LIQUID INTELLIGENCE THE ART AND SCIENCE OF THE PERFECT COCKTAIL DAVE ARNOLD PHOTOGRAPHY BY TRAVIS HUGGETT FOR MY WIFE, JENNIFER, AND MY SONS, BOOKER AND DAX Please bookmark your page before following links. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION PART 1: PRELIMINARIES MEASUREMENT, UNITS, EQUIPMENT INGREDIENTS PART 2: TRADITIONAL COCKTAILS ICE, ICE WITH BOOZE, AND THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW Ice by Itself Ice with Booze Chilling and Diluting The Fundamental Law of Traditional Cocktails SHAKEN AND STIRRED, BUILT AND BLENDED Shaken Drinks: The Daiquiri Stirred Drinks: Manhattan versus Negroni Built Drinks: The Old-Fashioned Blended Drinks and Shaved Drinks: The Margarita COCKTAIL CALCULUS: THE INNER WORKINGS OF RECIPES PART 3: NEW TECHNIQUES AND IDEAS ALTERNATIVE CHILLING NITRO-MUDDLING AND BLENDER-MUDDLING RED-HOT POKERS RAPID INFUSIONS, SHIFTING PRESSURE Rapid Nitrous Infusion with the iSi Whipper Rapid Liquors and Cocktails Rapid Bitters and Tinctures Vacuum-Infused Solids: Garnish Magic CLARIFICATION Definition, History, Technique Clarification Techniques: Nitty-Gritty Flowcharts Clarifying Booze in the ’Fuge: The Justino WASHING Booze Washing Milk Washing: What’s Old Is What’s New Egg Washing Chitosan/Gellan Washing A Short Word on Fat Washing CARBONATION PART 4: LITTLE JOURNEYS APPLES COFFEE THE GIN AND TONIC SOURCES FURTHER READING RECIPE LIST INDEX INTRODUCTION Cocktails are problems in need of solutions. How can I achieve a particular taste, texture, or look? How can I make the drink in front of me better? Taking cocktails seriously, as with all worthy inquiries, puts you on a lifelong journey. The more you know, the more questions you raise. The better a practitioner you become, the more you see the faults in your technique. Perfection is the goal, but perfection is, mercifully, unattainable. I have spent seven years and thousands of dollars on the problem of the perfect gin and tonic; I still have work to do. How boring if I were finished—if I were satisfied. Learning, studying, practicing— and drinking with friends: that is what this book is about. The premise: no cocktail detail is uninteresting, none unworthy of study. A little dose of science will do you good. THINK LIKE A SCIENTIST AND YOU WILL MAKE BETTER DRINKS. You don’t need to be a scientist, or even understand much science, to use the scientific method to your advantage. Control variables, observe, and test your results; that’s pretty much it. This book shows you how to make your drinks more consistent, how to make them consistently better, and how to develop delicious new recipes without taking random shots in the dark. Sometimes on our journey, in hot pursuit of a particular flavor or idea, I use methods that are preposterous and equipment that is unattainable for most readers. You’ll see what it means to run an idea into the ground. I also hope you’ll be entertained. I don’t expect most people to tackle these more involved drinks, but you’ll get enough information to give them a go if you are willing and able. I’ll hold nothing back and keep no secrets, which means there will be as many mishaps as successes (mistakes are often the origins of my best ideas). Last, I promise that there will be plenty of techniques, flavors, and drink ideas you can use, even if all you have is a set of cocktail shakers and some ice. I’m out to change the way you look at drinks, no matter what kind of drinks you make. This is not a book on molecular mixology (a term I detest). The connotations of molecular are all bad: gimmicks for gimmicks’ sake, drinks that don’t taste very good, science gone wrong. My guidelines are simple: • Use new techniques and technologies only when they make the drink taste better. • Strive to make an amazing drink with fewer rather than more ingredients. • Don’t expect a guest to know how you made a drink in order to enjoy it. • Gauge success by whether your guest orders another, not by whether he or she thinks the drink is “interesting.” • Build and follow your palate. This book is divided into four parts. The first part deals with preliminaries— equipment and ingredients—that pave the way for the rest. The second part is a careful study of how classic cocktails work: the basics of shaker, mixing glass, ice, and liquor. The third part is an overview of newer techniques and ideas and how they relate to classic cocktails. The