I Made MSG From Sewage…sort of...

[00:00:10][ __ ] happens. So make MSG out of it. MSG was discovered in Japan from dried seaweed. It's the fifth taste.

[00:00:19]>> King of flavor. Umami is the best flavor. The basic taste is sweet, salty, sour, bitter. All of them are [ __ ] Umami tastes like happiness.

[00:00:35]>> But you know what? I found this patent on how to make MSG. And I learned that the biggest company that produces almost all the MSG on this planet, Ainoto, they don't harvest it from seaweed. You know what they do? They basically do the same thing as raising chickens and collecting eggs. Except those chickens are tiny little bacteria that [ __ ] out MSG. And one of those bacteria is called coriny bacteria. Coriny bacterium. Tanicum.

[00:01:02]Glutanic. It's like 50 syllables. Oh my god. But I also need to say this is a stupid idea.

[00:01:10]Don't ever do this at home. There are bacteria and molds that will actually paralyze you or give you cancer or even worse, kill you if you accidentally grow it and eat it. I've grown mold on stuff to eat before, but you know exactly when it goes wrong. It starts smelling bad and looking incredibly cursed. But in this case, everything will smell bad and it will look like nothing because everything's really, really, really, really, really small. So in the 1950s in Japan, corony bacterium glutanicum was originally found in soil. And since this bacteria creates amino acids which has a nitrogen group in it, it needs a good source of nitrogen. And you know what else has a good source of nitrogen? Poop and pee. There were actually a group of scientists that went out and collected sewage contaminated soil. And through a lot of painstaking, tedious steps, they were able to isolate this bacteria that basically makes MSG, which cost me almost $200 to buy.

[00:02:09]>> I can't let you go, baby.

[00:02:13]I just want to tell you that.

[00:02:23]We're going to grow some bacteria so it can poop out glutamic acid. Then we're going to isolate that glutamic acid. And then we're going to convert that glutamic acid into MSG. Three steps.

[00:02:33]Should be easy, right? We're basically just making a beef broth that's a little bit sweet with an addition of some biotin. The beef broth has the nitrogen from the protein in order to be converted to the glutenic acid. We're also going to add sugar and salt into this broth, which is called growth media. Sugar is food for bacteria, so it can kickstart its growth. We're also adding salt because we're trying to keep other microbes out, and our target bacteria actually needs a little bit of salt to live. Biotin is actually just vitamin B7, and I bought it from CVS.

[00:03:04]This helps bacteria make glutamic acid.

[00:03:06]But now, we have to make sure there's absolutely no other bacteria inside of these. That means we have to increase the boiling temperature of water.

[00:03:14]Sebulinum spores, the ones that paralyze you, can live at boiling temperatures, and they live in anorobic or no oxygen conditions, which is exactly what we have in these jars. So, the pressure cooker actually raises the boiling point of water to about 240 to 250° F, which should be enough to sterilize our food.

[00:03:31]Things can potentially go horribly wrong now.

[00:03:45]This reminds me of when I used to cut open dead bodies. I had to keep everything sterile. And I'm not really that confident in this. I've never taken a microbiology class. And all my chemistry skills I never thought I would use again after graduating. This can go wrong if I breathe into it, if I sweat into it. And mold and bacteria just float in the air naturally all the time.

[00:04:08]So, if any of that gets into the solution, I'm pretty screwed. This is stupid. This is real stupid.

[00:04:16]But hey, for the king of flavor, right? When there's no one to blame, it's a hoax.

[00:04:22]It's a chamele.

[00:04:31]Do you ever feel that this place is real?

[00:04:36]It's a long life battle. I know I'mma take the time and it breaks me down.

[00:04:49]>> And now we wait for like 8 to 12 hours.

[00:04:52]We don't really know if we're going to have contamination. So this next step is here in order for us to make sure we're not going to die from eating this. But this step also means you have to transfer the bacteria over, which means there's more room for contamination.

