hot jupiter

[by john]

a few weeks back, elisabeth, one of my friends, defended her thesis on transiting exoplanets. the after-after-party was at our place, and i had been hemming and hawing for days on whether or not to make a special drink for the occasion. i ended up on the hawing (?) end, opting for the easy champagne route, when, with no more than an hour to spare before the first guests showed up, my roommate (a very good friend of elisabeth's) decreed that a special drink be made. being a good physicist, he prescribed well defined boundary conditions:

• the drink shall be named the hot jupiter,
• the said drink shall contain rum,
• thai chili tincture shall be used,
• and it shall require an orange and (transiting) maraschino cherry garnish.

well constrained, indeed, but there was still a lot of parameter space to explore! i first tried the boozy route...spirits-based...several rums...maybe vermouth...then turned to herbal...chartreuse, benedictine, becherovka...yet all with limited success. stressing out, with only half an hour left, i took a step back.

this drink needs to appeal to a wide audience, i figured. not just cocktail junkies with a taste for the herbal edge. what about citrusy and sweet? a classic 4:2:1?! a classic 4:2:1 turned out just great, in fact. satisfied, i measured out a large batch, making a large dent in a bottle of cuban rum for the 4, splitting the 2 between grapefruit and lime juice, then syrup for the 1. damn palatable. and just in time to start a round of congratulations and toasts to ephemerides.

hot jupiter

4 parts rum (havana club reserva)

2 parts citrus (2:1 grapefruit:lime)

1 part syrup

few drops of thai chili tincture per glass

shake and strain. garnish with a central star (orange slice) and transiting planet (maraschino cherry).

the spicy tincture was obviously just for novelty, but it added a curious afterthought to each sip. the hot jupiter proved versatile, as it also worked with dashes of bitters or a champagne float.

i don't have any pictures of the drink, but it looked something like this:

if only elevators had cocktail bars

[by john]

i've really been digging some books on public speaking lately (both via naveen) - presentation zen design and confessions of a public speaker. the latter has very good advice on distilling your presentation to different degrees:

In effect, by working hard on a clear, strong, well-reasoned outline, I've already built three versions of the talk: an elevator pitch (the title), a five-minute version (saying each point and a brief summary), and the full version (with slides, movies, and whatever else strengthens each point).

the same methodology can apply to conversations at a bar or party, where you present yourself layer by layer, without the usual academic powerpoint crutch. this skill is essential in a place like cambridge, where your average craft brew aficionado also cures cancer or microlends in southern india or scans meditating monks in an fmri machine.

drink 1. this is prime elevator pitch time - you have to hook your conversationmate before they take two sips. i usually stick with the half lie 'i do rocket science'.

drink 2. ok, 'rocket scientist' worked, so now i can transition to what kinds of x-rays come from space, how we can best detect them on said rocket, and why this is important for silly things like carbon-based life forms.

drink 3. if you're still asking the right questions at this point, i'll be laying down terms like 'superconductor' and 'ionization state' to fill in the details between those earlier broad strokes. i'll be drawing graphs in the frost of your silver julep cup. i'll describe the mechanics of a supernova so vividly that you won't even think to make a joke involving the oasis song.

further drinks. well, at this point i would hope to have segued to something more entertaining, like cocktail history. otherwise, i'd be yammering about the best kinds of tape for cryogenic purposes, and that's not good for anybody. but at least none of my julep diagrams would use comic sans.

Cleanliness -Is- Close To Godliness

[by Mike]

I've mentioned fat washing in an earlier post, and while the concept has always intrigued me I had never attempted the technique until over the break. That's a shame, really, because fat washing is perhaps the latest trend most cooperative to the home mixologist; the application is straightforward, fast, and by its very nature cheap.

For the unfamiliar, fat washing is all about hacking booze. When sugars are initially fermented into alcohol, the byproducts are not just ethanol and carbon dioxide. All kinds of molecules can be created, some which give an individual spirit its unique character and others that can contribute off flavors or be outright dangerous. Distillation is all about extracting as much of the desired ethanol and flavor compounds as possible while avoiding those less agreeable to the palette (or health, depending on your priorities).

