didn't fuck up making cinnamaldehyde from styrofoam, fucked up candy making. this is the content i always come back for

39:53 - "What I needed though, was hard crack." - NileRed, 2024

Weeks of painstaking chemistry followed by minutes of complete improvisation.

I love how almost every Nile's video goes like "This may have 97% kill rate, but I'm gonna try it anyways."

if i argue with that guy he would turn me into a gummy bear

49:43 "And I'm gonna be focusing on some more dangerous projects like turning AIR into a BOMB" nilegreen really predicted it all along

Your way of setting up a sentence and then never finish it the way id think you would and keep the video going like that for 52 minutes is amazing. It reminds me of rhythmic verbal hypnosis techniques.

Alternate title "I eat plastic so the fish don't have to."

$6,500 for a candy roller is the craziest part of this video

Styrofoam is already tasty enough.

Candy maker here! What happened there was it was too hot you have to use ice baths to slowly cool down the pan before putting on the table it shouldn't look like a liquid when it hits the table should be more solid. Like you guessed this is time sensitive.. Also to get it more crunchy you have stretch it on a warmed rod that keeps it from fully cooling this is the hardest part because going too slow can cause it to harden but this part is important for removing air and also mixing the flavor more evenly.

Nile pretending he couldnt take out 78% of new york on a sunday afternoon

You won't hear the words "it's really corrosive and kinda toxic, but it was exactly was exactly what I needed to make my cinnamon flavor" anywhere else

First step: homemade Napalm 4:45

Hello Nile! My name is Michael Lesser, I'm a college student from Florida. I'd like to ask you to consider adding captions to videos, and not the auto generated stuff since some chemicals can not be translated. This is so Deaf people or people who are hard of hearing can enjoy your videos easier and have the full experience, the science you do is so amazing, it would be a shame if anyone missed out. Love your content!

I love that you've casually just reminded everyone how to make vegan napalm in your *checks notes* Cinnamon Candy Video

42:00 gotta love how he had basically 0 problems with the complicated science stuff but he ran into problems 4 steps into making the actual candy

nilered: and I set it up for a distillation nilered: ... and I set it up for a distillation nilered, crying internally: ... and I set it up for another distillation

15:05 i love looking at the reflection in the flask and seeing you just staring at the setup

I love how he presents those "2 little instruments that I have", and I know they must be VERY expensive.

NileRed is the perfect blend of extremely detailed and diligent chemistry and phrases like “I figured it would probably be fine” and “I felt like the reaction was probably done”

If there’s one thing Nile Red has taught me, it’s that 90% of the work in chemistry is purification.

it's crazy how this semester, i'm taking ochem lab and now i can fully understand the processes nile does in his videos

"Very carefully break up the sugar" *cuts to Nigel hitting it with a meat tenderiser like it owes him money.*

Organic chemistry: Measured and precise Candy making: Chaos and use feeling

As someone who makes a lot of candy at home, it's funny seeing that Nile struggled more making basic hard candy than converting styrofoam into cinnamon oil in a lab.

i love how he spends all this time making food in the most difficult ways possible, just for them to turn out mid every time

It is worth noting that the early phase - the melting of the polystyrene glasses - is how modelling plastic cement works. You apply a thin layer to one side of the new joint, press the two parts together, and the cement (which is by half acetone and by half butyl acetate) melts a layer of plastic, which will then weld the two pieces together when it solidifies again.

As a pastry chef, what happened was you Seized the sugar. using the metal scraper on it caused it to create small sugar crystals in the syrup. when mixing molten sugars, you only fold it using the silmat till the sugar becomes more dense.

This guy is the embodiment of someone who is smart/skilled enough to be allowed in the lab, but also insane enough to be banned from it

Thank you so much Nile, your videos are curing my trauma i have from my chemistry internships during my biology studies at university. I had shitty internship teachers, but your videos give me back the fascination about chemistry ❤️. 😊

Nilered is probably the best chemistry youtube channel, everything he says is extremely clear and easy to understand, he teaches me alot about different chemicals and compounds (which is why i love chemistry) he also does a bunch of interesting and cool experiments which i find awesome in short: Nilered is the best!

Nile starving looking around his apartment for something to eat and drink and seeing styrofoam cups, plastic gloves, and paint thinner sitting in the corner of the room

It's striking how there's simultaneously so much overlap between chemistry skills and kitchen skills and yet they don't quite seem to transfer.

Can't wait for nilered to buy a particle accelerator for a transformation project.

I don't know why but I was so proud of how well you actually did the candy making part of this even with the mistakes

As a professional chef for many many years it's incredible he managed to make candy without horrifically burning himself. Also the reason why your candy seized like that is because you added in alot of cold liquid(food dye) without a stabilizer, which caused it to start instantly crystalizing around it even before you poured it out of the pan. Basically, in short, make sure to heat it to 300 or 320 or whatever ur temp is AFTER any additives or you'll get a chalky crumbly sugar mess instead of candy.

