A Justifiable Taste Experiment
By Darren Atkins
If you found yourself sitting in a room at the Manhattan Cocktail Classic facing a large still-like contraption, a famous chef/avant garde scientist and a sophisticated English gin specialist, then all signs point to you being in attendance at Distillation for Flavor-Past, Present and Future.
Distillation for Flavor-Past, Present and Future was presented by the tag team of Oxley Gin Global Ambassador Merlin Griffith and the French Culinary Institute’s Dave Arnold who is known for being a culinarily focused experimental genius and mad scientist of sorts. These two took their audience through a history of distillation and various distillation methods followed by a demo by Arnold who illustrated for the crowd, just what he and Griffith had been talking about. Of course no demonstration at a cocktail conference is complete without a tasting and Arnold didn’t disappoint as he distilled raw materials chocolate and jalapeno into flavorful distillates for the audience to taste.
It was obvious what the attendees were tasting because Arnold had distilled right up at the front of the room, but with words thrown around like “rotary evaporation” and “cold low pressure distillation”, most people may have been confused. But rest assured, just like the distillates Arnold produced, it all came out clear.
Arnold and Oxley explained that the way to understand alcohol’s relationship and progress with flavor is to become familiar with two main tools used in beverage laboratories; the gas chromatograph and sensory analysis. The gas chromatograph analyzes a liquid and separates the compounds through vaporization. Sensory analysis is the scientific method used for growth, analyzing and intercepting those responses received from the senses. Griffith explains why this is essential, “Your sense of smell and taste are very primal, and from an evolutionary stand point these would have told you if something was safe to eat or drink, you actually remember every single flavor or aroma that you come across, and you can train your senses by tasting lots.”
Arnold was ready to have his audience taste quite a number of things and he turned to his rotary evaporator, which is a device used in chemical laboratories for the efficient and gentle removal of solvents by samples by evaporation. Arnold comments, “Alcohol is a fantastic medium for carrying flavor and
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