Nile gradually increasing the desired RPM felt like the movie trope of the villain pushing their big scary machine to its limit while their advisor(s) beg them to stop
It'll never not be funny to me that Nigel has an _intimate_ understanding of what is basically modern day alchemy - and yet is _mystified_ by basic cooking. *_*edit*_*_ i just thought it was a little funny, y'all, i wasn't trying to make a statement about anything - you didn't need to start a war in the replies 😳_
Chemistry is precise and the exact process is completely understood (in theory at least). Cooking is much less precise, can involve improvisation or personal preference, and is often learned by practise and memorization without any need to understand what is actually happening inside the oven. I can absolutely understand a Chemist being confused by cooking.
Canadian customs is insanely lax on things coming in from China, hence why there is a huge fentanyl problem in BC and it’s almost matched with Mexico for trafficking into the US.
He's talked on a podcast about how the authorities really do not care about hobby chemistry. The one time he was contacted by the police was when he bought a large funnel, and they immediately stopped caring when they found his channel.
So, now he needs to do this a few thousand times to make back his money.. by which time his teeth will hate rotted out a d be diabetic from eating all the sugar.
obsessed with how out of like 4 ingredients, he couldn't be bothered to look up even roughly how much of the flavoring to add 😭 absolutely incredible process
And to top it off, he had experience with the flavoring already! He said it was old when he used it and then said, like, "Well back into storage for another year".
Tbf he was laser focused on the patent, and they (the patent’s creator) couldn’t be bothered to figure how much flavoring to add or when to add it in beforehand, either
Former candy maker here! To keep from reaching the carmelization stage, pull your candy off about 5 degrees before your desired state. It will continue to cook for a few minutes after that, depending on the amount of candy you are making. Also, buy the proper coloring, and never try mixing colors to get the proper color. The ingredients will change the desired color if you try to mix them.
Do you think it was a correct in the first batch and a mistake in the second to leave stirring on while cooling? I preferred the texture of the first batch, by eyeball only of course.
My suggestion would've been to add CO2 to other random foods...but then you mentioned adding far more dangerous gases like silane to sugar, and that seemed infinitely better!
26:10 I like how Nile’s genuinely worried but also lowkey curious so he just lets the camera man eat the *hard crack* and hopes it doesn’t rip his jaw off
If you've seen some old time candy style making videos, they use aeration to cause white color by adding in air bubbles. But they do it by folding and stretching rather than stirring
I think they mean that most people's voice change in some way when nararrating/recording vs live audio. Nile's voice doesn't change in pitch or tone or cadence, even on podcasts. It's very recognizable but jarring compared to many people.@@efenedick1305
Which is already degraded and then they degrade even more by putting it into boiling sugar. Neither of them has ever seen a lofty pursuits video? Some flavors and citric acid and color don’t go in till after the sugar is out of the pot and homogenized, not all bubbly. Saying it smells like burnt plastic would worry me
"Nile's super hard crack" Pop Rocks, available in various flavors like grape, cherry, cinnamon and nordihydrocapsaicin. Coming to a Walmart or Target near you soon!
Nile, one word: Triboluminescence... aka POPROCKS THAT EMIT FLASHES OF LIGHT! Wint-O-Green Lifesavers, Altoids, and some other candies already do this when you chomp on them, but it would be really, really cool to see the candy "sparkling" as it popped in your mouth. They may have to be "mint-flavored" poprocks though, as the methyl salicylate they use for flavoring is evidently what causes the flashes. I'm sure there are other food-safe compounds out there that would work, but that's the one that I know is edible, tastes OK, *and* makes light in candy form. Who knows, maybe you could find some alternatives that are flavorless, or maybe that emit different colors of light for the different flavors.
That would be super cool! But I'm not sure if the flashes of light would be bright enough, the Triboluminescence I've seen (in videos) seem to be quite dim and last only a fraction of a second
lactose is used in pop rocks specifically because it reduces the candy's hygroscopicity - that is, it's less likely to absorb water from the air, which would ruin the "pop" PS - you want the cylinder to come up to room temperature before opening it, so the pop rocks don't absorb humidity from the air (because they're so cold) as soon as they come out
This is the best video i've seen for a very long time... I love how you explain every single detail and even show what went wrong... Thanks for sharing...
The pop rocks company better come out with a “Pop Rock” because those big chunks looked intense and awesome. I could see those being like the One Chip spicy challenge.
You want to make the sugar super brittle and full of high pressure gas pockets. Like a prince rupert drop with many tails. I would figure all the gas makes the sugar cool super slow if you have a lot of it 😅 and you want it to cool really fast for brittleness, and opening a large vat early with the pressure difference may pop. With the limited surface area and heat transfer that means it basically layers the crystallization towards the center, which doesnt lose heat ambiently nearly as fast as the ice bath causes which also still has to occur with the surface area and time You're dry supercooling gas impregnated sugar glass!
I speak from several years of high level pastry experience. Dont stir sugar while its heating up. Once it becomes molten (the water has boiled out) you can stir it. You can tell its gone by the way the bubbles act. The bubbles start to get slow and sticky, and pop very close to each other. Which also means you can add as much or as little water as you want because it will boil off anyways. Lactose is a sugar type. Many advantages to using different types of sugar because of stability. Sucrose isnt very stable and wants to crystallize when molten and you can add other types of more stable syrup like dextrose to stabilize everything when doing confections. Also good little tip for measuring syrups. Measure into the container you are gunna use because you will loose a few grams which could make a difference in some recipes. Hard crack is as far as it goes. You should play around with the different stages of sugar by rapidly cooling droplets in ice water to preserve the stage. Cooking after hard crack stage only affects the flavor. It starts get a caramelize flavor the darker it gets. Once it starts to smoke your at the end of caramel flavor and soon after you will get a burned taste
The moment in the beginning he said "I can make this cheaper" I knew for certain there would be a new $20k machine for this video. Edit: You should try a batch with a bit of citric acid for sour poprocks
@@NepoMi Did you see the crazy metal box with piping leading to the covered fume hood on the backgrond. I bet there is something we are gonna see in few years. Hopefully 🙂
Dude, you are now, officially, my hero. I went on a similar journey myself and found out long ago that home made pop rocks weren't pop rocks and found out about the amazing way that pop rocks are made - and decided to leave it to the professionals. 😅 But you did it, brother! You bought the thing, did the thing and are now my hero. 😁❤
You need to keep the candy thermometer off the bottom of pan it will give the wrong temp and you will go over the 300 degree F temp. I make hard candy every year for xmas.