What happened on the first attempt at the cinnamon candy is something called “sugaring”. It’s when the candy is so saturated that it crystallizes back into regular sugar. This can be cause by too much agitation, too much water, too little water, and too high of a temperature. The fix is exactly what you did, using corn syrup to help stabilize the sugar.

I love these long format videos, absolutely fantastic and hope you keep them going.

Chemistry is more about winging it rather than was I expected, formulations and exact calculable procedures.

the fact that the red dye was more dangerous than the flavouring made of plastic in the final recipe was impressive

Gotta love how, time and time again, Nile proves how great he is at chemistry, and completely helpless he is with cooking.

This is most definitely my comfort youtube channel ❤ thanks for all your effort and amazing content 🎉

Candy maker here. I have had my molten sugar seize a few times before. Your instinct was spot on. Corn syrup keeps sugar from making course crystals like that. Also, I have always wanted a drop roller like that! I use an antique one that's pretty cool. You should roll your molten sugar when it's more stretchy. Let the hot candy rest longer on your silicon longer before beginning to stretch it. Once it firms up along the edge, you can fold it easier, and as you stretch it, you can align the crystals and make a crunchier candy. I would be happy to show you somehow, not sure how.

I love Nile doing a bunch of precise chemistry, walking us through it as a teacher and entertainer... and then kind of beefing it on the last possible step with a regular household skill

Honestly love how he goes from sounding really professional and educated reading papers on how to do processes to turn polystyrene into cinnamon to complete and utter panic at making hard sweets

I didn’t know I would like this video but I enjoyed the whole procedure and hard work it took for you to achieve your goal! Great job to you!🎉❤

I truly appreciate you generosity, you are a great teacher! Thank you

For people who don't know, the terms "lemon drops" and "cough drops" come from the process we see at the end here. You drop a sheet of them and they break into perfect chunks.

I love that the chemistry bits are super-precise, and the candy making turns into, "Then I added some random amount of water and corn syrup, and dumped in a bunch of food coloring." Excellent video!

Never realized how much I love the way he says "so!"

sugar / corn syrup / water mixture can solidify like that if there is still to much water in it / not boiled long enough at the desired temperature.

As a hobbyist candymaker, the candy seizing up is crystallization. The usual suspect here is undissolved sugar left on the sides of the pot. Most recipes recommend you apply a wet brush to the sides of the pot to get rid of any crystals left once it's reached the boiling point; some recommend putting a lid on for a few minutes, causing the condensed water to do the same job. The issue is that hard candy is meant to be a glass, an amorphous solid -- so any seed crystals will spread if introduced. The process happens very fast with hot candy, but still happens slowly at room temperature. Freezing is exothermic, and if it happens again, you can actually feel the latent heat of fusion as it occurs! At 40:24, you can see some crystals left on the sides of the pot, after the heating has already been turned off. Leaving the syrup in the pot, adding in cold ingredients, and stirring it, all cool down the syrup and increase the risk of picking up a small amount of solid sugar that won't melt -- and, just picking up a few molecules can cause crystallization when the candy gets closer to the freezing point. The second attempt likely worked because the bubbling action brought the hot syrup in contact with the solid crystals, allowing the heat to melt them. In general, remelting candy causes decomposition reactions to happen, possibly causing off flavors and colors; as well as boiling of volatile oils, making the intended flavor less pronounced. That said, fantastic job getting it to work on the first batch!

"Dude I could go for a drink and some candy, what you got?" *Nile looking intently at gloves and styrofoam cups*

It would be really interesting if you had a series where you compared how you did it, to how the actual flavorings are made.

nigel, I used to work for genpak, big canadian foam container company. resin pellets, isobutane or pentane is what the blowing agent we used on that, nothing else went into them. so has to be the base resin.

The way he narrates cracks me up. "In theory, it could ignite and potentially cause the blender to explode. So I made the decision to pretty much immediately stop it."

I love the transition from your domain of chemistry ("I carefully extracted 3.7ml with a pipette") to food science ("... And a completely arbitrary amount of corn syrup")

When I worked for a company that recycled EPS we had to grind up all the eps we got back into it's littlest unpressed form and the friction from pushing the eps out of the machine into a long plank or brank hardened it on the outside making it like bricks or planks of heavy wood

The flammability of the goop is no joke. I actually lit my room on fire when I was 15 by absolute accident while melting styrofoam. It went up so quickly I didnt even really have time to react and just threw a glass full of water at the wall

Nile following the OChem stereotype of "Putting 1 Colorless Liquid into another Colorless Liquid to get a third, also colorless, liquid" is the YT Chemistry I'm here for.

