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blackout


Registered: 07/16/00
Posts: 5,266
Last seen: 2 months, 25 days
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Popcorn hydrated at up to ~35psi did not explode
#23728451 - 10/11/16 02:27 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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Most know popcorn takes a good while to hydrate. I cooked 500g for about 1hour 15mins including heatup, grains went into boiling water to start, getting up to ~23psi and letting it cool down, spending quite some time above 15psi. It was still only weighing ~850g after this and I wanted it to be 100g(approx 100ml) water added per 100g grain, so my goal was 1000g.
I cooked again straight away and accidentally left it on its own too long and came back to find the gauge maxed out, it reads 30psi and if the scale continued the needle would have been at 35psi where it mechanically stops, so it could have been more. Seems my vent was a bit stuck and the secondary relief, a blow out gasket did not blow. As I was cooking grain under water I did not bother venting to start like you usually would. Anyway, I moved it off the heat carefully and it began to drop quick enough, so do not think it was much higher than 35psi, and for about 5mins. The max operating pressure is listed as 29psi on it. Of course it is dangerou to go higher than the max rated pressure on your own PC, some might be rated to higher than 35psi, most would be far less. The grains weighed 1004g after this and not a single one had exploded, I was expecting it all to be ruined, I have hydrated other grains at high pressure which turned to mush.
In other threads I have talked of the benefits of this. Sterilization times drop dramatically at higher temps/pressure, and as the temperature is pretty much uniform and surrounding all the grains there is no extra time needed like with jars, where you must consider the central grains in the core of a large jar/bag which could take a very long time to reach the temp indicated by the pressure. Therefore its likely that my grains were sterilized while hydrating.
This means you could load jars and simply steam them to resterilize, or have a shorter PC cycle than usual. As there is no wasted space due to gaps between jars, or trivets/plates holding the jars off the bottom, it means you can load a lot of popcorn into your PC. So people with small PCs might find it beneficial. They could have a second larger pot for steaming the jars. People with a large PC could still do the same, steaming of jars could be done in a large drum with an element in it.
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blackdust

Registered: 02/28/09
Posts: 8,327
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Re: Popcorn hydrated at up to ~35psi did not explode [Re: blackout]
#23728517 - 10/11/16 02:49 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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tombosley8
Full on... Bossley Baggins



Registered: 10/14/13
Posts: 3,660
Last seen: 8 months, 3 hours
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Re: Popcorn hydrated at up to ~35psi did not explode [Re: blackdust]
#23734066 - 10/13/16 01:15 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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I really like the idea!
Lots of spawn fast and easy.
If I have a couple 23 qt presto pc's and want to max out the amount corn per pc, how much water/corn should I use per pc?
Will a cycle at around 20 psi be good enough with a bit more time? or will this cause more burst kernels than a shorter cycle at higher psi as you did?
I have a 55 gal drum setup as a steamer with a stanley steamer as the element. Will this be sufficient in sterilizing after the pc sterilization/hydration cycle?
I haven't used the steamer in a while but I think at full capacity and max heat(and insulated) I could get it over 200 F.
how long would you recommend sterilizing say 4 qt bags(after the pc/hydration) in the steamer once at max heat?
And just to get the process more in detail, I would hydrate and sterilize in the pc at a high psi(for how long?) then let cool and load the corn into bags and then steam sterilize (for how long?) to kill any contams introduced when loading into bags. Since the core of the corn was sterilized during hydrating in pc, then all that you are worried about sterilizing is the outside of the grains which should not take long right?
And If I were to use an AA sterilizer for the second sterilization process, would say an hour at 17 psi for a 4 qt bag be sufficient?
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Edited by tombosley8 (10/13/16 01:16 PM)
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blackout


