A Galaxy in Your Glass - You Lucky Devil

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or, The World's Second Self-Mixing, Vacuum-Packed Cocktail.

Ever wanted to know what the center of our galaxy tasted like? Well do we have the drink for you. 

Not long ago a group of astronomers in Germany were searching for evidence of amino acids in a vast dust cloud called  

Sagittarius B2 when they found evidence of a organic compound called ethyl formate. This compound is formed when ethanol reacts with a formic acid; which sounds terribly dull until you realize this means ethyl alcohol occurs naturally is space, which is awesome.

Science.

This story was broken to the world with the headline of  

'Galaxy's Center Tastes of Raspberries, Smells Like Rum', which is both accurate and inaccurate in equal measures. Ethyl formate is partially responsible for the flavor of ripe raspberries (not to get into the mechanics of flavor perception), and it's odor is described as strongly rum-like; even the United Nations agree.

The problem is no-one can identify what sort of rum this particular corner of space smells like- is it a smooth, buttery Caribbean rum? A rich sugary number from Guyana? A rich and woody aged rum? A grassy, bright blanco? An unctuous, punchy over proof? Does space smell like a pot still or continuous distillation? There doesn't appear to be any consensus, and "rum-like" is a terrible descriptive. 

Clearly astronomers need to drink more. That is where I come in, I suppose. 

So armed with the knowledge of what the galaxy tasted like, I endeavored to make a drink that allows you to taste deep space from the comfort of your own home or bar. 

First off, following the rules of cocktails suitable for space, we couldn't use any fresh ingredients, and have to recreate our rum flavour using artificial means. 

On the left, fresh raspberries; the right, freeze-dried and powdered.

To recreate the raspberry flavor I freeze-dried some fresh raspberries and powdered them. The freeze-drying process (called sublimation, which might sound familiar to regular readers) allowed to create a powdered substance with an extended shelf life that would recreate an authentic fresh raspberry flavor when reconstituted, ideal for the purposes of a long space journey. Dehydration risks 'cooking' the fruit, burning sugars and creating a bitter flavor, and there is no guarantee of all the water being dehydrated, the presence of water of course precipitating spoilage. 

For the rum flavor I repeated the rum sugar method I had used earlier, this time using a strong French agricole rhum, for no reason other than that I love agricole rhum, the dirty stinky beast it is. 

Finished rum sugar and the rhum in question

Next up once again we are using our neutral space spirit, with vodka standing in once more, along with a mix of tartaric and ascorbic acids for our sour element.

 

 

Again we followed the self-mixing long-shelf life method of vacuum packing we used previously (hlink).

Recipe is as follows:

The Max Planck Cocktail

Named for the institute in Bonn, Germany, that made the discovery.

40ml Neutral spirit

1/8 tsp Tartaric Acid

2 tsp rum sugar

1 tsp freeze-dried raspberries

90ml Mineral water

Combine in a vacuum bag and seal at 20 millibars of pressure.
Just chill the bag, cut it open and add to glass. Or just stick a straw through the bag and drink like a Capri-Sun.

Seen above in the highball version, and below in the zero-g friendly vac-pac-bag version.

 

Signing off for now, follow us on twitter @Zero_G_Drunk for more nonsense in this vein.

The World's First Self-Mixing, Vacuum-Packed Cocktail, the Vac-Pacquiri

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or, the Reconstituted, Dehydrated, Powdered Vacuum-Packed Daiquiri.

So we can produce our own neutral spirit on the cheap in space, and using acids and powders we can replicate ingredients that would be impossible to obtain on the surface of Mars.

But now you've had a hard day working in the moisture farms tending lichen, it's quitting time and you want to wash down the stifling red dust of your new planetary home with a classic daiquiri. But how can you replicate the flavor of a Caribbean   white rum when you don't have any sugarcane in space?

Seeing as there is no official definition for rum we were able to take some artistic license in recreating this drink- we started by combining four parts cane sugar to one part Bacardi Superior and vacuum packing and cooking the mixture in sous-vide for 24 hours at 90 degrees Celsius. 

Cane sugar and Bacardi 4:1 solution ready to go into sous-vide

This created a thick, rich syrup that still held that lovely green-banana woody thing Bacardi has going on. We dehydrated this and blitzed it into a fine powder that still had that faint boiled sugar cane flavour that we could add to our neutral spirit to recreate a white rum flavour. 

Our powdered rum-infused sugar

Next we added our friend tartaric acid for the lime component and mineral water to replace the liquid volume lost from the juice and from not shaking. 

Not shaking? Well here is where it gets interesting - we sealed the lot in a vacuum bag and vacuum packed it. Because of the process of thermal enthalpy and phase changes we discussed in an earlier blog post, as the air pressure dropped so did the boiling point of the liquid in the bag until it began to  "boil" spontaneously as you can see in the video below:

As the liquid froths it mixes in the tartaric acid and sugar, effectively making it a cocktail that mixes itself. Ladies and gentleman, you may have seen flash infused, barrel aged and sonic prepped, but I believe this is the worlds first vacuum packed, self mixing cocktail.

Drinking history in the making

As you can see its crystal clear, and with the ingredients and the vacuum packing it has the added benefit of having an almost indefinite shelf life. Perfect for those long space journeys- imagine coming out of stasis sleep on a shuttle flight to Mars and refreshing yourself with a perfectly balanced daiquiri you'd made three years prior on the international space station. 

The Vac-Paquiri

40ml neutral spirit
2 tsp rum sugar
1/4 tsp tartaric acid
60 ml mineral water 

Combine in a vacuum bag and seal at 20 millibars of pressure.
Just chill the bag, cut it open and add to glass. Or just stick a straw through the bag and drink like a Capri-Sun; an added benefit as you can drink the Vac-Pacquiri in zero-G.

Notes

-My first two batches were aggressively unbalanced, so pay no attention to the recipes in the photos above.

-Powders are much lighter than their liquid counterparts and when kept properly will last much longer. This coupled with the impressive weight to drink yield ratio fits in with the space bar rules. 

- Again, be careful with these acids. Too much will massively unbalance your drink. 

- The Bacardi comes through in this drink, but something a little funkier would do well in this drink. Wray & Nephew flavored Vac-Pacquiris anyone? 

Well that's all for now. Follow me on twitter @Zero_G_Drunk for more nonsense in this vein.