Sunday, August 17, 2008

Fire!

I've done my first experiment to create flames for the Chile Fest dinner. I took Everclear (I hadn't bought that in nearly 20 years!), and brown sugar cubes.
fire1
Then we read this from the bottle:
"Caution!! Extremely flammable Handle with care"
So we grabbed the fire extinguisher. Then we read a bit more:
"Caution: Do not apply to an open flame. Keep away from fire, heat and open flame. Contents may ignite or explode."
With that I grabbed the flame!
fire4
It burned very intensely. Plenty of flame for my purpose. In fact, it may have been a bit large. It burned for 90 seconds before it started to flicker and we doused it under a bowl.
I also wanted to test the exploding glass theory, so I put this candle holder over it. This is the one I would like to use if I can find 18 of them (one for each guest).
fire3
It didn't explode (although we hid under the table just in case. Here's the downside to sugar:
fire5
The smell started at about 45 seconds and wasn't very appealing. So then I just poured some in a bowl and lit it! Fire! Fire! Fire!
fire6
Oooh, me like pretty flame!

Then I realized, the vessel for the flame is irrelevant from a functional perspective. Yes, I can control the flame depending on what I put the Everclear in, but its going to burn whether I put it on sugar or on a mouse's ass. So that opens up some possibilities. What if I poured it in a vessel of green chile? It melted the sugar, so it would heat/cook the chile, but it would burn itself out before it caused mischief.

So that's it for tonight. More fun with flames tomorrow. And, I'll try my homemade vanilla extract which I used 151 rum in.

3 comments:

Manggy said...

Yowza, good luck with that. Burned sugar is a bitch to remove from pans and stuff >:) If you can consistently cook the chile to your liking (I guess it would be... roasted?), there's great possibilities in the technique. If you really want *just* the flame (which I doubt), you'd probably want to dilute the Everclear...

Unknown said...

If you thread a wic thru a radish and trim the tip of the chili just enough to have the radish sit a third of the way in it, you should be able to fill the pepper with a lamp oil and burn it as a lamp, hurricane globe is optional.

Thinks to consider are how to make the chili stand upright for this.

Gfron1 said...

interesting. I'll be doing another test tonight...