Molecular Cocktails

[Dante]

Are you thinking of doing this with sodium alginate/calcium chloride, or gelatin and cold oil?

the former.

In either case, I think this would be extremely tricky, especially with the high proof of Chartreuse.

I'd got that impression.

AFAIK, alcohol interferes with both gelatin and alginate, so the only real option would be a reverse spherfication using a sodium alginate bath and calcium chloride in the Chartreuse

Hmmm...I hadn't thought of that...interesting...

(see this post, for example).

OK- I'll check that out. Thanx!

Sincerely,

Dante

[eje]

That pesky Eben Freeman is making the news again...

Eben Freeman Turns His Cocktails Solid Just for the Hell of It

Tailor’s new “solids,” a series of edible cocktails. There are currently three on the restaurant’s menu...“Cocktail geeks are coming in and asking me all these questions,” Freeman complains. “This is just to have fun!” And, he adds, soberly, to “push the boundaries” of mixology. No wonder they’re curious.

Oh, we're just a curious bunch.

But, uh, White Russian Breakfast cereal?

[slkinsey]

See, that stuff of Eben's seems whimsical and fun. I think "molecular mixology" has got to get past the becoming-tired-cliché of spherification tricks.

[jmfangio]

I think "molecular mixology" has got to get past the becoming-tired-cliché of spherification tricks.

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We're not quite there yet. Today's NY Times has an article on Cointreau's spherification kit.

A BARTENDER’S arsenal has looked roughly the same for a century or so. Just about any drink in the book can be whipped up with a sturdy bottle opener, a corkscrew, a long-handled bar spoon, a sharp knife and an all-purpose cocktail shaker.

Now a liquor company wants to convince bars that they will not be complete without a magnetic agitator, magnet extractor, syringes and a stash of powdered chemicals.

Starting Thursday, Rémy Cointreau, the global wine and spirits corporation, will begin teaching a coterie of New York bartenders how to deploy those tools and chemicals to shape tiny edible balls filled with Cointreau. The company calls the balls Cointreau caviar and suggests that bars spoon a few into a Cosmopolitan or a flute of Champagne.

Edited February 20, 2008 by jmfangio (log)

[slkinsey]

Now, if that's not an indication that spherified cocktails have joined Arthur Fonzarelli in mid-air, I don't know what is.

[bostonapothecary]

David Arnold, the director of culinary technology at the French Culinary Institute, said, “There’s so much to be done with drinks that’s not being done that doesn’t involve tiny little balls.”

interesting article...

if i made spherified balls of flavor i'd probably lie and claim it existed a hundred years ago... the tradition of a land you've never known... high concept things are cool but not when they are left to sit naked... everything needs a sense of humor and some cultural depth added to it...

strangely the most pressing issue to me at the moment is my bartenders were diluting my lime juice with water... 50/50... they said it was too tart and they wanted to stretch it out... i was speachless... how do you grow when you have wierd individuals doing insane stuff likeing diluting your acid?

i try and teach them about the concept of "the average of everyone's tastes"... when you make fifteen mojitos for a group of fifteen everyone individually will have different tastes but to be successful you need to hit the average... for sweet and tart history has shown that it is more or less one oz. of 1:1 simple to one oz. of lime juice... if you use your diluted lime juice you might please 5 of the 15 but you start to alienate the other 10...

balance theories by emperical study and measurement & portioning technologies (jiggers) seem to be the most pressing issues in mixology...

[johnder]

I just got back from the spherification demo held by Cointreau and it was pretty amazing.

They have created a sphereification lab kit for bars that makes it pretty easy to produce on a large scale as well as the technique for using alcohol in encapsulation.

The kits included everything needed to make the cointreau gold leaf spheres

magnetic agitator

scale

beakers

sodium alginate and malodextrin

calcium lactate

gold leaf flakes

strainers, spoons, syringes

and the best thing -- the pearl dropper.

It takes about 5-7 minutes to make up a batch of the cointreau gel which can then be held in the pearl dropper for service. When a drink ticket comes in, you turn the dropper upside down and the pearls form in the sodium alginate bath.