Wouldn't it overread, rather than unread though? In other words, it'd say 300 F at the pan surface while the mixture was still at say 270F.. I suspect he did lift it off the bottom though.
I accidentally made carbonated grapes and strawberries when we went camping, I used dry ice in the cooler and when we went to eat the grapes and strawberries they fizzled when we ate them, it was actually pretty cool, kids loved it 😂😂
The UA-cam cooking channel Internet Shaquille has a cool video about using dry ice in different ways. When he makes carbonated grapes he coats them in citric acid
This was truly delightful to watch. The sound of the big rocks exploding in their mouths genuinely made me giggle in excitement and delight, which is the same reaction I have to pop rocks, regardless of how many times I've had them. The little packages never have enough in them, so the idea of being able to literally fill my mouth with pop rocks is wonderful. I think Kmart sells party packs of pop rocks pretty cheap, I think I need to buy a few bags, pour them into a bowl and eat them with a spoon.
@@Crazyclay78YTthere’s a store in Australia called Kmart but it’s not the same Kmart as here in the U.S. They also have Woolworth’s, which is a completely different company than the department store we used to have here. It’s a grocery store there. Completely unaffiliated.
I am always amazed by what is sold on alibaba. Like obviously these machines come from somewhere but the fact that it is literally delivered and is purchasable with a few clicks in insane.
Your lab is the chemics equivalent to a car mechanics garage 100 machines and devices that have specific single purpose and might not actually be used again, but were necessary at least once Some had to be custom made for such a specific purpose And I think that's actually very fun
Every time the RPM reached its goal I grinned when I thought "ok now turn it up" and much to my amusement, so did Nile. We're also not gonna talk about what my first thought was when he dropped the zip bag on the table at the end.
Nile if you make more for consumption, you should tumble them in a rock tumbler with some powdered sugar and they'd probably look like commercial pop rocks as well. Just a guess.
"It was also, for sure, going to be very expensive and the cost of it would completely negate any possible savings that it would ever get, by making my own pop rocks... except at this point I was already fully committed." This, right here, is why we love you Nile.
So, nile, just so you know: the amount of water in candy making is irrelevant. You just need the highest temperature the sugar has to go to, because if you have to much water, the mixture can only go a little above the boiling point of water, but then it will boil of and only then can it reach a higher temperature. So the water content in the mixture is correlated to the temperature. That means that only when you have the right temperature you also have the right water content. That’s why the higher you heat caramel for example, the thicker it will be if you let it cool.
Bro actually bought a whole new autoclave just to make sparkly rocks Definitely deserves a like Still very useful for other experiments like hydrations, though (if the material allows it and doesn't corrode immediately)
Let's suppose Nile paid 10K for the machine (he probably did not), and divides the price of ingredients by 4 buying bulk raw sugar. His machine gets paid for when he makes the equivalent of 13 333 1-buck packs. He made 300g of rocks per run, which is what ? 15 commercially sold packs (the ones he shows at the start and says he gets for a dollar), probably more cause there's no way there's 20g of sugar in that pack ; Internet tells me 10g, so 30 servings per run. The machine gets paid for after 444 runs, and after that you're eating pop rocks for a quarter the price (and that depends even on the price you consider your ingredients to be, if you put all the 1-dollar per serving savings in paying the machine off you get that done for in 333 runs, barely a year of running it everyday).
@@paulbarbat1926well here we have it, another masterfully skilled investment to stick it to big pop, they never see this comming. Thank you for the rundown.
Yeah but they take like 60 percent profits if not more and thats why they serve it in such small portions because then they can make a huge portion and sell small ones that are cheap but expensive for the amount
You've done what I LONGED to after reading that same paper in 2019. I wanted to produce something similar to pop rocks in their still hot state when I was doing a grad-level volcanology class. I wanted to make CO2-infused molten sugar and let it explode out of a manual valve and collect the sugar 'volcanic ash'. My budget was much more limited, and I tried a citric acid + sodium bicarb reaction in my (steel plumbing pipe with a cap on one end and valve on the other) vessel to introduce the CO2 to the sugar. I used a $20 deep fryer (poorly calibrated with a candy thermometer) as my semi-controlled heat source. I got a nice puff of foamy, rusty molten sugar for all my work. Very disappointing. The leftover 'device' with its seized-open valve does look kind of like a redneck lightsaber hilt, though, and is a fun conversation piece. Your video finally gave me closure.
I'm 34 and I recently got back to pop rocks. I randomly get some at work and I thought I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I did as a kid and I got to say. It's still a pretty good candy. The popping and cracking still gets me every time and I like to bite the big chucks and feel them explode. Sometimes they shoot out my mouth. It's crazy how much pressure they got inside lmao It's crazy you uploaded this. Felt like this was made for me 😂
I fucking love when 1. He goes into the patent archives and 2. He goes on AliBaba. Those 2 things equal a GREAT video! This is one of the most satisfying you've done. Such a simple process but done so well to create a product indistinguishable from the real thing. PLEASE do more looking into patents, its so cool
Now you can make all the flavors that candy manufacturers dont have the BALLS to make! For one, make truly the most poppingest of rocks with extreme sour pop rocks, with highly concentrated lemon and citric acid to make the most extreme pop rocks ever made! And theres old classics theyd never make like banana pop rocks, or hell go truly insane, liquid smoke pop rocks! Fuck it, go absolutely crazy with it, the possibilities are endless!!
