Kevin Peterson
Appearances
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
A Negroni is going to be good almost no matter what you do. An old-fashioned really is balanced on a knife edge in terms of the ratio of bitters to sweet to spirit, which is part of the reason I almost never order Old Fashions when I go out anymore. I'll get a Negroni unless I really trust the person behind the bar.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
It's not a theory I've seen in the literature. The literature being a few hundred cocktail books that I own. But it's something that I explored in my book. And in terms of temperature, in terms of dilution, some drinks really have to be cold to be good. Some drinks really die quickly once that ice starts to melt.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
You know, gin and tonics, Collins style drinks, like once that ice starts to go, it really falls off a cliff. Some drinks can melt a little bit more and they kind of stay reasonable further into that sort of melty zone.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Well, yeah, sometimes you got to show people how it's wrong to let them appreciate how it's right. And one way that I would describe that is that your taste buds are temperature dependent. And when something's warmer, you're sending a different ratio of signals in. So even if you ostensibly made the right drink,
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
that right drink was intended to be served at 30F or 35F, and if it's at 70F, it's not the right drink anymore.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
I have read about how taste buds work. You know, I've, I've done a little bit of testing. It didn't make it into the book, but you know, say what is the optimal sugar concentration at 30 F at 60 F at 90 F. But, but I think just anecdotally, you probably know the answers to a lot of these, like the amount of sugar and ice cream is great when the ice cream is frozen.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
If you take, you know, once that ice cream melts and it's at, whatever, even 50, 60 F, it's like, oh my gosh, this is unbearably sweet. Or a can of Coke, you know, all the ratios are skewed once it's room temperature. The amount of sugar in the can hasn't changed, but the, you know, the way your brain or taste bud interprets that has changed a lot.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
A few hundred might be low thousands.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Sure. A distinction I do want to make, there's the frozen daiquiri, which a lot of modern bartenders would consider a bit of an abomination. The classic daiquiri is rum, lime, and sugar shaken with ice. And if you look in 10 different cocktail books, you're probably going to see 10 different recommendations of should it be two ounces of rum? Should it be an ounce and a half of rum?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Should it be half an ounce of lime? Should it be three quarters ounce of lime? You know, and they're all within a certain range, but... there's probably more disagreement than agreement on what exactly those numbers should be. So I said, well, let's just settle this once and for all. I'll just drink all of them and see where they're good. So I held two ounces of rum constant.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So I'm looking at a ratio now and not necessarily an absolute number. But I said, okay, we'll do a quarter ounce lime, quarter ounce sugar, and then we'll vary everything in quarter ounce amounts until the drink is terrible in some direction. And I wound up with a range where I said, okay, you know, kind of the ideal is two ounces of rum, three quarter lime, three quarter simple syrup.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
But there's a little bit of wiggle room on either side, a little bit more in this direction, a little bit less in that direction. I then did again with temperature and said, okay, where is it ideal? I did it again with dilution. So as you're shaking the drink, that ice is melting, right? When you pour everything into the tin initially, we would call that 0% dilution.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
As you're shaking, if you just shake a normal drink for 10 to 12 seconds, you're going to get about 30% dilution. So it's considerable. Yeah, which is surprising. It's like, hey, I paid 15 bucks for this and 30% is water? Yeah. Can you charge me 30% less, please? But yeah, so within all those variables, there are some acceptable ranges.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And yeah, what was intriguing to me was some anecdotal wisdom did actually point towards the thing that empirically said, hey, we're right in the middle of where we wanna be. There were some other points where I was like, oh boy, we're right on the edge here. So when you normally shake a cocktail, turns out about 35% dilution is where you kind of fall off that cliff.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So if you pre-chill some of your ingredients, you melt a little bit less ice, you wind up more in the middle of that kind of ideal zone for dilution. So actually at home, I started keeping my rum in the freezer just to, you know.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, very good question. And that's probably the biggest caveat with the whole book is... I couldn't pay somebody else to also grant $1,500. Yeah, there is a section on uncertainty, actually, data uncertainty. So a couple things I did. Yeah, I did go back and recheck myself on certain points and say, okay, three months ago, I thought this was terrible or good or right on the cusp.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Do I still think that? I had some of my staff. I tested them as well. And then even like measurement uncertainty, when you're using a jigger, is that accurate to 0.1 ounces, 0.01 ounces on a Saturday night? How different than when you're doing it? for the sake of your testing. So, so I actually, yeah, I had some of my staff, I was like, all right, pour two ounces as quick as you can.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Like, you know, I had to pour it into different tins and, you know, we masked it out and yeah, there, there's something like a five to 10% variability in poor, um, poor level. So, so yeah, there's some analysis there. And basically what I said was, um,
