Bitter woods

Bitter salts. See Magnesium sulfate heptahydrate Bitter wood. See Quassia... 

Synonyms Bitter ash Bitter wood Picrasma excelsa Quassia amara Definition Wood of Picrasma exceisa or Quassia amara, contg. bitter principle quassin Properties YIsh-wh. to bright yel. chips or fibrous coarse grains, si. odor, very bitter taste Uses Natural flavoring agent in foods and pharmaceuticals bitter tonic medicine (anthelmintic) extract as fly poison on flypaper surrogate for hops hair lotion alcohol denaturant... 

Eisenhower, John S. D. The Bitter Woods. New York G. P. Putnam, 1969. 

Holy Bible, Exodus, Chap. 15, verses 22-25 "... so Moses brought the sons of Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the desert of Sur. And they marched three days in the wilderness and found no water to drink. And then they arrived at Merra and they could not drink from the waters of Merra because they were bitter.. .. And the people murmured against Moses saying What shall we drink And Moses cried unto the Lord. And the Lord showed him a wood and he put it into the water and the water became sweet . 

China isenwein, m. (Pharm.) bitter wine ol iron. -gerbsMure, /. quinotannic acid, -gras, n. China grass (ramie), -holz, n. cinchona wood. 

The greatest care in. manipulation, and the most scientific methods in the treatment of wine, have been tried in France, and the result has been the production of the finest winos in the world. The removal of the wine from the vat to the cask is there as carefully regarded as the work of fermentation. The casks are all made ready at the same time as the vats. If the wood of which they are made is new, they will not fail to communicate an astringeuey and bitterness to the wine. To prevent this, the casks are repeatedly washed with cold water, and then with hot, in which peach leaves and salt are infused. They are repeatedly shaken while the fiald is hot, and then are left so that the wood may absorb them, and they may penetrate into the pores of the timber. The casks are now emptied, and boiling hot must, to the extent of two or three quarts, is introduced. The bungs are put in, the casks shaken, and then left to cool. Some use only hot wine in place of the above substances. If the casks ore old, they scrape off the tartar that lines the staves, and wash them vrtth hot water and must, or wine. If they have contracted an ill smell, or show the least mark of decay, they are burned at once, because, in... 

Quassia wood is very commonly used as a bitter tonic and anthelmintic. 

Naringin (= 2,3- [wood, bark] Adiantum spp., Ceterach officinarum PKA (27) (TPO) [bitter,... 

Among polyphenolic compounds, two types of flavonoids, the anthocyanins and flavanols (i.e., catechins, proanthocyanidins, condensed tannins), are particularly relevant to the quality of red wines, as they are key compounds for color definition and astringency. Other flavonoids such as flavonols may have some influence on color and bitterness, although they are present in red wines in much lower amounts. Phenolic acids and hydrolysable tannins, released from barrel wood, may also have an influence on wine taste and color, and hydroxycinnamoyl derivatives from grape must are involved in the oxidative browning of white wines together with flavanols. Besides, some of these perceptions may be modified by other sensory characteristics (e.g. sourness, sweetness) related to other wine components (Preys et al. 2006). 

Wooding S, Kim UK, Bamshad Ml, Larsen J, Jorde LB, Drayna D. 96. Natural selection and molecular evolution in PTC, a bitter-taste receptor gene. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 2004 74 637-646. 

Kim U, Wooding S, Ricci D, Jorde LB, Drayna D. Worldwide 98. haplotype diversity and coding sequence variation at human bitter... 

Marah is an area of desert located near the Red Sea on the Sinai Peninsula. The desert water is bitter due to high alkalinity. Weathering of wood on the desert by the sun causes the alcohol groups of cellulose and hemicellulose to be oxidized to carboxyl groups. By throwing a piece of weathered wood into the alkaline water, an acid-base reaction takes place in which the alkalinity of the water is reduced. Thereby, the water becomes sweet. 

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