We sampled both the cointreaupolitan with spheres as well as a champagne cocktail with spheres. Both interesting from a textural thing more than anything else.

Overall it was a great hands on demo of how to make them. We all had our own little station for working at with the full kit of tools.

Definitely going to play around with the idea a bit more.

[bostonapothecary]

tonight i drank sparkling sauvignon blanc... they don't exist in the wild but with a little molecular mixology anything is possible... it has a particularly fun aromatic intensity... i can't wait to top a french 75 with it...

a winemaker told me that carbonation increases aromatic intensity... certain wine varietals could become obnoxious if they were anymore intense which is why they don't exist in sparkling versions under any tradition... cocktails love near obnoxious intensity at times... so a market just emerged!

does anyone know anything about surface tensions and dissolving CO2 in liquids? what is the optimal for keeping a gas from escaping a liquid and how do you create the optimal if it doesn't already exist?

i want freshly squeezed (no more than an hour old) sparkling grapefruit juice... the surface tension of the natural juice doesn't like being injected with bubbles that much... can it be done?

Edited February 22, 2008 by bostonapothecary (log)

[plattetude]

I just got back from the spherification demo held by Cointreau and it was pretty amazing.

←

I'm curious, John (and this may seem like a ludicrous question): presumably the spherification lab is designed specifically for Cointreau? But there's nothing to prevent using the toolkit for any other liquid, is there, should a bartender be of such a mind? I assume there are proof- and/or spirit-specific concentrations of the various chemical components that would need to be tweaked, and that would be a matter of trial and error, yes?

Christopher

[slkinsey]

does anyone know anything about surface tensions and dissolving CO2 in liquids?  what is the optimal for keeping a gas from escaping a liquid and how do you create the optimal if it doesn't already exist?

i want freshly squeezed (no more than an hour old) sparkling grapefruit juice... the surface tension of the natural juice doesn't like being injected with bubbles that much... can it be done?

Where did you get this idea about surface tension? As far as I know, solubility of a gas in a liquid depends on the gas, liquid, temperature and pressure. But since we're talking about dissolving carbon dioxide into water, for our purposes we can consider this a constant. Solubility, then, depends upon temperature and pressure. Lower temperatures and higher pressures correspond to greater solubility. Time can also be a variable, depending on the carbonation technique used, simply to allow the gas sufficient opportunity to dissolve into the liquid.

We create fizzy liquids by dissolving carbon dioxide into water under increased pressure (chilling the liquid also helps, of course). The liquid fizzes because, when the liquid returns to regular atmospheric pressure, the gas comes out of solution, forms bubbles and we get effervescence. Actually, most of the carbon dioxide simply escapes from the surface of the liquid into the atmosphere without forming bubbles. In order to form bubbles within the liquid, nucleation sites are needed -- usually provided by microscopic pieces of cellulose or tiny points on the surface of the glass (little known fact: the best champagne classes are etched by the manufacturers to provide nucleation sites throughout the glass). Carbonated water in a perfectly clean, flawless glass would not form bubbles.

The size and extent of the bubbles is largely determined by the amount of carbon dioxide dissolved into the liquid, with larger bubbles corresponding to greater amounts of dissolved gas. One reason why we consider small bubbles desirable in champagne is that a certain amount of carbon dioxide is lost through the cork as the wine ages and therefore an aged champagne containes less carbon dioxide compared to a young champagne. The chemical composition of the liquid can also have a minor effect on the characteristics of the bubbles, and of course on the formation and character of a "head" on the liquid as the bubbles rise to the surface. This, and a whole lot more, is explained well in the book Uncorked: The Science of Champagne by Gérard Liger-Belair.

In the formation of persistent bubbles at the surface of the liquid, which is not the same thing as "keeping the gas from escaping the liquid," surface tension and other variables can be important. If you want a persistent foam like that, I would suggest including some egg white in the charger with your liquid.