So there's one thing you're missing from this project: a heated table. It helps to keep the candy from getting too hard and stay malleable. You have the press next to the table and run it through the press straight from the table.

Hey I've made candy a few times before and it looks like that issue you had with the "chunky candy" is from crystallization that forms around the edge of the pot when you boil the sugar violently. When these small crystals cool down into your candy they make a texture similar to what you were pulling apart in your video. You found the right solution, just re-melt it.

Its funny how good Nigel's chemistry cooking skills differ so much from his actual food cooking skills.

Nile spending 6250 USD on a candy roller will never not be amazing

All your videos are very interesting and entertaining, 10/10

This man has tenacity. I would have burst into tears during the candy making process. Should have removed it at the right temp.

Nile was the perfect mix between a deranged but smart scientist and that one unemployed friend at 2 pm on a tuesday

Absolutely love that NileRed's close to mastering chemistry as a whole and yet, when it comes to cooking/baking anything, he's a toddler with an apron

I love how it turned into a cooking video 2/3 of the way through

Great work! Leaving a comment for the algorithm. Good luck and looking forward to your upcoming projects.

I like how hardest part for nile was making actual candy instead of the chemistry.

I love that the hard chemistry portion involves a lot of research and meticulous attention to detail but then the candy making process, which is really just applied chemistry, boils down to "idk, I'm sure it can't be that hard" XD

I love you Nile, video had come out on my Bday

Nile makes me feel like I know everything about chemistry and that I am smart

as a chemistry student who vaguely knows things about chemistry now these videos are 100% more entertaining and also 100% more dangerous because my fatal flaw is looking at something i cannot do and going "i can do that"

As someone who has made candy before I know what happened when the white chunks appeared. This was caused by the candy syrup seizing due to a lack of corn syrup which inherently interrupts the crystallization process of sugar cooling down. This was luckily solved when you added more to the mixture however which I'm shocked that you basically did by chance.

Ugh this is my favourite cooking channel

I love putting on his videos that I've already watched to sleep. I mean this with no hate, I love his videos. Something happens to my brain when I hear him speak; I black out within 10 minutes. I can fully watch a video if it's the first time, but if I've already seen it, it's like a sleeping sledge hammer that hits me right in the face.

air is 78% Nitrogen. and nitrogen is used in many explosive, so next video will be him getting the nitrogen from the air and making amonium using the Haber-Bosch process

As a pastry chef and confectioner, Nile's candy-making skills are actually pretty impressive, all things considered. Those cranks are crazy to use, and the candies look great!

I love this man so much.

Watching Nigel make candy is satisfying af

I love this channel. He spends literal weeks synthesising a tiny vial of the vital ingredient, of which he'll need over half for a batch of the final product, and then fully commits first time instead of practicing once on an unflavoured batch of the practically-free sugar candies. Cooking sugar to make any sort of candy or caramel is one of the scariest things to do in the kitchen because of how a five-second mistake can ruin the entire enterprise despite how cheap the ingredients are.

I love this whole "turning something completely inedible into something consumable" series, it fascinates me what's all possible through chemistry

Carries out weeks of complex chemistry, then completely wings the candy part. This is why we're all here

I'm not even a minute in and I'm predicting that the hardest part for Nigel will be making the actual candy. He's a decent chemist, I don't think he's an amazing chef lol.

Love how Nile is just dropping that “oh yea we can use this for napalm sometimes” while mixing two common and very cheap products together.

I am a chemist too, and I was initially scared when you said you needed to evaporate the acetone off of the polystyrene -- I was like "don't use an oven, don't use an oven, don't use a flame, don't use a flame, just let it sit out" haha

Great video, keep up the good work

fun fact! the reason so many candies have ‘drops’ in their name (ie, Lemon Drops) is because of the process of dropping the big sheet of hardened sugar onto the table to separate the individual candies after it’s been rolled out

From a prep cook. Dealing with sugar is an absolute bastard. Having made caramel sauce, it's really easy for it to crystalize at the exact wrong time and lose the entire batch. The fact that you got past all that and almost had it is incredible.

This is amazing

The emotional rollercoaster of this thing seeming to never end

6:05 "It kinda felt like pulling apart a fresh quesadilla" *DON'T EAT IT NILE DON'T DO IT*

I love how you see things going pretty well at minute 10 and then accidentally see the progress bar and see you've got an emotional roller-coaster to go on still

Hey NileRed, I'm on a keto diet and can't enjoy certain foods. Could you make a video on efficient methods to separate sugar from mixtures, like honey or fruit juice/powder? It would be super helpful! Thanks!

Insane how many steps are involved in this one.

Fun fact. Styrofoam and acetone are used as practical effects in movies to simulate strong acid effects.

nile saying he needed “hard crack” at 39:53 literally made me spit out my food from laughing 💀 this video has sm good clips