paulraphael

They tell you not to put the jars in the dishwasher. There's a bearing cartridge in there that's sealed against smoothies but not dishwasher detergent. I find them effortless to clean just by blending some warm soap water. Fill it about 3/4, put in a drop of dish soap, and pulse it to high speed 2 or 3 times. Rinse. Spray with sanitizer if you like. For getting every drop of food out of the bottom, ISI makes a narrow silicone spatula that's perfect for this. It's designed for getting everything out of their whipping siphons, but works perfectly on a vitamix. Also perfect for most mason jars. Last I checked these were out of stock everywhere ... I hope they're still making them.

DA's experiments show that rocks do a pretty good job of keeping things cold. The choice is a few smaller rocks, which will keep a drink colder, but dilute it faster, or a big handsome rock, which will let it warm more but will keep it stronger longer. For drinks served up, he's a believer in making them small so they stay cold as long as you're drinking them. Personally, I'd rather have a bigger drink and take my chances. Or drink it faster. I always make my negronis on the rocks, with a couple of ice cubes in a chilled glass. I think that drink does fine with extra dilution, but it needs to be really cold. Whisky drinks I don't mind warmer, but I'd rather avoid dilution. I make old fashionds with a 2" cube.

After this many posts on amateur thermodynamics, I need a cocktail.

Now I understand what you're saying. But it goes against the experimental evidence. I did address the possibility of ice being colder than 0° ... the basic physics and the experiments demonstrate that this makes a negligible difference in the glass. [Edited to add ... I just saw your post describing the experiment.] Of course, if you contrive a situation with huge amounts of ice, and it's much colder than the equilibrium temperature, then that 1/2 calorie per degree per gram would be able to make a significant difference. But is this not relevant to anyone making cocktails!

I'm not 100% sure I understand your point here. It's true that once the cocktail reaches its equilibrium point (around -5°C for the drinks of the strength used in DA's experiments there will be no more melting. And there will likewise be no more chilling. Are you talking about what happens when you put extra cold ice into a cocktail? The experiments address that. You get a very small additional amount of cooling from the colder ice. 1/2 calorie per degree for each gram of ice, vs. the 80 calories per gram you get from the ice melting. This ends up making a minute difference.

He doesn't; he's demonstrates that the mass of ice is irrelevant, assuming there's enough of it. The total surface area of the ice is relevant, but only to the speed of chilling. Not to the final temperature or dilution. "You use “enough” ice. We did initial experiments that showed that using too little ice results in poor chilling and greater dilution. The benefit of adding more ice plateaus at a certain point so that it neither helps nor hurts the temperature or dilution. I don’t have exact numbers for the plateau point (I lost my old data cause I’m a jerk), but using Kold-Draft ice, Eben and Alex shook a 100 ml gimlet with one cube, two cubes, three cubes, and up. They were able to keep getting better results up to at least 5 cubes." I now see the Duveltini experiment, but not sure I understand what you're saying.

I don't see the Duveltini experiment. Is that link right? Are you suggesting a flaw in Dave Arnold's methods or analysis? I'd be curious to hear what it is. I've gone over every one of those results and I don't see an exception to the "melting ice mantra" at any temperature.

Chilling is proportional to dilution, no matter how far you chill. Dave specifically demonstrates this. The amount of chilling due to conductivity, or the coldness of the ice, is negligible. Ice’s tremendous chilling power doesn’t come from the energy required to heat it up, but from the energy required to melt it. It takes 0.5 calories to heat a gram of ice from -1°C to 0°C (this value is called the specific heat of ice,) but almost 80 calories to melt that same gram (this value is called the heat of fusion of water). To put it another way, melting 1 gram of ice provides the same chilling power as bringing that same gram of ice from -160°C to 0°C.

Take a close look at Dave Arnold's research. He demonstrates that cocktails chill to below 0°C. And that essentially ALL the cooling power is from the melting. No need for salt; alcohol works through the exact same colligative properties. In his book he explains this in greater depth ... enthalpy vs. entropy—and why cocktail chilling depends on the same essential principles that guarantee the eventual death of the universe.