As for your grapefruit juice. . . so long as it is as cold as possible when carbonated and spends sufficient time under pressure, you shouldn't have any problems. An hour is a fairly short time period, however, if you're using a seltzer bottle. You should also consider that citrus juice is full of suspended particles. These make great nucleation sites and are likely to make the carbonated juice lose its fizz rather quickly. You might consider running the juice through a fine filter (perhaps experiment with a Büchner funnel filter) to remove these particles to the greatest extent possible. Adding some gum arabic could be interesting as well, as it should result in good head retension.

Edited February 22, 2008 by slkinsey (log)

[bostonapothecary]

does anyone know anything about surface tensions and dissolving CO2 in liquids?  what is the optimal for keeping a gas from escaping a liquid and how do you create the optimal if it doesn't already exist?

i want freshly squeezed (no more than an hour old) sparkling grapefruit juice... the surface tension of the natural juice doesn't like being injected with bubbles that much... can it be done?

Where did you get this idea about surface tension? As far as I know, solubility of a gas in a liquid depends on the gas, liquid, temperature and pressure. But since we're talking about dissolving carbon dioxide into water, for our purposes we can consider this a constant. Solubility, then, depends upon temperature and pressure. Lower temperatures and higher pressures correspond to greater solubility. Time can also be a variable, depending on the carbonation technique used, simply to allow the gas sufficient opportunity to dissolve into the liquid.

We create fizzy liquids by dissolving carbon dioxide into water under increased pressure (chilling the liquid also helps, of course). The liquid fizzes because, when the liquid returns to regular atmospheric pressure, the gas comes out of solution, forms bubbles and we get effervescence. Actually, most of the carbon dioxide simply escapes from the surface of the liquid into the atmosphere without forming bubbles. In order to form bubbles within the liquid, nucleation sites are needed -- usually provided by microscopic pieces of cellulose or tiny points on the surface of the glass (little known fact: the best champagne classes are etched by the manufacturers to provide nucleation sites throughout the glass). Carbonated water in a perfectly clean, flawless glass would not form bubbles.

The size and extent of the bubbles is largely determined by the amount of carbon dioxide dissolved into the liquid, with larger bubbles corresponding to greater amounts of dissolved gas. One reason why we consider small bubbles desirable in champagne is that a certain amount of carbon dioxide is lost through the cork as the wine ages and therefore an aged champagne containes less carbon dioxide compared to a young champagne. The chemical composition of the liquid can also have a minor effect on the characteristics of the bubbles, and of course on the formation and character of a "head" on the liquid as the bubbles rise to the surface. This, and a whole lot more, is explained well in the book Uncorked: The Science of Champagne by Gérard Liger-Belair.

In the formation of persistent bubbles at the surface of the liquid, which is not the same thing as "keeping the gas from escaping the liquid," surface tension and other variables can be important. If you want a persistent foam like that, I would suggest including some egg white in the charger with your liquid.

As for your grapefruit juice. . . so long as it is as cold as possible when carbonated and spends sufficient time under pressure, you shouldn't have any problems. An hour is a fairly short time period, however, if you're using a seltzer bottle. You should also consider that citrus juice is full of suspended particles. These make great nucleation sites and are likely to make the carbonated juice lose its fizz rather quickly. You might consider running the juice through a fine filter (perhaps experiment with a Büchner funnel filter) to remove these particles to the greatest extent possible. Adding some gum arabic could be interesting as well, as it should result in good head retension.

←

that is a good summation. i wonder if it was the abundence of suspended particles that caused the failure with the grapefruit juice. gonna have to try it again...

[NutellaBear]

I just got back from the spherification demo held by Cointreau and it was pretty amazing.

They have created a sphereification lab kit for bars that makes it pretty easy to produce on a large scale as well as the technique for using alcohol in encapsulation.

The kits included everything needed to make the cointreau gold leaf spheres

magnetic agitator

scale

beakers

sodium alginate and malodextrin

calcium lactate

gold leaf flakes

strainers, spoons, syringes

and the best thing -- the pearl dropper.

