Priceless: A widow with a baby asks the prince to marry again

Sun Zhizhao took the opportunity to report and hand over many affairs when the prince was doing his job. He also adjusted the direction of the recent disaster relief. The food problem has basically stabilized, and next they will gradually invest funds to revive the people's livelihood in Xingzhou.

Liu Rusi finally had the rare opportunity to get away from Chu Shiyu and could finally do her own thing in peace!

She asked Caiyun and Xuefei to immediately buy 20 kilograms of cheap wine and beeswax, while she put together a set of primitive equipment for distillation in the kitchen. Liu Rusi has always been grateful that the knowledge she learned has not abandoned her.

The boiling point of alcohol is 78 degrees, and the boiling point of water is 100 degrees. Distilled alcohol is usually heated in a water bath, keeping the water bath temperature between 77 and 79 degrees.

Therefore, the difficulty in distilling alcohol lies in how to control the temperature, and there were no thermometers in that era.

Although Liu Rusi knew how to make a thermometer, she lacked the most basic material, not mercury, but transparent glass or plastic tubes. The development of technology requires the support of a complete industrial chain... But she was not erudite enough...

So Liu Rusi's method is to keep the water bath below the boiling point, and try to maintain the temperature at which alcohol vapor will appear. Then repeat the distillation. Once the distilled alcohol can be ignited, it means that the alcohol content has reached 60 degrees, and then distill it again. The degree cannot be accurately 75 degrees, but it is enough for disinfection.

When Liu Rusi confirmed that the distillation device was available, Caiyun and Xuefei led the guards to deliver two jars of wine to the kitchen.

The alcohol content of wine in this era is usually around 10 degrees. Even if some is lost during the distillation process, she can still get nearly a liter of alcohol, which is more than enough to prepare at one time.

Caiyun handed a large piece of beeswax to Liu Rusi, looked at the large porcelain vase and the teapot beside the stove, and asked curiously, "Sister Si, what are you doing? Do you need help?"

"No need, I can do it myself. You guys continue to study and learn to read." Liu Rusi refused with a smile.

In theory, it is good to have someone to help. Qin Lie had helped her in preparing alcohol before, but she didn't want these two little girls whose values ​​were not yet formed to touch alcohol...

She knew that her fear of alcohol was bordering on paranoia, but she didn't think there was anything wrong with it. After all, people wouldn't die if they didn't drink.

The first time she prepared alcohol was in the second year after she came to Qin Lie's house. He didn't drink alcohol, and she had an understanding of Qin Lie's willpower. She solemnly told Qin Lie that she hated people who drank alcohol, and only after getting his promise that he would never drink alcohol did she feel at ease to let him participate, and Qin Lie never let her down.

When Liu Rusi was the only one left in the kitchen, she began to prepare for distillation.

She first placed two layers of gauze on the funnel, filtered the wine she bought and poured it into the porcelain bottle. Then she took a high stool and placed it across the pot, then placed the bottle on the steaming rack in the pot from between the legs of the stool, and tied ropes between the legs of the stool and the mouth of the bottle, securing it at two opposite corners.

After confirming that the porcelain vase was stable, she placed the teapot upside down on the mouth of the vase. The mouth of the teapot was slightly smaller than the outer edge of the vase, and the curvature up and down was just enough to stabilize it. Then she wrapped gauze around the junction of the vase and pot, wrapped a layer of yellow mud around the gauze to seal it, and finally wrapped it with another layer of gauze to prevent it from falling.

Just as she was putting the three-foot-long bamboo tube onto the spout of the teapot, the annoying sound of footsteps came.

Yes, she could already hear Chu Shiyu's footsteps!

"Rusi, what are you doing?" The strange scene on the stove made Chu Shiyu very curious.

Liu Rusi had already told the guards outside the kitchen not to let anyone in, but Chu Shiyu was obviously not within the range of the guards...

She glanced at the ready-made distillation device. The sooner the medical alcohol was ready, the better. But she couldn't avoid him. She looked at Chu Shiyu seriously and asked, "Do you drink alcohol on weekdays?"

Chu Shiyu was puzzled and answered, "I rarely drink."

Liu Rusi frowned slightly, she seldom drank, that is to say, she would drink... although the chance was not high, but there might be a day when she wanted to try the taste of strong liquor.

Seeing her expression, Chu Shiyu immediately felt alarmed! He quickly added: "Because drinking affects my judgment, I won't drink if I can. It's just... as a prince, I need to attend palace banquets from time to time, so I can't avoid drinking a few glasses."

Liu Rusi nodded slightly, knowing that alcohol would have a negative impact. Thinking back to the fact that she hadn't seen him drink in the past two months, the situation was already on the verge of happening. She couldn't just stop because she was worried that he would become an alcoholic.