[00:05:06]Let's love the people from every corner of the world.

[00:05:26]So, it's been a couple days and we finally have this.

[00:05:30]Looks good. But these huge dots and colonies of bacteria, meaning there was some sort of contamination. And it didn't just happen with this plate. It happened with this one and this one and this one too. But luckily, I knew I wasn't really that good at microbiology. So, this is past trunk. This is probably a week before I'm actually doing everything. We're gonna grow some bacteria on some augur plates just in case I mess up. Nick's gonna help me out with uh growing some bacteria. So, I didn't expect this to come in like a glass container. And we don't really know how to open it. So, uh well, that exploded.

[00:06:24]>> Will you see us back here again? Come before it's too late. Hurry up cuz I can't wait. Let's put on our singing all night long.

[00:06:37]>> Thanks, Nick, for helping out. Thanks for coming by.

[00:06:43]Okay, so now we have our clean colonies with no contaminations, except now we're on our own. No more backup lab. And this next step takes an entire week to even finish. Any small mistake can be multiplied by millions.

[00:06:58]I'm wiping down the workspace with 70% alcohol, wiping down my gloves, sterilizing my tools. Then I'm going to scrape this colony of bacteria into the final liquid culture, which should produce glutamic acid. Well, I just spilled it all over my cooler.

[00:07:20]Good thing I have two This is now a mixture of glutamic acid and a ton of bacteria. This is the original growth media. And this is the one that's been cultured on. And this is a lot murkier. And it doesn't really smell bad. Doesn't smell sour or anything. Still kind of has that beef broth smell. And there's no mold growing on it, which is a really good sign.

[00:07:55]So, we need to get rid of all of the junk that's in it, like the dead body of bacteria. Except this filter costs $200.

[00:08:07]Let's see if this works. Instead of a $200 filter, we're going to use this.

[00:08:11]That cost me like around $30. This thing is supposed to be designed to remove the bacteria from water. And I think this is usually used. They have like a straw version that's actually used for when you're like out in the wilderness and you don't have like a solid source of water. So, we're going to use this today in order to filter the bacteria out of our MSG soup thing. I hope this works.

[00:08:42]>> You got something that makes me feel like I'm at the top of the world.

[00:08:49]Spin me around and around and this is our time. The dance floor is jumping tonight.

[00:08:58]You got something. This works by having filters that are like a certain size that can filter out bacteria but will keep in things like salts. In our case, glutamic acid. I'm actually pretty surprised to see how clear this is. I guess this does purify the water. But maybe the brown I don't really know where the brown comes from. Maybe that's from beef broth, but this is actually the growth media before.

[00:09:23]And this is after it's like purified from the bacteria growing in it. And it's even clearer than the growth media that we set up without bacteria in it.

[00:09:32]So this next step is going to require if inhaled, remove person to fresh air to keep comfortable breathing. If on skin, take off immediately contaminated clothing. Rinse skin with water or shower. If in eyes, rinse continuously with water for several minutes. Remove contact lenses. If swallowed, rinse mouth. Do not induce vomiting.

[00:09:51]Immediately called poison center or doctor. Hydrochloric acid. Yay.

[00:09:58]We had to make all the glutamic acids turn into a solid so we can extract it from this liquid. And that requires hydrochloric acid, which we don't have.

[00:10:10]So, we're going to use something from our cabinet. Citric acid is what makes lemons and limes sour. And it's often found on like sour candies. That's the little crystal like sugary looking things. It's actually citric acid that you're putting on. But yeah, this is a lot less toxic because I could just eat it out of this container and it won't, you know, mess me up by just breathing it in. So hopefully this is going to work. So we need to acidify our soup to a pH of two in order to get the glutamic acid to solidify. You could actually see it turn cloudy here, meaning that there are little solids forming before and then after. And we're going to leave it in the fridge overnight in order to let all the solids settle to the bottom. In the morning, we're setting up a funnel with the coffee filter and filtering out all the solids, which ended up being so little. It was so hard to get off. So, I just put everything into a jar and shake it up with some water in order to get the solid bits out. Okay. The issue right now is what we have actually does not taste umami at all. It tastes sour.

