A Jigger of Blog

Via Doug at The Pegu Blog, Giuseppe Gonzalez of Painkiller in New York City has an exhaustive post up on his exploration of how he and his colleagues arrived at a Frozen Daiquiri recipe for their relatively young Tiki-style bar. It’s really a geeky look at how to account for the speed at which ice dilutes a cocktail with water and how much the volume of water needs to change with each recipe variation for a particular drink (from changing ingredient ratios to changing spirit brands). Not surprisingly, recipes that work perfectly as shaken Daiquiris do not translate perfectly once they are blended in a blender. Since Painkiller serves some blended drinks, it was critically important that Giuseppe understand how recipes need to be changed for a blender and what level of dilution is necessary to make balanced blended drinks. The process causes him to fundamentally challenge assumptions he’d built over years as a craft cocktail bartender and the process is quite remarkable to watch. It’s also a testament to how hard today’s craft bartenders work to provide their customers with complex, balanced, enjoyable drinks.