welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen today I am going to continue my
exploration of making cherry pop in the last episode I tried a couple of things
and we got somewhere that tasted really good that Julie like kind of a light
very light flavored not too tart not too sweet cherry pop it was quite nice but
it wasn't exactly what I was looking for so today I'm gonna try something a
little bit different to get to the spot where I think I want to be and that's
the thing about these videos this is just me noodling around in the kitchen
trying out different methods and trying to figure out what I like and how I'm
gonna get there so into this bag I have put sweet black cherries these are
frozen cherries you've got them at a local orchard here and to that I'm gonna
add some tart red cherries just to kind of play against the sweetness with a
little bit of the tartness next in of course is the sugar next I'm going to
put in a vanilla bean now I've opened up the vanilla bean and scraped out the
seeds in the middle and I'm gonna put those in separately as well as the pod
and to that I'm gonna add just a few black peppercorns and this is
Tellicherry black pepper taste a little bit different than other black peppers
although it is the same plant I think it's just grown in a different area and
maybe let ripen a little bit longer so I'm gonna put in I don't know six or
eight black peppercorns that should add just a little bit of depth of flavor I'm
not gonna make it hot I'm just gonna change it a little bit okay now I'm
gonna vacuum seal this
okay now I'm gonna let this macerate and in order to speed that process up a
little bit I'm going to put it into an immersion cooker or sous-vide generally
not something I really like doing I've had a few of these machines they never
really seem to last very long I do realize that I use them when we were
using them I use them a lot more than people would at home and often I find
that using an immersion cooker is sort of a solution looking for a problem but
I think in this case this might be helpful it might be useful so I'm going
to let this go for an hour to at sixty degrees Celsius and I'll keep checking
back on it and sort of decide by eye when to stop it
okay so it is actually a couple days later I put this into the bath the
hot-water bath I left it for a couple of hours and then I got sidetracked on
something else realized I couldn't get back to it so I chilled this down really
quickly and I stuck it in the fridge where it's been for probably 48 hours
and I think that's probably a good thing because look I've got a lot of liquid in
this container and the cherries have broken down so I'm going to go through
the process of straining out the solids and you want to do this very carefully
you want to get as much of the solids out as possible because any of those
tiny little particles will lead to what's called a nucleation site and
that's what really promotes off-gassing in your pop and essentially it just
makes your pop go flat faster so the first strain is through a fairly large
mesh strainer just to get the really big stuff after I ran it through a metal
sieve I then lined the sieve with this coffee filter Chemex coffee filter and
ran it through that and I've got a really nice clear liquid there's a
little bit of sludge left in here and I ended up with just shy of one litre of
this cherry juice so to that I'm going to add some glycerin about a tablespoon
and that glycerin is going to do two things it's going to coat the inside of
your mouth and hold the cherry flavor there just a little bit longer it's also
going to help with head retention so when you pour it out into a glass you're
going to get a nice foamy head on top and it's going to stick around for a
while and that foam on top is important because it holds some aromas that you
can smell as you lift the glass to take a drink okay I think we're ready to do
an initial taste now in between last time in between the last video in this
video I did a bunch of experiments in the background using the last syrup that
we made and I tried a bunch of different things in it I put it in almond essence
I put in some bitters to see what the bidders would taste like a couple
different kinds of bitters the pastes showed worked a really nicely knit I
added vanilla and I added cheri essence I'm feeling really good
about this one I don't think I need to add much more to it except for the
phosphoric acid so I'm gonna put that in next and so this is not actually full-on
phosphoric acid I played with the phosphoric acid and I can't quite get it
right it takes just such a minut amount that I'm having trouble with it so I'm
gonna use acid phosphate much easier to control and I will link to it below it's
easy to buy friend of mine down in London makes it and you can order that
and he'll ship it out to you so in with the acid phosphate and then the water
now I'm using an ISI whipper cannister because it carbonates really quickly and
so this is a co2 cartridge put one in
and give it a shake now you don't have to use an ISI canister I just find that
it carbonates small amount of liquid really quickly with really strong
carbonation levels much stronger than you would get with a SodaStream or if
you put a little bit of syrup in a glass and then pour it in some soda water
this this gets me much closer to what I'm gonna get in the end when I put it
in a full-size keg and serve it all summer long so I'm gonna stick this in
the fridge and about half an hour we'll give it a taste okay so in the last
video I failed to let everybody know that you're supposed to let the gas off
first before you open the is I seemed pretty straightforward now the worst
thing is gonna happen if you open this up under pressure is you might get wet
but nobody wants to get with it so let the pressure off first hey Bradley Glen
and I did only use one co2 cartridge this time cuz have you been very bubbly
very bubbly and part of that bubbling is the glycerin that I use so let's see oh
it's still very bubbly it's looks that much flavor this nut flavor much more
color yeah this one than the last versions you've done so I didn't add as
much glycerin so there's not as much head which is something I can still
what only this one does not have the super strong strong cherry flavor
necessarily that one of the other ones did but it's got a very full flavor yeah
although not necessarily just cherry
much better than any of the other once you've made yeah it's early didn't make
us you know that that first sour yeah um in between the two videos I was playing
with the phosphoric acid you got that and there was a couple where it was just
as soon as you got it in your mouth it was like oh my that's really Pleasant
now I really like that it's not super super sweet mm-hmm I think others would
like more syrup in it yes and yeah I would say I would say most people would
like more syrup in it knowing that I have to you know water down juice cuz I
find it too sweet which is funny considering the amount of cake I you
probably 1/3 more syrup would get that to the level of what most people are
looking for but it's got a lot of those flavors that you're looking for it's a
very full flavor yes you know lots going on um so I think the addition of the two
kinds of cherries the black pepper corns I think is brilliant someone left a
comment in the in the comments section that their grandmother put black
peppercorns in her cherry pies and always wanted the fair so I thought
let's do that I like this this is the one I really love cherry pie and so that
color is the color just from the cherries there's I didn't add any
coloring to it so I think it's your selection of cherry is very important
mm-hmm and the leftover cherries are in that cherry upside-down cake so I'm
looking forward to that now this is great so I'm gonna take this as a base
starting point and do a cherry coke so I'm going to get the 7x formula back up
and running make a new one do a cherry coke and I think what I've learned with
this is going to play into the next Dr Pepper episode which will be a while
it's gonna be a while relax but it is coming because I think
what I learned doing this is you gonna help me out there all right
thanks for stopping by see you again soon come back for this cake
you