[SGVHAK] 08/15 (Thu) meeting recap: ice cream abounds

[Lan Dang]

Hi all,

Before I get to the recap, three items.

1) There is a Repair Cafe event this Saturday (Aug 17th) from 6-9pm at Arroyo Food Co-op store (494 N. Wilson @Villa in Pasadena).  I am not clear if one must RSVP on Meetup in order to attend.  I don't think I will be there long, but I promised to bring ice cream.  I rather feel like making Nutella ice cream.  

http://www.meetup.com/Repair-Cafe-Pasadena/events/126348712/

2) The  next HAK meeting is Saturday, August 24th, from 2-6pm at Hastings Branch Library (3325 East Orange Grove Boulevard Pasadena, CA 91107).  I will send out another reminder closer to the date.  Let me know if you're planning any kind of show and tell or workathon so I can publicize it.  

3) In the future, let's start the Thursday meetings at 6:30pm.  That will give Dave enough time to finish his work before we descend on him.  Most of us can't get there till around that time anyway.


RECAP:

As usual, it was a fun HAK meeting.  We had a larger than normal turnout since we had folks who hadn't come to Dave's shop (or any HAK meeting) before as well as folks we hadn't seen in months.
 
I think we hit a peak of 15 people at the shop, of which 10 stayed to the end and came to dinner.  Carmine's on Live Oak seems to be our place now, and the wait staff has noticed our regular attendance.

There was a lot of activity.  Dave was still working on something for work.  Adam and John K. were working on installing packages on Dave's new Linux computer.  John W. had another 3D printer kit he was assembling.  I don't remember if he has posted a link to his friend's Kickstarter.  Braddock and Joel and John K. worked on Internet-in-a-Box.  Mic was doing another lockpicking workshop.  Thanks to Homan's advice and memories of Mic's LUG presentation, I was able to pick 3 or 4 locks in quick succession.  I hadn't realized that you *barely* want to put any tension on the lock. 

I brought a cooler with dry ice and several different ice creams.  There were Klondike bars, Skinny Cow sandwiches, homemade peach ice cream, a homemade mango-passion-fruit yogurt mousse.  I had the beginnings of a cantaloupe sorbet.  

We did indeed make ice cream using a cryogenic bath of dry ice and vodka.   The inspiration for this was the following MAKE article.  
http://makezine.com/2010/01/15/make-projects-15-minute-ice-cream/


Mic had suggested using vodka instead of denatured alcohol because we didn't want to worry about tainting the ice cream with something potentially toxic.  I got the containers recommended in the article, which was a gallon-sized beverage cooler and a bain-marie, which is basically like a stainless steel beaker.

We pulverized the dry ice with a rolling pin--great therapy for a bad day at work.  The guys took turns pouring it into the beverage cooler.  We then poured in vodka and got hit with a faceful of alcoholic fumes and a lot of fog coming out of the cooler.  We ultimately ended up dumping the entire bottle of vodka into the cooler.

Mic jury rigged a handle for the bain-marie using a wire hanger.  This gave us a safe way to lift it in and out of the dry ice/vodka.

At first, we were unable to make a liquid bath.  The top froze over, so we just rested the bain-marie on a thick ice crust and got very wet cantaloupe slush.  Then Mic realized that the vodka was still liquid underneath the ice crust, so he pounded away at the crust and broke through to the liquid at the bottom of the cooler.  Now we were able to freeze the sorbet.  We only made a small amount at a time, because we needed the cooling liquid to come up to the same level as the sorbet in the bain-marie.  We stirred vigorously with a rubber spatula until it became too solid to stir.

This is our jury-rigged ice cream maker in action.  Notice the empty bottle of vodka in the corner.  We did this out in the parking lot with a nice breeze.
http://i.imgur.com/N1c2XIJ.png


Now the guys give me a hard time and tell me I should have been using liquid nitrogen.  All I can say is: you bring the liquid nitrogen, I'll provide the ice cream base.


Lan

N.B. Apparently, you can keep your dry ice from sublimating too quickly by insulating it really well.  The first layer of insulation is wrapping the dry ice in several inches of newspaper.    Fill the cooler with wadded up newspaper to further insulate the cooler  I am going to try using a wadded-up thermal blanket since I have one wadded in a bag somewhere, never having figured out how to refold the crinkly material.
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