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
There are some real outliers, people who just want zero sugar or the ultimate bitter thing or the whatever, and I'm not trying to capture those people in this data. 90% of the people that I talked to fell – well, probably 95.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Most of the people I talked to fell within this range where they said, yep, I pretty much agree, or maybe there's one point where I'm a quarter ounce more lime juice than you, which is – getting into that measurement uncertainty realm. So I kind of said, if you just kind of like squint your eyes a little bit when you look at my graphs, I think we're all going to agree here.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And, you know, so don't take it as, okay, down to the last milligram. But the other thing that I wanted to do was to just bring some of this thinking into the cocktail world and say, okay, a thousand years from now, are people going to look back and say, yes, that was the true Daiquiri form?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Maybe, maybe not, but I hope they can say it's cool to bring this level of meticulousness and analysis to the cocktail world in a way that it hasn't been brought before.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah. Yeah. So, so it's a nod. I mentioned a little bit earlier, but that, that idea of a golden ratio, there's a certain relationship between the lime and the sugar that's more important than the relationship between the lime and the rum. Right. Or I should say the overall quantity of a sweet sour to spirit. You can make a little juicier daiquiri.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
You can make a little drier daiquiri as long as the lime and sugar are in the proper proportion. Yeah. you can have a little more spirit, a little less spirit.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah. Yeah. So some other examples would be something like an old fashioned, which is predominantly bitter and sweet. Something like a Negroni, which, again, is mostly bitter and sweet, but now it's got vermouth in it, which is a wine based product. So you've got some sourness and some umami in much smaller amounts, but a little more complex ratio there.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And what I found was that those more complex drinks tended to have wider tolerability bands.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah. You know, you can maybe liken it to, say, when you're making a curry and there's 26 spices in it, like, well, I accidentally put too much spice.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, yeah. So I started by doing a bunch of daiquiris and saying, okay, now I've – and the daiquiri is a drink that a lot of authors have sort of taken as like, okay, let's analyze the heck out of this. Oh, okay. So I took that as like, okay, well, if I'm going to write a book, this is kind of where it's got to start.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And so I did all this analysis, but then I said, yeah, as you mentioned, okay, a bee's knees, a gimlet, a lot of these sweet and sour drinks are the same template. Well – Do they behave the same or is there a different science of the gimlet? Is there a different science of the bee's knees?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And what I found was when you look at the ingredients in that more generalized sense, spirit, sweetener, citrus, rather than lime specifically or rum specifically, a lot of those plots actually fall directly or almost directly on top of each other.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah. So the literal build would be an ounce of gin, an ounce of Campari, an ounce of sweet vermouth. But I would generalize that to say an ounce of spirit, an ounce of Amaro, which is like a bittersweet liqueur, typically Italian, and an ounce of vermouth, which could be sweet or dry.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And there's, you know, even within a single category of sweet vermouth, there's a lot of variation in sweetness or dryness.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yep. Yeah. And like I mentioned, it was intriguing that... That added complexity gave you more wiggle room. I guess my intuition was actually where yours was at, was that, oh, now there's more moving parts. If anything gets out of place, the system is more likely to fall apart. But there was actually more resilience there. More resilience in terms of ingredient ratio. You could be further off...
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Oops, I accidentally put too much gin in.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
It's fine. No such thing as too much gin, right. The Negroni held up to both colder and warmer temperatures than most cocktails. It held up to both more and less dilution than most cocktails. So... Yeah, I wasn't actually trying to write a book in praise of the Negroni, but that's essentially what I wound up writing.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, I think balance is kind of what gets you in the door. Like if it's not balanced, send that drink back. Like there's no saving it. So, you know, the way I often describe it when I'm teaching cocktail classes is most people get the ingredients right. You find some recipe in a book, you find it online. Okay, you bought the right gin, you bought the right...
