For EC: Science of Stirring notes

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  • converting ice @ 0 degC to water @ 0 degC requires 80 calories / mole
    • takes longer cool a drink with colder ice
  • no temp difference between center and surface of a *dry* cube of ice (< 0.2 degC)
  • speed of stirring works the way you’d expect (faster stir cools faster; disregard aeration in this context)
  • “chilling only comes with dilution”
  • spinning (in a lettuce spinner, say) water off ice removes 7-10% of weight (from ice in the well; ice from the freezer doesn’t have much melt on the surface)
  • constant stirring is more efficient both in terms of temp and dilution
    • leaving a drink on ice doesn’t really lower the temperature notably as long as you’re likely to leave it to make the rest of the order: just stir it, then move to the shaken drinks
  • chill mixing glasses in order to avoid their leeching calories (heat = energy) from your drink
    • less relevant for tins, as they’re far thinner and metal changes temp far more rapidly than glass
  • cf quotes in prior post

Quotes from Tales of the Cocktail 2010

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Jul/10
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Last year I pretended that I was going to make my way through my notes and post a summary of every seminar I attended. I failed completely at that. I’m not going to pretend this year: instead, I’m just going to transcribe, with attribution, the humorous quotations from notable bartenders I jotted down. Given the blog, never mind traditional media, coverage of the event at this point, I feel this is my niche. So, here we go:

“The dry gin martini is the shortest distance between two points.” – Dave Wondrich

“If you can’t look cool stirring, your drink won’t have any deliciousness.” – Thomas Waugh

“… as long as that shit ice is consistently shit.” – Dave Arnold

“Never trust a skinny chef or a sober bartender.” – Danny Valdez

“You should have your own rockstar in mind [when tending bar].” – Dushan Zaric

“The government is not in the liquor or wine business.” – France, when asked by the US to police St. Pierre et Michelon during Prohibition [Somebody needs to tell the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania about that...]

“Martinis are like women’s breasts: they should be round and smooth. One is too few, three is too many.” – Henrik Hammer, Geranium Gin

“We’ve got a Dutchman, a South African, and a Dane: if we were any more laid back, we’d be horizontal.” – Andrew Nichols, of door74, presenting with Henrik Hammer and Timo Janse

Crescent Run, 2010: complete

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Total time: call it 17 hours. (I think we left slightly after 20:00 Eastern Tuesday, but we’d have been at the Monteleone’s parking lot at 12:00 Central / 13:00 Eastern if we had known Wednesday’s NOPD blockade system.) So, that missed the mark, but I know where the time was lost.

Total distance: 1223 miles

Average speed: 71.94 mph

Top speed: 119 mph (fwiw, that’s the max at red-line on a flat surface that the 2010 Dodge Charger SXT, 3.5L V6, has to give… I did give it another quarter mile to nurse any little bit more out; measured via GPS, not analog speedo).

Pictures: http://eclipsed.net/~gr/Pictures/Crescent_Run-2010/

More words: http://forums.f1weekly.com/showthread.php?tid=4769