Table of Contents

Lake Making

Name: Sophie Macomber

Date and Time: 

2021.June.1, 10:30am

Location: Home Kitchen

Subject: Cochineal Pigment Making Reverse

        I first set up my workspace. I was worried about both hot glass shattering when coming in contact with the cold, granite countertops and potentially dying the counter with the cochineal pigments, so I layered about six dish towels for the base of my workspace. I decided to try making the reverse recipe for cochineal because I personally like purples more than pink, and it seemed that the majority of the group had decided to do the normal cochineal. I used a glass measuring cup to pour 300 ml water into my quart sized mason jar and 50 ml into my pint sized mason jar.

        I then put my drawstring bag of cochineal into my quart sized mason jar along with the 10g of alum and stirred this together. The color produced was almost like a cranberry-juice red. I then placed this into a large pot and put in water until the water line was above the cochineal mixture. I put this on medium-high heat to boil as it was a very large pot. While this started to heat up, I put my 4g of potash into my pint sized jar. This dissolved almost immediately, which I had not been expecting.

        The instructions said to bring the water in the pot to a boil, which I was able to do, bringing it to a rolling boil, which made the jar rattle a lot. I showed this to Professor Smith, but apparently this was too strong of a boil and that I should be looking for some small bubbles and steam, which I was able to do by bringing it down to medium-low heat. I was supposed to be able to see some faint steam from the cochineal mixture, but I couldn’t really tell what was coming from the water and what was coming from the mixture itself so I’m not entirely sure that I ever got to the right temperature. I think overall, the instructions about what we should be looking for to tell when the cochineal mixture is hot enough in the bain marie need to be clarified. I set my timer for 20 minutes at this point and let it boil. I did not stir it while it boiled.

        When the mixture had boiled for about fifteen minutes, I decided to place my pint sized jar filled with potash and water into the bain marie. While it visually appeared dissolved, I had been warned the potash and alum both took a considerable amount of time to be dissolved and water so heat was necessary; therefore, I didn’t want to be deceived by my eyes in thinking that the potash was completely dissolved when it wasn’t. This is where I made my fatal mistake. While the water level in the pot had been appropriate for the quart size jar with 300ml of water in it, it was much too high for the pint size jar with 50 ml of water. The jar immediately tipped over in the pot. It filled with water, and I’m sure that some of the potash water spilled out into the pot. I was extremely panicked when this happened and pulled it out of the pot, soaking the mitten pot holders that I had been using. There was about 4x as much water in the jar when I was able to get it out. In a panic and not really thinking straight, I thought that the amount of water might be more important than the amount of potash and I hoped that maybe the bottom of the water had all the old potash water and only the top water was the new water, which was not the case. I poured about half of the top water (hoping that it was just the new water and not the potash water) into the sink. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have done this. I was then left with 100 ml of water but I am uncertain how much potash was in this water.

        After the 20 minutes had passed, I removed the quart sized jar from the pot and put it on my layered towels so that the glass would not shock and shatter. Using the chopsticks I removed the drawstring bag from the jar and placed it on a paper plate so that it would not stain anything. First, I took the pH of the water without any of the potash mixture in it, which was around 4 and I knew that I was ideally looking for around 6 or 7. I took the pH by slowly lowering the pH strips into the mixture, holding them with the chopsticks. This didn’t always work and sometimes they fell into the mixture. I then began to slowly pour the potash mixture from the pint sized jar into the quart sized jar. I took the pH after adding ⅛ of the potash mixture (about 12.5 ml) and the pH was still around 4; however, I got some bubbling and fizzing with foam on the top, which let me know that it had been working. I then added what I thought was about 5/8 of the potash mixture because adding ⅛ really hadn’t done anything to the pH. I turned out to be really bad at guessing how much I put in as this ended up being almost all that I had in my pint sized jar. My first attempt at testing the pH was unsuccessful and the strip came back many different colors. I tried again and it was about 5. I tried stirring the mixture for about five minutes to aid the reaction and tested it again twice and it was still about 5. I then decided to pour in some water from the pot (in case the potash had spilled into the pot water), which resulted in a pH that was between 5 and 6 but closer to 5. I decided to try again but it didn’t change the pH. Professor Smith had mentioned that it was ok if the pH was around 5, and since mine was sort of in between 5 and 6 and my jar was reaching capacity, I decided to stop there and let it settle.

        I let the jar rest for about fifteen minutes. A lot of light purple particles sunk to the bottom while the darker purple liquid stayed on the top. This happened pretty quickly, but I decided to let it rest the full 15 minutes even if it didn’t really need all of that time. I then moved onto straining my pigment. I made a contraption using a paper cup with the bottom cut off, which I was able to fit into the pint sized mason jar. This actually fit in pretty well. I then put my coffee filter into the paper cup. I poured the mixture in the quart sized jar into the contraption to let it filter. At some point Caroline mentioned that they had sent two coffee filters along in case of emergencies, and it would take longer to strain if you had doubled it, which I had done. I carefully removed the bottom coffee filter, being sure not to lose anything on the upper coffee filter; however, this happened right as I started draining, so there weren’t many pigment particles. I ended up pouring as much liquid as the coffee filter could hold into the contraption, letting it strain and repeating. When the pint sized jar ran out of room, I emptied it into the sink. It had a very dark purple color. I could tell when I was really straining the pigment as there was a puddle of purple slush.

        When the mixture had strained, I moved on to washing the pigment. After the first wash, the water was almost a hot pink in color, which was a lot less purple than the original water in the straining. I poured this out and rinsed it again. This water was a very light, baby pink. I was very surprised that washing it had worked so well. After the third wash, the water was clear and I had a little pile of pigment on my coffee filter. Had I not poured out my potash, I would have likely held more pigment; however, my mistake wasn’t as disastrous as I had originally thought.