opinionated alchemist

in courtesy of esquire.com I had a look into my statistics - and it seems, that most of you, my readers, are interested in cocktail recipes. My Mojito post is doing still very well in the hit-statistics - even more surprisingly - the post about the El Diablo is strong - actually the post with the most hits ever [of my blog]. So I decided to write up a post about my absolutely favorite. I think this drink is not only the forebear of all cocktails - it is also more than the king - it is the emperor of bar-drinks. Check out the first quote in print which was published in 1806: "a mixture of spirits of any kind, water, sugar and bitters, vulgarly called a bittered sling." Looks like an Old Fashioned - doesn't it? But where is the name coming from. We can be quite sure, that there was in the mid 1800's a new breed of drinks coming up. Those mixed with wine aperitifs - which were most of the time vermouth. The predecessors of Manhattan and Martini [or Martin...

The guys at www.cookingissues.com made also pretty amazing graphs!  The ice doesn’t matter and even the time of shaking doesn’t really matter [as long as you are shaking longer than 15-20 seconds - a problem of most bartenders...] What matters is the amount of water, which comes with the ice.  Maybe a good drainage in the ice well, makes more sense than a “double_expensive_super_ice_machine? Yes and no! The results are talking to me like that:  there is no [ice] excuse anymore, when you get shitty drinks in a bar!  A proper ice machine still shows you, which drinking venue is quality oriented!  And: the results are only related to the sole shaking. If you use shitty ice cubes in a drink on the rocks, the drink will dilute much faster in the glass. Now, thanks to Dave Arnold, we can slow down again a bit [after the ice carving out of a glacier from the moon] and apply our special skills to more customers. Well....

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 dri...