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Citrus, you know, I buy the same limes as you, you know, there's not like special bartender limes or something. But what a lot of people don't get right are kind of the engineering variables. So the temperature, the texture and the dilution primarily. And a lot of what that comes down to is did you shake it right or did you stir it right?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And one of the ideas there is when you're shaking or stirring, yes, you're mixing the ingredients, but that's not primarily what you're doing. Shaking for two seconds. will pretty thoroughly mix most ingredients or stirring for a couple seconds.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
The way I like to think about that is what you're doing is you're setting the temperature, you're setting the dilution, you're setting the level of aeration. And when you think about it that way, so kind of the ideal shake is about 12 seconds, which is way longer than most home users shake and frankly longer than most bartenders shake.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
I've been doing this long enough that now a timer just starts in my head. The minute I start shaking it, I can't stop it. One, two, three. And my body refuses to stop until I hit 12. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm just saying it's a thing. And that's how long it takes for enough ice to melt, enough dilution to happen, enough chilling to happen.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And you have to shake it quite hard to integrate air bubbles into the drink. So that's a red flag if you're out on the town and you get a shaken drink and the bartender just kind of lazily, I'll shake this. Okay. The ice is kind of slopping back and forth for a few seconds. Like, let me stop you right there. I'll get a Negroni instead. Yeah.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So yeah, the technique is how you set those engineering variables and with a couple of rules of thumb, which I lay out in the book. But yeah, the biggest one is shake for 12 seconds and shake it hard.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So about an 18-inch shake is ideal.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Indeed. And I would say you could probably get away with shorter. Really what you want is the impact of the ice into the end of the tins. So it's got to travel far enough that you can really kind of slam it, slam the ice into the end. So you get a good.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
There's almost like an auditory cue more than a say.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Also true. Yep.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Let's say you fill your shaker 90% full with liquid. There's not enough room for everything to slop around and integrate the air.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
There's a lot to say about martinis. And the thing is, it's a minefield because everybody thinks their version of a martini is the correct version. And there's so many variations out there. And this is a little bit of an age thing. I'm kind of right at the cusp where I drink martinis. I find a lot of guests that are older than me drink martinis.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
A lot of guests that are younger than me don't drink martinis. And so normally when somebody comes in and says, make me a martini, I'm like... Tell me what you like in very specific terms. And I can totally do that. Well, I always make it with a quarter ounce of vermouth. I always make it with this, you know, and it's like, I always make it with this gin or that vodka or whatever.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And it's like, yep, I can do that for you. Absolutely. That is not what I would have guessed. So yeah, So that was, yeah, it was, it was actually a little bit of an intentional choice to avoid the martini because there's so many strong opinions there and there's so many opinions that don't line up with each other that I was like,
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Maybe I'll just have to write a different book about martinis at some point.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. And certainly that's. That's a part of the cocktail world. What glass do you serve the drink in? What color is the drink? I've you know, we don't list the color of the drinks on the menu. I've totally had guests.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
you know, husband and wife where the husband had to switch drinks with his wife because his drink was too pink, which sounds silly, but I've, I've witnessed it, you know? And yeah, now I've, you know, I'll say when I got into this world, yeah, I had a bit of that. And at this point I've drank every dainty and pink and whatever drink along the gender spectrum you want to think about.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And I, I don't, you know, it barely crosses my mind anymore, but yeah. Then with guests, I'm like, Oh, okay. People care. Yeah. I don't love the fact that there are the gender connotations with drinks and glasses, but it's reality.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Oh, boy. Yeah. That's another thing is like what, you know, if you ask people to name one cocktail fact, what are they probably going to say? Well, it's shaken, not stirred.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So, I guess my first answer would be, well, how do you take your martini? Shaken or stirred? Okay, great. That's exactly what I'm going to do. You know, my opinion is to stir it. And I would actually take a step further and say it's not that one is right or wrong. It is stirring and shaking give you different amounts of temperature drop, dilution, textural change.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
What is it that you want in the final drink? And what are the ratios of the ingredients that you put in there? Is that going to give you a balanced drink at the end? Some ratios might need a little more dilution. Some ratios might need a little lower temperature. So I'm really just kind of ducking the question here. But, you know, my martini is basically a Manhattan build.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Two part spirit, one part vermouth, couple dashes of bitters, stirred. That's not, you know, that's a rarity that I get a request to make a martini. in that exact way.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, shaking and dilution, or sorry, chilling and dilution go hand in hand, where the chilling of the drink comes from melting the ice. So to get a colder drink, you have to melt more ice. And Yeah. So you're just picking a point along kind of a dialed in line, colder and more diluted or less cold, less diluted.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah. So the air bubbles that you shake into the drink and what they tend to do is boost aroma. So they trap, you know, little aroma molecules or some atomization that happens there. And then they pop when you drink and go up into your nose. And And this is a really noticeable effect. You might think it'd be pretty minor. I've done it both ways. And it's like, oh, wow.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
You could stir a drink to the same temperature. You just have to stir it a lot longer than you would shake a drink. And it's a completely different drink. Even though the temperature and dilution are the same, the presence of those air bubbles dramatically alters the drink.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And the other thing that it does is it inhibits some of your tasting of the drink, meaning some of those air bubbles cling to your tongue and basically it sort of blocks some of the liquid from interacting with taste buds. So the shaking boosts aroma and drops the level of taste. So as a weird thought experiment, I said, well, could you make a shaken old fashioned that's balanced?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
which again, most people would say terrible abomination.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So the way that I build an old fashioned is two ounces of whiskey, usually something in the 25 to $30 range, a quarter ounce of simple syrup and three dashes of Angostura bitters. And, and then I would stir that for 10 seconds over a big ice cube. And there's your old fashioned.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And if you wanted to create that same balance in a shaken drink, so because shaking inhibits some of that taste signal, you have to boost the amount of taste ingredients, meaning you have to add a little more sugar, you have to add a little more bitters, but it also enhances the aromatic elements of the drink. And in an old fashioned, a lot of the aroma is coming from the whiskey.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So really what I found there was I had to use better whiskey. Because part of the point of an old-fashioned is you've got this kind of mid-level or entry-level whiskey, and you can make it really delicious with a quick tweak. It's maybe not something I would sip neat, but I would totally sip it as an old-fashioned.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Once you shake it, all those off-notes really come out in a more dramatic way, and you've now got to bump up to, say, a $40, $50 bottle of because the aromatic profile of a nicer whiskey is just more pleasant, and that's what you're playing up.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, yeah, that's a great way of saying it. That's not my quote, but maybe... You're welcome to do it. So it's almost like the dose makes the poison. A little bit of this molecule enhances aroma, but once it goes too far, now it takes over the drink and now it's made the drink terrible.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So for instance, one of the big compounds in whiskey is called ethyl acetate, which has a little bit of a green apple note. And when it's present in low amounts, it sort of helps you appreciate everything else. It's almost good up to the point where you consciously notice it.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And then once it crosses that threshold, you start to say, oh, there's kind of a solventy nail polish remover, like off note in this whiskey. Some clear spirits have it in abundance. So something like a Pisco or an unaged brandy, it really overwhelms. which is, you know, not a lot of people drink Pisco neat, or at least I don't. But you shake it up in a cocktail.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Now the lower temperature, more dilution, the other ingredients can bring that molecule into an appropriate range where it becomes a feature instead of a flaw.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Right. So if you have a stirred martini recipe that you find to be balanced and you wanted to shake it instead, you would have to boost the level of the taste ingredients, meaning more bitters, more vermouth, and you would have to use nicer aromatic elements, which would also include the vermouth, but predominantly the spirit. So if you're getting away with a $20, $25 bottle of gin...
