The Science of Bartending

Happy 1st August Food Junglers and welcome back to the analysis section!

Today, Meg will be summarising the changing landscape of bartending and how, with the introduction of new-age tools, making drinks has become something of a sci-fi experience. Let’s dig in.

Hey everyone, Meg speaking.

The longer you work in bartending, the less you claim to know. With technological innovation happening across the globe in attempts to revolutionise the way we create and consume alcohol, even those who have spent years perfecting their craft behind the bar still have things to learn.

In fact, bartending has never been so close to a science as it is now.

Using science behind the bar 

Dave Arnold is widely accredited with popularising the “scientification” of bartending in the 2010s. His book, Liquid Intelligence (2014), called for bartenders to think like a scientist in order to make better drinks. Tinkering with temperature, carbonation, acidity, and sugar concentration, he forced bartenders to think deeply and scientifically about cocktail creation. 

And since the book’s publication, the use of lab-grade technological equipment in bartending has also soared. 

Pulling from bottled spirits and liqueurs is no longer enough for the world’s top bars, as owning scientific equipment like rotary evaporators (“rotovaps”) is now commonplace, and sometimes even expected.

The rotovap, a vacuum distillation tool used to pull and preserve delicate flavours without the need for heated distillation, has even replaced simple bottles at a few Top 50 back bars (Crossroads Bar, A Bar with Shapes for a Name).

This is just one example of the changes in attitude towards drinks-making, moving further away from the bartender with a bottle and towards a whole lab being installed behind the bar itself. 

Science for the people 

Realistically speaking, though, not every bar can afford a rotovap. And, as much as I’d love to create my own in-house sandalwood distillate, that’s not always possible.

Despite this, understanding the scientific way of making cocktails is becoming much more commonplace across the bartending industry and is no longer reserved for the quirky mixologist. 

You only have to take a look at cocktail competition entries from bartenders across the globe. In these competitions, you simply do not stand a chance if you haven’t experimented with some kind of scientific process, whether distilling or carbonating.  

It has been cocktail competition season here in New Zealand - where I currently live - and the level of ingenuity continues to impress me. Entrants are using cold-fusion methods to create lapsang tea infused fino, distillers enzymes to break down brioche and create a breakfast inspired oloroso sherry, and at-home distillation to create coffee hydrosol from coffee grounds. 

The changing landscape

The bar industry has gone through many phases: cocktails made a comeback in the 1990s and 2000s, bartending with flair and trickery arguably became popular in the 2010s, and now the 2020s looks to be the decade for mixology and precise bartending technique.

Flair and showmanship have seemingly been replaced with a type of drinks-making that could be easily mistaken for a chemistry experiment. The best bars focus on creating pre-batched bottles and ready to serve drinks that have been concocted with flasks and high-tech machinery in rooms that are not seen by the customer.

This new mixology era means that the customer has to trust the bartender even more as you don’t see the whole process behind a cocktail being made. Perhaps that won’t be for everyone. 

And whilst everyone will still be able to appreciate the elegance of a negroni or an espresso martini, there is certainly no going back from the path we have forged with this new wave of mixology. The bartending world is only going to seek to outdo itself and continue to innovate, dragging more scientific and culinary techniques into the industry. 

I have been lucky enough to work with some talented bartenders, sharing their knowledge of niche distillation and infusion practices. However, there is still so much to learn!