Jumbo Juice

Making Jumbo Juice takes some patience and moderate skill. It is definitely not for absolute beginners. The cost for all the ingredients is roughly one hundred dollars. But most of the ingredients come in a large quantity so you won't have to purchase them again for a long time.

The benefits of making this bubble juice, other than the fact that it's great is that your cost per gallon of usable bubble juice is drastically reduced. Where with a recipe like our quick and dirty bubble juice you end up spending more money over time. But it is dramatically easier to make. That's the trade off.

Before we get started we'd like to thank Dustin Skye for his hard work designing Jumbo Juice. We can't thank him enough for open-souring this recipe! Thank you!

To make Jumbo Juice you will need a number of ingredients, which can easily be sourced. Some of which you will need to purchase online. You will need the following ingredients:

The polymers in Jumbo Juice sound scary but they are harmless. Here are the Material Safety Data Sheets on both.

Here is some more general information about both polymers.

"Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is a polyether compound with many applications from industrial manufacturing to medicine. PEG is also known as polyethylene oxide (PEO) or polyoxyethylene (POE), depending on its molecular weight. The structure of PEG is commonly expressed as H−(O−CH2−CH2)n−OH." -Wikipedia

See PEO's many uses

"Hypromellose (INN), short for hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC), is a semisynthetic, inert, viscoelastic polymer used as eye drops, as well as an excipient and controlled-delivery component in oral medicaments, found in a variety of commercial products.[1][2]

As a food additive, hypromellose is an emulsifier, thickening and suspending agent, and an alternative to animal gelatin.[3] Its Codex Alimentarius code (E number) is E464" -Wikipedia

See HPMC's many uses

Now that we have that cleared up let's talk about what tools you will need to make Jumbo Juice.

  • Safety first (Gloves, Eye Protection)
  • Paper towels
  • A digital scale capable of weighing ingredients down to .01g and up to at least 128g
  • A couple containers to weigh and set aside weighed dry ingredients
  • Large bowl
  • Plastic spatula
  • Large spoon
  • Large measuring cup
  • 5 gallon bucket
  • Large stir stick
  • Access to water
  • A funnel
  • A large container to store your finished product in

Here are our measurements for Jumbo Juice. As you'll see I have multiple measurements for making different amounts. The pint mix is great for testing because one pint is mixed with one gallon of water to make usable bubble juice. The other mixes were used when we first started to make this concentrate, to step up to 5 gallons. We did this because we didn't want to waste materials if our numbers were off.

Here are my simplified notes as well which can be downloaded for offline use.

One Pint Mix

Dry Ingredients:

  • Baking Soda: 3.2g

  • Citric Acid: 1.6g

  • Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose: 1.02g

  • Polyethylene Oxide: 0.4g

Wet Ingredients:

  • Dawn Manual Pot & Pan: 12fl oz (1 ½ Cups)

  • Glycerin: 04.6oz (weight)

  • Water: 4.63fl oz (136.93g)

 

Half Gallon Mix

Dry Ingredients:

  • Baking Soda: 12.8g

  • Citric Acid: 6.4g

  • Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose: 4.08g

  • Polyethylene Oxide: 1.6g

Wet Ingredients:

  • Dawn Manual Pot & Pan: 48fl oz (6 Cups)

  • Glycerin: 1.84oz (weight)

  • Water: 18.52fl oz (547.72g)

 

Gallon Mix

Dry Ingredients:

  • Baking Soda: 25.6g

  • Citric Acid: 12.8g

  • Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose: 8.16g

  • Polyethylene Oxide: 3.2g

Wet Ingredients:

  • Dawn Manual Pot & Pan: 96fl oz (12 Cups)

  • Glycerin: 8fl oz (3.68oz)

  • Water: 37.04fl oz (547.72g) (4 ½ Cups)

 

5 Gallon Mix

Dry Ingredients:

  • Baking Soda: 128g

  • Citric Acid: 64g

  • Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose: 40.8g

  • Polyethylene Oxide: 16g

Wet Ingredients:

  • Dawn Manual Pot & Pan: 480fl oz (60 Cups) (3.75Gal.)

  • Glycerin: 40fl oz (18.4oz) (5 Cups)

  • Water: 185.2fl oz (96.6oz) (23.15 Cups)

 

Now let's get into instructions. The instructions below are based on making the 5 gallon mix. Which is what we usually make. The only difference in process with the smaller recipes is that you can scale down from the use of a 5 gallon bucket if you'd like.

Once you have all your ingredients and tools together to make Jumbo Juice the first step it is to weigh out all of your dry ingredients, combine them in a container, and set them aside. Then you will measure out your glycerin and pour it into your large bowl. Now add all of your dry ingredients into the glycerin and stir under it is completely homogenized. Note here that you do not want to violently mix your bubble juice as you can damage the polymer chains.

Once your slurry is fulling homogenized its time to measure out your soap and pour it into your 5 gallon bucket. Use your spatula to recover as much soap from your measuring cup as possible. Once this is done you will pour a little bit of the soap you measured out into your glycerin slurry and mix it until it's consistent. This makes adding the slurry to the soap more seamless. Without this step the slurry will sink to the bottom of your soap and is very hard to mix properly. (BE CAREFUL not to stir too vigorously as the mix will begin to foam up and rise.. Which is it be expected. But if you over do it your soap will overflow and you'll have a big mess to clean up. You have been warned..) Now pour your soapy slurry into the 5 gallon bucket using your spatula to get every last bit of the slurry into the bucket. Begin stirring the two together with your large stir stick.

Once you have thoroughly mixed the two together or until the soap foam is rising too high for comfort let the mix sit until the foam begins to settle. Just be careful to keep an eye on the mix every so often while the soap is rising just in case the foam starts overflowing from the bucket.

Now that the mix has settled, it is now time to add your water (keep in mind that your water does not necessarily have to be perfectly measured since ultimately you will be using water to dilute the concentrate anyways). After adding the water give the juice a final round of stirring before you pour it into your storage container using your funnel. With larger batches this can be pretty difficult.

What we do is use a 5 gallon water container. Place the container in the sink. Push the 5 gallon bucket right up next to sink with the funnel in the container right up against the side of the bucket. Now use your large measuring cup to scoop and pour the mix into the funnel. Once the bucket's volume of bubble juice lowers it becomes more manageable to just pour the concentrate directly from the bucket into your container. BE CAREFUL not to pour too fast or too much at once into the container as the mix will begin to foam and can overflow.. The best thing to do is pour as much of the mix into your container as possible without overflowing. Then let the mix settle for a while before topping it off.

Once you have your bubble juice stored its good to let it sit for a couple days to ensure that all the ingredients are fully hydrated. Tip the container end over end a couple times a day just to get the juice moving. I also recommend doing this before mixing usable bubble juice too for best results.

We also recommend reviewing The Soap Bubble Wiki's page on Jumbo Juice as well for further information.

When you are ready to use your Jumbo Juice you will mix one pint of concentrate with one gallon of water and stir thoroughly (if you decide to use one of the 5 gallon water containers I mentioned above don't use the pour spout). We usually mix two gallons at once. You're now ready to cast some enormous soap bubbles! Go have some fun!