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
All right, open up the wallet, you know, buy something a little higher on the shelf.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, texture, I'm mostly meaning the amount of air bubbles that are included. And what I found was that it's kind of an all or nothing thing. When you're putting air bubbles in there, you kind of just want a bunch of There's not a drink where it's like, okay, a few air bubbles is good, but a few more is worse.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
It's like it's either zero or if you're going to start putting them in there, you might as well just go all the way and shake the heck out of it.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
If I had written my book before I built my bar, I would have put a lot more freezer space in and I would chill every glass. Yeah, chilling the glass is a great idea. Those whiskey stones or those kind of like non-melting chilling components, they're great.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
They just don't have a lot of heat capacity, so they don't actually buy you that much temperature change or that much time in terms of keeping your drink cold, which is the big advantage of ice is that you know, as it melts or as it freezes, there's so much energy transfer there that you get a huge temperature change with a little bit of ice melt.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, there's a surface area consideration there. Sphere is kind of the lowest surface area to volume ratio. There you go, math. And the visual component can't be denied. Most of my book centers on getting the molecules in the glass right and the temperature and these engineering parameters. Well...
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
a pretty garnish and, you know, and the human element, tell somebody a funny story, connect with them in that way. Like that literally does make the enjoyment of the drink that much more. And, you know, As an engineer, that's not my specialty.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, yeah. Part of the idea in the book was, can we decompose flavor into different components and say, well, let's optimize each one individually, put them all back together and see if that kind of creates an optimal cocktail for us. So a lot of the discussion we've had so far is, let's optimize the taste, let's optimize the temperature, texture, dilution.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
The last big component, not the only remaining component, but probably the biggest remaining one is the aroma. And so every time you're putting ingredients together in a cocktail, you've got some gin aromatics, you've got some vermouth aromatics, you've got some bitters aromatics, you're creating a martini perfume. That's not how most people think of it.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
But, you know, what can perfumery teach bartenders about how to compose better scents? And in the worlds that don't interact very much, But I think, you know, that's really perfumery is the art that has studied the molecules that go together and the harmonies and the notes, bass notes, top notes, all that stuff.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And a lot of times in bartending, you say, well, this works and maybe this works a little bit better. And, you know, it's more guess and check more than us, um, an iterative analytical approach to building a fragrance. You get the drink balanced, you taste it, it smells pretty good. You say, okay, you know, um, and, and I, I like to, you know, basically do another round of, um,
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, that, I mean, that's really the tricky part is that scent is so complex. In taste, you can kind of measure sugar amount and bitters and sour and, you know, you can put some pretty firm numbers on these. But then you have somebody smell something and one person smells celery and the other guy says it's fenugreek and the third person says it's maple syrup and you're like, well, okay. Yeah.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
We can't even agree on what this is, let alone what the number is that's supposed to go with it. So it becomes a more sort of metaphorical qualitative approach, which, you know, isn't to say it's not important or it can't be honed or improved, but it, yeah, you, you get into more hand wavy arguments in the, you know,
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, so I started my working life in the food world. I was back a house for some years. I went to culinary school briefly, thought I was maybe going to be a chef someday. The closer I got to that, the more I realized that wasn't really the life path I wanted to be on. Went back to school, physics undergrad, engineering grad school, worked in the working with people.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
For a physicist that loves numbers, I'm like, man, there's just not a lot of numbers when it comes to scent composition.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Absolutely, absolutely. There's a Chinese spirit called Baijiu. that has some molecules that appear both in foot fungus and in Parmesan cheese.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
You have to be very careful which thing you're going to say it smells like, you know?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Correct, correct. I mean, there are some essential oils or perfume components that are food safe. For the most part, I'm using literal herb spices or things out of a bottle meant to be consumed more directly. Right. But yeah, applying that perfumery mindset to composing the aromatic side of the drink.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, yeah. Like I said, because there's, I mean, for one, not many numbers, but two, not even many words. You know, when you think about how to describe a smell in a verbal sense, let's say an orange. Could be bright, could be sweet, could be warm. Well, that's a visual reference, that's a taste reference, and that's a temperature reference. None of those are actually smell words.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And so, you know, it's like this weird black box that you're like, I can't even put any words, numbers, anything. Like, how do I even think about this? So you get into this realm of metaphor, And some of these metaphors I think are quite intuitive where a lot of people can smell something very light and bright more on the citrusy side and say, okay, I can see how that would be a top note.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
