[Sca-cooks] Smoke Essence.

[Stefan li Rous]

Adamantius commented:
> On Jul 7, 2005, at 12:02 AM, Adele de Maisieres wrote:
> > kingstaste at mindspring.com wrote:
> >> A pretty slick device, although I'm not sure it is worth the
> >> effort unless you really want to be sure you aren't buying a
> >> bottle of chemicals.
> >
> > Of course, what you'll be doing is _making_ a bottle of chemicals...
>
> True, but they're the same chemicals you'd be adding to your food by
> hanging it in the smoke in the first place, and also very nearly
> identical to the chemicals you'd be adding if you used smoke essence.

Ideally, that is true. Admittedly, I am not an organic chemist, however 
I have some serious concerns about this home made making of smoke 
essences.

We have discussed the problems with distilling safe, drinkable alcohol 
on this list previously. I fear that there would be similar concerns 
with this. The industrial processes which are used to produce these 
smoke essences are at least likely to be consistent. Doing this at home 
the temperature and other factors are more likely to vary. You may end 
up creating other compounds than you want, and those may have hazards 
you aren't aware of. In addition, those industrial methods are likely 
to be done using materials that do not themselves introduce problematic 
compounds, if for nothing else then that if you leach materials out of 
your production equipment you will eventually have to repair it. For 
instance if someone were to do this at home and use galvanized metal in 
the collection or cooling apparatus or use a leaded rather than 
unleaded solder to assemble it, this could be a problem. And these are 
just those that immediately occur to me.

Mark S. Harris
(Stefan would probably consider this witchcraft)
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
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