Help with consistency of Gin and Tonic sorbet

[stuartlikesstrudel]

Hi all,

I've recently started making G&T sorbet on occasion... it's refreshing, delicious and a bit of a novelty.

When I had the idea, I googled for recipes and found a few, eventually going with this one (link) because I liked the sound of it not being too sweet, and the author refined the recipe before posting so I thought it might be a good one. And I do like it - i've made it twice and love the taste, and I am happy with the granita-like texture I get from freezing it directly (no ice-cream machine). I up the gin to about 90mls so it is a bit more noticeable.

However, I'm not COMPLETELY happy with it. I would like it to be a little less sweet, and also it ends up quite soft which is good for serving, but it melts really quickly. With my limited experience, my understanding is that alcohol doesn't freeze, so the more gin I have in it, the LESS desireable the texture. Likewise with sugar (or at least, it helps keep icecream/sorbet soft).

So how can I play the balancing game to get something that freezes a bit harder (or stays frozen a bit longer, if they are different things), and if possible, is a little less sweet? It's already pretty icy from the high water ratio but as i said earlier, I don't mind that it ends up like a granita and a *bit* icy.

Thanks, chilled-dessert-gurus!

EDIT : I have tried using the eggwhite suggested in the recipe the first time, and didn't actually notice much difference between the two. And I note that someone in the comments suggested gelatin, but I think that would be doing the OPPOSITE of helping it stay frozen longer?

Edited January 11, 2010 by stuartlikesstrudel (log)

[Lisa Shock]

I haven't done many alcohol-containing sorbets, but, for regular ones, I find the key is having the brix between 25% and 30%.

You can buy a refractometer on eBay, make certain to get on that is designed for brix and that reads from 0% up to at least 40%. I managed to get one with a dual read out that goes from 0-90 so, I can use it for jam as well.

I would also expect that a tonic made with real sugar instead of HFCS would freeze up a bit firmer.

[Shalmanese]

Is your problem weeping or melting? Those are two very different things. Sorbets without too much solid matter like lemon tend to weep. The solution is to add stabilizers to it. Invert sugar, glucose, glycerin etc. are all possible stabilizers. The sorbet topic has more on this.

If it's melting, my best guess is you're putting them in room temperature bowls. Try chilling the vessels beforehand and see if that helps.

[Blether]

What do you freeze the sorbet in ? Different freezers & different fridge/freezers have different ultimate freezing power, as well as thermostats to set the temperature. Of course in the same room, a sorbet that comes out of the freezer at -17 will stay frozen longer than one that comes out at -5.

[stuartlikesstrudel]

Thanks for the replies, all.

Lisa, thanks for your suggestions... the tonic I use (and most soft drinks in Australia) are still made with sugar, but it was worth checking

I haven't got a refractometer, but will look into that. I am also thinking I might make a split batch and try a few different sugar levels so I can see the effect.

Shalmanese, melting is the issue. There is a *little* bit of separation where I get a sticky pool of tacky stuff, but now that I think about it that is probably different again to weeping. My head would tell me that would be due to oversaturation of sugar, but that doesn't make sense since it's not a very sweet recipe. Hmm.

You are right that I'm serving it in room temp bowls. This is sure to be a factor. I don't think I've noticed it being such a problem with other sorbets or icecreams I've made...

Blether, similarly, I'm using the same freezer I've used for other frozen stuff, so this shouldn't be much of a factor.

Cheers all, I will let you know if I do any experiments and how they turn out.

[scott123]

Less sugar=harder sorbet. If you cut the sugar by 1/4, you'll end up with something slightly firmer.

How open are you to artificial sweeteners? 75/25 sugar/splenda would probably buy you a little more firmness. Splenda has a tendency to react a little strangely with citrus, but I don't think that ratio would be a problem. There's also aspartame if you're willing to go that route.

And, I could be wrong about this, but thicker mixtures tend to thaw more slowly, because, as they melt, the outer layer tends to cling and create a bit of insulation. So give the gelatin a try.

[jackal10]

The alcohol will make it melt easier (lower freezing point)

Leave out the gin and pour it over intead of putting it in the mix

Youll get more taste and a better sorbet

McGee in The Curious Cook suggests for lemon or lime water ice 1/2 cup juice, 14 tbs sugar, 1 cup water.