Registered: 07/16/00
Posts: 5,266
Last seen: 2 months, 25 days
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Re: Popcorn hydrated at up to ~35psi did not explode [Re: tombosley8]
#23734683 - 10/13/16 04:30 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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tombosley8 said: If I have a couple 23 qt presto pc's and want to max out the amount corn per pc, how much water/corn should I use per pc?
I think I used about 2-2.5L with 500g of grain. This was excessive and I could have gone less. I think it should be enough so the grains can freely move about and not risk getting burnt on the bottom.
I will keep better notes next time, you can do some tests yourself. You would want all the grains submerged the whole way through. As they cook they obviously expand, and water is sucked in.
Say I added 2L to 500g and it ended up 1000g so approx 500ml was absorbed by the grains. This means I will have less than 1.5L of water left in the PC, as some will always be lost as steam. As there is no real reason to vent the PC like you usually do then you can seal it and have less moisture loss. After the PC cycle is finished I could scoop out water until the grains are just covered. Say I take out 500ml and the grains are now just under water, this means I could have afforded to have had 500ml less to start with. But again, too little water and they could burn, I suppose you could line the bottom with foil or something.
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tombosley8 said:Will a cycle at around 20 psi be good enough with a bit more time?
I would think so, I would usually not go above 25psi myself. Mine ended up with 2 cycles. In another thread I spoke of getting up to pressure as fast as possible. A way to do this is to have your water at a full rolling boil before adding the grains. I preheated other grains in the microwave, this was to stop the cold grains cooling down the boiling water and taking longer to heat up again. I did not want a long time spent heating the grains which could overcook them and have them too hydrated. I think it is best to have high power because of this. If you had a low power heat source and had loads of grain in a large PC it could take 2 hours before it got to 1psi, in which time they might be hydrated enough.
By using excessive water in a PC it will take a lot of energy to get it up to boiling, but also will have more energy to give. e.g. if you add 100g of grain to 10L of boiling water it will have little impact and easily reach boiling again. The downside of excessive water is that it will be taking up room in your PC which could have had more grain. You would have to be a ratio which works well.
Getting the time right will have to be done empirically, and with the same quantities, heat source etc. If you cooked for 20psi for 1.5hours and they are still not at the hydration level you want you know you will be able to add more time the next time. You cannot simply cook them for another 30mins, get them to hydration level, and then decide 2hrs is best (1.5+.5), since an additional 30mins at 20psi is going to hydrate them a lot more than 30mins if extra cooking. If your grains are overhydrated you know you have to use less time. If the overhydrated grains are not all burst you could possibly mix them with under hydrated grains and resterilize, so they do not go to waste.
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tombosley8 said: Will this be sufficient in sterilizing after the pc sterilization/hydration cycle?
I can't say, you will need high power as I explained.
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tombosley8 said: how long would you recommend sterilizing say 4 qt bags(after the pc/hydration) in the steamer once at max heat?
I am not sure how long is needed. It should be only airbourne contams, most boil water for just 10mins and say it is long enough to kill airbourne contams that may have fallen in it. Of course the bags would have to get to full temp. As they are not in a PC you have access to the bags, they could be taken out and shaken to mix the core grains with the rest and speed up the time needed for uniform heating.
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tombosley8 said: I would hydrate and sterilize in the pc at a high psi(for how long?) then let cool and load the corn into bags and then steam sterilize (for how long?) to kill any contams introduced when loading into bags. Since the core of the corn was sterilized during hydrating in pc, then all that you are worried about sterilizing is the outside of the grains which should not take long right?
Thats pretty much the theory. I would not let them cool though, I loaded mine in jars and put them back in while they were still hot, to speed up the time taken for them to get to temperature again. You can of course let them cool though. The times will depend on your own setup.
If you did test runs it would unfortunately really need the full amount of grains. You cannot just do a test with say 500g of grains, 2L of water and then figure you can scale up to 5000g and 20L of water. The small amount will need less water and be far quicker to heat up. But you could possibly try and get an idea by lowering your power to extend the heat up time of a smaller amount so simulate how it will be with a full batch. Also on cool down you could still apply low power to the small run, this is to mimic the slower cool down that a larger batch would typically have. If the cool down is too long it could get excessively hydrated. But venting to cool faster is more likely to cause exploded grains, so again a balance has to be worked out.
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tombosley8
Full on... Bossley Baggins



Registered: 10/14/13
Posts: 3,660
Last seen: 8 months, 3 hours
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Re: Popcorn hydrated at up to ~35psi did not explode [Re: blackout]
#23734931 - 10/13/16 06:11 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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ok, awesome, thanks so much. I think I really might try this in the near future as it would free up the stove and workload a lot. Would love to put the old steamer to use too.
so it sounds like slightly more water is better than just enough as it will help heat up better and will not allow them to burn.
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blackout said:
Quote:
tombosley8 said: If I have a couple 23 qt presto pc's and want to max out the amount corn per pc, how much water/corn should I use per pc?
I think I used about 2-2.5L with 500g of grain. This was excessive and I could have gone less. I think it should be enough so the grains can freely move about and not risk getting burnt on the bottom.
When you say excessive do you mean too much grain per water or too much in the pc at once?
I was imagining I could have my pc almost half full of grain with water a few inches over that.
Or would having the pc nearly 3/4 full of material be crazy(too much)?
Nice tips for heating up quickly to prevent overcooking. When you microwaved them did you rinse them or hydrate them first somehow or just nuked the dry grains?
Or as you said, if I use more than enough water the grain will not cool the water too much and therefore I would not have to use the microwave? I think I'd rather just do less grain than have to microwave as well.
Also I love the tip of taking the grain out of the steamer and shaking to heat the center faster. never thought of that, although I don't know how much heat I would lose to opening the steamer to do so. It does heat up pretty quick so maybe I'm overthinking that. And the benefit of exposing the core would definitely help a ton on time. I could probably do more like 5+ qts with that technique implemented.
Thanks again I really like your ideas and hope I can give this a try soon just al ittle busy with agar and life at the moment.
Oh yeah one last thing, how do you strain the corn before the steaming process and for how long?
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blackout


