It's 600 times sweeter than sugar, so help me dilute this.
February 23, 2018 4:12 PM   Subscribe

I bought some pure sucralose and I would like to make it into something usable. Help me figure that out.

I would like to dilute the powdered sucralose into a liquid solution so that I can use it in food and beverages. I do not want to mix it with a powdered filler. I need help figuring out how much powder and how much liquid to put together to make this usable.

What I have:
• 100 grams of pure sucralose.
• A 2 oz bottle with an eyedropper.
• Vodka.
• Water.
What I do not have:.
•A sensitive scale.
What I know:
• One serving of pure sucralose is 30 mg.
• 1/2 tsp of the pure sucralose is ~1050 mg.
• There are ~1200 drops in 2 oz. (~30 fl ml in an ounce and ~20 drops in a fl ml)
Considerations:
• I want to be able to use the solution in both something like coffee AND in cooking/baking.
• Would vodka or water be a better medium for the dilution? Or something else?
• I know that the lack of a sensitive way to measure the sucralose is less than ideal, so the answer I come up with will be both imperfect and inexact. That's fine, as long as I can figure out what I need to do to correct for it.

So, I get lost doing the math. I also can't decide how strong to make it. Help? And can you think of other things I might want to take into consideration?
posted by Stewriffic to Food & Drink (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I've been doing this for awhile. I just tried different measures until I got what works for me. I think the dropper bottle I have is 3oz.
I use 2 tsp and fill the rest with water. I'll use ~3 drops for a 8oz cup of coffee. 10 drops suffices for a pitcher of hibiscus tea. I made noodle pudding and used 20 drops; it was too sweet.
posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 4:20 PM on February 23, 2018


I think what you want is simple syrup, which is a sugar/water mixture that has the same sweetening power as an equal volume of granulated sugar.

Except that you are starting with 100 grams of something that is 600 times sweeter than sugar. So that's 600*100 grams of water to go with it, or 17.67 gallons of water. Nope.

So you don't want simple syrup. You could make a solution of sucralose that is 10 times sweeter than granulated sugar, volume for volume, by mixing your 100 grams of sucralose into 1.767 gallons of water. That's only 1/5 of a cup away from 1.75 gallons of water, so I'd shine it on and call it 7 quarts of water.
posted by the Real Dan at 6:35 PM on February 23, 2018


Response by poster: Y'all rock.

Let's get deeper if we can. I'm looking for a balance in the solution of 1) precision, 2) economy of volume (2 oz not 2 gallons), and 3) usability in real world applications.

Cat Pie Hurts's answer gets close to the volume of what I am asking for, but is less precise than I was aiming for. Ideally I'd like to be able to say 1 drop= 1tsp, for example.

The Real Dan's is precise enough but makes too much solution and I have no idea how a 10x solution translates to equivalent baking/cooking measurements.

I *think* that if I could get 30 mg per one drop that might work. I also think I could make a solution of up to 2 cups, as long as I think it will keep. (Hence the vodka options).

Clarified question: How do I make a solution so that one drop is equal to the sweetening of 1 tsp sugar?

Goal: 30 mg pure sucralose = 1 tsp sugar = one drop solution

Maybe I ought to have the category changed from food and drink to math or something.
posted by Stewriffic at 6:31 AM on February 24, 2018


Response by poster: Oh, and I definitely do not want a simple syrup because 1.5 cups liquid won't work in a cookie recipe, if you see what I mean.
posted by Stewriffic at 6:35 AM on February 24, 2018


I did the math on this once. Sucralose dissolves in water at about 25-27 percent by weight. I weigh out 7.5g of sucralose and add warm water to reach 30g. If you go much higher than that, it will fall out of solution (esp. if it gets cold).

At this maximal solution, it's about the 1 drop == 1 tsp sugar mark. I use a couple drops in a mug of coffee and 5-6 drops for 24 oz of rather sweet tea.

Basically, you really want to add as much sucralose to your water as it will hold. If it precipitates out, add more water, if it doesn't precipitate out add more sucralose. :)

Be careful handling sucralose, just because it's so finely powdered it tends to get everywhere and is really yucky to breathe.
posted by zengargoyle at 6:35 AM on February 24, 2018


Response by poster: Oooh! That's really good, zengargoyle! You added super important practical info about risks of handling and supersaturation AND a metric formula. So now given my constraints of no scale to weigh, I'm going to go with your approach of guesstimating teaspoons of powder to a particular volume of water and then checking visually for the saturation.

1/2 tsp= approx 1 gram of sucralose

So 3 and 3/4 tsp for 30 ml water?
posted by Stewriffic at 6:49 AM on February 24, 2018


« Older Writing a character with a disability   |   One missed period and two negative pregnancy tests Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.