fostel@ncsu.UUCP (08/12/83)
Someone asked what was the ingredient that the US agreed to stop putting
in its Bubbly? Well, get ready to call you doctor, cause it was peroxide.
Yeah. Very unappealling. My only hope is that is was never done on
Domestic releases of sparkling things. If you have any old US champaigne
think of the new uses! Sterilize wounds! Bleach your hair! Dried blood
sounds tame by comparison.
----GaryFostel----
P.S. Someone else asked about the bubbles in "Fine Champaigne" and whether
size was relevant. Yes and no. A number of factors can determine the size
of the bubbles, some of which are related to "quality". Bubbles tend to
form around "things" -- nucleation loci if your into that -- like sharp spots
on the glass surface, or little pieces of dirt. Sooo the more flaws in the
glass and the more dirt, the more bubbles form, faster. Sooo the less
Co2 there is hot to trot into bubbles, so each bubble -- itself a nucleation
locus -- will encounter less Co2 as it rises and will thence be small.
So cheap glass and sediment could lead to lots of small bubbles. Also,
the of course, things like temperature, viscosity and Co2 solubility enter
into it. If its cold, the bubbles should be small. Perhaps people are
more careful to properly chill "quality" champaigne. Viscosity and
solubility are the areas where grape and fermentation properties seem
most likely to enter. The viscosity will (guess) be most strongly related
to sugar content, with drier varieties having less sugar. My intuition
is that a dry solution would lead to more smaller bubbles, because of
the relatively easier time the bubble would have getting started in life
perhaps allowing for nucleation sites which are a bit smaller, hence
more numerous, hence giving again, the smaller bubbles. So DRY champ.
would tend to ahve smaller bubbles. Maybe you should write to the guy
who does the Ameteur Scientist and ask him to do a colume on it. Sounds
like his kind of thing. His name is Jearle Walker.
----gnf---