You smell some deep, dark, heavy, wintry scent, pipe tobacco or bonfire and say, okay, yeah, that's more base note. And maybe it's not language you've used, but I think I've done classes with people and talked to novices and People are like, okay, yeah, you know, within a half hour, I'm kind of like on the same page with what you're saying. It's not, you know, this speaks to me as well.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And then that opens up all of the ideas of how do you create, how do you go from notes to chords? How do you create harmonies? How do you create dissonances? Are you composing a children's song where everything just goes together nicely? Orange and vanilla and all happy scents. Do you put a little bit of a jazz note in there?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
ooh, this black licorice kind of throws some people, but maybe that's what makes it interesting.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Well, I guess kind of taking that jazz note idea. So all the aromatics in an old-fashioned are pretty harmonious. If you're using, say, a darker sugar, those aromatics go nicely with the bourbon or the whiskey notes. A lot of bitters are more baking spice forward. And like all of these different components kind of have a fair amount of overlap with each other.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
But then when you make a Sazerac, you're essentially making an old fashioned, but you're putting in a little bit of that black licorice note through the absinthe. And so it's almost like, you know, you had your like, kind of normal, whatever harmonious thing. And then you said, what if I make this one note, do this. I like that. Yeah. And now all of a sudden it's like a lot fewer people like it.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
I really miss kind of the immediacy of the service industry. You know, a lot of what I'm doing in engineering is developing PowerPoints that maybe my boss looks at and maybe not. And that's kind of what I do and it pays well and it's comfortable, but I kind of wanted a different challenge and yeah, started sucking some money away and then opened a cocktail bar.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
I mean, there's certainly a genetic component, how sensitive you are, literally which olfactory receptors you have. There are a few hundred and not everybody has the same ones. But there have been some studies done, which I can't necessarily cite you the paper on the fly here. But what people have found is that as you train your sense of smell, you are not necessarily getting more sensitive or...
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
You don't learn to pick things out at a lower threshold, at a lower concentration. What you learn is how to describe them better.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Okay. You make better verbal connections. You have a more rich vocabulary of description. So yeah, you watch a sommelier pick a part of wine and they're doing all these one weird motions, but then they're saying, oh, I get tennis balls and I get warm weather and I get garden hose and this and that. And you're like, You smell the same wine and you're like, this just smells like wine.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
It smells like wine, yeah.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, and I think another part of it too is your expectations get refined.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
where now I've read enough about whiskey that I know, okay, these notes come from the barrel. These notes come from the grain. These notes come from this and that. When I'm smelling a whiskey, it's not like my mind is a blank canvas and somebody's just putting something up there and I'm trying to pick it apart. I'm looking for a green apple note. I'm looking for a nutmeg note.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
I'm looking for a cinnamon note, which maybe not in a conscious way, but I've been primed through years of drinking whiskey to say like, oh, is this a rye, is this a wheat, is this a whatever?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And it's, yeah, it's a different experience when you're not trained in that world, it can feel overwhelming because yeah, it's just a bunch of random stimuli and you're like, I don't know how to differentiate these or what facets go together and what facets don't. And somebody that's done it for years and years can more quickly categorize, describe, picture these inputs.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Well, maybe I can actually take a step back further and say this. If you're thinking about opening a bar and you're a good home bartender, You're already doing all the fun parts, including drinking the drinks. If you are thinking about opening a bar, yes, there's coolness to it, but you're going to be adding a lot of unfun parts as well. So keep that in mind.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, in terms of like, hey, I'm at level – And I want to be at level four. Like, how do I, how do I level up my game in terms of a home bartender? The way I approach it is, you know, find a drink that you love, whether it's the daiquirin, the Negroni, the old fashioned, whatever it may be, and work your way out from there.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
If you say, oh, there's 10 different cocktail families and there's a thousand different spirits, and I'm just going to work my way through one by one. Good luck.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
You know, what, what I would say is, okay, you're an old fashioned drinker. Great. Try it with a little more sweetness, you know, do, do some of these, uh, ingredient ratio studies, find your perfect old fashioned and then say, okay, well, let me try it with a different whiskey. Let me try it with a different sweetener.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Uh, I mean, I, I'd worked as, as a cook in places that served alcohol, but I had not been a bartender before. I had not, uh, you know, not been kind of front of house before I had been reading a lot. I had been drinking a lot of cocktails, which isn't quite the same as working.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Let me try it with a different bitters and kind of build out from comfortable territory. And, um, You know, I know people that get into this world and there's so many spirits to buy. Oh, I want to try one aviation. Now I got to buy a $35 bottle of creme de violet. It's a problem. Yeah. You use it a quarter ounce at a time. You just buy yourself a hundred aviations.