Guinneol; develoing with Guinness beer!

I always try to try new development systems, like more experimental ones, in order to renew the courses of chemical photography that I impart to different places.

After having found this article on the net: “Revelando un carrete al estilo irlandés: con cerveza Guinnes” and deducting the bad translation (detergente…) I finally proceeded to try this alternative development system.

I see in the “recipe” this is very similar to the Caffenol developing system but, obviously, changing the coffee for Guinness beer.
I followed the instructions but instead of “detergente” I put Sodium Carbonate (Soda Wash) which is what I suspect NOT translated well in the previous link ;).

So to make our development with Guinness necessary:

For the recipe of “Guinneol”:

  • A can of Guinness 50cl. The one I had at home clearly puts 44cl and is the amount I used for this first experiment.
  • 50gr. Of Sodium Carbonate (NO Caustic Soda !!)
  • 12gr. Vitamin C (ascorbic acid)

Development process:

  1. In a one-liter container mix beer, Sodium Carbonate and vitamin C.
  2. Mix well, very well, the mixture until we make sure that Sosa has no lumps. I have an old “mixer” powder that I use for these purposes …
  3. Interestingly there is heating the mixture to 30 Cº, I have achieved it with a microwave.
  4. In the dark, I have introduced the spool (a Lady Gray 400 from Lomography) to the spiral and it is in the development tank.
  5. We fill the tank with running water to help the development process for 1 minute.
  6. We emptied the tank and put the experimental Guinneol developer inside the tank.
  7. The development time is 15 minutes at the temperature of 30 Cº of the developer. Like most development processes, we will constantly shake the tank for the first minute and the rest, until we reach 15 minutes, 10 seconds of each minute.
  8. After 15 minutes we cleaned the tank well by emptying and shaking the tank 5 times (about 2 minutes).
  9. Optionally you can make a stop bath, I am not a supporter 😉
  10. Finally we will fix the reel with commercial fixing liquid for 5 minutes.
  11. Final cleaning to remove all chemicals (about 6 minutes as in step # 8)
  12. Final wash with antistatic liquid for 1 minute.
  13. We will extract the film and let it dry.

With the film already revealed you can enlarge the photograph to an enlarger or make a scan.

If you are scanning your reel, I recommend doing it in color. Here the same image scanned with color and automatic adjustments of the scanner and on the right the same as captured by the scanner.

guinnesol001_-_008.jpg guinnesol001_-_012.jpg

To this album you can see the results of the whole reel: https://photos.app.goo.gl/YVukHKtLMCHT71rK2

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