Why would you think that? How would this allow 0°C ice to chill a room temperature mixture to -7°C?

A refractometer would be tricky, because there's both sugar and alcohol in there. You won't get an absolute measurement that means anything. You'd have to get a before and after reading, and do some fancy math. I think using weight or volume would be easier and more accurate.

I'm not trying to be dismissive of the minds behind the 25% figure. Just pointing out that it is at best an average. Or as Dave the Cook suggests, a goal with certain recipes. The Cooking Issues link (Thanks Mitch!) shows much of what D.A. talks about in his book. A few takeaways: Size and shape of the ice cubes matter, but not in the ways that many people assume. More/smaller ice cubes chill faster, but not more. They also tend to dilute more, but for a specific reason: bar ice is wet (it's always hanging out at 0°C) and more surface area means there's more water clinging to it. That water adds to dilution without contributing to chilling. Dave recommends shaking the water off of wet ice using a strainer. Temperature of the ice is irrelevant. Virtually all of ice's chilling power comes from its latent heat of fusion (the energy required to melt it). Making it 10 or 20 degrees colder will have little effect. Except, curiously ... Ice colder than 0°C will chill your drink more slowly than 0°C ice. Because science! It will take a bit of time to warm to 0°, during which it does some very inefficient chilling. Only when it hits 0 and starts to melt does the powerful chilling begin. However ... Chilling is asymptotic—you'll eventually reach a fixed minimum temperature when shaking or stirring. But stirred drinks chill slowly enough that ice cubes matter. Because no one stirs long enough to hit that asymptotic low temperature with big ice cubes. To hit the temperature you want consistently when stirring, you need to be consistent about ice cube size and shape, stirring speed, and time. The nuances of shaking technique might have an effect on drink texture, but they don't affect the temperature or dilution—provided you shake long enough ... but not much too long. But we were talking about Martinis, and Sean Connery is dead. Anything that adds significant heat to the drink from the outside will cause extra melting and dilution. This includes a hot ambient temperature, spending way too much time stirring / shaking / hanging out, or using an unchilled vessel that has a lot of thermal mass, like a classic stirring glass.

Right, that 25% percent figure is just an average someone came up with. What I like about the article is the idea that martini perfection starts with a sweet spot for strength. The author's sweet spot may not be yours or mine. But if you figure out what yours is, then you can tweak your ingredients and method to get there. It would have been helpful if he'd mentioned the effect of method. Chilling a cocktail always leads to a certain minimum dilution. But there are a million things you can do (for better or worse, on purpose or not) that add even more dilution.

Yeah, if your goal is a cold cocktail, you should be straining a chilled drink drink over those big rocks. I especially like the 2" cubes for whiskey drinks like an old fashioned. Things I just want chilled a little, and that I don't won't to dilute too quickly. For something I want super cold, like a negroni, I stir with ice and strain. The ice in the drinking glass can be anything (the big cubes do look nice).

That thread's an entertaining read. But In the time it takes to plow through it, you could read Liquid Intelligence, and get the right answers. TL;DR: Much of of what serious imbibers say about ice defies the laws of physics!

I hope NATO generals in Eastern Europe are studying this. Any strategy that won a détente with those 3 cats should certainly work with Putin.

The way to figure out your actual dilution is to just measure the volume of your cocktail after you strain it. You'll see it's a lot bigger than what you measured into the tin. The difference divided by the final volume = your percentage of added water. If you think you're getting too much, there are ways to remedy this.

Right, and this is what the proposed legislation I've seen is about. Banning gas appliances outright would be too hard and expensive. In our building in NYC, for example, we're not even allowed to have an electric range or oven. The building doesn't have the electrical capacity. This is probably a typical situation in older cities.