"I am making disinfectant. The main ingredient is wine, but it can only be used for external injuries. Drinking it by mistake will cause stomach pain and have a great negative impact on the body. In severe cases, it may lead to poisoning and death."

She warned him solemnly: "You must first promise not to drink the disinfectant I made as wine, nor give it to others, otherwise I will need to ask you to leave the kitchen."

Did she think he was a fool? How could he drink something that could cause death? However, there was no reason to refuse her request. Chu Shiyu quickly and seriously promised: "I will never drink disinfectant as wine! And in the future, I will not drink unless I have no choice!"

The latter guarantee was not necessary, but Liu Rusi felt a little happy when she heard him say that. Her mentality on this point was the same as that of a bully. Every time she got one more person to "isolate" the wine, she would feel a sense of accomplishment.

Liu Rusi reluctantly let go of her grudge. A three-foot-long bamboo tube was basically enough to serve as a condenser. It just needed to be tied to another bench and fixed.

Chu Shiyu wanted to help, but when he saw her wrapping gauze and mud around the spout of the teapot and the bamboo tube, he didn't know how to intervene and couldn't help but ask, "What is the function of this tube?"

"You know that boiling water will produce steam, right?" Liu Russian was thinking about how to educate him.

"When water is heated to a certain temperature, it will boil and produce a lot of water vapor. This temperature can be called the boiling point, which we can set at 100 degrees. When the water vapor is cooled, the temperature drops and it condenses into water again."

"And I want to extract a substance called ethanol from the wine. Its boiling point is about 78 degrees..."

As Chu Shiyu listened, he realized that this was similar to the principle of the water and fire cauldron used to brew wine. The joy of brewing wine for some literati and scholars was the same...

However, her statement obviously had a complete system, which was refreshing to Chu Shiyu. He took note of every word she said with an open mind.

As Liu Rusi spoke, her hands did not stop moving. Once she had roughly explained the principle, the entire device could start to ignite and operate.

Chu Shiyu finally managed to find something he could do, and he started a fire...

Everything went smoothly. When the first drop of liquid with the smell of wine flowed out of the bamboo tube and fell into another porcelain bottle, Liu Rusi relaxed her slightly tense heart.

She asked Chu Shiyu to control the fire in the stove and keep it at a low flame. She started to process the beeswax. Caiyun and Xuefei bought a large piece of beeswax. She estimated that she would not need so much, and such a large piece would not be easy to melt.

She put the kitchen knife into warm water and was about to start cutting the beeswax. When Chu Shiyu saw this, he couldn't sit still anymore and stood up to grab the kitchen knife.

Liu Rusi made a smooth cut, quickly moved the knife away and said, "Temperature control is critical now, you can't leave without someone. Choose between controlling the fire or cutting the beeswax."

Chu Shiyu hesitated for a moment and suggested, "Let's get someone in?"

"I don't want to let other people know how to make disinfectant for the time being." Liu Rusi knew that this kind of self-righteous thinking was an obstacle to the development of science, but she could not get over that hurdle in her heart.

Some people may think, isn't it just alcohol? Is it necessary to be so cautious?

But her fear of alcohol was no less than that of drugs. You know, Maffei and Conch were invented as analgesics, but they deviated from their original purpose and became a scourge to countless people.

Many people overlook the fact that alcohol can also be addictive. Although the harm may not be as extreme as that of drugs, it is also a social problem that has been difficult to solve. In modern times, two major countries have issued prohibitions on alcohol, but the rampant "demand" can no longer be banned.

Even though she now named it disinfectant and repeatedly emphasized that it cannot be drunk, she knew in her heart that this warning would be ineffective.

As long as it spreads, sooner or later someone will try to drink it, which may give rise to many alcoholics. Not to mention the resulting social problems, the extremely high alcohol content alone can cause many people to die from alcohol poisoning!

You know, in the modern world, millions of people die every year from drinking alcohol! It's almost as many as car accidents!

So even though alcohol plays a huge role in the development of medical care, Liu Rusi does not dare to really open this Pandora's box. After all, who can predict whether more people will be saved or die in the future because of it?

"Then how many people know about it now?" Chu Shiyu was not surprised that she was unwilling to pass it on. After all, there were many family skills in Daxia that were passed down from father to son and mother to daughter.

"It's just me and Qin Lie." Liu Rusi had a basic understanding of Chu Shiyu's character and knew that he would not spread the news.

Chu Shiyu was overjoyed! Qin Lie was already dead, which meant that this would be a secret that belonged only to the two of them!

Because of this sudden surprise, Chu Shiyu took the initiative to give up the idea of ​​letting other people in, but was struggling with the division of labor between the two of them. He wanted to take care of everything... but Liu Rusi emphasized that someone must be in charge of the fire and temperature control.

"If I hadn't come in, what would you have done by yourself?" Chu Shiyu suddenly discovered the blind spot.

