Jeffrey Morgenthaler’s carbonated take on the Americano cocktail is poured into bottles for serving. Photo by Jeffrey Morgenthaler
The steel briefcase arrived inside two other boxes, Russian doll-style. Its combination-lock latches flipped skyward with a gratifying snap. In the briefcase, snug inside custom-shaped foam, lay a device that looked like it was designed by a committee made of Steve Jobs, Q from James Bond lore and a sex therapist.
My therapy, however, would be the liquid kind — I’d be carbonating cocktails at home.
The idea came to me following a pair of road trips to visit with two of the best and trendiest bartenders in the country: Craig Schoettler at The Aviary in Chicago and Jeffrey Morgenthaler at Clyde Common in Portland, Oregon. At the terribly tony Aviary, Schoettler and his crew make Dark and Stormys, carbonating the whole drink, booze and all, then pouring it in a soda bottle, capping it and serving it in a paper bag, hobo style.
Morgenthaler’s technique was to mix the ingredients for his cocktails — a classic Americano, and a Broken Bike, his signature spin on the Bicyclette — in Tupperware vats overnight, allowing the flavors to steep, then carbonating and bottling the mix the next morning so all a busy bartender has to do is pop the cap.
4½ oz Campari
6 oz Dolin sweet vermouth
13½ oz filtered water
peel of one orange
peel of one grapefruit
Refrigerate overnight, then strain out peels. Place contents into an iSi Twist ‘n’ Sparkle, carbonate, and fill four 187ml glass bottles with drink. Seal with a crown cap, chill, and serve.
Recipe by Clyde Common’s Jeffery Morgenthaler
I sampled many of the duo’s drinks, serious cocktails with a festive splash of fizz. Then I came home and looked at my slightly beat-up, $80, plastic SodaStream carbonator and had a thought: outside the manufacturer’s warning against carbonating anything but water, what stopped me from having some friends over and making my own carbonated drinks?
I’d pre-mix the drinks the night before (à la Morgenthaler) and get to do the showy, fizz-making part in front of a group of astonished guests. I’d skip the bottling process and pour the drinks straight into their glasses, thus joining the ranks of the super-trendy cocktail elite with the push of a button.
Morgenthaler and Schoettler shared five recipes with me, but they didn’t make it easy. They were conceived for larger crowds, and the measurements were tricky to downscale — Morgenthaler’s notes were in ounces, and Schoettler sent two in grams and one in ounces. No mention anywhere of, say, parts, jiggers, cups or tablespoons.
I took a swig from the nearest bottle and winged it. In the morning, I admired my chilled pitchers of beautiful, bright-colored liquid, artfully strewn with citrus peels.
In the name of science and a good excuse to try a few more drinks, however, I decided to try three different carbonators. I would also need some backup machinery in case SodaStream’s warning was right and I ended up with a drink called “Broken Bike on the Kitchen Walls”.
I brought in Schoettler’s recommended kit, the Bond-esque Perlini Carbonated Cocktail System ($200) with a set of cartridges, an injector widget and the three-piece carbonating container. I also tested Morgenthaler’s preferred method, the iSi Twist ‘n’ Sparkle (about $50) that came in a fanfare-free cardboard box.
It’s easy to appreciate the simplicity of my SodaStream, which just requires cold liquid in the bottle (the carbonation takes better when the booze is cold) and a press or three of the button on top, depending on how fizzy you’d like your drink. Plus, compared to the other two systems that take single-use gas cartridges, the SodaStream runs for weeks at a time on larger tanks.