h a l f b a k e r yExperiencing technical difficulties since 1999
add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, random
news, help, about, links, report a problem
browse anonymously,
or get an account
and write.
register,
|
|
|
Please log in.
Before you can vote, you need to register.
Please log in or create an account.
|
Now, you might be thinking "Er, isn't this utterly redundant? Couldn't I just, you know, pour the stuff into whatever I'm mixing it with".
I say you're just lazy and not thinking "redundant inventionly" enough.
Simple concept, really. Have a layer of frozen alcohol placed into your glass. This
not only ensures that you have alcohol in your drink but ALSO means one very special thing - YOU DON'T LOSE ALL THAT ROOM TO ICE.
Now, I'm sure we've all been to bars where the cheap bastards skint you on the drink by basically shoving the whole glass full of ice and then daring to charge you full glass prices to your face.
This, of course, is a way around it.
Not only does the layer of frozen alcohol act as a cooling agent, but it ALSO chills your drink AND slowly melts into the mixer (Coke, Lemonade, whatever) which means that the drink gets more alcoholic as TIME GOES ON. Your first sip is mild, the second a little stronger... by the time you get to the bottom of the glass you've consumed enough alcohol that you no longer care that the mixer was virtually gone earlier in the drink.
And after all, surely you're aware that the first few sips is the hard part to get through.
[link]
|
| |
The freezing point of 'alcohol', or rather ethyl alcohol/ethanol is -112C or 170F. This fact alone makes this a toughie to implement. |
|
| |
Assuming we could get away with the above, when the good stuff melts, it may or may not mix well with the rest of the drink. |
|
| |
The other thing is that I don't think that coke + ethanol will taste nice at all. |
|
| |
If the alcohol (and hence the glass it adheres to) is at -112 C, the thermal shock of adding a mixer at 3 - 5C is probably going to cause the glass to shatter. Spectacularly. |
|
| |
Even if it doesn't shatter, touching your lips with the rim of a glass that has now warmed up to a more modest -50C is going to cause immediate and agonisingly painful burns. |
|
| |
I once saw an incident where, on a stinking hot day, a fitter made an "ice lolly" by freezing a cup of vending machine orange juice in a handy Dewar of liquid nitrogen. He then peeled away the plastic cup from the block of ice, let it warm for a few minutes, then licked it. |
|
| |
He didn't leave it long enough. The resulting burn to his tongue earned him a five day stay in hospital being fed through a tube, reconstructive surgery, losss of taste functions, and a written disciplinary warning for serious misconduct. |
|
| |
Later experimentation showed that if you leave the ice block until the surface starts to melt, then you can do it, but not otherwise. |
|
| |
You could make "frozen alcohol cubes" to drop in your drink. I think they might have a tendency to explode, too. I suspect that being hit by solid alcohol shrapnel would also be very painful and damaging. |
|
| |
Jinbish: Coke and Bacardi, on the other hand...
AFM: I was just going to post alcoholic ice cubes myself. Argh, my foot, indeed! |
|
| |
/I suspect that being hit by solid alcohol shrapnel would also be very painful and damaging// |
|
| |
Self-disinfecting, though. |
|
| |
Indeed, [egbert], you assertion would appear in first consideration to be correct. It would of course depend on how much debris was entrained by the fragments as they punched their way though your epidermal layers. |
|
| |
Please take your position at the bar for a Certain Test .... |
|
| |
I wonder if the water would freeze before the alcohol warmed up? Would the alcohol be pure? If you add impurities to the alcohol, the freezing point will change. Would the right amount of water work? Go with a 50/50 mixture which freezes at... -40? |
|
| |
This is an interesting idea. Reminds me in a way of those fancy glacial ice cubes you could order in Japan a few years ago (the air trapped in them is under higher pressure than our current atmospheric pressure, considering that it's >10,000 years old. As such, they melt with popping noises). |
|
| |
I've always been a fan of jello shots - maybe that's a good compromise. Entrap alcohol in a jello cube, then freeze it. Add your cube to your drink, and it will slowly melt and release the alcohol. |
|
| |
Regarding the idea of layered drinks - I used to be a bartender and it is not easy, under extreme time pressure, to pour the perfect B52. At the time, I was studying biochemistry and using the night job to pay my way. In the Lab we had this centrifuge... Taking a batch of new test tubes, Bailey's, Grande Marnier, and Kahlua, we pipetted (disposable tip) an exact double shot-B52 into all 16 test-tube bays and spun her up to minimum speed (max speed would have separated the liquor components). The only dangerous bit was that to gently slow the rotation, we had to slow the centrifuge with a fingertip. I had wanted to invent and market a commercial drink mixer/centrifuge, but never got round to it. |
|
| |
Regarding the freezing point of alcohol, It really doesn't matter how dilute the alcohol is. My mother once cooled her beer in the freezer and forgot about it. When she finally took a swig, she made these choking sounds and grabbed a glass of water. She had discovered freeze-distillation. (incidentally, this technique is illegal in some localities). |
|
| |
If you're truly obsessive, and have to make the original idea work, what you can do is cast hollow ice cubes, fill them mostly with alcohol, cover them with a flat ice lid and add a drop of water to weld them shut. At first, the drink (e.g. Bacardi & Coke) will taste only mildly alcoholic, but after the ice melts... |
|
| |
Other variations are alcohol filled fruit and sugar capsules in drinks. These ideas are really dangerous if you don't know what you're doing with alcohol content, or they drink the thing at the wrong speed, so don't try it alone, or on someone unsuspecting. |
|
| |
I have invented the perfect B52 pouring accessory. The traditional method of pouring a B52 involves pouring the Baileys down the back of a small spoon touching the side of the glass. This diffuses the mixing point and slows the speed of the Baileys so it doesn't penetrate and mix with the GM. |
|
| |
The only problem is the skill required to match the pour rate and to space the spoon from the glass. |
|
| |
Take a piece of rubber tapered to the tip edge (imagine a flat ended spatula with a wide tip). One side has deep (1.5mm) ridges spreading from the handle. Press the ribbed side against the glass with the tip slightly above the surface of the GM. The ridges against the glass will form channels that start narrow and deep and end wide and shallow. Slowly pour the Baileys down that side. The system will moderate and diffuse the flow to reduce mixing at the boundary layer. |
|
| |
By using a rubber spatula concept, any size glass can be accomodated and so too can be glasses with varying internal diameters. |
|
| |
well iv designed and maunufactured a prototype which allows you to coat the inside of a stainless steel beaker with the spirit of your chioce. if any one's intrested i would like to put it into production. I just need a few thousand for the production cost, iv allready got some cocktail bars in London intrested. |
|
| |