Liu Rusi paused. If it were her, she would put the cutting of beeswax behind her... The two things didn't have to be done at the same time...

"Anyway, I want to cut the beeswax now, you take care of the fire!" Liu Rusi said in a firm voice.

Chu Shiyu raised his eyebrows and asked, "Why don't you take care of the fire for the time being, and let me cut it?"

The silky feeling of cutting beeswax with a hot knife is very pleasant! This is simply depriving her of happiness! Liu Rusi couldn't help but say speechlessly: "Don't ask so many questions about such trivial matters, okay!"

As he was in a good mood, Chu Shiyu decided to give in for the time being. He sat back in front of the stove and earnestly warned, "Be careful not to get burned. Be careful with the knife and don't hurt your hands..."

"The food you had in Dongshan Village before didn't fall from the sky." Liu Rusi said in a light tone, no longer able to express her speechlessness.

Chu Shiyu could see her impatience and knew that she was used to doing these things, but the deep or shallow scars on her hands showed that she had suffered pain in these daily trivialities...

He didn't know whether those scars could be removed, but he could only try his best to prevent his hands from getting new scars.

Liu Rusi used the water in the pot to heat the knife and cut the beeswax into small pieces smoothly. She found a small soup pot, put the wax blocks in it, covered it, and then put it in the large pot at the other end of the stove, using the residual heat from the distilled alcohol to melt the wax.

Then she began to concentrate on watching the distillation pot. Whenever the water in the water bath showed signs of bubbling, she would add a ladle of cold water to keep the temperature constant.

After a while, the bamboo tube stopped dripping liquid, and the first bottle of wine was distilled, but the work had just begun...

Liu Rusi asked Chu Shiyu to turn down the heat to the lowest setting and let him take a break. Then she would remove the large porcelain bottle from the pot and replace it with a new bottle of raw wine.

But before she could touch it, Chu Shiyu immediately stopped her and said angrily: "It must still be hot now, don't you know?!"

Liu Rusi raised her hand to show the rag she was using for heat insulation and patiently explained, "It's not that hot. Just take it off quickly."

"It will still be hot, wait until it cools down before taking it apart!" Chu Shiyu was very tough, he would not give in to such an almost inevitable thing!

"There are still three bottles to be steamed. It will take even longer to cool down and then heat up." Liu Rusi was helpless. The amount of distilled liquid should not exceed two-thirds of the bottle. The large bottle used now can only distill five kilograms of wine at a time.

Chu Shiyu's brows tightened. "It took half an hour to steam that bottle just now. Are you planning to spend two hours here?"

That might take longer. This is the first distillation, and it usually takes two more times. But she certainly wouldn't say that.

"I need to boil water for the first bottle, which will take a while. That's why I want to change the bottle without waiting for it to cool down, so that I can do it faster the next few times."

Chu Shiyu looked at the device that was put together in the pot, frowned and said, "Why not create a suitable device to save the trouble of loading and unloading."

"But now that we have started, we can't just do half of it, right?" Liu Rusi also had the idea of ​​building a distiller, but based on the previous alcohol consumption, preparing alcohol once would be enough for a long time, so it would be more cost-effective to use something that was pieced together.

"Okay, but you just have to say it. I'll change the bottle. If you insist on touching it yourself, that's it for today." Chu Shiyu said in a serious tone.

Liu Rusi had no choice but to agree. After experiencing the "fear of carriage shock" incident, she understood how far Chu Shiyu could go if he made a fuss...

After taking a short while to dismantle the device, Liu Rusi instructed Chu Shiyu to pour the remaining distilled water into a copper basin, then insert a funnel and cover it with gauze to filter and pour the wine for the second time.

Looking at the turbid substance filtered out from the gauze, Chu Shiyu began to ask again: "Why didn't you tell me that you wanted to buy wine? This kind of turbid wine is often of extremely low quality."

Problem youths really have many problems. Complaining inwardly, Liu Rusi calmly explained, "Good wine or bad wine is the same. The strength of the wine is what matters. After distillation, it will become pure. Using cheap wine is more worthwhile."

Chu Shiyu was skeptical, but did not ask any more questions.

The two jars, totaling 20 kilograms of wine, were distilled once. The time was indeed shorter than the first bottle. Three bottles were finished in one hour.

When she was about to distil the five kilograms of liquid again, Chu Shiyu questioned her as she expected: "Why do you still need to do it? It's getting late now. It's time for dinner in half an hour."

"The preparation of disinfectant water is quite complicated, but if we don't interrupt it, the overall time will be shorter. It will only take about two more distillations," Liu Rusi explained.

Chu Shiyu estimated based on the time just now that it would take no more than a quarter or two, so he nodded in agreement and continued to help her with the operation.

Liu Rusi observed his expression from the corner of her eyes. They had been busy together for two hours without stopping. In fact, he didn't look very anxious. Instead, he looked at her worriedly from time to time...