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Do you want to drink a hundred aviations? Do your friends, family want to drink, you know? And there's better ways, you know, more economical ways to get into it. And I think either picking, you know, a spirit and saying, okay, I'm a whiskey person. Let me try a sour drink with whiskey. Let me try a bitter drink with whiskey. Let me try a bubbly drink with whiskey.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Or just picking a category and saying, I'm a bittersweet person. Let me try a bittersweet whiskey drink. Let me try a bittersweet gin drink. Let me try a bittersweet cognac drink. You know, that's the way. And in my book, there are some tables where, you know, I would say kind of explore a row or explore a column rather than trying to just explore the entire table. off the bat.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Um, yeah, the cocktail genome project. So, so really as I was writing, uh, my book cocktail theory, that was really like, how do you, how do you create the perfect drink? Whether it's a gin and tonic or a Collins or a whiskey sour or a whatever. But if you don't like gin and tonics, that gin and tonic is not the perfect solution for the situation, no matter how well I make it.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And so like, as I was writing this, I was like, Oh man, I'm gonna have to write a second book about, you know, how do you match a drink to a person? And, And the way that we typically do that is it's on you. You come into my bar, I give you a menu and I say, good luck, read through all these weird ingredients. And maybe I throw you a couple of phrases. Oh, creamy. Oh, bitter. Okay.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
I can kind of like pick where I think I'm supposed to be. But, you know, I'm the one who's been making drinks, you know, thousands, tens of thousands over the last few years. Even if you drink a lot, it's probably not 10,000 drinks in the last year.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
But, uh, yeah, uh, read it, read a book called liquid intelligence, which I would kind of describe as the scientists or engineers guide to the cocktail and became really enamored with the nuances of it. And, um, I think a lot of people that wind up in this industry come to it from the people side.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
know a couple years so so it's like you've got knowledge of your preferences i've got knowledge of the drinks can we kind of flip the script and say well what if instead of me telling you about the drinks what have you told me about your preferences it's like going to the doctor like they have the medical expertise but you know your body and how you feel right and you better meet somewhere in the middle
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, if you go to the doctor and they say, well, here's the menu. Do you have Rescoe-Fleck syndrome? Do you have leprosy? Do you have gonorrhea? You're like, I think gonorrhea. That's not the way it works, yeah. Yeah, so flipping that script, and the key for me has been, well, what are the questions that I should ask? One way to do it is to say, well, what do you normally drink?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Which I think is like the cheapest, most... You know, it often gets you to the right place, but it's not, it's maybe more a reflection of your habits. And while gin and tonics are easy, I keep a bottle of gin in my cupboard and a bottle of tonic in my fridge and I pour them together. Well, do you like that the best or is it just the easiest to make? And, you know. Right.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Maybe if I asked you the right questions, I would realize, oh, actually, you know, you don't like the bubbles, you like the bitterness from the tonic. We can separate those two and combine them in a different way and, you know, create you a drink that's more ideally suited to you. The other cool part of this is I've been asking people about a lot of their culinary and scent history.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
What was your favorite candy as a child? What cuisine did you grow up with? What's a happy scent memory? So, you know, um, I, I had a customer who loved tequila, who loved bittersweet drinks and who grew up in Belgium and ate these violet candies, which was some brand I had never heard of, but I basically made him a tequila violet Negroni and he absolutely loved it.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Not a drink I probably would have ever made, you know, off the top of my head. Um, but it, you know, I was able to kind of piece together these components of flavor to ideally suit him. And, uh, he loved it.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah. So, so it follows a lot of the same thinking of my book where I decompose the flavor, um, you know, into taste, into scent, into some of the more conceptual elements. Now, a lot of people don't necessarily know what umami is or what their preferences are around it. So a lot of my work has been, well, how do I ask these questions in the right way to get the data I need from people?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Rather than asking about umami in a general sense, I can say, do you like barbecue potato chips? Do you like, you know,
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
meat and mushroom dishes do you like yeah even even with bitterness it's complex because it can be acquired in a very narrow band maybe you dislike bitterness but you've drank enough coffee that you love coffee uh but that doesn't mean you're going to like Campari or Fernet or Malort which are all bitter liqueurs so you know I've
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
You get some entry-level job, you work your way up, now you're behind the bar, and then maybe you add some technical details later. I came to it the other way where I had all of the technical skills and none of the people skills. So that was a little bit of a harsh learning curve, but more or less made it.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
I've been burned a few times where somebody was like, yeah, a little bit. I drink black coffee all the time. I eat green vegetables.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And then you give them some capari. They're like, Oh, this is terrible.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And you know, so, so a lot of that has been kind of this back and forth where a lot of my kind of trusted regulars, I'll send them the survey of 30 or 40 questions. I'll then design them drinks and I'll have them rate them and say, Oh, is this good, is this bad? And what I'm really going for, I let people give a gold star to the drink if it's one of the top 10 best drinks of their life.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Which is a high bar, but people are drinking, so maybe they forget some of those top 10s too. Lowers the standard a tad. And yeah, what I'm shooting for, there could be a couple outcomes. Maybe maybe you make a reservation at my bar and I text you the eight most pertinent questions. And I've got enough lead time that the minute you walk in the door, I just hand you something.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