NileRed: Measures components and temperatures to the highest degree of precision and throws out the entire batch if they're off by a single molecule NileBlue: Eyeballs all measurements and just throws it all together and hopes for the best
When making candy/caramel. The more water you add, the longer it takes, as anything byond the minimum amount needs to be evaporated. You can look up the target moisture content based on how hard the candy/caramel should be. You can take the the %content moisture and multiply it by the mass of sugar. You need more than the min,~ a dash more than soft crack, it minimises burning / early caramelisation the harder you stir the mixture. So you can save time and use less water the hard you are willing to work.
When I saw how much flavouring was used for the first batch I *knew* it was gonna turn out inedible Never, ever underestimate how powerful food flavouring oils are. A table spoon worth of oil is enough to flavour a 40 pound batch (highly dependant on flavouring too, of course, but grape is strong)
Amazing video! I'm 63 and I remember having these as a kid .25 a pack and the packets were always half full! You are spot on with the price being way over priced for what you get. I really enjoy these videos, keep em coming, and thanks again!
Actually, it's not overpriced at all, last job i had a had a coworker explain to me when you are making anything and plan on selling it, you incorporate the cost of everything you buy and double it, then add more for the time and energy you put into making it, batch work like that, you divide it to get the cost of the final product.
It's why people are mad when minimum wage goes up, causes stores will have to raise the prices to offset losses, and when certain president's regulations on gas (energy), for transportation and to make goods the consumer will have to pay more because it costs more to make and send the product
A personal vendetta, my grandfather who worked at a gum factory brought me these when i was 5. I thought i was dying, years later, my favorite candy. You're missed, my dear french grandfather
Nigel, you can purchase catering packs of almost anything, in Australia we can buy massive packs of pop rocks for instance, supposed to be used for cake toppings or cupcakes etc, we buy them to put on ice cream and stuff....Just in case you wanted a cheap way to stock the cupboard without risking the big bada boom again.
Highly recommend watching some Ann Reardon related videos of making candy, both simple syrup and hard crack candy (which is what you are/were trying to make)
It won’t boil off completely, but water percentage is related to temperature- struggled with a recipe for a long time, until I learned that a sizable percentage of the candy was water.
Idea: Try extracting potassium metal from bananas. I'm not sure if this is even possible because water from filtration reactions can just eradicate the tiny bits of potassium in bananas anyways. My initial thought is to turn it into a compound and then filter it with no reactions, but I'm not an expert or anything so. I may be mistaken at how little potassium there is in bananas, but I really just want to know if it's even possible in the first place to separate the two.
Thank you for creating these videos. I've had an absolutely rancid day and coming home to see a new video from you, perks me up a bit and gives me something enjoyable to focus on. You, in particular, are special just for being you, and I love partaking in these experiments and experiences that you share.
This was actually incredibly impressive and something I never expected you to pull off or do, such a interesting process to create such an interesting candy. That first batch was explosive.
I was not expecting him to actually pull this off first try. This is one of those rare instances that he doesn't take literally months to over a year to finally get a process right lol.
most of industrial food flavours a really high in concentration, we have flavours that we mix in concentrations of 0,02 ml per liter water. also try a little bit citric acid next time^^
@@ventilate4267 not all are that small, i would say average ratio for pure flavour is between 1ml and 0,5ml. it gets even crazier when you have compounds for soft drinks, the ratio for some of the sugar free variations is below 2g but the avarage would be 10g, with sugar more like 80g
According to google, Lactose is used because the three sugar mixture has lower hygroscopicity (pulls less water from the environment) than other formulas, hence why it yields better pop rocks, as the candy stays harder in storage! TIL
Nile gradually increasing the desired RPM felt like the movie trope of the villain pushing their big scary machine to its limit while their advisor(s) beg them to stop
It will stabilize, It’s under control!
SHUT IT OFF OTTO
@@smith7602 The power of poprocks in the palm of my hands
Exactly what came to my mind when I saw it 😅😂
Not great, not terrible
I love Nile's tutorials on making super hard crack!
Indeed.
As opposed to soft crack?
super soft crack
Much cheaper than the regular suppliers!!
I want gasious crack
It'll never not be funny to me that Nigel has an _intimate_ understanding of what is basically modern day alchemy - and yet is _mystified_ by basic cooking.
*_*edit*_*_ i just thought it was a little funny, y'all, i wasn't trying to make a statement about anything - you didn't need to start a war in the replies 😳_
Lol you are right. Chemistry and physics are second nature to him, while cooking seems unfamiliar, yet fascinating.
A description of a mage if all his food was magic takeout and suddenly he has no magic to use so he needs to learn how to cook.
yeah that a good analogy 😆
It’s mostly because he considers food to be an inefficient and inconvenient nutrient delivery process.
Chemistry is precise and the exact process is completely understood (in theory at least).
Cooking is much less precise, can involve improvisation or personal preference, and is often learned by practise and memorization without any need to understand what is actually happening inside the oven.
I can absolutely understand a Chemist being confused by cooking.
the name of each stage being hard ball to soft crack to hard crack is amazing
You should make some candy, it’s pretty cool to see the different stages. Love making caramels personally.
Getting an item named "bomb" through customs seems like a fun exercise
he already on all lists so why not ?
I am sure they know its just a weird machine as soon as they saw his name, or he finally decided to make a nuclear reactor.
@@mixswist He probably has a specific employee in Customs he just works with now I bet lol.
Canadian customs is insanely lax on things coming in from China, hence why there is a huge fentanyl problem in BC and it’s almost matched with Mexico for trafficking into the US.
