@francois’ delightful op-ed (below) feels particularly timely to me in the wake of the “swizzle” (not actually a swizzle, but a middling punch served over crushed ice) I was served yesterday evening.
Even I get confused about some of these things, and bartenders sometimes help confuse me.
There is formula, there is intent, and there is technique. Recipes are terse and you often must read between the lines. Correctly understanding the intent can have significant implications for how the formula is interpreted, including glassware selection, garnishing, and choices about vague quantities (“top with…”, “fill with…”). Technique also can make all the difference—some drinks (e.g., the now-fashionable Garibaldi) are all technique (as @Splificator has explained to me more than once and I maybe now grok).
A sour that has degenerated into a quasi collins is a mediocre drink. A swizzle with insufficient ice, and insufficiently potent (flavorful) ingredients to hold their own against that ice is … not a swizzle. A bartender can easily Mr. Potatohead themself into fraudulence.
I was gonna start a new thread about techniques but found this instead and Dave’s article about Plato & Aristotle (Gotta love the classic problem of universals) seems a good foundation.
I’ve moved to Copenhagen last year after 12 years in London and the bar industry here is currently going through a milk punch craze. It’s like a bad version of Blendtec’s viral video series of “Will it Blend” where every single drink is asked the question “Will it Clarify” (and can it be served in a rocks glass on a block of ice devoid of any personality).
Milk punch (and egg) clarification is obviously nothing new as it goes back hundreds of years so this made me think of which techniques exist for drinks beyond the basic build, stir & shake along with their origins.
In recent years the UK have taken on the freezer “Switching” technique as made popular by Iain McPherson of Panda & Sons in Edinburgh (at least the bars who can hustle a suitable freezer) and lately the idea of simply freezing & thawing certain fruits to manipulate the water and sugar content is starting to gain traction on social media.
Are there any older references for these freezer related methods to manipulate flavour?
There are a handful of notes on freezing and how it makes liquids leave solids upon thawing in Modernist Cuisine but beyond that I’m unfamiliar with whether these techniques have previously been formally named.
If these are methods that may stay around for longer (The milk punch obviously will), it would be useful to identify them and “isolate” them into a “hero serve” of sorts similar to the Caipirinha, Ti Punch or Swizzle as discussed already for the purposes of training newcomers to the industry.
Beyond freezing, are there other “simple” methods of old that are yet to be revived?
Sounds like “jacking” to me, as in freezing liquids to concentrate alcohol a la homemade applejack. I remember reading an online exchange where a commenter expressed skepticism of centrifuge clarification, whereas you could just use agar etc. A piqued Dave Arnold replied that he’d essentially invented both techniques, and centrifuge yield and efficiency were exponentially superior. With all due respect to our ancestors’ ingenuity, sometimes the new techniques are just better.
I’m not for a second disputing the key influence of modern bartenders and the likes of Dave Arnold who influences and pushes the industry forward in the right direction, but here I’m more interested in the actual history of the methods.
Centrifuge clarification has been used for separating milk solids since the late 1800s and given agar has been recognised as similar to gelatin from before 1900 as well, I doubt we can fairly credit Arnold as having “invented” these techniques.
Sure, he might have optimised them for bartender specific ingredients and had a HUGE influence on the use of the tools in the bartending world through Liquid Intelligence but again, this came out in 2014 while Modernist Cuisine came out in 2011 which is far more detailed on some of these insane techniques in food & drinks.
New science is so extremely rare so I’m curious as to how they’ve evolved and when they’ve been used before any modern revivals.
Not sure how I’d missed the term “Jacking” for the freeze distillation methods. That’s very helpful @EvanD thanks!
As far as new science goes, i use an ultrasonic bath at work (i’m at a distillery) and i’ve not come across the use of ultrasonics or sonification or UAE (sonically assisted extraction) employed in any bar literature or scientific literature beyond medical application - not exactly “New” but the use of ultrsonics does rapidly accelerate the extraction of aromatic compounds - in learning about this and other extraction methods, the idea of freezing things as a way of extracting optimal flavour from them would also transfer to the development of freeze dried powders where you want to be able to add flavour in a concentrated way.
I also feel bars do themselves a bit dirty. if you want to clarify a drink - just run it through a pump with a filter, you’ll clarify the drink in a couple of minutes, half an hour to an hour if you’re doing a kegs worth of it and if you’re making milk punches surely the investment into that is worth is as much as any other bar equipment? seem silly to just sit about waiting for your milk to filter your solids for multiple hours on end when we have way better tools for filtering in our modern age.
I do think there is something to be said though about modern techniques opening up the way for alternative ingredients that allow for dietary requirements and that’s great, fantastic - make that more accessible.
i feel that - to repond to the original quote - isnt so much a mistake of technique, it’s jst a lack of respect for the history of that style and incorrect teaching, most bartenders who are half serious about the craft generally take a lot of pride in their techniques so someone making a tall sour fizz drink - unless they’re designing it as a silver fizz style cocktail probably wouldn’t enjoy serving a drink that is either without proper consideration of category and or techniques.