Careful distillation produces a finer, smoother product at the expense of yield; aging further reduces undesirable compounds at the expense of time. Because both approaches cost money, the end result is that quality spirits tend to correlate with lighter wallets.

Is there any use for the cheaper bottles, then, besides fueling college misadventures? Like so many things in life, the answer can be found in fat. You see, some of those unappealing flavor compounds are highly fat soluble. Once fat has dissolved in alcohol it will start binding with the molecules, particularly those responsible for the astringent vapors so characteristic of bad booze. Removing the fat then leaves a much smoother spirit at a fraction of the cost.

Almost any fat can be used, but easy removal necessitates animal fats that will solidify in the refrigerator and can be simply strained out of the alcohol with a fine mesh. Because fat dissolves so well in alcohol, trace amounts will be left behind no matter how well the alcohol is strained. While flavor neutral fats such as lard can be used to avoid introducing any new flavors, the real magic of fat washing happens when particular fats are used to impart complementary flavors to the spirit at hand.

The most famous applications so far have been with whiskey, utilizing both bacon fat and butter to round out younger bourbons and ryes while adding a rich note rare to most spirits. When considering my own application, however, I reached for unaged tequila with grassy and vegetal flavors complementary to more savory fats. My fat of choice would be freshly rendered duck fat.

Again, the process could not have been more simple. After picking up an inexpensive bottle of Sauza blanco, I added melted duck fat (75 parts base spirit to 4 parts fat) and let the solution sit overnight. The next day I threw the bottle into the fridge and by the evening I was sipping a smooth, velvety spirit laced with the luxurious taste of duck.

An improvement over shots, no?

Ghost of Cocktails Past

[by Mike]

Could you identify this drink? Transparent, white spirits... maybe a martini? Would you guess a margarita?

Yesterday a friend forwarded me a link to Cooking Stuff, the writings of two technically minded staff at the French Culinary Institute who spend their time playing with food science (and rapidly becoming my favorite blog). Reading through a few of the entries I came upon Stupid Simple Agar Clarification: a straightforward, completely vegetarian technique for clarifying all kinds of liquids. I'll leave the details to the original post, but the short story is that technique allows for the removal of solids suspended in any solution to leave a strikingly clear liquid with all of the original flavor.

Besides requiring no specialized hardware and being extremely simple, the agar clarification is fast: you can have a clarified liquid within a half hour. Other techniques, which require on the order of a day to complete, can't be used with perishable liquids such as citrus.

Once I read about clarified lime juice I was sold. Sneaking out of work this morning, I ran down to Chinatown to pick up some agar and began to clarify as soon as I made it home in the evening.

The excitement implied by the Cooking Stuff post and the past few paragraphs may sound hyperbolic, but I cannot overstate how amazing the whole process is. In fact, the only downside is that the clarification is not total. Some opacity remains, and the transparency fades when looking through enough liquid.

The applications are many, and my mind is still racing with the possibilities. After margaritas I threw together a Mexican Firing Squad for my testers (particular thanks to Leo, who also provided photography coaching), a drink that becomes hard to distinguish from one based on rye based on sight alone.

There's just something pleasantly devious about stirring a margarita, don't you think?

Diabetic Shock

[by Mike]

While at Drink a few months ago one of the lovely bartenders was running through the ingredients in one of their tiki drinks, the Jet Pilot I believe. The usual suspects were there, with a twist provided by the inclusion of cinnamon syrup. While the spiciness of the cinnamon proved a nice addition to the drink, I couldn't help but ponder the use of syrup to draw out that flavor. Was the sugar necessary for extracting the flavor? Was there hope for combining cinnamon with sweet spirits?

Over the next few months I became more aware of the ubiquity of flavored syrups. New recipes were dense with the stuff and it seemed as if syrups were quickly becoming the default when a bartender wanted to introduce new flavors. Why was such a popular technique bothering me so much?

