OK I got a mandatory General Chemistry Textbook, yay! People, however, give me textbooks all the time. One of them was Organic Chemistry, and I'm thinking what exactly would I use it for? My first thought was: can it help me make good beer? Can I learn how to test THC levels in marijuana? Antioxidant levels in a smoothie with added cocoa, or berry wine? Vitamin levels in stuffs? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Eventually, maybe. But you'll have to flog through a load of tedious stuff about cycloalkanes and SN1 vs. SN2 reaction mechanisms first, I'm afraid. Woodward-Hofmann Rules are cool, though - look em up. Also the norbornyl cation, though that may be an acquired taste.......
I glanced at, Woodward-Hofmann, and thought to myself I would need a very very expensive laboratory to incorporate an organic chemistry education into beer and wine making. Besides that thinking of the chemical composition of neurotransmitters? Anyway, does anybody know how to test the antioxidant levels in an unclear liquid?
If you know what the antioxidant is (e.g. BHT) and just want to know the amount you have, you could probably still consider something like IR. If you have an unknown mixture the best bet may be a method by which you expose it (at a set temperature) to a known pressure of oxygen and monitor the uptake rate. With many antioxidants you will get almost no uptake until the antioxidant is exhausted - what is called an induction period - followed by a rapid rise once oxidation starts. Methods like these are used in the oil industry for lubricating oils, which the area I used to work in. For wine and beer, chemical analysis has certainly been done. But as these are highly complex mixtures the equipment would indeed be considerable. I would think some form of gas chromatography, to separate these mixtures for one by one evaluation, would be essential. But I have not looked into it.
I would just focus on temperature levels of organic molecules unraveling. Then I could mix antioxidents protein and CBD into a chocolate.