[00:11:09]So Dr. Kada, the guy that discovered umami, noticed that the first isolations were brown in color and also tasted sour because they didn't make MSG. They made glutamic acid, which is an acid like citric acid that come from limes and acetic acid that come from vinegar. So the early products of MSG were barely even umami tasting. And that's why we need to transform this glutamic acid into MSG. This glutamic acid is not going to dissolve in the water until we add the baking soda. Baking soda is also known as sodium bicarbonate and MSG stands for monos sodium glutamate. So that means the baking soda is giving the sodium group to the glutamic acid to form MSG and also neutralizes all of the acid in the solution. So it's going to bubble up a little bit. We finally have MSG, but now it's dissolved in the solution. And now we need to get rid of all of the liquid.

[00:12:08]There is not a lot of MSG in here. So, we have to actually test this to see if it's actually MSG. Except this machine is $6,000.

[00:12:18]And every company that I messaged either ghosted me or said they couldn't help.

[00:12:24]Of course, we got to do it ourselves.

[00:12:26]We're going to use this little rectangle to make sure we have MSG. And I'm getting hardcore organic chemistry PTSD right now. We're gonna compare our experimental with our control MSG that we got from Ainomoto on this little sheet. And it's probably going to tell us if we have MSG. It's not super precise, but you know, it's the best we can do at home.

[00:12:50]When I put the sheet in the liquid, the liquid will slowly climb out the paper, carrying the molecules with it. But different molecules will move differently depending on how much they like the liquid versus how much they like the sheet. So if my experimental MSG and the real MSG move up to a similar spot, that's a good sign. That means they contain similar compounds.

[00:13:13]But if they move completely differently, that means I probably made a mistake and it's not the same thing. So, the place don't really have anything on it right now, so I got to spray it with this.

[00:13:22]Mild central nervous system depressant may cause headache, nausea, dizziness, drowsiness, and incoordination. Severe vision effects, including increased sensitivity to light, blurred vision, and blindness may develop.

[00:13:36]What?

[00:13:39]Um, that doesn't look right. So, we were supposed to get two dots on this little plate, and only one showed up.

[00:13:49]And that was the control MSG. So, something clearly went wrong. I noticed the experimental product didn't really dissolve into water. All right. No matter how much I stir this, it does not dissolve, which might mean that I don't really have MSG, which is supposed to easily dissolve in water. And that might be the reason why it's not really showing up on this test. And I think I screwed it up during the dehydration because I just put it in the oven at like 225 and that might have maybe cooked and made things react when it was shouldn't have.

[00:14:23]And also the big batch that I made that I thought would be my backup plan. It yielded almost nothing. Even though there's like so much more liquid than the last batch. I don't want to do this again.

[00:14:35]Oh, I hate chemistry and microbiology.

[00:14:39]Oh my god. Every time I do this, it takes like a week.

[00:14:50]All right. Well, It took another 6 days to get here.

[00:15:12]There is almost no MSG solids in this. I just have no idea what's going on.

[00:15:21]>> I failed so many times and had to restart this that I've learned how to turn sand into steel.

[00:15:31]I've grown a whole garden on a t-shirt. So, I got this. I'm not going to make my own growth media. I bought some growth media that's meant to grow E. coli on that will hopefully work with these bacteria.

[00:15:47]I'm I am so done. I am I'm just going to do this using the storebought growth media and see if I can still do this. Oh my god.

[00:16:13]We're not [ __ ] around anymore. We got our hydrochloric acid.

[00:16:17]>> I see a train moving too fast, but I'm not leaving around.

