Rinse sminse?

[EvergreenDan]

I understand that if you are using a standard sized glass at a bar, that a rinse is a quick way to repeatably measure a fixed small amount of a liquid. That is, if the amount that clings to the glass happens to be the amount the drink needs, something of a coincidence, I think. Different glass? Different size rinse, though.

And I get that there can be an aromatic aspect when the rinse is above the liquid top, so you smell the ingredient, at least on the first few sips. But by the time the drink sloshes around, how much rinse is really left on the glass?

I recently made a drink that made a big deal of rinsing the rocks ice with Campari. As we all know, ice surface area / volume varies greatly with shape. And the amount of liquid that will cling varies with how wet the ice is. So this instruction, it seems to me, just introduces variability and makes the drink harder to make. After I dump in the stained mixture, the Campari clinging to the glass and ice will immediately mix. Why not just tell me 1/4 oz (or whatever) in the shaker?

So if, horror of horrors, you make a Sazarac with the Absinthe in the shaker, what exactly would be the deleterious effect on the drink, other than perhaps the pleasure of watching the mixing ritual?

Ditto for muddling. I make a Caipirinha using my regular citrus squeezer. It does a better job of extracting the juice, and is a crap-load faster if I'm making 4 of them. Perhaps I'm missing a tiny bit of expressed oil that muddling gives, but I could easily whip off a zest and express it. Plus, there's wasted drink lost to the limes in the bottle of the glass. (Don't believe me? Suck one sometime.) And I find that the drink is more consistent with simple, rather than sugar, because sometimes the sugar dissolves well and other times less well.

Am I missing something? I'm here to learn.

[brinza]

So if, horror of horrors, you make a Sazarac with the Absinthe in the shaker, what exactly would be the deleterious effect on the drink, other than perhaps the pleasure of watching the mixing ritual?

Ditto for muddling. I make a Caipirinha using my regular citrus squeezer. It does a better job of extracting the juice, and is a crap-load faster if I'm making 4 of them. Perhaps I'm missing a tiny bit of expressed oil that muddling gives, but I could easily whip off a zest and express it. Plus, there's wasted drink lost to the limes in the bottle of the glass. (Don't believe me? Suck one sometime.) And I find that the drink is more consistent with simple, rather than sugar, because sometimes the sugar dissolves well and other times less well.

Am I missing something? I'm here to learn.

There is something to be said for ritual when making certain drinks, like Old Fashioneds, Sazeracs, and Caipirinhas (see posts #74-76 in the Old Fashioneds thread). Sometimes the ritual is half the fun. Sometimes you just want the damn drink and don't feel like screwing around. Although I always make Caipirinhas by muddling the limes with granulated sugar, I'll admit that when someone asks me what a Caipirinha is, I tell them, "It's like a Daiquiri, but a lot more work." I don't even bother with Mojitos, mainly because I don't care for them, but also because I tend to be too brutal with the mint.

As for rinsing, I wonder if it's really only effective is you use a tall glass, but make the drink to fill it only halfway, so you get the most out of the effect of the aromatics clinging to the sides of the glass.

[slkinsey]

Rinsing a glass with an aromatic spirit makes the most sense when there will be a significant "collar" between the surface level of the liquid and the top of the glass. This is a way to get an aromatic component at an intensity level that would only be possible using a much greater amount of the spirit if it were simply combined with the other liquids in the mixing glass.

Rinsing a glass can also be a handy way of getting a consistent and small amount of a select booze into a glass. I don't think the different size of different glasses makes as much of a difference as you might think, because larger glasses are also going to hold more of everything else. That said, if the glass isn't going to have a "collar" then I'm not sure this has any advantage over simply measuring into a mixing glass (except perhaps for time efficiency).

I agree that "rinsing the ice" is pretty useless.

The problem with making a Sazerac with absinthe in the mixing vessel (not a shaker!) is that you miss out on the intense absinthe aromatics. A proper Sazerac should be in a large enough rocks glass that the liquid only comes perhaps 1/3 of the way up. 1/2 way at the most. That leaves an awfully large expanse of "dry" glass for the absinthe to stick to, where it can find its way into your nostrils when you take a sip.

