Tales of the Cocktail® New Orleans 2016

It’s a hard historical truth that where human beings go, drinks follow. Explorers loaded their ships with ale and beer before they’d even consider setting sail. Jacque Cousteau enjoyed wine in his underwater lab. And now cocktails are going cosmic, as space becomes the newest place alcohol is being mixed and prepared—and will one day be enjoyed. The marriage between outer space and alcohol has been going on for billions of years. Astronomers already knew that there is free-floating ethanol swirling through the interstellar medium. Just this year, investigators discovered that Comet Lovejoy, which sweeps through our solar system every few thousand years, is made up in significant measure of alcohol and ice—a great starter for the most naturally occurring cocktail if ever there was one. More important to the hospitality industry is the new push toward space tourism, with mixologists and distilleries looking for ways to develop and consume cocktails in space—not just for the benefit of eventual cosmic vacationers, but for manufactuers back home who want to learn more about the chemistry of their drinks so that they can offer ever more variety of flavors and experiences. In 2012, the Ardbeg Distillery flew small amounts of its whiskey distillate mixed with charred oak aboard the International Space Station to simulate the barrel aging process in zero-g. An identical control study was run on the ground. The result was two different mature whiskeys with two very different flavor profiles—both delicious. A California-based company has developed a 3D-printed martini glass that uses ribbing and surface tension to prevent a zero-g cocktail from simply floating out of the glass. More recently still, the Savoy Hotel’s Beaufort Bar flew one thousand copies of its menu to the edge of space aboard a high-altitude balloon and then recovered them, a way of bringing a small brush with space to the bar’s very demanding customers. Studies aboard the space station—even ones not directly connected to cocktail development—are revealing secrets about the physics of carbonation and convection, of how the simple act of shaking or stirring changes liquids in zero-g, and how flavor sensitivity is affected as well. All of that basic science has applications both both on and off the Earth. Join Claire Smith-Warner (amateur space geek), Jeffrey Kluger (co-author of Apollo 13 and science editor for Time magazine) and Tristan Stephenson (author of The Curious Bartender) to explore the history of alcohol in space and the ways those experiences can help us develop better, more interesting cocktails on Earth. The presentation will include some extraordinary footage from the space station showing just how otherworldly the behaviour of water and carbonation can be in zero-g. You’ll never look at liquids the same way again.