DE 25 DE FEBRERO, DEL CONSELL
2. ANÁLISIS MICROBIOLÓGICO 1. Aguas y alimentos
Stirring a drink may seem like a simple task. In fact, it is more difficult to make a consistent stirred cocktail than almost any other type of cocktail. Stirring is a relatively inefficient chilling technique. It takes a long period of constant stirring for your drink to approach its minimum possible temperature. In our martini experiment, it took over 2 minutes of stirring for the temperature and dilution to plateau—way longer than anyone should stir a drink. The main variables are the size of the ice cubes you use and how fast and long you stir. Smaller ice has a large surface area, and chills and dilutes quickly. Really fine shaved ice can chill and dilute extremely quickly, getting down to near-equilibrium in a few short seconds of flaccid stirring (see the section on Blended Drinks, here)—not ideal for most stirred drinks, which aren’t designed to be highly diluted or overly cold. Conversely, a stirred drink made with giant 2-inch ice cubes dilutes and chills very slowly, usually leading to an overly warm, underdiluted drink. Some bartenders like this style, but I don’t. If I want a low-dilution, merely cool drink, I’ll order a built drink (see here). Stirred drinks should fall somewhere in between these and shaken drinks. The best ice to use for stirred drinks, therefore, is medium-sized and relatively dry: large cubes that you freshly crack into smaller cubes with the back of your bar spoon, or regular machine ice from which you shake the excess water. The size isn’t vitally important, because you can adjust the dilution and
temperature of the drink by how long and how fast you stir. If your ice is on the large side, you will stir longer or faster to achieve the same result you’ll get with smaller ice. Got small ice? Stir less or stir slower.
In real life, you often can’t choose what ice you’ll be working with at any given time, and you should thus be prepared to adjust your stirring to match your ice. It isn’t a good idea to change your technique; just adjust how long you stir. Practice stirring so that you can stir two drinks at a time with both hands stirring at the same rate. Try to make your stirring style consistent. If you are consistent, you can taste the first few cocktails you make in an evening and adjust how long you stir based on the ice you have.
I always prefer stirring in stainless steel shaking tins, because they have a very low thermal mass. It doesn’t take very much ice melting to chill them down. They don’t affect the temperature or dilution of your drink. Large glass stirring vessels can be gorgeous, but they have a huge thermal mass and can change the finished temperature of the drink by several degrees—enough to make the drinks seem too warm when served. You can get around this problem by prechilling all your stirring vessels with ice and water, but don’t bother. Most of my bartenders want to use glass. I tell them that’s fine, so long as they pledge to prechill every single mixing glass with ice and water every time they stir a drink, without exception. Metal tends to win out.
Many bartenders add a boatload of ice to their mixing vessels when they are stirring. But if ice doesn’t touch the liquid, it does no good. Some excess ice can be helpful if you think the ice will settle a lot during stirring, but most bartenders use far more than is necessary. At best, the extra ice is useless; at worst, the extra water contained on its surface will overdilute the drink. Too little ice is also bad. Tiny amounts of ice don’t have enough chilling power to complete the task and can’t deliver what power they have rapidly enough. Ideally, you want the ice to contact the drink you are chilling from the bottom of the vessel all the way to the top of the liquid. To insure that this happens, you need to add more ice than is strictly necessary, because ice floats and you need a bit extra on top to weigh the mass of ice down into your drink. Any more ice than that is counterproductive, and a pain if you are making drinks at home, where your supply of ice is usually limited.
Remember, stirring drinks is a game of repeatability. Develop a stirring style and remain consistent and your drinks will remain consistent. The essence of stirring is pure dilution and chilling—no texture development, no aeration. Because stirred drinks aren’t aerated, they can look amazingly clear. I love that clarity and don’t want to add anything to my stirred cocktails to ruin it. Stirred drinks are relatively boozy (our Manhattan was 26 percent alcohol). The high booze level of the finished cocktails is why most stirred drinks tend to be very spirit-forward, not light and refreshing.
Refreshing is hard to achieve at 26 percent alcohol by volume.