Because scientifically the sugar is inconsequential. The water acts as the solvent, if anything the highly hydroscopic sugar would reduce the effectiveness of the water to dissolve flavors into solution. Infused water alone (possibly heated to increase the solubility of any flavors compounds) should provide as much, if not more, flavor without limited the potential applications; the flavored syrups could be recreated on the fly with the addition of simple or demerara syrups bases.

Flavored waters, however, are not without their own flaws. All of that liquid risks diluted drinks, forcing a compromise between the strength of the additional flavor and those already present in the base spirits. What we'd need is a more powerful solvent, something that can extract the desired flavors in much smaller quantities.

That solvent already plays a critical role in the world of mixology, extracting the essence of berries and herbs into gin and caramelized wood into whiskey to name a few. Alcohol, of course, is the prized solvent. Infusing herbs or spices in relatively bland high proof spirits such as vodka or 151 produces solutions so potent that only a few drops are necessary to impart the desired flavor to a drink. Pretty much bitters without the bitter.

To demonstrate the above arguments I put together a test with kaffir lime leaf. Each infusion placed the same amount of chiffonade'd leaves into one of four solvents: (from left to right) 151 rum, water that was them simmered with the leaves, a simple syrup simmered with the leaves, and room temperature water.

The power of the alcohol is immediately visible in the vibrant green of the 151 infusion, and the taste proves no exception. What flavor dissolved into the syrup is, as expected, dominated by the sweetness. With no completing flavors, the kaffir comes through more clearly in the simmered water, although its not entirely welcome; it seems that many of the bitter compounds in the leaves dissolve readily in the heated water, creating a rather unappealing infusion. The unheated water offered hints of flavor but nothing noteworthy.

As academic as this has been, it has proven tremendously useful at least once.

One of my favorite hidden jewels, The Tequila Book (Gorman and de Alba, 1978) compiles a myriad of tequila recipes ranging from offensive shooters to classically designed cocktails featuring everything from orange bitters to egg whites (just imagine how refreshing this can be after reading through every vintage text without seeing one good tequila drink). A particularly intriguing entry, the Spanish Fly called for tequila, Liqueur 43, and a sprinkling of cinnamon. The agave of the tequila and vanilla of the Liqueur 43 would pair great with the cinnamon, but the ground spice would just clump on the surface of the drink and offer little aside from aroma.

With the inherent sweetness of the Liqueur 43, a syrup would be immediately out of the question. Following the arguments above, I procured cinnamon extract, readily available in the baking aisle of any grocery store, and went to work. Indeed, the spicy extract did the trick, providing all of the cinnamon flavor without any unnecessary sweetness or dilution.

Spanish Fly

2 oz reposado tequila

1 oz Liqueur 43

0.25 oz Benedictine

0.25 tsp cinnamon extract

dash xocolatl mole bitters

A lesson I won't soon forget.

on barflies

[by john]

'bartender, there's a fly in my manhattan!'

'what, you think you're the only one with addictions here?'

Adding to the Toolbox

[by Mike]

A few years ago I started making a Good Eats inspired cranberry granita whenever November rolled around. This quick, easy dessert is great to have around not only for its convenience but for its luxurious mouthfeel. The large, pectin-infused ice crystals melt slowly and coat the tongue with the tart cranberries flavors cut by the sweetness of the sugar and brightness of the lime zest. As recommended on the show, the granita also makes a damned fine cocktail. Once the crystals melt they provide a complex cranberry flavor far exceeding that of any cranberry juice, not to mention the added body and texture.

But is there a compromise between the two service options? Tequila and Cointreau would play excellently with the flavors in the granita, but adding the spirits directly to the crystals would only accelerate the inevitable melting. I needed a way to contain the spirits, keeping them separated from the granita until service. A technique from the oft maligned molecular gastronomy offered a possibility; armed with some sodium alginate and calcium lactate samples from Jeff of Cooking For Geeks I started playing with spherification.

A derivative of seaweed, alginate doesn't do much more than thicken liquids. When the alginate solution comes in contact with the calcium lactate, however, the thickening is dramatically enhanced. Submerged in a calcium lactate solution, a weak alginate solution would form a thin skin around a liquid core. Made weak enough, the delicate skin is just strong enough to contain the liquid until popped in the mouth.

