Transmuted Wine - Part 1

April 7th, 1.30pm-4pm, Chandler 260

Fol 43v
Varied and Transmuted Wine
Grate Brazilwood very fine, let it soak for one or two hours in clear water. Then take this tinted water and add some clear water and you will make wine as clear as you like. If you please, put a drop of lemon juice or orange juice in it and it will immediately become white. You can drink it without danger.

Reading and Interpretation of the Recipe

There are several open questions.
First: what about the quantity?? No mention of how much to use or at least by what measure of proportion one shall combine water and Brazilwood. The previous annotation and experiment from Fall2015 -- here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B-XEEy8kJKUvaEtkdGZ0QkRqSWs -- is not really helpful (in fact, they must have bullshitted with the quantities: 40ml of Brazilwood, really??)
Second: what about the containment/preparation? Even though the manuscript speaks of grating, is is unclear how fine the Brazilwood is supposed to be (green tea leaf like, or closer to being a powder?). Also, in what container (material) do I soak -- glass, metal, wood? Does it matter?

I decide for three variations.

First: Putting the already grated Brazilwood into a "Tea Bag" made from Cheesecloth. -- (In the following V2)
Second: Grounding the Brazilwood and putting the powder into water. -- (In the following V1)
Third: Loose grated Brazilwood in water. -- (In the following V3)

Doing the Recreation

Preparation

I get three glasses (for the three variations), cheesecloth, grated brazilwood (thanks Naomi!), marker and tape for labeling, scissors, notebook plus pen & phone for recording, ...



SHOOT: I forgot the darn lemon!! I run out and go to the next grocery shop. 3 for the price of...

V2: Tea Bag

I cut a piece of cheesecloth, get some water (deciding to use 50ml per variation), label my glass, and get the Brazilwood (it has a sweetish but harsh woody smell, not smoky at all, but rather mild)



I find a scale, I take three spatulas, leading to approx. 0.04g (it switches between 0.03-0.04-0.05 constantly... meh, let's say it is 0.04, it's not really supposed to be rocket science after all ... author-practitioner, I am looking at you!)



I fold the cheesecloth twice (as the Brazilwood is rather finely grated already), put the 3 spatulas/0.04g of Brazilwood in, and fold it into a tea bag (closed by a rubber).




The tea bag floats on the surface, I later force it to stay on the ground of the glass with a spatula. You can see a very slight discoloration, a very shy rose, tinting the water.
It is now 2.29pm.

V1: Ground

Again, I take three spatulas/0.04g of Brazilwood and ground it into a fine powder in a stone mortar. I scrape it into 50ml of water. The Brazilwood floats on the water surface. It immediately starts discoloring the water. Within a few seconds you can see an effect (water becoming rose).



For whatever reason I decide to shake it. BOOOM. Intense red color. Beautiful, isn't it?



Here you have a pretty clear comparison of V2 and V1. It is now 2.37pm.

V3: Loose Wood

Self explanatory: I simply put 3 spatulas/0.04g pf Brazilwood into 50ml of water.
I leave it to you whether I wrote loose in German (= lose) or had a brief moment of mental letter shuffling (btw, syslexia ducks!)
Discoloration begins rather rapidly. Not quite as intense as the ground version but waaaaay faster than the tea bag variant.
It is now 2.40pm.

Results and Analysis

Overall, I leave all thee variations soak for an hour.

After 30 mins: All three variants show discoloration at different stages. V2 has a slight rose tone, not really noticeable. V1 is intense. V3 develops but shows clear signs of reaction.






You can see the different reactions really nicely in the video below:




Closer to an hour (about 50 minutes in) you now really can see the differences in the discolorations. Fascinating.
Btw, it does not smell like something you'd normally would think of drinking at all...

Tasting the Wine?

Ok, let's put this wine to the test... I decide to pour myself a small bit... wine tasting time!




Donna stops me.

Says something about health and safety. Mumbles something about Pamela killing her if I get killed in the lab under her watch and to better wait until Monday and ask Pamela whether I can drink it under her watch (Pamela, please?) Not quite sure how I can pitch this as being a good idea but I have a few days to think about it. It's for science and glory!

I also decide to "de-wine" the mixtures with the lemon on Monday as well.

So I pour all three wine versions into three separate small containers as control samples.



Everything gets labeled and stowed away safely in one of the upper shelves.



Donna reminds me not to forget to label the lemon as "Not for human consumption" .
So I did.



And now we wait. Till Monday! Good night, my (Al)chemical Romance!