YOu could replace the water with a good tonic,

Edited January 11, 2010 by jackal10 (log)

[paulraphael]

A couple of thoughts: first, the problems of too sweet and too soft take care of each other: use less sugar.

second, since alcohol is antifreeze, you can reduce the amount of gin a bit, and then enhance the gin flavor by adding juniper in some other form (make your own infusion ... this would be a cool project).

with sorbets, more water tends to give a harder texture. it also gives more iciness. a stabilizer like zanthan gum or locust bean gum will greatly reduce iciness and improve creaminess (they work in tiny quantities).

Is all your sugar coming from the tonic? If so, one solution would be to mix in some sugar free tonic (but I think artificial sweeteners are gross, so that would be low on the list). Better would be a mix of tonic and water, and add your own quinine to increase tonic flavor. I don't know where to get quinine, but that would be a cool project too. I'd also be inclined to look up classic tonic recipes online ... it's possible that they were even more interesting once upon a time.

[lesliec]

This is completely off the top of my head but, since we seem to agree that higher alcohol = less inclination to freeze, how about burning the alcohol off some of your gin before you put it in? Might give some interesting, different flavours.

Haven't tried sorbet, but I've been playing with G&T jellies of late. They really sparkle in the baby martini glasses I found a few weeks ago - I made some coloured/flavoured with grenadine and Midori (separately) for Christmas dinner (the old red/green theme) which went down very well.

Good luck with your experiments. Let us know the results.

[stuartlikesstrudel]

Alright so my first round of experiments are done...

I made two half-batches... the base recipe was :

1/2 C water

1/2 C sugar

1/8 C gin

1 C tonic water

juice and zest of 1 small lime

For trial (A) I dropped the sugar to 1/4 cup, and added 1/8th tsp xanthan gum.

This one ended up being a bit icy, but probably a bit less so than usual, which is good, given that it has less sugar than usual.

Batch (B) replaced the 1/2 C sugar with 1/3 C glucose. This was an arbitrary decision, I should have done 1/2 a cup I think. This one was really quite good in texture, it was less icy without getting too gummy. Though having said that, I just did a quick scrape this morning, I haven't tried it properly yet.

And actually I have decided that perhaps the sugar amount was almost right to begin with. So my next trial will be with the xanthan gum, and 1/4 C sugar and 1/4 C glucose (i am led to believe that glucose is about 30% of the sweetness of sugar). This should hopefully be a BIT less sweet than the original, and with the textural advantage of glucose and xanthan.

Thanks for all the tips - some new ideas as well as confirmation/re-explanation of a few things that I kind of understood but wasn't sure about.

[paulraphael]

i'm interested that the glucose is helping ... since it's less sweet, you generally use more of it, so you get a softer texture. i thought maybe fructose would be promising.

[stuartlikesstrudel]

Yeah, I don't know exactly... I guess because I used a bit less of it (1/3rd cup vs 1/2 cup sugar) there is a slightly higher water content overall, which would make it a little firmer to offset the effect of the glucose? And also it may not be any better in terms of hardness compared to the original... it certainly is smoother/and a bit 'fuller' on the mouth though.

This is my first time tweaking a sorbet so I could even have done something wrong and invalidated the test

[paulraphael]

This is my first time tweaking a sorbet so I could even have done something wrong and invalidated the test

I wouldn't say you did anything 'wrong,' but by messing with more than one variable at a time you made it a lot harder to figure out what did what!

[tan319]

Try some fruit in the mix, like a fairly neutral apple, golden delicious.

Immersion blend the whole thing but don't strain.

I've made the basically liquid based sorbets using A Ducasse/Robert recipe as a guideline.

Good luck!

Edited January 16, 2010 by tan319 (log)

[Tri2Cook]

Getting a gin and tonic sorbet that's not too sweet but has good texture is probably going to take a few rounds of tweaking. As you've already discovered, it's easy to get the taste right... but then you have textural problems (too soft, icy, etc.). It's pretty easy to get the texture right... but then you have taste problems (too sweet). You could up the solids while reducing the relative sweetness a little compared to sucrose with glucose powder. Sorbet stabilizer would help as well. Regardless, a low sugar/low solids/high alcohol sorbet with good texture is going to be a bit tricky (unless you happen to have some liquid nitrogen handy).

[stuartlikesstrudel]

This is my first time tweaking a sorbet so I could even have done something wrong and invalidated the test

I wouldn't say you did anything 'wrong,' but by messing with more than one variable at a time you made it a lot harder to figure out what did what!