That's the theory, anyways. Use too much alginate and the liquid becomes too thick and the skin too tough, rendering the final pearls awkwardly chewy. Recipes trawled from the internet lack any consistency, so the final ratios had to be left to experimentation. Even with working proportions, forming the spheres themselves is nontrivial. Creating small caviar isn't too hard, but larger pearls takes some clever technique. The delicate membranes then require careful handling, lest they burst prematurely.

It took a few iterations, but I eventually settled into a successful recipe and developed sufficient technique that I could consistently produce large, fragile pearls well suited for the granita. I was using an old bottle of cheap blue curacao for testing, and the bright, contrasting color proved useful for illustrative purposes. Any real application would likely feature translucent pearls hiding within the red crystals.

geek bar

[by john, mike, naveen, david, aviv, and te]

get a couple drinks in any of us and soon we'll be fervidly discussing science or cocktails, and often both. science (science!) tells us why we like the tastes we do, how to make them better, and how to predict what you'll like next time. bold claims get bolder with each sip until we know that we (we!) can do those things better. yeah, we assert, we could totally open a bar, and apply science to make it amazing. psh, nevermind the economy and all those entrepreneurial hazards...science works.

thankfully, we always sober up, and none of us has quit his day job yet. good ideas have distilled out, though. here are the initial (feasible) ones; feel free to add your own.

atmosphere

overall: open, not too dark, led lighting, no kitschy beakers or lab coats

• back-lit plates of glass along the walls for scrawling equations
• bunsen burner mood lighting
• graph paper napkins
• low-key plasma screens showing real-time drink trending, and possibly kubrick or bergman flicks (or nova documentaries)
• polarized microscopy posters
• flash cards with tips/conversation starters for shy geeks seeking to chat up their attractive bar-neighbors
• bookshelf of textbooks
• overly simple web site hides the contact info and menu in the html comments

drinks

overall: lots of bartender interaction, backed with powerful statistical methods; restrained use of lab gadgets; precisely made classics and science-enhanced originals

• menu formatted in LaTeX
• touchscreen at tables with machine learning software to suggest drinks
• discreet use of liquid nitrogen when suitable
• vortex mixers
• titrated absinthe cocktails
• pipettes for busy nights
• geeky original drink names: 'feshbach resonance', 'mcmc', 'sag a*', 'mixture of gaussians'
• cocktail shakers with built-in thermometers and timers
• endothermic glassware (an r&d project for now...)
• pH meter for analyzing individual citrus fruits
• bartenders speak perturbative field theory ('i'll have a next-leading order manhattan.')

makes me dizzy just theorizing about it...

Laplace Would Marginalize Over Red and White

[by Mike]

It would be odd if we had come so far in academia without being passionate about science. Unfortunately, this means that after a drink or two some of us (i.e. me) find it difficult to keep from talking physics and data analysis. While I'm working to avoid random outbursts of science, especially in mixed company, I can't do it without at least one cocktail memorializing my some aspects of my research.

How do you make the optimal cocktail? One approach would be to find your single favorite recipe, the selection and ratio of ingredients, and stop there. Another approach goes further, considering not just your favorite recipe but also perturbations away from that recipe. You may prefer a 6:1 martini, but how much more do you prefer it to the 5:1 or the 7:1? Or the 1:1 for that matter? The second approach would advocate serving an infinite number of cocktails, the amount of each serving weighted by the preference for that ratio. A similar approach would be taken towards ingredients.

This approach is not as foreign as it might immediately appear. Stripping a cocktail down to a single ingredient, someone with no previous experience would try the same amount of each different variety. But this is just the flight commonly used to taste spirits, beer, and wine.

