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The steel briefcase arrived inside two other boxes, Russian doll-style. Its combination-lock latches flipped skyward with a gratifying snap. In the briefcase, snug inside custom-shaped foam, lay a device that looked like it was designed by a committee made of Steve Jobs, Q from James Bond lore and a sex therapist.
My therapy, however, would be the liquid kind – I'd be carbonating cocktails at home.
The idea came to me following a pair of road trips to visit with two of the best and trendiest bartenders in the country: Craig Schoettler at The Aviary in Chicago and Jeffrey Morgenthaler at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon. At the terribly tony Aviary, Schoettler and his crew make Dark and Stormys, carbonating the whole drink, booze and all, then pouring it in a soda bottle, capping it and serving it in a paper bag, hobo style.
Morgenthaler's technique was to mix the ingredients for his cocktails – a classic Americano, and a Broken Bike, his signature spin on the Bicyclette – in Tupperware vats overnight, allowing the flavors to steep, then carbonating and bottling the mix the next morning so all a busy bartender has to do is pop the cap.
__Bottled Sparkling Americano__4½ oz Campari
6 oz Dolin sweet vermouth
13½ oz filtered water
peel of one orange
peel of one grapefruit
Refrigerate overnight, then strain out peels. Place contents into an iSi Twist 'n' Sparkle, carbonate, and fill four 187ml glass bottles with drink. Seal with a crown cap, chill, and serve.
Recipe by Clyde Common's Jeffery Morgenthaler
I sampled many of the duo's drinks, serious cocktails with a festive splash of fizz. Then I came home and looked at my slightly beat-up, $80, plastic SodaStream carbonator and had a thought: outside the manufacturer's warning against carbonating anything but water, what stopped me from having some friends over and making my own carbonated drinks?
I'd pre-mix the drinks the night before (à la Morgenthaler) and get to do the showy, fizz-making part in front of a group of astonished guests. I'd skip the bottling process and pour the drinks straight into their glasses, thus joining the ranks of the super-trendy cocktail elite with the push of a button.
Morgenthaler and Schoettler shared five recipes with me, but they didn't make it easy. They were conceived for larger crowds, and the measurements were tricky to downscale – Morgenthaler's notes were in ounces, and Schoettler sent two in grams and one in ounces. No mention anywhere of, say, parts, jiggers, cups or tablespoons.
I took a swig from the nearest bottle and winged it. In the morning, I admired my chilled pitchers of beautiful, bright-colored liquid, artfully strewn with citrus peels.
In the name of science and a good excuse to try a few more drinks, however, I decided to try three different carbonators. I would also need some backup machinery in case SodaStream's warning was right and I ended up with a drink called "Broken Bike on the Kitchen Walls".
I brought in Schoettler's recommended kit, the Bond-esque Perlini Carbonated Cocktail System ($200) with a set of cartridges, an injector widget and the three-piece carbonating container. I also tested Morgenthaler's preferred method, the iSi Twist 'n' Sparkle (about $50) that came in a fanfare-free cardboard box.
It's easy to appreciate the simplicity of my SodaStream, which just requires cold liquid in the bottle (the carbonation takes better when the booze is cold) and a press or three of the button on top, depending on how fizzy you'd like your drink. Plus, compared to the other two systems that take single-use gas cartridges, the SodaStream runs for weeks at a time on larger tanks.
Guests arrived. I gave them the carbonated lowdown, poured the pre-mixed Americano into its SodaStream bottle and pressed the button on top. It made its usual satisfying wooshing noise, followed by its odd Jake-brake clunk that marks its pressurization limit. I did this twice and started to open it.
Big mistake. Thick, foamy bubbles filled the space at the top of the bottle and forced their way up into the pressurizer. Any warranty I had flew out the window. I waited a bit, tried again and, well, waited some more until I could finally unscrew the bottle and pour the ruby-red contents into their waiting glasses. We toasted, and tasted. The drinks were fantastic – pleasantly bitter, slightly sweet, fizzy and delicious.