last part is a series of recipes, mini- journeys based on a particular idea. At the end you will find an annotated bibliography of cocktail books, science books, and cookbooks, plus journal articles that I find interesting and germane to our subject. WHAT I AM THINKING ABOUT PRETTY MUCH ALL THE TIME I approach cocktails like everything I care about in life: persistently and from the ground up. Often I perceive an irksome problem in an existing cocktail, or become entranced with an idea or flavor, and my journey begins. I ask myself what I want to achieve, and then I beat down every path to get there. I want to see what is possible and what I’m capable of. In the initial phases of working through a problem, I don’t much care if what I’m doing is reasonable. I prefer to go to absurd lengths to gain minute increments of improvement. I am okay with spending a week preparing a drink that’s only marginally better than the one that took me five minutes. I’m interested in the margins. That’s where I learn about the drink, about myself, and about the world. Sounds grandiose, but I mean it. I am not unhappy, but I am never satisfied. There’s always a better way. Constantly questioning yourself—especially your basic tenets and practices— makes you a better person behind the bar, in front of the stove, or in whatever field you choose. I love it when my dearly held beliefs are proved wrong. It means I’m alive and still learning. I hate compromising, and I hate cutting corners, but sometimes I have to. You need to keep hating compromise at every turn while knowing how to compromise with minimum impact when necessary. Always be focused on the critical path to quality, from raw ingredients to the cup. I am often surprised by how much work someone will put into making ingredients for a drink, only to destroy all that work at the last moment. Remember, a drink can be ruined at any stage of its creation. Your responsibility for vigilance as a drink maker doesn’t end until the drink is finished—and your responsibility as an alcoholic-drink maker doesn’t end until the imbiber is safe and sound at home. PART 1 PRELIMINARIES Measurement, Units, Equipment Having access to cool equipment has helped me develop ways of achieving good results without the equipment. In this section we’ll look at the equipment I use at home and at my bar, Booker and Dax. Almost no one—not even well-heeled professional bartenders—will want or need all the equipment on this list. In the technique-based sections of the book I’ll give you workarounds for the bigger- ticket and hard-to-find items as often as I can. At the end of this section you’ll find shopping lists organized by budget and interest. A note on measurement, before we launch into a discussion of tools. HOW AND WHY YOU SHOULD MEASURE DRINKS Drinks should be measured by volume. I am a big believer in cooking by weight, but I mix drinks by volume, and so should you. Pouring out small volumes is much faster than weighing a bunch of small ingredients. Furthermore, the densities of cocktail ingredients vary wildly, from about .94 grams per millileter for straight booze to 1.33 grams per millileter for maple syrup. For the bartender, the weight of the finished beverage isn’t important, but the volume is. The volume determines how close the top of the finished drink will be to the rim of the glass. This liquid line is called the wash line, and maintaining a proper wash line is essential to good bartending. In a professional setting, it is essential that your drinks be consistent. Having standard wash lines for each drink you prepare gives you an instant visual check that everything is okay. If your wash line is wrong, something is wrong with the drink. Consistent wash lines are also important to your guests’ well-being. Two people get the same drink, but one drink sits higher in the glass: do you like the person with the taller pour more, or are your techniques just a bit shaky? Advocates of the free-pour don’t measure their drinks with measuring tools. Some free-pourers gauge how much they have poured by looking at the liquid levels on the side of glass mixing cups. These bartenders recognize through practice what liquid increments look like in a standard mixing glass. Other free- pourers use speed-pour bottle tops, which produce a steady stream of liquor. Speed-pour mavens judge how much they pour by counting off the length of