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My son today asked me for an analysis of a situation, which was described to him as being purely anecdotal but apparently a fairly widespread belief among bartenders, so possibly correct.
The description is that if you take the two metal halves of a cocktail shaker, with a normal compliment of liquid stuff and then add either:
Now this is a very UN-controlled experiment. For one thing, he thinks that generally with a single cube, more shaking is done (longer time) in order to achieve the same degree of temperature/dilution but that's not definite.
My own explanations were that if indeed this is a valid description of results, there are two possible reasons:
(1) they do in fact shake for longer and it's just that longer shaking leads to more frothiness
(2) the smaller cubes bang together and create more localized shock waves that collapse some of the tiny bubbles and cause some of the gas to be reabsorbed than would be the case with far fewer shock waves of just one big cube hitting the ends of the shaker.
So ... anyone have any more enlightened take on what might be going on (again, assuming that the outcome is in fact correctly described) ?
Thanks,
Paul
The description is that if you take the two metal halves of a cocktail shaker, with a normal compliment of liquid stuff and then add either:
(1) a bunch or normal sized ice cubes
(2) a single much larger ice cube
You get different degrees of "frothiness" in the resulting drink when shaken. My expectation was that the multiple cubes would lead to more frothiness but he said the consensus is that the single cube leads to more frothiness.(2) a single much larger ice cube
Now this is a very UN-controlled experiment. For one thing, he thinks that generally with a single cube, more shaking is done (longer time) in order to achieve the same degree of temperature/dilution but that's not definite.
My own explanations were that if indeed this is a valid description of results, there are two possible reasons:
(1) they do in fact shake for longer and it's just that longer shaking leads to more frothiness
(2) the smaller cubes bang together and create more localized shock waves that collapse some of the tiny bubbles and cause some of the gas to be reabsorbed than would be the case with far fewer shock waves of just one big cube hitting the ends of the shaker.
So ... anyone have any more enlightened take on what might be going on (again, assuming that the outcome is in fact correctly described) ?
Thanks,
Paul
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