Dark and Stormy
1½ oz Goslings black rum
½ oz ginger syrup
¼ oz simple syrup
¾ oz fresh lime juice
4 oz water Place in Perlini with ice. Carbonate, shake, strain in Collins glass with ice. Garnish with mint and float ¼ oz of Goslings rum.
Tom Collins
2 oz Hayman's Old Tom gin
¾ oz lemon juice
¼ oz simple syrup
4 oz water
Carbonate.
Recipes by The Aviary's Craig Schoettler
"It tastes like summer!" Franny said, and she was right. Not the hydroponic- supermarket-tomato-in-winter "summer" but a taste of the real thing, where you're in a rocking chair on the porch. It went over big.
Next, I poured the Broken Bike into the iSi bottle. I noticed it had one line for carbonating water and another, lower down, for other fluids (A-ha!). I popped the cartridge into the handle assembly, screwed it down and – woosh! – we were off and running.
With its golden caramel glow, the Broken Bike, made with white wine and Cynar bitter artichoke liqueur, was the surprise hit of the evening. Really, was the guy who thought of turning thistles into a drink related to the first man to eat an oyster? Yet all six of us, even those I knew weren't going to be wild about it, liked it. Some even loved it.
You can wing it with the SodaStream and the iSi, but with the Perlini, you really need to read the manual. The thing's briefcase even contains a flash drive with an instructional video that uses that "Apple simplicity" ethos to mask the reality that without paying attention, you'll end up with Gosling's Dark Rum in a Pollock-esque pattern on the ceiling.
I screwed the cartridge into the external handle, disassembled the bottle into cap, top and bottom, and filled the latter with ice and a relatively small amount of booze compared to the other two carbonators. I screwed everything back together, held the whole thing at a 45-degree angle and mushed the CO2 handle against the lid until the cartridge was spent. I gave the whole thing a shake and, like the others, a wait before opening. There's some cool-kid factor at play here, and the high-tech look and feel of the Perlini jibes well with The Aviary's vibe. But it's a bit of a fuss in my modest abode.
No matter. We made a round of Tom Collins cocktails, which turned out like gin and tonics sprinkled with magic powder. My girlfriend, Queen of The Sour Cocktails, got all swoony; it was a fantastic drink. The one noticeable difference was the Perlini's pleasantly tinier bubbles.
The gang got a bit woozy, with conversation flipping from books on Islam to Judy Blume and "Flowers in The Attic." So I skipped the Dark and Stormy – I tried it the next day, finding it big and brooding with ginger juice and dark rum – and headed straight for dessert with Schoettler's Concord Grape cocktail. It's a mix of Concord grape juice, Banks rum and ruby port. I wooed the crowd by telling them that I've made Angostura ice cubes, a crazy-easy trick that helps cover up the fact I bought the grape juice at the corner store.
"Grapeade!" exclaimed Fanny. The purplish drink with orange ice cubes is goofy, childish fun. Diederik, who wanted to opt out of the round, declared it his favorite, making every round someone's favorite and the night an unqualified success.
So which machine?
Schoettler swears by the Perlini, and those with a preference for tiny bubbles and slightly over-sophisticated gadgetry should go this route. Morgenthaler likes the Twist 'n' Sparkle, and I really liked its simplicity.
Though neither device made such a vast difference that I'd give up my old SodaStream and its giant CO2 canisters. Sure, I might be picking bits of solidified Americano from the inner workings of my machine for the next few months, but I like its eco-friendlier, large-capacity tanks, the ability to control how fizzy you make your drinks and, of course, the way it carbonates water.
Regardless, the key is finding a drink you like, prepping it ahead of time and making the bubbles flow. Dark and Stormy or Broken Bike, carbonating cocktails isn't reinventing the wheel, but it's pumping up the tires.
Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray lives in New York City.
See Also:- SXSauced: Crafty Cocktails at East Side Show Room
