The Dave Arnold post at:<p><a href="http://www.cookingissues.com/2009/07/24/tales-of-the-cocktail-science-of-shaking-ii/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cookingissues.com/2009/07/24/tales-of-the-cocktai...</a><p>(linked from this review) is arguably much more interesting than the review itself. So is everything else at Cooking Issue. Cooking Issues is amazing.
Ok, sure, it is great to consider the extra minutes added to the taste-window which a bigger ice block vs several smaller ones gives... But, really, what I've wondered about when I go to drink such tasty drinks is that the bigger target seems ignored. The ice wouldn't have to melt so fast if it wasn't having to counteract so much heat getting in unnecessarily. But drinks are mostly put in contact with container walls which are directly connected to the external wall in contact with the air, table/bar, and human hands. Heck, one could go all out and pick some material(s) with a lower thermal conductivity than glass. That might be worth some bother too, but I don't know that it is needed.<p>Why is it I have a Thermos (made of stainless steel, so not optimized for thermal conductivity at all) which can keep coffee mouth-burning hot all work day, but when I go to some fancy scotch tasting establishment they hand me a chunk of glass engineered more for looks than for the task at hand?
Was Ian Fleming completely wrong? "When you shake a martini, you aren’t integrating the elements in a way to create a smooth texture – you are doing the opposite. A shaken martini gets diluted too fast and gets too much air mixed into it. The result is a slightly frothy and watered down drink."<p>I assumed he didn't want to get inebriated in order to have a non-fuzzy head for all the goings-ons but the bartender would have noticed..<p><a href="http://www.drinkspirits.com/gin/james-bond-wrong-shake-martinis/" rel="nofollow">http://www.drinkspirits.com/gin/james-bond-wrong-shake-marti...</a>
Humidity also has a big effect (lower is slower, it's plausible that drinks in Vegas are less diluted than in Hawaii).<p><a href="http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/article/66/4/10.1063/PT.3.1958" rel="nofollow">http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/a...</a>
Granted the thermodynamics lesson is all well and good. The more interesting point is in the making of ice cubes (or spheres). Apart from pitching some product, it's the water. Sufficiently purified water (ie reverse osmosis) produces glass-clear ice. Cloudy ice contains dissolved sediment typical of tap and barely filter water.