How to make your own edible water bottles
In a world where plastic waste is a real problem, companies are springing up trying to find a solution. One of these companies is Skipping Rocks Lab, who have successfully designed an edible water bottle made from seaweed compounds. If you’re curious about them, why not make your own?
Edible Water Bottles
You will need:
1 gram sodium alginate
5 grams food-grade calcium lactate
(These sound fancy and complicated but the first is just a refined compound of brown seaweed and the other is a salt used in cheese – you can find these to food grade standards here)
1.2 litres of water
Three bowls
Ladle
Kitchen Scales
It’s important that you have a good set of kitchen scales so you can weigh out the right measurements, otherwise, you might get the wrong consistency, and be left with either goop or balls of jelly.
Step 1.
Start by mixing 1 gram of sodium alginate into 240 ml of water. It might not dissolve easily, so you can use a blender or whisk to mix it all together and help speed up the process.
Step 2.
Mix 5 grams of calcium lactate into a different bowl filled with 950 ml of water, and keep stirring until it is completely dissolved.
Step 3.
At this point, you have two bowls of liquid. Using a ladle add spoonfuls of the sodium alginate water into the calcium lactate water. Be careful not to add too much of the sodium alginate, if it gets too crowded they will stick together.
Step 4.
Stir the mixture for 3 minutes to activate the ingredients and cause the sodium alginate to congeal.
Step 5.
Get out the third bowl, but this time just fill it with water. Using a slotted spoon, pick up the bubbles out of the calcium lactate and put them into the plain water to stop the reaction.
Step 6.
Give it a mix, and then you can remove the edible water bottles and put them on a plate or into a bowl for everyone to try!
Did it work? Let us know in the comments. And remember you can experiment with different flavours – try using juice or squash.
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