Table of Contents

Lake making

Name: M. Whitman

Date and Time: 

2021.06.01,  10:15am

Location: Apartment, Manhattan

Subject: Lake making

The morning was pretty cool still after a chilly, rainy weekend and so my apartment had not warmed up by the time we started preparing to make the cochineal lake.

I opted to warm the cochineal mixture in a mason jar by itself out of concern for overcrowding or overheating the alum mixture, but I think this was a mistake. I still feel a little new to gas stoves after a lifetime of electric and slowed down the entire process by waiting for the bain-marie to come to a rolling boil. Really, I could have turned up the burner much higher and put both in at once, but once I realized this it felt risky to plunge the alum jar into the bain-marie, so I wound up starting a separate saucepan for it. Others said their alum dissolved in cold water but this was not the case for me at all and it actually took quite a bit of stirring and high heat to get it to dissolve.

I was surprised at how easy it was to handle the jars after fishing them out of the water, thinking that they would be too hot to move without mitts, but they cooled to warm rapidly. In retrospect I should have employed a pipette but gradual pouring seemed to work well.

The process of steeping the cochineal reminded me quite a lot of coffee extraction--some French press enthusiasts suggest grinding much more finely than the typical course for extraction and also advocate for a 10-15 minute steep. The cochineal, however, must have been ground so finely that I think it would have been difficult to sift it out later, so the tea bag might have been necessary.

Adding the alum, even slowly, resulted in continuous reactions and it wasn’t until the very last of it that the pH dropped to 7ish--until then it stubbornly hovered at a forest green color and stayed pretty basic. I added in fairly small increments, probably a little more than 10 ml.

The separation of liquids was quite striking, slow but noticeable and a little bit reminiscent of a lava lamp. I used a funnel to set up the filtering--I hadn’t used it in years and so felt okay donating it to the cause, but I was tempted to use a v60 because the size would have been more accommodating given it could hold a larger volume and was specifically made for filtering. However, I didn’t want to dye either purple. Truth be told my plastic v60 might have faired well but it might have stained the porcelain v60. The funnel I used seemed to work well though it required slow pouring for the initial filtering. The rate of flow made me really realize how small the particle size for the lake was. Unlike the following wash, however, the filtering was fast enough that I could add in the remaining liquids in the jar without waiting too long. The first wash, in contrast was much longer and the resulting filtrate was clear with maybe a slight purple hue that one would miss if not looking for it. I don’t think it needed another wash but I did it again, and this time the filtering took well over an hour--I even left and came back and it wasn’t done, and it didn’t look dry when I took the lake out of the funnel hours later.

I had a moment after the second rinse where muscle memory almost led me to swiftly move the filter to the trash--coffee again!--but I caught myself and laid it to dry on a piece of foil. It had a clay-like consistency for the next few days but I checked it the following weekend and it is a pastel color, perhaps a bit pinker than lavender but near that.

Remaining questions: How finely ground should the ‘raw’ materials be? What’s the optimal size for extraction?

Too late I thought to use a different type of filter--what would the effect of various types of cloth be on filtering?