It takes about 5-7 minutes to make up a batch of the cointreau gel which can then be held in the pearl dropper for service.  When a drink ticket comes in, you turn the dropper upside down and the pearls form in the sodium alginate bath.

We sampled both the cointreaupolitan with spheres as well as a champagne cocktail with spheres.  Both interesting from a textural thing more than anything else.

Overall it was a great hands on demo of how to make them.  We all had our own little station for working at with the full kit of tools.

Definitely going to play around with the idea a bit more.

←

I was interested in the kit and hoping that someone would have caught a picture of it. I am particularly interested in the Pearl Dropper since good tools are still things everyone is looking for. I read in the NYT that it looked like a cheese or pepper flake shaker. The magnetic agitator sounds like a good addition and I assume that is like one of the lab stirring machines with a spinning magnet in the bottom. Otherwise I would think that they would have all the chemicals in pre-measured portions of some sort because I cannot see a bartender fiddling with a gram scale in strobe lights.

/Tim

[NutellaBear]

if i made spherified balls of flavor i'd probably lie and claim it existed a hundred years ago... the tradition of a land you've never known... high concept things are cool but not when they are left to sit naked... everything needs a sense of humor and some cultural depth added to it...

But the key is to ensure you at least have your facts straight or have an unverifiable story. I remember going to a restaurant at the top end of the list of best kitchens. We did a wine tasting and the Sommelier was always very descriptive and it sounded like he had trudged around the mud in his rubber boots.

I knew a particular wine area very well however, which was a reason I was looking forward to a specific wine in the tasting menu. And on he starts describing how this one variety comes from the North slope which has more clay content than the Southern slope. However looking at the vines they had very similar qualities blah blah blah.

So I then said that from the Northern slope one had a very good view of a valley and did he see this particular landmark? The Sommelier stuttered a bit then went tut-tut and explained that he had only ever seen pictures and had never even been to Europe.

Did I feel taken for a ride!

/Tim

[bostonapothecary]

if i made spherified balls of flavor i'd probably lie and claim it existed a hundred years ago... the tradition of a land you've never known... high concept things are cool but not when they are left to sit naked... everything needs a sense of humor and some cultural depth added to it...

But the key is to ensure you at least have your facts straight or have an unverifiable story. I remember going to a restaurant at the top end of the list of best kitchens. We did a wine tasting and the Sommelier was always very descriptive and it sounded like he had trudged around the mud in his rubber boots.

I knew a particular wine area very well however, which was a reason I was looking forward to a specific wine in the tasting menu. And on he starts describing how this one variety comes from the North slope which has more clay content than the Southern slope. However looking at the vines they had very similar qualities blah blah blah.

So I then said that from the Northern slope one had a very good view of a valley and did he see this particular landmark? The Sommelier stuttered a bit then went tut-tut and explained that he had only ever seen pictures and had never even been to Europe.

Did I feel taken for a ride!

/Tim

←

you are right you need to be careful. there is an art to a good story and a good sense of humor...

"this is a specialty of rural borneo or least it SHOULD be... they have all the ingredients..."

i think wine should be taken a little more seriously. its ok to mix and manipulate it but alot more time, blood, sweat and tears go into it than any silly liqueur i make...

with wine also i've gotten to a point where i dont' like to endorse a pairing unless i've actually tried it... luckily i get to try alot... its a big practice to bluff on pairings but i've found when you actually start obsessively trying things its so counter intuitive...

bluffing and experimenting with cocktails is great fun... you can construct and present a new drink with out ever having previously tasted it in confidence mainly because you know the contents of sugar, alcohol, bitter and acids you are working with...

[Dante]

OK- tried several techniques, including the reverse spherification (what I got from that reminded me of the H.P. Lovecraft line about "Ye liveliest awfulness". It was so hideous I threw it out in to my back yard rather then in to my trash can- I'm sure some day its children will come crawling out of the woods seeking revenge on me )

I even tried diluting the Chartreuse, using it as just a flavouring, but even the smallest amounts still interfered with the process, so I guess it's just chemically impossible.

