Making Napalm

[Owly055]

Today I undertook a rather terrifying experiment in the kitchen. I plan to make a dubbel and decided to make some medium dark candi sugar. Let me tell you....... You want to be careful, and not have children around. This stuff is deadly. Molten sugar at 300F will stick to and burn any flesh it touches.

I never came into contact with the stuff, but I wasn't born yesterday, this is not a nice process and calls for extreme caution. It reminds me of playing with explosives!!

The process involved heating and watching color...... pretty subjective.... then cranking the heat to bring the molten sugar to 300 quickly, and pouring it out onto aluminum foil to cool. The pan had to be boiled to get the residual stuff out, which turned rock hard rather quickly. It's a cheap but time consuming process.

I'm wondering about trying something like this with DME........

The result is beautiful however...........

H.W.

 

[flars]

I've found it is really worthwhile to have a fast digital thermometer when taking sugar to the hard crack stage as you have.

 

[Homercidal]

We made hard candy all the time as kids, usually around the holidays, but sometimes just for fun. I don't recall it being any big deal.

I made hop candy a couple of weeks ago without a thermometer. Had to use the cold water trick to see when it was ready. Worked ok, but not as convenient for sure.

 

[aamcle]

or mix some palm oil and naphtha.


aamcle

 

[Owly055]

I was thinking the other day about this, and it seems to me that dry roasting sugar in a stainless fry pan or pot might be a good alternative. I googled it, and one of the procedures for making caramel is done dry. It's essentially the same process. Anybody dry darkening sugar dry in a skillet?

H.W.

 

[mongoose33]

Guess which thread has popped up on the NSA early-warning system?

 

[Owly055]

Guess which thread has popped up on the NSA early-warning system?

Just for the NSA:

I like to mix it with powdered aluminum and iron oxide. If you only cook it down until it stabilizes at 150F, the result is a sort of plastique thermite you can set off with a strip of magnesium ;-) It's not an explosive, but it burns hot enough to melt through any metal known to man, and many types of refractory materials. ( I just made that story up on the spot), though thermite is perfectly legal and a great way to cast iron parts. It's used by the railroad to weld continuous rail.......... The sugar isn't a part of it, but other things are which improve the metal.

Then of course there are a few explosives you can make from household items such as acetone, iodine, ammonia, and a few others I can think of in various combinations, but we won't go there or the thread will be killed ;-)

I'm just interested in making candi sugar for brewing...

H.W.