In practice, preparing more than one cocktail is often prohibitive. When trying to optimize a recipe, however, it may not be a bad idea to compare the different possibilities directly. Consider the choice of bitters in the Monte Carlo,

Markov Chain Monte Carlo

In four shot glasses prepare

1 oz rye whiskey

0.5 oz benedictine

Add to individual glasses

1 dashes Angostura bitters

1 dashes Whisky Barrel Aged bitters

1 dashes Peychauds bitters

1 dashes Xocolatl Mole bitters

Now let's see how long I can go without talking about work...

the flux bias

[by john]

some truths are hard to swallow - tonight it was that cryogenic experiments can require late nights in the lab, so that precious liquid helium doesn't run out. but thankfully, quality homemade drinks are easy to swallow.

here's what i played with tonight after getting home:

the flux bias

1 1/2 oz tequila (azul reposado)

1/4 oz green chartreuse

1/4 oz maraschino liqueur

3 dashes xocolatl mole bitters

stir and strain.

very sippable, with the different earthy flavors taking turns. the name is a bitter (hah) reference to the little electronic things i was trying to keep cold and characterize - squids.

another hard-to-swallow one: mike may have been right all along - the tequila trend is definitely here, with a new tequila-heavy bar mayahuel in manhattan, the spirit's re-christening at tales (according to misty, tom, and many a blogger), and the great popularity of my sole tequila drink at the party. i'm rolling with the trend, and it's fun. azul, it's worth mentioning, has a great flavor (and no nasty vapors), with a great price point ($23 for my bottle).

p.s. - it is hard to quantify the excitement between mike, andy, and i over the (early, in time for the party [the 1919 was a house special saturday night], thanks to adam) arrival of the xocolatl mole bitters. good things shall come.

Nerd Cred

[by Mike]

While we're discussing the intersection of science and spirits, it seems appropriate to boast about some of the art decorating my apartment.

The images are produced by scattering light off of spirits, in this case a Sloe Gin Fizz (on the left) and tequila (on the right), that have been crystallized with some proprietary chemisty. These and a slew of other, gorgeous images are available for viewing and purchase at Molecular Expressions.

And you thought your drink looked good in the glass.

Mystifying the Demystified

[by Mike]

As John introduced, we absolutely love it when people take a scientific perspective on cocktails. Not only are two of our passions combined into one, but our expertise in one of those passions (science!) opens up the possibility of our making a contribution to the other (booze!). On the other hand, that expertise makes us particularly vulnerable to snobbery.

You know that almost inevitable feeling of disappointment that accompanies a poorly made cocktail at a less than reputable establishment? That's the same feeling I get when I see an article with a poor explanation of scientific principles or abusing data analysis.

To be fair, the former is somewhat delicate. The basic arguments are solid, but the description and application of "entropy" is lethargic. Taking from every bad introductory text on thermodynamics, the authors anthropomorphisize molecules as particles striving to be free when the proper description is a little more subtle but far more enlightening (don't hesitate to request more information, especially over drinks).

The latter? Let's just say that failing to properly calibrate an instrument or posting "errors" without any further description should be as immediately horrifying as a shaken martini. The use of Excel is more like reaching for a cheap triple sec: it'll do in a pinch but if you're going to take the time to make a drink then you might as well make it right.

Of course I'm being particularly picky here. The articles were great fun (seriously, who can't appreciate a thermocouple at the bottom of a Boston shaker?) and I look forward to further scientific endeavors into the world of cocktails.

I just wish there were more scientists involved. We're always looking for a good time.

cold, hard data

[by john]

the cocktail world has gone slightly aflutter lately (i wouldn't go as far as 'wild') about the shaking of ice. yes, the act that is so routine to your average barkeep that they hardly give it a second notice. and yet, after so many times of not noticing it, one develops a style, and one wants to claim (via pseudo-science or not) the superiority of that style.

exhibit one: a long video of a recent seminar by a japanese bartender, who is a proponent of using many kinds of ice and the japanese 'hard shake' style. he affably parries questions from the audience about using one technique over another with 'because that is the best way i know'. concrete explanation is missing, but i can sense that while a small fraction of the audience is skeptical, the rest is willing to believe the arcane wisdom from this strange land.