[00:16:27]I think one of the issues that the particles are just too small and they go straight through the coffee filter. So, I can't really collect any of the solids.

[00:16:39]That means I need to buy another or find a way to get some expensive equipment in order to make this happen.

[00:16:49]Okay, so I never thought I would own one of these in my life. touched. This was the only working centrifuge that I found at my local university like garage sale thing. And I think this thing is like $4,000, but I got it for like a hundred.

[00:17:04]Um, yeah. The problem with this is that we have this much liquid and the test tubes are only this big. We're going to pour out the excess of this liquid, hoping not to get any of the solids. And then with the remainder of the liquid, we're going to fill up these test tubes.

[00:17:19]I think there's 26 of them. So, I can only do like 40 milliliters at a time.

[00:17:27]Oh my god. And spin it really fast in the centrifuge. At the end, there should be a solid little pellet at the bottom of these tubes. And the top will be all liquid. We're going to get rid of the top liquid. And that the bottom should be glutenic acid, which we still need to process. I'm so over this cuz this took me all day to do. And now we need to clean everything with alcohol. This doesn't really look like MSG. So, at this point, I thought it was really close. Turns out I wasn't. I've been getting a lot of help from Chris and Wayne who are for my Discord, and they've been helping me for weeks to get this done, and I've been so grateful for them. But if you want to join the Discord, uh it's the links to my Patreon. It's free to join. Definitely, this video would not be happening if it wasn't for them. They basically came up with this next part, and I barely understand what's going on. Danger. Keep away from children and pets. Causes severe skin burns and eye damage. Wear protective clothing and eye face protection. Use only in well ventilated area. Do not breathe dust, vapors, mist, or spray. Harmful if swallowed. Wash exposed skin thoroughly after handled.

[00:18:31]I added the dry product into the container and added sodium hydroxide into it and mixed it together overnight.

[00:18:36]I was supposed to filter the solids out of this, but it looks like everything dissolved in here. So, I guess I don't have to do that. I'll just add acid and see if anything reacts. Everything's going to go back in the centrifuge to separate the solids.

[00:18:52]That's not a lot left over. And I finally neutralized everything with tiny specks of sodium hydroxide. So, everything was dissolved. And I use that to test it on my TLC.

[00:19:05]Well, I'm going to have to double check what this means and also double check if this is safe to eat.

[00:19:19]I used to major in chemistry and absolutely hated it. It was always just a stepping stone in order to get to a different place in my life. I'm calling my cousin who's getting their PhD in bioengineering. Yo, can I eat this MSG that I made?

[00:19:32]>> Okay. Well, first off, you can eat anything once, but the difference between something being edible versus something being something you know that you actually should eat are kind of two different questions. Typically, for food and like biio manufactured products, you also have to have good manufacturing practices. And you have a lot of a lot a lot of checks for contamination along the way and in the final result. So even though you made something, the purity of it, the conditions in which it were made, all in all, uh it's a bad idea to eat this. Don't eat this. Please don't eat this.

[00:20:08]>> Just curious, Nick. If there were MSG made from this, would you eat it?

[00:20:15]>> Sure.

[00:20:16]>> And after working with some of the smartest people that I know, I can confidently say I still hate chemistry.

[00:20:23]And I'm totally okay with that.

[00:20:27]the way you >> So Chris, what do you think about this TLC?

[00:20:39]>> Hey, Trong. So, uh, taking a look at your TLC, you do have a little bit of a streak on your stuff. It could be some unconverted glutamate or some other amino acids. We can't really say without other testing. Moving forward doesn't magically mean loving the crap that you had in the past.

[00:20:55]>> Good news is that it looks like you've got a spot that looks really similar to your MSG control. Um, but overall what we can say is you definitely made some MSG.

[00:21:05]>> It means deciding what you make from it now. I never knew we could feel this way. Now that I do, I want it every day.

[00:21:17]Ooh, the way it burns.

[00:21:30]>> Would you eat it?