He's talked on a podcast about how the authorities really do not care about hobby chemistry.
The one time he was contacted by the police was when he bought a large funnel, and they immediately stopped caring when they found his channel.
Looked the machine up for anyone who is wondering. The price ranges from 5k to 10k USD
The things this man does for his candy is insane
hey what if he spends more than 10k on actual pop rocks
So, now he needs to do this a few thousand times to make back his money.. by which time his teeth will hate rotted out a d be diabetic from eating all the sugar.
bro spent 10K on a machine, so he wont be spending $1 on candy.
Bet he made 10-50k on the video lol
And, seeing as it is used for a video, can probably be written off, either in whole or in part, on his taxes as a business expense.
obsessed with how out of like 4 ingredients, he couldn't be bothered to look up even roughly how much of the flavoring to add 😭 absolutely incredible process
Also no idea on the step to add it, lmao.
He's very precise and careful until he decides to just wing it
And to top it off, he had experience with the flavoring already! He said it was old when he used it and then said, like, "Well back into storage for another year".
Tbf he was laser focused on the patent, and they (the patent’s creator) couldn’t be bothered to figure how much flavoring to add or when to add it in beforehand, either
@@oriongurtner7293 heating with the sugars may changes the flavoring molecules, so they usually added last.
Nile: This mixture has to be highly precise
Also Nile: Oops that's too much, eh should be fine
Lol, every step- "but it's probably ok..."
It's actually hilarious how good he is at precisely following steps in chemistry and how reckless and god-awful he is at following recipes.
@@ZeAwesomeHobohe cooks like an Italian nonna without the actual experience. Just eyeballing it.
Oh boy another episode of "Nile buys an ungodly expensive Chinese apparatus that will only be used for one project"
THE chinese apparatus
Don't you worry, in couple next years there will be video with "I'm glad that i bought this machine for years ago"
If he buys enough one use Chinese apparatuses then he will be able to do anything.
That's nonsense. Aerogel, superconductors, pop rocks etc. are all coverup.
@@termiterasin but only once
Former candy maker here! To keep from reaching the carmelization stage, pull your candy off about 5 degrees before your desired state. It will continue to cook for a few minutes after that, depending on the amount of candy you are making. Also, buy the proper coloring, and never try mixing colors to get the proper color. The ingredients will change the desired color if you try to mix them.
Do you think it was a correct in the first batch and a mistake in the second to leave stirring on while cooling? I preferred the texture of the first batch, by eyeball only of course.
Why is your great wisdom not higher up
@@jsalsmanbro snuck into the lab
Also wash down the side with water!
Hell yeah a professional!
My suggestion would've been to add CO2 to other random foods...but then you mentioned adding far more dangerous gases like silane to sugar, and that seemed infinitely better!
allahu akbar ahh food
I would like to see helium pop rocks just for fun!
@@古客人dasistfelixdude! 😂😂😂
Fun fact, a really easy way to carbonate soft wet foods (like fruit) is just to leave them in a bag with dry ice. No joke, it's that simple.
@古客人dasistfelix The translate option in your comment just capitalizes the words.
22:50 "Some of these crystals are two or three inches long! You're an artist Mr. Nile!"
26:10 I like how Nile’s genuinely worried but also lowkey curious so he just lets the camera man eat the *hard crack* and hopes it doesn’t rip his jaw off
When someone offers themselves in the name of science, you ask if they are sure and respect their brave sacrifice
camera man never die.
@@gilgabro420 true
Bro I fucking jumped when I heard it pop.
i think the bigger one from before genuinely could kill someone though
13:00 "kinda smell like gloves"
Years earlier "i made grape juice out of gloves"
thats exactly what went through my mind when they said that. pretty cool.
i thought it was a joke
Same .-.@@jessebeegee
Very observant
@@jessebeegee he made grape soda from clear vinal gloves over on nilered.
he also made hot sauce. lolol
8:19 "When I was making cinnamon candies, I wanted hard crack" - NileBlue, 2024
Some people would call that "drug addiction."
I call it "Human brain science"
This will be in a "Nile out of context" compilation for sure
beat me to it lol
Now i want super hard crack
If you've seen some old time candy style making videos, they use aeration to cause white color by adding in air bubbles. But they do it by folding and stretching rather than stirring
the fact that nigel casually talks in exactly the same way he narrates things on nilered makes me feel ways
What kinda ways are we talkin'..?
@@efenedick1305 10/10 would do Nigel
@@Tipp02984aw hell nah
I think they mean that most people's voice change in some way when nararrating/recording vs live audio. Nile's voice doesn't change in pitch or tone or cadence, even on podcasts. It's very recognizable but jarring compared to many people.@@efenedick1305
Nile didn't make Pop Rocks, he made Blast Boulders
Meteoric impact Mountains
Armageddon Continents
@@Alexus00712 (x)plosive planets
Hypernova Planets.
Damn straight lol
Most candy recipes: "We'll be using natural flavorings."
NileBlue: BARREL OF METHYL ANTHRANILATE
just as the founding fathers intended
Which is already degraded and then they degrade even more by putting it into boiling sugar. Neither of them has ever seen a lofty pursuits video? Some flavors and citric acid and color don’t go in till after the sugar is out of the pot and homogenized, not all bubbly. Saying it smells like burnt plastic would worry me
@@mattynek2 The world renowned founding fathers of Canada
That’s what companies secretly mean when they say “natural flavorings”.
The stuff naturally occurs in grapes, so I suppose that's natural enough for manufacturing candy.
I am 41... you have fulfilled a childhood dream. Thank you for letting me live vicariously through this video!~
11:20 NileRed is such a good creator who listens to his community. He finally gave us the hard crack rock tutorial we’ve been asking for
[]_[]
Bait
@ hooked
"Nile's super hard crack" Pop Rocks, available in various flavors like grape, cherry, cinnamon and nordihydrocapsaicin. Coming to a Walmart or Target near you soon!