As for muddling, yes it does make a difference. A good citrus squeezer should be expressing little or no citrus oil. I suppose it might be possible to get a similar load of pungent citrus oil by soaking an entire lime's worth of twists in the booze, but this strikes me as more trouble than it's worth. But don't take my word for it: try it yourself. Make a Daiquiri your way using lime juice from your citrus squeezer, and make another one where you muddle in lime quarters (a good way to tell how much lime juice you have muddled out is to tip the shaker out into a jigger). See if they taste different. Then see if you can make them taste the same using lime twists in the non-muddled version. My strong suspicion is that they will taste quite different and that you won't be able to make up the difference using lime twists.

[KD1191]

At some point I got the impression that "seasoning" ice is more than just coating the cubes....that "Campari seasoned ice" connoted a sense of, make yourself a Campari on the rocks and when you've finished it, serve the drink calling for seasoned ice in that glass. The Magnolia Tree from Rogue Beta Cocktails is a great drink, and I almost always enjoy a short Campari on the rocks while preparing it, then use that glass for the MT.

Edited February 28, 2010 by KD1191 (log)

[KD1191]

Too much Campari on the brain. Replace that last Campari with Green Chartreuse. The Magnolia Tree calls for Green Chartreuse seasoned rocks.

[EvergreenDan]

Uh, yeah, I meant Chartreuse, too. Red ... green ... same thing. BTW, I used Creole Shrubb in the Magnolia Tree and thought it was a nice substitution, (although I didn't have any curacao to compare with).

I'll have to try a Sazarac in a bigger glass. I don't have the barware variety that I might.

I'll try the muddle versus squeezer, although my squeezer is the citrus-colored (lemon/yellow, green/lime) enameled ones. It turns the rind inside out, so I'm guessing it expresses some oil.

And then there's the "21 drops of lemon" instructions....

[KatieLoeb]

I've found that a glass "rinse" tends to be too imprecise, and depending on how much liquor is poured in to rinse with, how carefully coated the inner surface of the glass is, and how much of the rinsing agent is actually dumped out can yield wildly varying results. For a Sazerac or whatever it's part of the ritual but I've tried to solve the glass rinsing problem by putting the absinthe into a dasher bottle and using a standard 3 dashes to rinse with (seems just enough to coat the interior surface of the short rocks glass we serve the drink in). For other applications I use an atomizer bottle and a standardized number of "spritzes" for either dry vermouth or Laphroaig scotch for a smokey componenent in a drink.

[EvergreenDan]

So I tried making two caipirinhas, one with squeezed lime and one with muddled.

First, the biggest difference was that the muddled one was sweeter, because the muddling extracts less juice. To compensate, I added a touch more simple to the squeezed one. At that point, any differences in taste were associated with the sweet/sour balance, rather than any flavor components differences from the lime oils. YMMV, of course.

[weinoo]

Does more of the "rinse" cling to the glass if it comes out of the freezer vs. a room-temp glass?

[Shalmanese]

Alcohol hitting a cold glass should increase the viscosity so, yes, I'm guessing there would be more left from the rinse.

[mhagglund]

I'll second the use of atomizers for rinsing. I've got a couple of the Misto vermouth atomizers- I keep one for absinthe, one for Angostura. They really are more efficient in their aromatic effect instead of a simple rinse. More liquid clings to the glass and there's much less waste. For Valentine's weekend I was serving a cocktail in a champagne flute with a rosewater rinse. Friday night I was did a traditional rinse; saturday I emptied and cleaned my bitters atomizer and refilled with rosewater. I saved greatly on the amount of rosewater necessary and gained much in the effect. I stuck with that for the rest of the weekend.

[haresfur]

Does more of the "rinse" cling to the glass if it comes out of the freezer vs. a room-temp glass?

In my experience it makes a huge but hard to quantify difference.

Edited March 4, 2010 by haresfur (log)