Yeah, I wondered about that... with the glucose one I did cut the sugar AND use glucose but i thought perhaps because they're affecting the same thing (overall sugar level) that it might be alright. There's only so much of anything I can eat, so bunches of tests becomes quite a task or takes a long period of time to work through it all

Tri2Cook, that's a good summary of the challenge, I think. Would using powdered glucose instead of liquid make a difference? I thought that liquid glucose is essentially just hydrated... so reducing the water and adding liquid glucose would be the same as keeping more water and adding powdered, right?

[Tri2Cook]

The value of the powder is that you can up the solids level for a given amount of liquid beyond what you can do with the liquid glucose. If you take liquid glucose and dissolve in some powdered glucose you've increased it's solids without increasing the liquid content and with less relative sweetness compared to adding sucrose. I usually do my sorbets with a base syrup of sucrose, water, glucose powder and stabilizer to which I add my flavor component. It works great but I think it would be quite a bit too sweet for what you're doing. I've never experimented with using isomalt in ice creams and sorbets so I have no idea how it works/doesn't work but it would be another way of reducing sweetness compared to sucrose (and glucose) if it works. I know it works great for pushing marshmallows to the savory side because I have tried that. A syrup of tonic water, isomalt, glucose powder and stabilizer would be significantly less sweet than a sucrose based syrup (then you'd just add some fresh tonic water, the gin and maybe a bit of lime) but I can't tell you how it would work because I've never tried it (I just enjoy a good brainstorming session)... but I think I'm going to have to find out now that you've got me thinking about it.

[scott123]

Finding Science in Ice Cream

Freezing point depression of a solution is a colligative property associated with the number of dissolved molecules. The lower the molecular weight, the greater the ability of a molecule to depress the freezing point. Thus monosaccharides such as fructose or glucose produce a much softer ice cream than disaccharides such as sucrose. This limits the amount and type of sugar which one can successfully incorporate into the formulation.

In other words, both glucose and fructose are counterproductive in regards to achieving a firmer sorbet.

Edited January 17, 2010 by scott123 (log)

[tan319]

If you'll pardon me for saying, it seems these days most of the people in here make everything so friggin hard.

Dig what scott 123 has to say.

Read your Migoya book

I mean, with most gins being somewhere between 86 &90 proof you're fighting a bit of an uphill battle but...

[Tri2Cook]

In other words, both glucose and fructose are counterproductive in regards to achieving a firmer sorbet.

Yeah, I'm thinking the key here is going to be some form of stabilizer. It won't produce a firmer sorbet but it will poduce a more stable one that won't melt into a puddle as quickly. Some commercial frozen desserts are so full of gums that they can be almost completely melted and still hold their shape. Since low sugar and/or solids would generally lead to overly hard or icy sorbet and relatively high alcohol is going to lead to overly soft sorbet with crystals of frozen water making it grainy, I wonder if hydrating a stabilizer and combining it with the gin and tonic base would let them meet somewhere close to the middle while maintaining some stability?

[paulraphael]

Yeah, I'm thinking the key here is going to be some form of stabilizer. It won't produce a firmer sorbet but it will poduce a more stable one that won't melt into a puddle as quickly.

Most of the stabilizers are also texture modifiers, so they can indeed firm up your sorbet. The issue is getting just the right consistency. There are many versions of firm, and many versions of the sense of melting in your mouth. This becomes clear when you taste a weird version.

Some commercial frozen desserts are so full of gums that they can be almost completely melted and still hold their shape.

Classic example of something that's overstabilized ... and of the kind of weird consistencies you'll want to avoid.

[Tri2Cook]

Alcohol doesn't cause graininess, the grainy sensation happens when the water content freezes and the alcohol doesn't and you end up with ice crystals suspended in slush.

I once read on a cocktail blog that a combination of agar and xanthan is a good stabilizer for cocktail sorbets. I'd be more inclined to try gelatin and xanthan though. I'm sure the agar firms it up just fine but I don't think the melt would be right. I haven't actually tried either though, I use commercial stabilizer blends (stabi-sorbet and stabi-3000) most of the time. I do an apple sorbet that I pucker up a bit with malic acid and stabilize with apple pectin just to stay on the apple theme but I've never tried pectin in a booze sorbet.

I wiped out my gin a couple nights ago making Gin-Gin Mules and haven't got around to picking up more yet or I'd try just hydrating some stabi-sorbet, cooling it then mixing in a standard gin and tonic with no additional sugars or anything. If this brainstorm is still on-going when I get more, maybe I'll give it a shot.