Don't forget the almond scented ones
@@Mesra73 And the ones filled with spontaneously combusting gas.
Spicy Pop Rocks actually sounds good.
@@RobertCraft-re5sf hot rocks?
@@Mesra73 Thinking about it, I wouldn't trust Nile with ANY candy he serves me.
6:56 that better not be methyl anthranilate ... 7:01 OH MY GOD that is enough to make the entire city grape scented for a week
more extreme grape flavor than a peasant in the 1400s would get in his whole lifetime
What you're saying is, grape street deodorant could be a thing
Nyeheheheh
They should add that to french subways
@@travisfabel8040 Grape Street's grape, alright.
When you got to the indistinguishable phase, it brought me great joy. Well done
The amount of unusual machines in this man's lab. . .
right tool for the right job
It's slowly increasing
Instruments or tools*
I'm calling it now, at some point he's going to have a nuke reactor in his lab. Like in the cornered or something
A Mann requires the right tools for the right job
Nile, one word: Triboluminescence... aka POPROCKS THAT EMIT FLASHES OF LIGHT! Wint-O-Green Lifesavers, Altoids, and some other candies already do this when you chomp on them, but it would be really, really cool to see the candy "sparkling" as it popped in your mouth.
They may have to be "mint-flavored" poprocks though, as the methyl salicylate they use for flavoring is evidently what causes the flashes. I'm sure there are other food-safe compounds out there that would work, but that's the one that I know is edible, tastes OK, *and* makes light in candy form. Who knows, maybe you could find some alternatives that are flavorless, or maybe that emit different colors of light for the different flavors.
Yes please
Yes this one!!!
Bangin idea mate. This one is the winner.
Damn, that would be amazing at a rave.
That would be super cool! But I'm not sure if the flashes of light would be bright enough, the Triboluminescence I've seen (in videos) seem to be quite dim and last only a fraction of a second
Nigel’s channel is slowly turning into a cooking show and I’m here for it
It’s not anything I would have expected but I love it
Breaking Bad or Willy Wonka
Why r u gay
Nile Blumenthal
Let him cook
Some random Chinese company: "why the hell are we suddenly selling so many of these pressurized gas mixers?"
lactose is used in pop rocks specifically because it reduces the candy's hygroscopicity - that is, it's less likely to absorb water from the air, which would ruin the "pop"
PS - you want the cylinder to come up to room temperature before opening it, so the pop rocks don't absorb humidity from the air (because they're so cold) as soon as they come out
I feel like you're an insider at the pop rocks factory
a pop rock narc in the flesh!
Why on earth do you know this very specific piece of Information lol
Big Pop Rock is coming for you.
Please don't just leave us hanging. Give us a hint on where you learned this knowledge, oh Great Pop Rock Man. 🙌🏻
1:41
The slogan (both in English and Chinese) on screen is so hilarious!
"your reaction, my reactor!"
I re-watched it after seeing your comment. Whoever came up with that slogan was ingenious! 😆
It is Our Reactor comrade!
Only Nile can completely disregard instructions, wonder why something fails, but still keep us totally entertained.
Apparently you don't watch Exlopsions&Fire's channel.
@@V3racious3 another great channel!
Just like in horror movies about stupid teenagers? 😮
He’s basically the Arin Hanson of chemistry
Wow thanks for the spoiler you casual
This is the best video i've seen for a very long time... I love how you explain every single detail and even show what went wrong... Thanks for sharing...
The pop rocks company better come out with a “Pop Rock” because those big chunks looked intense and awesome. I could see those being like the One Chip spicy challenge.
Capsasin infused...
This result was awesome though. Exploding sugar!?!!
@@Oneill_from_Ireland lmao, ER Room here we go lol
You want to make the sugar super brittle and full of high pressure gas pockets. Like a prince rupert drop with many tails.
I would figure all the gas makes the sugar cool super slow if you have a lot of it 😅 and you want it to cool really fast for brittleness, and opening a large vat early with the pressure difference may pop. With the limited surface area and heat transfer that means it basically layers the crystallization towards the center, which doesnt lose heat ambiently nearly as fast as the ice bath causes which also still has to occur with the surface area and time
You're dry supercooling gas impregnated sugar glass!
I think the company doesn't want to do big chunks 'cause they might get sued...
I really like that @12:50 he uses an electric pipette to add a completely arbitrary amount of the flavoring 💀
it's a calibrated pipette which doesn't use electricity but still funny he just added a random amount
the precision of the arbitrary amount ended up serving a purpose though, it let him know how much is too much.
Replicability is important even when doing discovery
@@MrPoopiesoupMrPoopiesoup is foul but hilarious.
💀💀4:18
New challenge. Can you make a pop rock big enough to rival Sodium when thrown into water?
Just dont stir it but fill it with co2
Give Eulabelle a lab and she'll make a pop rock the size of the moon
@@T-Bunny stir normally when heated,
turn off stirring before cooling
Lower rpm for bigger air pockets
Probably not. Pop rocks just release a small amount of trapped gas; they don’t generate large amounts though a chemical reaction.
This is great! So amusing and funny at the same time.
I about fell off my chair laughing at the silane gas Pop Rocks concept.
26:48 "I think we mastered normal pop rocks enough." Emphasis on *normal*. Helium pop rocks when?
Nitrous rocks too
fuck it, *HYDROGEN POP ROCKS*
Helium wouldnt do anything. Youd have to inhale the rocks and then youd just get sugar solidifying in your lungs.
"How do they taste?"
_chipmunk voice_ "Pretty good"
forget about helium
*HYDROGEN POP ROCKS*
8:30 Not surprising to find a chemistry nerd talk about his love for Hard Crack
off topic but
🥷's call you the WHAT?
