We were lucky enough to acquire a Waring commercial milkshake mixer. It was given to us to play with in our workshop and we were determined to put it to good use. We love milkshakes but we were convinced that there was more we could be doing with the machine. Cocktails seemed like a natural progression. Next thing we knew our back ordered PDT Cocktail Book arrived on our doorstep. It seemed like serendipity.
We decided to mix up the Old Flame, a deceptively simple cocktail consisting of good gin, fresh lemon juice, simple syrup and an egg white. We had to adjust slightly for the agave syrup that we had on hand instead of simple syrup and happily squeezed Meyer lemons because we had them in house, but other than that we followed the directions as written except we shook one drink by hand and mixed the other in the milkshake machine. The difference was immediately visisbly. The one mixed in the machine had a much bigger head of foam and held together for much longer than the one we shook by hand. There was a 5-degree temperature difference, in Fahrenheit, favoring the milkshake machine as the colder beverage. It had a softer texture, washing across the palate like silk, with a softer alcohol burn than the other. While both drinks were very good, the one mechanically mixed defintely had an edge. There will be more experiments in our future to see if the type of drink matters and if and when there are times when hand shaking is best. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.
Years Past
