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.