AN EDIBLE OF SORTS 🔥
Loved the fact that he basically made something akin to crack with about the price of it too.
I am down for some hard crack rn too.. check my username
@@dr.dr4cula785the sandwich 🫡😂
I speak from several years of high level pastry experience.
Dont stir sugar while its heating up. Once it becomes molten (the water has boiled out) you can stir it. You can tell its gone by the way the bubbles act. The bubbles start to get slow and sticky, and pop very close to each other. Which also means you can add as much or as little water as you want because it will boil off anyways.
Lactose is a sugar type. Many advantages to using different types of sugar because of stability. Sucrose isnt very stable and wants to crystallize when molten and you can add other types of more stable syrup like dextrose to stabilize everything when doing confections.
Also good little tip for measuring syrups. Measure into the container you are gunna use because you will loose a few grams which could make a difference in some recipes.
Hard crack is as far as it goes. You should play around with the different stages of sugar by rapidly cooling droplets in ice water to preserve the stage. Cooking after hard crack stage only affects the flavor. It starts get a caramelize flavor the darker it gets. Once it starts to smoke your at the end of caramel flavor and soon after you will get a burned taste
Thank you for your very informative comment.
lol no
Great tips. I'm thinking the 3 sugars in a precise ratio suppress the glass transition temperature and keep the candy in a glassy state
TLDR
he's got a ton of invert sugar in it, stirring isn't really a big deal
8:23 candy makers why are you so exelent at naming things
@26:15 a madman behind the camera, I love his gusto in basically going against Nile's judgement call. that pop was killer!
Well cameraman never dies
Someone has to test the theoretical for it to become a practical notion.
27:43 yes, indeed I did learn something. I learned how to make super hard crack.
its more like crystal
@@monad_tcpCrystal meth
My favourite home cooking channel
Now this is a top comment 😂
*meth
I actually love how the cameraman is curious to what he is doing and ask what's going on, good job man
The moment in the beginning he said "I can make this cheaper" I knew for certain there would be a new $20k machine for this video. Edit: You should try a batch with a bit of citric acid for sour poprocks
Yeah, exactly. His lab is probably better equipped that most chemistry labs.
@@NepoMi Did you see the crazy metal box with piping leading to the covered fume hood on the backgrond. I bet there is something we are gonna see in few years. Hopefully 🙂
@@VirusmanChannel That's a vacuum glove box, I looked it up
This one looks like $3000 so actually not too bad, nothing compared to the NMR machine he has
Companies usually use Malic Acid for a sour taste.
Dude, you are now, officially, my hero. I went on a similar journey myself and found out long ago that home made pop rocks weren't pop rocks and found out about the amazing way that pop rocks are made - and decided to leave it to the professionals. 😅
But you did it, brother! You bought the thing, did the thing and are now my hero. 😁❤
Lol I went through the same
You need to keep the candy thermometer off the bottom of pan it will give the wrong temp and you will go over the 300 degree F temp. I make hard candy every year for xmas.
Clipping it to the side of the pot so it’s above the bottom is a good idea…
@@markiangooley Our boys clipped it, didn't they?
they clipped it, but it still was touching the bottem of the pan.
Wouldn't it overread, rather than unread though? In other words, it'd say 300 F at the pan surface while the mixture was still at say 270F..
I suspect he did lift it off the bottom though.
That and he probably needed to wash down the sides of the pan, too, right?
Nile and Cameraman banter is peaked in this video
I accidentally made carbonated grapes and strawberries when we went camping, I used dry ice in the cooler and when we went to eat the grapes and strawberries they fizzled when we ate them, it was actually pretty cool, kids loved it 😂😂
The UA-cam cooking channel Internet Shaquille has a cool video about using dry ice in different ways. When he makes carbonated grapes he coats them in citric acid
26:25 new product idea, pop rock, just one of those large chunks
introducing pop boulder - dentist's newest nightmare
ah yes, the punch rock
Thats a genius name@@sharon_ivana
bomb rock? rocket rock?
one punch rock
This was truly delightful to watch. The sound of the big rocks exploding in their mouths genuinely made me giggle in excitement and delight, which is the same reaction I have to pop rocks, regardless of how many times I've had them. The little packages never have enough in them, so the idea of being able to literally fill my mouth with pop rocks is wonderful.
I think Kmart sells party packs of pop rocks pretty cheap, I think I need to buy a few bags, pour them into a bowl and eat them with a spoon.
kmart still exists?
i think youd need about 2-3 party packs to fill an entire bowl up with pop rocks
cool kink
I have this reaction to hard crack.
@@Crazyclay78YTthere’s a store in Australia called Kmart but it’s not the same Kmart as here in the U.S.
They also have Woolworth’s, which is a completely different company than the department store we used to have here. It’s a grocery store there. Completely unaffiliated.
I am always amazed by what is sold on alibaba. Like obviously these machines come from somewhere but the fact that it is literally delivered and is purchasable with a few clicks in insane.
I love the interaction between Nigel and his cameraman. It makes the videos very fun to watch.
i feel the opposite. I'd like less input from the cameraman.
I hate him one second and love him the next
26:30 why have a bunch of pop rocks when you could have a pop boulder?
pop planet the size of a room
Your lab is the chemics equivalent to a car mechanics garage
100 machines and devices that have specific single purpose and might not actually be used again, but were necessary at least once
Some had to be custom made for such a specific purpose
And I think that's actually very fun
It’s like his souvenirs lol
maybe for Tax write-off
Every time the RPM reached its goal I grinned when I thought "ok now turn it up" and much to my amusement, so did Nile.
We're also not gonna talk about what my first thought was when he dropped the zip bag on the table at the end.
Nile if you make more for consumption, you should tumble them in a rock tumbler with some powdered sugar and they'd probably look like commercial pop rocks as well. Just a guess.
Or just have them shipped to somewhere, they would be all powdered up in no time.
