:: life gives you limes ::

From April 14th to the 17th, I attended the USBG Northeast Regional Conference held in New Haven. One of the talks that I rather enjoyed and felt that I could convey well as a summary was "Life Gives You Limes" by Donny Clutterbuck who is an officer of the Rochester chapter as well as a bartender at The Cure in that city and a founder of the Pour Cost app.

The four citrus fruits that Donny covered were the major ones at the bar: lemon, lime, orange, and grapefruit. The classics that we make with them respectively are: the Whiskey Sour, Daiquiri, Screwdriver, and Blinker. Donny wondered if there was a particular rule to how these fruit juices were being utilized. As a starting point, he looked at acid to sugar balances. At one part acid to 10 parts of sugar by weight, the average person cannot perceive one more than the other. He defined brix as percent sugar by weight such that a 13 brix solution is 13% sugar or 13 grams sugar to 87 grams water. Therefore, a balanced acid-sugar mix would look like 1 gram citric acid, 10 grams sugar, and 89 grams water.

In cocktails, orange juice was represented by the Screwdriver which is booze + juice. Most orange juice is 1:8 or 1.5% acid (citric + ascorbic) to 12 brix sugar content. This is rather close to 1:10 so it comes across as close to balanced. Grapefruit was showcased by the Blinker which is booze + sugar + juice. The structure is guided by the fact that grapefruit juice is a 1:5 or 2% acid to 10 brix. This extra acid over the balance point is why grapefruit goes really well with greasy food.

The Whiskey Sour to represent lemon is structured as booze + sugar + juice. Lemon is 1:1.8 on average with 5% acid to 9 brix. Equal parts of lemon juice and simple syrup balance the mix to make the drink work. The Daiquiri for demonstrating lime juice was rather similar with booze + sugar + juice. Lime weighs in at 1:1.7 with 6% acid to 10 brix. With the Daiquiri, it needs 6% acid and 60 brix to balance but lime juice alone rings in 50 brix shy at 10 brix; luckily, 1:1 simple syrup is 50 brix so combining the two in equal parts adds up to the perfect balance of 1:10. This works best when there is no extra acid or sugar in the rum itself.

Other spirits can work well swapped into the place, but not all combinations taste great. For example, white spirits seem to favor lime while darker spirits shine more with lemon. Donny explained this by acids and their effects on the palate. Both lemon and lime have citric acid which hits the senses early and fades; lime contains malic and other other acids that are sensed later. Similarly, while both white and dark spirits have alcohol which hit the senses early and fade, aged spirits have polyphenols from the barrel that are sensed later. Therefore, malic acid and polyphenol perception clash. Thus, a Whiskey Sour with citric and polyphenols ends up a whiskey drink, but a Daiquiri with alcohol and malic acid is a lime drink by what flavors are lingering. Donny added the saying "Silver and lime works every time; lemon and brown, send it on down!"

The point of this all is not geek out about citrus but to make people happy and to do this consistently so every time they come in, their drink is the same. This requires methodical recipe execution. Donny recommended taller, thinner jiggers since the difference in height above or below the lines (assuming internal markings or when filling to the top) is less than when it is wide (compare a tall Japanese to a wide Leopold jigger, for example, especially at the smaller measures). The next aspect was consistent ingredients; since we do not make the booze, we ought to focus on the juice. Donny offered up a lot of his time course data. One of his least favorite was orange juice which fell apart rather quickly. With this, he declared "Craft isn't craft if the store-bought is better!" Grapefruit was the least volatile (it tends to ferment before it oxidizes), whereas lemon and lime both got weird around day 4 (but best around 3 hours). Vacuum sealing or utilizing a Vacu-vin can help delay the process. And as a bonus pointer, he recommended Cafiza espresso cleaner tablets to get the stuck on citrus reside off the inside of the bottles.

For sustainability, lemon and lime juice can be clarified after 2.5 days. Then use it to make a 1:1 syrup; this cordial is sugar stabilized and can be utilized to make stirred Sours. And for cold press purchased juices, they are often brix adjusted and come across differently from freshly pressed ones in house recipes, so some ratio tweaking is needed. Overall, you can get 3-4 days out of a bottle before it goes off. Regardless of the process chosen for ingredients, it is crucial to make everyone's favorite drink the same way every time and good jigger and juicing practices play a major role.