Oh well, it was a good idea, just not a viable one...

Sincerely,

Dante

[eje]

Over in the Stomping Through the Savoy topic in a bit of accidental molecular mixology I discovered that substances high in pectin gel in alcohol solutions.

Might it be possible to use pectin to form something like a caviar? Would be more like a jelly ball...

[donbert]

I was interested in the kit and hoping that someone would have caught a picture of it.

Ask and ye shall receive:

More pictures from the event here.

[Tomek]

Nice. Thanks for that. I would have thought that for 1450 USD they atleast wouldn't make basic spelling mistakes on the labels i.e. could afford to have a proofreader

[johnder]

For those that want to see the pearl dropper in action, there is a video floating around youtube from the Paris event

[T.Thrasher]

Everyone on this thread should take a look at playboy this month the March issue. There are 3 pages dedicated to Molecular Mixology. I guess this means it has hit the main stream now. If you only want to look at the articles I think it is page 77.

[Tomek]

I received my Biozoon Cocktail Pro set today. I was wondering if anyone has bought or used this set ? http://www.biozoon.de/shop/product_info.php?info=p28_.html

There's a great book that comes with the set with around 50 recipes. Unfortunately it's in German so I have to start learning it soon.

However the set looks very professional and is intended specially for cocktails. It also has 2 interesting ingredients that I never came across before. One is some sort of dye and the other something that makes drinks glow in UV light as far as I can tell.

[Provocachic]

Hello,

Sounds like an interesting set that you've just invested in. Perhaps you could share more about the 2 unusual ingredients that you'd mentioned with this forum? More details and some pictures (being used, look of ingredient, etc) perhaps?

Provocachic(sm): "what would your story taste like?"

I received my Biozoon Cocktail Pro set today. I was wondering if anyone has bought or used this set ? http://www.biozoon.de/shop/product_info.php?info=p28_.html

There's a great book that comes with the set with around 50 recipes. Unfortunately it's in German so I have to start learning it soon.

However the set looks very professional and is intended specially for cocktails. It also has 2 interesting ingredients that I never came across before. One is some sort of dye and the other something that makes drinks glow in UV light as far as I can tell.

←

[Tomek]

I will definately do that when I give them a go over the coming weekend. I might need some help from a German speaker

[Tomek]

I'm still getting my head round the German instructions which are not as easy as I thought. Even a German I met at the weekend had trouble to explain it to me. However the 2 ingredients that I mentioned are:

Riboflavin (E101) and Beta-Carotin (E160a)

The Riboflavin is supposed to make drinks "glow in UV light". Unfortunately I don't have a UV at home to see what the effects are.

The Carotin is meant to give "deeper colour" to drinks

The other ingredients are Agar Agar, Sodium Alginate, Calcium Chloride, Methylcellulose and Xanthan.

The set comes with a metal measuring spoon, 2 3ml dropper pipettes, a measuring cup up to 25ml, a plastic spoon and book - instructions and recipes.

As soon as I get my head round the Geman obstacle and have any results I will definately report back. I'm a complete novice to this game.

The one thing that struck me so far with all the ingredients of the set is that they seem to be dosed with the metal spoon that comes with the set. No weighing involved i.e. Dissolve 4 spoons of alginate in 120ml of water. Then mix 20ml of the mixture with 40ml of cocktail. 4 spoons of Calcium Chloride in 130ml of water to make the bath.

That is if my guesses of the German are correct.

[eje]

Wow, an article in Forbes Online about Molecular Mixology?

What is the world coming to?

Molecular Mixology, Lauren Sherman, 07.01.08, 6:00 PM ET

Flame and gelatin are two important components of a bartending trend that's migrating from upscale lounges to amateur kitchens. Known as molecular mixology, the method takes scientific principles and tools and applies them to the construction of alcoholic beverages. These cocktails often require their creator to freeze, gel or flambé ingredients, and with the exception of a few wildly dangerous drinks, most can be made at home.

Includes recipes from Eben Klemm, Darcy O'Neil, Jamie Boudreau, and Claire Smith.