"It was also, for sure, going to be very expensive and the cost of it would completely negate any possible savings that it would ever get, by making my own pop rocks... except at this point I was already fully committed."
This, right here, is why we love you Nile.
It's not about the money, it's about sticking it to Big Candy.
The real savings were what we learned along the way.
@@Sonny_McMacsson The real savings are these videos paying for the equipment so that he can have free pop rocks
@@travisfabel8040 I mean, he does still have to buy the sugar, corn syrup, and lactose...
@@blargcosterthose things are literally dirt cheap, you can get pounds for pennies
So, nile, just so you know: the amount of water in candy making is irrelevant. You just need the highest temperature the sugar has to go to, because if you have to much water, the mixture can only go a little above the boiling point of water, but then it will boil of and only then can it reach a higher temperature. So the water content in the mixture is correlated to the temperature. That means that only when you have the right temperature you also have the right water content. That’s why the higher you heat caramel for example, the thicker it will be if you let it cool.
And if you never let it cool, it's a fun way to torture the caramel. "Oh please! Let me cool a little?" "No! You know what you did."
I just learned so much about candy making from this and probably would have never looked it up myself.
Bro actually bought a whole new autoclave just to make sparkly rocks
Definitely deserves a like
Still very useful for other experiments like hydrations, though (if the material allows it and doesn't corrode immediately)
This is probably the best advertisement for pop rocks. Makes you think, “it takes all that!? And I can purchase it with my spare change?!”
> “it takes all that!? And I can purchase it with my spare change?!”
That could be said about half the modern economy.
Let's suppose Nile paid 10K for the machine (he probably did not), and divides the price of ingredients by 4 buying bulk raw sugar. His machine gets paid for when he makes the equivalent of 13 333 1-buck packs. He made 300g of rocks per run, which is what ? 15 commercially sold packs (the ones he shows at the start and says he gets for a dollar), probably more cause there's no way there's 20g of sugar in that pack ; Internet tells me 10g, so 30 servings per run. The machine gets paid for after 444 runs, and after that you're eating pop rocks for a quarter the price (and that depends even on the price you consider your ingredients to be, if you put all the 1-dollar per serving savings in paying the machine off you get that done for in 333 runs, barely a year of running it everyday).
@@paulbarbat1926well here we have it, another masterfully skilled investment to stick it to big pop, they never see this comming.
Thank you for the rundown.
Yeah but they take like 60 percent profits if not more and thats why they serve it in such small portions because then they can make a huge portion and sell small ones that are cheap but expensive for the amount
@@paulbarbat1926 I don't think I like pop rocks THAT much.
You've done what I LONGED to after reading that same paper in 2019. I wanted to produce something similar to pop rocks in their still hot state when I was doing a grad-level volcanology class. I wanted to make CO2-infused molten sugar and let it explode out of a manual valve and collect the sugar 'volcanic ash'. My budget was much more limited, and I tried a citric acid + sodium bicarb reaction in my (steel plumbing pipe with a cap on one end and valve on the other) vessel to introduce the CO2 to the sugar. I used a $20 deep fryer (poorly calibrated with a candy thermometer) as my semi-controlled heat source. I got a nice puff of foamy, rusty molten sugar for all my work. Very disappointing. The leftover 'device' with its seized-open valve does look kind of like a redneck lightsaber hilt, though, and is a fun conversation piece. Your video finally gave me closure.
Finally… closure
I'm happy for you.
I'm very pleased for you, bard!
I love watching NileRed tutorials on making hard crack.
Or superhard crack
@@akosv96 gimme somma that supa hard crack 🤪
8:22 I just got to that point
this is probably the only recipe that doesnt require like
conventional cooking skills
and the result is flawless
I'm 34 and I recently got back to pop rocks. I randomly get some at work and I thought I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I did as a kid and I got to say. It's still a pretty good candy. The popping and cracking still gets me every time and I like to bite the big chucks and feel them explode. Sometimes they shoot out my mouth. It's crazy how much pressure they got inside lmao
It's crazy you uploaded this. Felt like this was made for me 😂
Yeah.. you’re never too old, to have the time of your life with some pop rocks loll.
I fucking love when 1. He goes into the patent archives and 2. He goes on AliBaba. Those 2 things equal a GREAT video! This is one of the most satisfying you've done. Such a simple process but done so well to create a product indistinguishable from the real thing. PLEASE do more looking into patents, its so cool
being friends with this guy must be so fun like imagine the random Christmas presents you'd get. like hell yeah dude i want lab made pop rocks
So your friend is a chemical wiz with all the equipment in the world… and he made you pop rocks for a gift???
@@billcook4768 why are you talking like that wouldn't be awesome. pop rocks in *any* flavor you want!
22:49 this is poppin!
Now you can make all the flavors that candy manufacturers dont have the BALLS to make! For one, make truly the most poppingest of rocks with extreme sour pop rocks, with highly concentrated lemon and citric acid to make the most extreme pop rocks ever made! And theres old classics theyd never make like banana pop rocks, or hell go truly insane, liquid smoke pop rocks! Fuck it, go absolutely crazy with it, the possibilities are endless!!
unironically, i would like to try the lemon ones
@@Pheubel and i would try all of them
Capsaïcine Pop Rocks...
i would totally try the banana. i love that artificial flavor.
@@MeteorMarkliteral firecrackers
8:40 i love this tutorial for super hard crack
The best kind of crack
😅😂
Will be great in an out of context video
Easier recipe:
Paint sodium blue
Eat
So real
The Hardest Crack indeed
Delicious
Omnomnom
Why am I shivering?
