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A few years ago, I spent time exploring highly concentrated bubble juice concentrates. eGoo was one of the fruits of that exploration and yields a concentrate that can be diluted 20:1 or more (though 14:1-17:1 are more frequently used). It is an easy recipe that can be altered slightly to make a concentrate of just about any strength. Such concentration is easy with high molecular weight PEO but not easy with polymers like HEC and guar gum which require much higher polymer concentrations -- which tend to be either unstable in the presence of soap. I have some nice 3:1 and 4:1 concentrates that are shelf-stable, but no super-concentrates that are nice and uniform.

20140317 20140316 guar concentrate waterless CROP WEB

Bubble gel 1.1. March 16, 2014

I have succeeded in making waterless guar concentrates in the past that work well but are kind of ugly -- because the only way (until know) that I found to make a concentrated guar-based bubble juice that dilutes at a high water:concentrate dilution -- is to basically mix guar gum, detergent and something that disrupts hydration. It turns out that baking powder will do the trick. Essentially, you end up with a slurry where the unhydrated (i.e. ungelled) guar gum and the baking powder's corn starch separate out. It works fine, but you still need to add baking powder when diluting since the baking powder in the concentrate has no power to influence the pH of the diluted juice. (pH adjustment is the reason that baking powder is beneficial to bubble juice.)

Anyway, I had an idea a few years ago about something to try that I totally forgot about until looking through my backlog of experiment ideas. I'll wait to share details until we have seen whether this mix is shelf-stable or not. It is based on the results the 2012 waterless concentrate trials -- essentially a slight tweak of one of the recipes that I used with the amounts adjusted a little bit and a tiny bit of an extra ingredient or two.

We'll see....

First update - late morning the next day[]

This morning, I decided it would be handy to have a second batch of this gel -- that I might use while I let the original mix sit on the shelf. I mixed up the same ingredients with one ingredient added in a different order. Within 90 minutes, the new batch showed signs of separation and settling. It will be interesting to see if the two end up in the same state -- taking different lengths of time to stratify -- or if the initial mix will stay uniform.

20140318 superconcentrates
 

The mix separated. The next day an attempt to re-stir was momentarily successful but after 20 minutes separation started again. I diluted the mix with 1 liter water. The result was a bit too acidic and needed some baking soda to bring the pH in to the target range of 7.2-7.6. There were some floating very small chunks. The next day, these were mostly resolved, but the mix was not as uniform as I would like.

Third Batch[]

20140318conc mislabeled

On March 18, I mixed up another batch with a slightly different mixing order and a very tiny variation in the amount of one ingredient. The result was quite different from the first two batches. This may be too stiff to dilute well. We'll leave it to see if it is stable.

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