That's your, you know, the equipment you grew up with times the, you know, flavor profile you like times your favorite spirit. Maybe you're part of my secret club that we have your profile on, you know, in our customer relationship database. And I say, okay, well, we were kind of going down a gin rabbit hole last time. Should we keep going that way?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Looks like you also kind of appreciate some cognacs. Maybe we want to dip over that way. And it's tricky because the ideal cocktail, it's both a moment in time, but it's also... It evolves over time. What I drink five years ago is not what I drink today or 10 or 20 years ago.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And being able to sort of push people one step beyond where they're at today is one thing I look for in a cocktail experience and one thing I try to provide to my guests. So even if you maybe don't love the drink in this moment, you look back and say, that was actually a pivotal experience for me. I hated the first Negroni I drank. But it was a very pivotal experience. And I'm glad I had it.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Okay, okay. So kind of the three categories that I find are most important, you know, you kind of made this differentiation between features and flaws. So you don't want to have a flaw. So you got to get the amount of alcohol right, or kind of like the concentration of alcohol, the bitterness and the sourness level.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So do you prefer more spirit forward drinks like old fashions, Negronis, Manhattans, or do you prefer more drinks where other flavors are more forward, like a deck region and tonic, something like that.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Spirit forward. Um, and then do you like more sourness in your drinks? Uh, you know, do you like that citrus element in there? Do you prefer it to be more of a, um, you know, um, let's say like sourness versus bitterness. Do you prefer something more like an old fashioned Manhattan or do you like a bit of citrus juice in there? I know you mentioned the sidecar earlier.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, my book is called Cocktail Theory, A Sensory Approach to Transcendent Drinks. And, you know, written in a couple parts. So it's like, how does a physicist think about a cocktail? How does an engineer think about a cocktail? How does a perfumer think about a cocktail? And then how do you put all those pieces together to actually... make a cocktail for a real person.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
I think Mindscape, you know, the spirit forward drinks, I feel like lend themselves a little more to kind of sitting, pondering.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Okay. So yeah, novelty and complexity I find are big. There you go. You've already said you prefer complexity. If you look at a menu, do you order a drink? Say a drink has an ingredient that you're not familiar with. Do you avoid that drink or do you order that drink?
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
You know, and that was a new feature to me when I opened the bar. I would put some weird spirit on there. Oh, have you had Baiju before? No. Do you like Baiju? I don't know. Yeah. Why are you ordering this drink? Because it's, you know, because I've never had it. There you go. Awesome. Here we go.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Okay, so we're more on the, you know, so spirit forward, more bittersweet, more complex, more novelty. And then we need some aroma element that's going to be kind of our central like storytelling feature. So is there some happy scent memory you could share? Happy scent memory. Maybe a flavor, maybe a candy, maybe walking in the garden or like the smell of grandmother's cooking or.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Oh, perfect. So there's a word for that, petrichor.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Which is the scent of, yeah, the earth after the rain. Petra is stone, ichor is blood. So petrichor is like the blood of a stone. Okay, so we're going to make a petrichor Negroni.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So we're going to have to distill our own gin using vetiver. Okay, which is grass that grows in Indian Haiti and it smells very much like you know dirt after rainfall. You know we're going to need some forest elements, I think we kind of get that from the juniper berries with the. The gin. Um, let's use, let's use instead of Campari, let's use St.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
George Bruto, which is also a red bitter liqueur, but it's got a very prominent fur note. Yeah. And, uh, and let's use. Let's use Antica Vermouth, which has kind of this deep, dark, a little bit sweet, a little bit vanilla note to it. But I think that's going to nicely offset our kind of rougher, more aggressive aromatics.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
So let's do that in equal parts, stir it over an ice cube, and I think we're good to go.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
I think a little orange peel, you know, expressed over the top never hurts in a brownie.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, deep, dark, kind of foresty gin. Boy, let's see. Well, this is a little bit of a different direction, but Mileto gin is based around tomatoes and it's kind of this very like herbaceous outdoor garden vibe. So not quite forest, but yeah, as an intriguing and weird off the shelf gin.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
loved it. Thanks for having me.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, I think a lot of what I do, that G-word gimmick is one I'm very careful about because there is a lot of gimmickry in the cocktail world, a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of Instagram-worthy drinks that you don't actually have any interest in drinking, and that's not my interest. I approach it more from the point of view of your taste buds, your olfactory receptors, all of your...