The study I saw (reported in the Times last week) showed that there wasn't a consistent difference between expensive and inexpensive ranges. The study was not designed to figure out exactly where the leaks were coming from. It's possible that it was mostly from fixtures and connectors. Much of the released methane is not from leaks, but from gas released by burners before they ignite. This is most significant with oven burners, which use lots of gas and which cycle on and off with the thermostat. Someone in the comments section calculated that the average daily methane leakage from a gas range was about the same as the average daily methane leakage from a human. I didn't check the math, but sounds reasonable! Which would be to say, this is all a minor source of methane when you compare to all the world's other methane leakers (sheep and cows being high on the list). It's really just another problem to pile on top of all the others—not huge in and of itself, but part of a larger picture.

It's true that it makes a difference where the electricity comes from. The arguments for conversion away from gas still include some of the following: This is a longterm project, and the electric grid is slowly transitioning to a higher percentage of renewable sources. Gas-fired power plants have much more stringent pollution controls than gas-fired appliances. Using electricity eliminates the hazards of gas at the endpoints (leaking methane into the atmosphere, pollutants in the home, explosion hazards, etc.)

Unhelpfully, I agree with basically all sides here. Gas appliances are a major problem for many reasons, and in the name of the public good I support all the legislation that's phasing them out. I also love gas ranges, and have never really liked cooking on anything else. I hope to be able to build a kitchen someday with a raging Bluestar range and a commercial hood, and to be able to enjoy cooking with for a few years before the prophesy of Mad Max comes true. I'm hoping induction is as awesome as its converts claim. See "If by Whiskey" for rhetorical clarity.

When I was around 10, my dad decided to make me bartender at one of our big holiday parties. This might not be an example of his usual fine judgment. His thinking was that he could train me to limit the amount of booze in each glass—and maybe, just maybe, there'd be less chance of one of my very thirsty uncles smashing through the windshield and into the hereafter on the long drive back to the suburbs. My Chicago relatives are Irish. They're older, and they're old-school. My dad's plan didn't stand a chance. Instead of being the cocktail police, I became the disciple. A big, friendly, hairy arm would land around my shoulders and I'd hear something like, "come on, kid, I'm gonna show you how to make a martini." The lesson would be something like Hawkeye's. Or, " ... you pour a drop of vermouth into the cap, and just kind of wave it around the rim of the glass before pouring it back into the bottle." Then uncle #2 would pull me aside and say, "kid, forget everything that guy told you. THIS is how you make a martini ..." Good times. And no thanks to me, everyone eventually made it home.

Cool article. I need to pick up some dry vermouth and try to ... uh ... duplicate his lab's results. Interesting that he found a sweet spot for final strength. An idea from Dave Arnold's research: one way to reduce dilution is stir in a shaker tin instead of a mixing glass. Or, pre-chill the mixing glass by swirling ice in it until you feel the cold on the outside (or if you're Dave, swirl with liquid nitrogen). The reason is that a mixing glass has a much higher thermal mass than a tin, and so when you stir a drink in it, a significant amount of ice melts just to chill the (not pre-chilled) glass. So at any given final temperature, you'll get noticeably more dilution. At Dave's bar, he tells his bartenders that they can use a fancy crystal mixing glass if they want, but they have to pre-chill before every cocktail. Most of them give up and just use a shaker tin. It's not that the tin or pre-chilling is inherently superior ... just that Dave has formulated his drinks for a particular final dilution and strength. Same could apply with Wondrich's martini. If you don't have navy-strength gin, you might get into the right ballpark just by stirring in a tin.

This is a rare case where I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to the reviewer. There is no context in this or any imaginable universe where the mouth-lick dish would be anything but a horror. And the chef's reply pretty much cements him as a narcissist who's rather out of touch with what food is. I tried to find other reviews of the restaurant for balance, but this kerfuffle has pretty much buried all the others in the Google results.

Amen. I have piles and piles of research papers collected just for ice cream. Most of the studies were not conducted with ice cream in mind. There's every kind of study on every kind of sugar, every kind of hydrocolloid (and combination of hydrocolloids), on the ways dairy proteins respond to heat, on flavor perceptions at different temperatures, at different levels of sweetness, at different levels of fat ... it goes on and on. Much of the science is just about understanding the most basic things, like the sugar composition of different fruits. If anyone wants me to ruin ice cream for them forever, I've got thousands of pages of PDFs, not even counting footnotes ...