exhibit two. a few recent attendees of tales of the cocktail made an honest scientific plunge into the debate of shaking efficacy. entropy, thermocouples, excel graphs and all. while i cringe a bit at their longwinded explanation of freezing-point depression and their excel statistics (mike may whip up a polemic later), i laud them for tackling the myths (dare i say religion?) of shaking, and doing so with science. they found that shaking style doesn't matter, shaking time doesn't matter, but maybe your shaker (all metal/pre-cooled/boston shaker) might matter. empiricism, baby!

exhibit three. twitter! ok, maybe just a single tweet tonight from the drinkboston writer, lauren. drink's bartenders are apparently into ice wars. with thermometers.

here's hoping the trend continues. it keeps us science-minded folk feeling useful and in touch.

Recycling

[by Mike]

Fresh juice is without question a requirement of a well stocked bar, and maintaining a fresh supply can be a bane to any amateur cocktail enthusiast. Citrus left out at room temperature squeezes well but quickly acquires bitter flavors as the fruit ages; storing fruit in the refrigerator can delay the onset of off flavors but at the expense of firmer flesh that can make significantly reduce juicing efficiency. Even fruit kept in the fridge, however, will eventually spoil. With an oft random schedule vulnerable to aging citrus, what is a graduate student to do?

In the past, I would either try to use old citrus (to the detriment of many a cocktail) or swallow the waste and throw it out. After my last big cocktail party, however, I had nearly a pint of freshly squeezed juice that I couldn't bring myself to trash and I began to research alternatives. Eventually my search stumbled upon the unsung hero of preservation: the freezer. Freezing the squeezed juice in 1/2 ounce increments would dramatically increase the effective lifetime while providing convenient serving sizes. Conveniently, one of my ice cube treys held exactly 1/2 ounces in each well. The experiments were on.

My main concern was that the frozen juice would take too long to thaw and limit the convenience of the method. Fortunately, chemistry proved a powerful ally; something in the juice (not sure if it's the low pH or just the solutes impeding crystal formation) reduces the latent heat of the cubes. Build a drink, throw in the cubes, and you'll only have to wait a minute or so before they melt and the drink can be finished with the introduction of ice and a quick shake.

The initial batch of lime and lemon cubes have been in my freezer for over a month now and I have yet to notice any significant reduction in quality. I would definitely pick up some fresh fruit in the case of a party or the occasion to impress someone, but the cubes are definitely sufficient for today's grad student on the run.

ice

[by john]

i was reminded last night of just how essential ice is as a cocktail ingredient.

in order to properly warm a cliquot-loving friend's new apartment, i brought a flask of pre-measured gin and st. germain and a bottle of prosecco to make elderfashion royales. the only thing i didn't bring - and hadn't thought i needed - was ice. like habit, i put the glassware in the freezer and started looking around for the clear stuff...but alas! after some playful admonishing, i went ahead with the drink, swirling it in a frozen pint glass and then topping the chilled flute with prosecco.

ah, but there's the rub. a drink is not stirred, shaken, or built with ice for the bracing chill alone; dilution is - i would argue - the most important side effect. you don't want to poison your guests, after all.

so, i ended up trying two versions of the cocktail - one straight up, and one with 1/4 oz of water to simulate a little bit of dilution. and there was definitely a difference...the 'watered down' one was indeed rounder.

the cocktails turned out nicely (as st. germain and bubbly usually do), and made the night's conversations all the more pleasant.

-----

now, i've been trying to restrain myself from becoming an ice snob, as bartenders are wont to do. i don't boil my water beforehand, or purify it, or do two stages of freezing...but i will admit to buying some tovolo trays, which give very solid one inch cubes. they've got a lot more shaking power than chipped ice, and they look sexy in a collins glass.

however, i think this might take it too far: physicists have discovered a new kind of ice, dubbed ice xv. it is formed only at high pressures and is a little strange, being antiferroelectric. i don't know how it would change a drink, but it'd be impossible to find out anyway. i guess those scientists will have to celebrate their achievement with some champagne chilled in regular ol' ice ih.

as a final ice news note, check out this slideshow of different kinds of solid water and then tell me people aren't obsessed with this all too common, all too weird substance.