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
you know, all these little sensors that you have in your nose and your mouth, what are they measuring? What are those signals telling your brain? How can we optimize those signals? not just the Instagram.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, more of the perspective of a physicist than the literal theory. physics. So what are some generalized things that we can say about cocktails? What are some rules that apply across a broad swath of cocktails? One way to approach cocktails is to say, okay, I like Manhattans.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Let me just dial in the perfect whiskey plus the perfect vermouth plus the perfect bitters and the right ratios and just get one drink really correct. but then you have to do that times all 18,000 classics.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Might be fun. Never, but maybe there's some generalized things we can say where, okay, maybe a martini and a Manhattan have some similarity because they're both a spirit of vermouth, a dash of bitters, depending on how you make your martinis, of course, you know, sweet and sour drinks, uh, a margarita and a gimlet and a daiquiri.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
They have a spirit element, they have a sweetener element, they have a citrus element. And when you start to look at it in that more general sense, there are some trends that come out and almost some ideas like golden ratios of taste inputs, how do you compose a scent? So that's kind of what I mean by the physicist approach to the cocktail.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah. And I think, you know, when you're working in this world and you're trying to create new drinks or you're trying to memorize a bunch of drinks, when you're doing it onesie twosie, it's a very daunting undertaking. Once you start to see those trends, now you can say, oh, well, I know that, um, a pisco sour and a whiskey sour have the same ratios. I don't have to memorize both drinks.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
I just have to memorize one set of ratios and now I can make any of these drinks, you know, immediately.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Not my original phrasing that came from a bar called Death & Co. in New York. But, you know, this idea that the different recipes are, you know, essentially sets of ratios and you can sort of sub different ingredients in. That idea has been around for a long time. But the phrasing, Mr. Potato Head... As soon as I heard it, I was like, why? We don't need it to look for any other names.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
It's so intuitive. It's so catchy. But yeah, the idea being you've got a Mr. Potato Head doll. You can put in the googly eyes. You can put in the sunglasses eyes. You can put in the angry eyes, the happy eyes. As long as there's eyes where the eyes are supposed to be, and a nose and a mouth where they're supposed to be, it looks like... I mean, weirdly, a humanoid potato.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And the idea is if you have a sweet and sour cocktail, as long as you've got a sweet component where the sweet should be, sour where the sour should be, spirit where the spirit should be, that could be lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit. That could be honey, maple syrup, sugar, agave syrup. And it unlocks this... creativity because now you can be more creative in how you combine things.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Oh, I, you know, even if you're at home and you're like, well, I want to make this drink that calls for lime, but I only have orange. That's fine. You know, Mr. Potato Head out the lime, Mr. Potato Head in the orange. You got a delicious drink right there.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah, yeah. You know, one of the ways I think of it is getting a drink right, getting it balanced is getting the tastes correct. So your tongue only perceives bitter, sour, salty, sweet, umami, and every cocktail can be defined as some ratio of those. So an old fashioned is a ratio of bitter to sweet, a sidecar is some ratio of sour to sweet. And that's how you make sure the drink is balanced.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
But then where more of the storytelling, more of the intrigue comes in is on the aroma side where to the tongue, honey is just a sweetness, but to the nose, there could be floral elements. There could be some caramelized elements. There could be you know, whatever the bees were eating. Now you're telling the story of those bees through the cocktail.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Yeah. Yeah. There, there's an idea in, in the aroma world that ingredients pair well together when they share some common aroma molecules. And I've actually read a couple books that are, you know, more or less just lists of sort of unexpected combinations of foods that share aroma compounds. So I had a drink on the menu a couple of years ago that was blueberry and horseradish.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
Which does not sound good, right? And it's like, it's more, it's the more, how should I say? The more terrible it sounds, the more fun it is to actually serve to someone. And they're like, what the heck? This is actually good. You know, the more you can sort of twist that expectation from, well, this sounds completely awful. I guess I have to order it just to prove you guys are morons.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And then they take a sip and they're like, wait a second. Oh my gosh, it's actually okay.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
And then it had a blueberry, amaro, and we made a tincture out of horseradish. So we just took the horseradish root, chopped up, soaked that in alcohol for about two weeks, straightened out the chunks, and we just had a little dropper bottle where you could dose in some horseradish to taste.
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
307 | Kevin Peterson on the Theory of Cocktails
A few hundred. And, you know, and that's... What's shocking is the difference between a good drink and a great drink is often three drops of this, four drops of that, quarter ounce, like you were saying with the sidecar. Maybe the difference between a great sidecar and a good sidecar is an eighth of an ounce of lemon. Right. And some drinks are quite robust. You can just kind of pour, whatever.