Shaking with water ice is not the best way to make cocktails at home

[Shalmanese]

Strawberry Margarita

Ingredients

1.5oz Herradura Silver Tequila at room temperature

2oz Clarified Strawberry Lime juice at fridge temperature

0.5oz Cointreau at room temperature

For the juice:

Puree half a pound of strawberries with 2 limes.

Add half a pack of gelatin to a few tsp of water (I would do a quarter pack next time), let sit for 5 minutes.

Heat gelatin mix in the microwave until completely clear (30s), add to puree.

Put in fridge for 2 hours, then in the freezer for 4 hours.

Take the frozen puree and put over a cheesecloth lined strainer in the fridge overnight.

To prepare:

Mix the tequila, juice & cointreau in a container, stash in freezer for 2 hours

Brush the outside of a glass with saturated salt solution, roll in sugar, stash in freezer

Take both out, pour mixture into glass, drink.

I didn't have any Pectinex or a centrifuge so I decided to use gelatine freeze-thaw to clarify the juice. I put a little bit too much in which means my yield was only 2 oz of clarified juice. After taking the photo, I measured the drink to be at -5.5C. The strawberry flavor was present but relatively muted at that temperature. After letting it warm to -2C, the strawberry flavor was much more pronounced.

Edited August 9, 2014 by Shalmanese (log)

[Adam George]

Funnily, we pre dilute and chill batches of cocktail in our bar.

Old fashioned served in 20 seconds? Yes please.

[Hassouni]

But a lot of drinks need the water.

 

A million times yes

[Kohai]

The importance of water is not to be understated.

 

You couldn't just substitute pineapple juice for water and get a better drink. You need the water to reduce the intensity of ingredients that (simple syrup, lemon juice, certain spirits to certain people) just don't taste that great on their own. I know you're aware of this already, but it's worth observing.

 

And, speaking as a bartender who uses more distilled water behind the bar than any other product, for some reason adding water to mimic shaken-ice dilution just doesn't quite achieve the same result. I'm not sure why this is. Even a martini that just rests on ice without stirring doesn't taste the same to me as one that is stirred to the same level of dilution. I can't really explain this but it seems to be the case.

[brinza]

Once when I had a bottle of gin in the freezer, I took it out to make a Martini, and I suddenly thought, "Hey, the gin is cold, the vermouth is cold.  No need to stir with ice--all I have to do is measure them out and pour them right into the glass, right?"  WRONG.

[Shalmanese]

Once when I had a bottle of gin in the freezer, I took it out to make a Martini, and I suddenly thought, "Hey, the gin is cold, the vermouth is cold.  No need to stir with ice--all I have to do is measure them out and pour them right into the glass, right?"  WRONG.

Well, yes, you need to add additional water to replace the ice melt.

[FrogPrincesse]

White Lyan in London has already taken this concept to the extreme - they don't use any ice at all.