As I have posted yesterday the Agar-Agar Clarification post, I thought, that it would be also great, that I reinstate the post about Science behind shaking. Again Dave Arnold - again groundbreaking. Maybe these discoveries were even more groundbreaking as the clarification techniques.
Hence enjoy, what you will find out here...
I could say now: I’ve told you...
Obviously I won’t do [ups - ahem I just did...].
Dave Arnold and the guys at www.cookingissues.com just did an epic voyage, discovering the mechanics behind shaking.
Why don’t you read the short story below - and click the blue link for the whole post?
For those of you without patience: the Short Story
Cocktail shaking is a violent activity. If you shake for around 12-15 seconds (though shaking longer won’t hurt), and if you aren’t too lethargic, neither the type of ice you use nor your shaking style will appreciably affect the temperature or dilution of your drink. Shaking completely chills, dilutes and aerates a drink in around 15 seconds, after which the drink stops changing radically and reaches relative equilibrium. Shaking is basically insensitive to bartender-induced variables. See my post on the Science of Shaking.
Stirring is different. Think of stirring as inefficient shaking. It can take over 2 minutes of constant stirring to do what shaking can accomplish in 15 seconds. No one stirs a drink for 2 minutes, so the drink never reaches an equilibrium point. All the bartender-induced variables – size of ice, speed of stirring, duration of stirring, etc. — make a difference in stirred cocktails, so bartender skill is very important in a stirred cocktail.
Because stirring doesn’t reach equilibrium, stirred drinks are warmer and less diluted than shaken cocktails. Stirred drinks, unlike shaken ones, are not aerated. Stirring does not alter the texture of a drink –it merely chills and dilutes. A properly diluted cocktail stored at -5 degrees Celsius in a freezer is indistinguishable from a properly stirred one.
Don’t believe me? The proof’s in the long story.
Basically: The technique of shaking is insignificant for the temperature and dilution of the drink; most important is the length of the shake.
However - the texture of the drink depends on the method!
Further, it is meant, that the drink is still shaken properly and not douche_bag’gy like you can see so often.
Another important note of the story is, that stirring makes actually sense!
There is the controversy, that you can shake drinks [which supposed to be stirred] and according to cookingissues.com this is wrong - meant to be stirred drinks, are tasting better stirred than shaken
[I always knew this, but thank you for the confirmation].
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