Registered: 07/16/00
Posts: 5,266
Last seen: 2 months, 25 days
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Re: Popcorn hydrated at up to ~35psi did not explode [Re: tombosley8]
#23741700 - 10/16/16 08:33 AM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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First off- a factor/problem is hydration levels to bag size. Paul Stamets recommends far less moisture in larger bags. I am using 400-700ml jars so can have higher moisture levels. Popcorn is 14-15% moisture, it should be similar across all brands as this is important for it to pop properly. Say 500g popcorn has 15% moisture, this means 425g is dry matter, I am adding 500g additional moisture to get it to 1kg. So it is 425g dry and 575g moisture, so 57.5% moisture. Stamets recommended 60% for 16oz jars, 50% for quart jars, 43% for gallon jars, 40% for 10L jars, 38% for spawn bags. So you could not get away with processing for as long a time. So unforuntately you are hit on 2 counts for larger operations. You will be cooking a lot more grain and so it will take longer to heat up and so be more likely to overhydrate if cooking for the same time once up to pressure, and you will be typically be using larger containers which ideally should have less moisture.
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tombosley8 said: When you say excessive do you mean too much grain per water or too much in the pc at once?
I mean I could have got away with less water. Excessive might have been a poor choice of words as it makes it sound quite negative. I just mean if you want to maximise the space in your PC you need to figure out what will work. My PC does not let much steam out during cooking, others which do will need more water, so it would be difficult to come up with ratios that work for everyone.
Some might want to keep the cooking water for LC or agar, as it will be sterile, you could bottle and freeze it as there will be quite a bit.
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tombosley8 said: Or would having the pc nearly 3/4 full of material be crazy(too much)?
Some PC instructions might give advice on this. Many people would be cooking grains & pulses the way I did for eating so there might be good info out there already on other sites about cooking food. The grain is going to expand so you need room for that to happen. You could estimate the expansion by doing small batches. You could take rough volume measurements by measuring the distance between the top of your water and the top of your pot. e.g. if I added 2.5L and 500g grain it might be 6 inches from the top of the pot, after cooking it might have expanded and be just 5 inches from the top. Now later on I could fill the pot with water until it is 5 & 6inches from the top, and measure these volumes (it could be weighed as 1L is roughly 1kg). You are most interested in the expanded volume. It is safer to be dealing with cold water than hot grains & water, this is why I would do it later on.
If the expanded volume was 4L then I could try adding 8L to my PC and see where the water line is, if it looks OK then you could double your recipe and it should be OK, if too full you can determine the volume which does look OK in your PC and adjust your recipe to match that. Most pots taper outwards at the top, so 1 inch of height can be a lot more volume at the top than at the bottom.
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tombosley8 said: When you microwaved them did you rinse them or hydrate them first somehow or just nuked the dry grains?
I microwaved dry grains. They need to be stirred, they can burn. Mine got well over 100C while still not being dried out, past 140C, some will tell you this is physically impossible, a good warning sign! lots of people on here just reiterate stuff they heard, but have never tried it themselves. I was doing this to save my overall time too. I would have the hob, kettle and microwave all going at once to speed up my overall processing time. If you are using a large PC then you are not going to fit a lot in the microwave anyway. THey could be done in a normal oven to if you were bothered. The popcorn seems far more robust than other grains, I did not do it with popcorn.
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tombosley8 said:how do you strain the corn before the steaming process and for how long?
I just strained in a pasta strainer, but I am only dealing with small amounts. I get them into jars ASAP and back in the PC, so its more like one extended cooking time. I never really bother drying grains out like others do. Popcorn is like hard balls when done, it is very easy to shake. Many consider popcorn to be a very inferior grain though, expensive and not performing as well as others.
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