Force feed potassium and water pills
NileRed: Measures components and temperatures to the highest degree of precision and throws out the entire batch if they're off by a single molecule
NileBlue: Eyeballs all measurements and just throws it all together and hopes for the best
Nigel gradually increasing the desired RPM felt like that cloudy with a chance of meatballs scene
Nigel is the only youtuber to buy a fricking bomb and put it in his second channel.
fucking**
😂😂😂
When making candy/caramel. The more water you add, the longer it takes, as anything byond the minimum amount needs to be evaporated. You can look up the target moisture content based on how hard the candy/caramel should be. You can take the the %content moisture and multiply it by the mass of sugar. You need more than the min,~ a dash more than soft crack, it minimises burning / early caramelisation the harder you stir the mixture. So you can save time and use less water the hard you are willing to work.
Not only that, but he completely screws it up by adding the flavoring and color after
I think it’s crazy that the first batch was so off that it was literally exploding and yet this man still ate it
When I saw how much flavouring was used for the first batch I *knew* it was gonna turn out inedible
Never, ever underestimate how powerful food flavouring oils are. A table spoon worth of oil is enough to flavour a 40 pound batch (highly dependant on flavouring too, of course, but grape is strong)
@@DJBaphomet It's funny how this is a mistake he has repeated time after time for years.
Now, obviously, you must make flavors that are not commercially available. Licorice flavor, sassafras flavor, ginger flavor, cayenne flavor, ...
silane flavor, butane flavor, tritium flavor...
military grade stink pop rocks
Taro
scatole
came here to say this. i want mcdonalds sprite flavored pop rocks
i love just out of context nile saying that hes making "hard crack" and "even harder crack"
Wouldve been a goldmine for nilegreen.
I love these videos so much. I suck at chemistry, but i sure love to watch chemical reactions. Especially when they're explained this well!
Amazing video! I'm 63 and I remember having these as a kid .25 a pack and the packets were always half full! You are spot on with the price being way over priced for what you get. I really enjoy these videos, keep em coming, and thanks again!
25c in 1970 (assuming you were around 9) is worth $2 today. If anything they've gotten a little cheaper
1 bag was 25c at that time you now spend 2 bucks for 4 bag pack at least in my state
It’s wholesome someone of your age watches his videos haha
Actually, it's not overpriced at all, last job i had a had a coworker explain to me when you are making anything and plan on selling it, you incorporate the cost of everything you buy and double it, then add more for the time and energy you put into making it, batch work like that, you divide it to get the cost of the final product.
It's why people are mad when minimum wage goes up, causes stores will have to raise the prices to offset losses, and when certain president's regulations on gas (energy), for transportation and to make goods the consumer will have to pay more because it costs more to make and send the product
A personal vendetta, my grandfather who worked at a gum factory brought me these when i was 5. I thought i was dying, years later, my favorite candy. You're missed, my dear french grandfather
27:34 can't wait to hear about it on the news
From NileRed to NileGreen real quick
At what point does a candy become a munition
@@ngwoowhen you add silane
The ever so lethal pop-boulder!
As someone whos lactose intolerant and loves pop rocks, I am devastated.
OMG this is one of the best videos. Throwing the rock and seeing it bounce and fall and then "explode" and jump all over the room
was mindblowing
Nigel, you can purchase catering packs of almost anything, in Australia we can buy massive packs of pop rocks for instance, supposed to be used for cake toppings or cupcakes etc, we buy them to put on ice cream and stuff....Just in case you wanted a cheap way to stock the cupboard without risking the big bada boom again.
As a fellow Australian... Fukn where!?
Highly recommend watching some Ann Reardon related videos of making candy, both simple syrup and hard crack candy (which is what you are/were trying to make)
I'm in my late 40s and your channel is one of few I get genuinely excited over when new content is put out. Thanks for the effort.
The amount of water doesn't matter because to achieve the temp it all has to boil off anyway.
It won’t boil off completely, but water percentage is related to temperature- struggled with a recipe for a long time, until I learned that a sizable percentage of the candy was water.
@@cheebahjones420 yep… basically lining it all up all the way to 212°F! Oops… I meant 100°C… 😳
8:15 Love learning to make super hard crack ❤️
THATS SO FUNNY 😂
Idea: Try extracting potassium metal from bananas. I'm not sure if this is even possible because water from filtration reactions can just eradicate the tiny bits of potassium in bananas anyways. My initial thought is to turn it into a compound and then filter it with no reactions, but I'm not an expert or anything so.
I may be mistaken at how little potassium there is in bananas, but I really just want to know if it's even possible in the first place to separate the two.
26:15
The pop sound was so concerning yet satisfying, and then Nigel's reaction is priceless. Love this moment XD
Thank you for creating these videos. I've had an absolutely rancid day and coming home to see a new video from you, perks me up a bit and gives me something enjoyable to focus on. You, in particular, are special just for being you, and I love partaking in these experiments and experiences that you share.
Let's just hope you don't have another day like today for 9 months, when his next video drops lmao
This was actually incredibly impressive and something I never expected you to pull off or do, such a interesting process to create such an interesting candy. That first batch was explosive.
I was not expecting him to actually pull this off first try. This is one of those rare instances that he doesn't take literally months to over a year to finally get a process right lol.
Congratulations on demonstrating it is possible to create something we've all eaten
Chef of 20 years here. You are not far off the mark with your theories about the process
most of industrial food flavours a really high in concentration, we have flavours that we mix in concentrations of 0,02 ml per liter water. also try a little bit citric acid next time^^
That is an insanely small ratio
@@ventilate4267 not all are that small, i would say average ratio for pure flavour is between 1ml and 0,5ml. it gets even crazier when you have compounds for soft drinks, the ratio for some of the sugar free variations is below 2g but the avarage would be 10g, with sugar more like 80g
According to google, Lactose is used because the three sugar mixture has lower hygroscopicity (pulls less water from the environment) than other formulas, hence why it yields better pop rocks, as the candy stays harder in storage! TIL
this needs more upvotes
@@n9nereddit user
I spent the whole end of the video it's the biggest smile on my face wow well done bro