecules budge up closer between the bigger alcohol molecules thus reducing the volume. This is about as scientific as I can get but I did find your more detailed explanation more eloquent.
Just a further observation when measuring stuff.
I keep my flour in a flour bin. As usual, I scoop my flour out and weigh it according to the recipe I am following (“seat of pants” cooks can stop reading now!). I noticed that I needed less scoops of flour when the flour bin was nearly empty than when I took scoops from the recently filled flour bin.
I guessed this was because flour at the bottom had had time to settle and had been compressed by the weight of flour above it and the compression caused when previously taking out scoops.
Out of curiosity I weighed a levelled cup of flour from a nearly empty bin and then compared it with the weight of a cup of flour from a recently refilled flour bin. The former weighed 141.2 grams and the latter weighed 110.2 grams.
I find it quite remarkable that there is a difference of around 25%.
Interesting! I suppose it tends to give weight to the opinion of measurers rather than guesstimators when it comes to doling out ingredients.
I was watching a YouTube video about coffee-makers yesterday and they made a similar point about adding coffee grounds to an espresso machine - tamping the coffee down is needed to make sure the right quantity is used.
I saw something similar where you need to weigh the coffee and not use volumetric measuring. Surprised these anal coffee brewers dont have a spring loaded tamper with a scale so as to compress the coffee to the same level in the porta filter. ![]()
I don’t know - I mostly drink instant coffee. ![]()
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Suspect most anal coffee drinkers use an Aeropress, and weigh their coffee. And if you want to know how anal it can get, here’s the 1st Place 2024 World AeroPress Championship Recipe:-
That’s why, when using volume measures you should always sift flour and put it into the cup or bushel or whatever with a spoon, that’s what most recipes which use that system say. And why they say about brown sugar that it must be a packed cup, and so on.
This is why grammes rule, as if we needed more proof ![]()
Coffee enema?
Well you would get a faster caffine hit ![]()