What's wrong with the uncomplicated cocktail?

[Shalmanese]

It seems to me that "cocktail culture" universally reviles the sweet drink and sugar is a dirty word to serious cocktailians. I agree that sugar has gotten a bad rap with chocotinis and cosmos but the reaction seems to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater IMO.

Empirically, it seems about 10% sugar seems to be the optimum sweetness for beverages. All the major soft drinks are about 10% sugar, orange juice is about 10% sugar and when I make lemonade at home, sweetening to about 10% sugar leads to the best tasting lemonade. Only Beers, wines & liquors are notable in that they often have no sugar.

I appreciate the complex, dry, "challenging" cocktails but I also occasionally want simple, refreshing cocktails that are at the same 10% sugar range. How come these cocktails are universally decried by cocktail snobs as being "too sweet"? I don't see any of them complaining that freshly squeezed orange juice is "too sweet".

[cdh]

Ah... your post brought this to mind: Not too sweet... quite amusing.

[Alcuin]

Here's a test case: two versions of the Daiquiri that I see as two different interpretations of the drink.

Dry:

2oz rum

3/4 lime

1 t sugar

This drink is very dry and quite acidic. I like it for that reason and it is more about the rum: you're letting the rum have center stage. The sugar is just there to make sure it isn't too edgy, but the drink is edgy. I guess you'd call that your challenging dry cocktail.

Balanced:

2 oz rum

3/4 simple

3/4 lime

This drink is well balanced. It's sweetness and tartness are in harmony and harmonize with the rum. It's a seamless drink, without many edges. With this interpretation, you're bringing out the fruitiness of the rum.

These are two interpretations of one of the most elemental drinks. But neither one in my opinion is superior to the other, even though the latter is considerably sweeter. I drink one or the other depending on mood, and would make one or the other depending on the drinker. If somebody thinks the former is superior because it's challenging and dry and dials down the sugar considerably, I think they need to widen their perspective. A proper Manhattan also has a decent amount of sweetness, and the role of that sweetness is important in relation to the base spirit. So I just don't see why we should lionize dry drinks. That's like saying every movie has to be black and white, slow, and serious.

[thirtyoneknots]

I would actually challenge the notion that drinks with appropriate amounts of sugar to make them accessable to the general public are looked down upon at all. Indeed, successful bartenders must strive to hit this mark with the lion's share of their standard recipes, a restriction home enthusiasts do not have. Of course as we've been discussing lately on this board, tolerances for sugar, acidity, and bitterness are highly subjective and all over the board, but its fairly straightforward to make something in the sweetness range of a coke. I would in fact say that most of the recipes I've seen from the powerhouse cocktail bars tend in this direction when made as written.

That said I think that boards like this, made up of professionals and dedicated amateurs alike, tend to place a significant weight of discussion on dry, bitter, challenging drinks simply because they are novel and sort of "in vogue" right now as waves of adventuresome drinkers search for the next novel flavor to un-jade their palates. When you stand in the service well for 6 hours slamming out all manner of pleasing, "balanced" drinks for the public, you don't necessarily want to go home and get on egullet to write about those kinds of drinks, wonderful though they may be.

Most cocktail bartenders I know don't actually drink many cocktails outside of testing them for the work environment (or visiting peers at work). Beer, whiskey, wine is the order of the day once the last tab is closed.

[Crouton]

Beer, whiskey, wine is the order of the day once the last tab is closed.

Might as well be the quote of the century...

[TongoRad]

Perception and balance can be a tricky thing, especially if you are just relying on your palate. There could be sugar there that you aren't noticing- I bring this up because you mentioned that you believe that there is no sugar in beer. In truth, on average beer will have 75% apparent attenuation. 'Dry', in beer terms, means it is approaching 80%, and something truly dry is a rare bird indeed. Something with a high amount of bitterness or tartness will require a significant amount of residual sugar to make it palatable, balance it out, although the initial impression (i.e. "jeez, that's hoppy") still tends to define the beer. Some elements of beer culture, it seems, tend to mirror cocktail culture, in that the 'hoppy' guys don't like 'sweet' beers, although in reality that residual sugar is more prominent than they realize.

[Chris Amirault]

I appreciate the complex, dry, "challenging" cocktails but I also occasionally want simple, refreshing cocktails that are at the same 10% sugar range. How come these cocktails are universally decried by cocktail snobs as being "too sweet"? I don't see any of them complaining that freshly squeezed orange juice is "too sweet".

Shalmanese, can you share with us some examples of these cocktail snobs universally decrying sweetness? He asks while drinking a Sazerac with a good dose of gum syrup.

[bostonapothecary]

It seems to me that "cocktail culture" universally reviles the sweet drink and sugar is a dirty word to serious cocktailians. I agree that sugar has gotten a bad rap with chocotinis and cosmos but the reaction seems to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater IMO.

Empirically, it seems about 10% sugar seems to be the optimum sweetness for beverages. All the major soft drinks are about 10% sugar, orange juice is about 10% sugar and when I make lemonade at home, sweetening to about 10% sugar leads to the best tasting lemonade. Only Beers, wines & liquors are notable in that they often have no sugar.

I appreciate the complex, dry, "challenging" cocktails but I also occasionally want simple, refreshing cocktails that are at the same 10% sugar range. How come these cocktails are universally decried by cocktail snobs as being "too sweet"? I don't see any of them complaining that freshly squeezed orange juice is "too sweet".

somehow, sugars at certain relative levels render gustation innocuous. sugar also can't be considered alone. that soda has acidity and carbonation which are attention grabbers from the sweetness of its sugar. those relationships form tension which we like. the lemonade, orange juice, etc. also feature lots of tension. "refreshing" usually refers to the tension of sweetness, acidty, and coldness.

because flavor is multisensory, and there is an order to how our attention gravitates across those senses, if you render one of those senses innocuous your attention can climb to the next harder to reach sense.

beverage largely renders texture innocuous which eliminates a big variable to perceiving the other senses. if you simplify gustation by basically creating a sweet drink, your attention can more easily focus on aroma.

now that you've streamlined the path to aroma, you can explore it. cosmo is fairly boring aromatically while a manhattan is compelling and extra-ordinary.

the innocuous is not therapeutic and aroma isn't the most therapeutic aspect of a flavor experience either... particular tensions for a particular mood.