Cocktail Quizzes with Answers

• EW

  Evan Wallace Staff member

  12/14/24, 8:48 PM

  QUESTION 1: You are drinking a highball, say, maybe a bourbon and ginger ale (one of my favorite go-to informal winter drinks). You’re about halfway through when you realize you need to pop out to the grocery store before they close for more ginger ale. You decide to put your half-finished drink in your freezer while you are gone. What happens to the dilution level of your cocktail while you are gone?

  ANSWER: The cocktail stops diluting immediately, and actually starts to become more concentrated due to water freezing out of solution. The reason is as follows: The liquid portion of the drink was already in equilibrium with the ice before you put in in the freezer. So no further dilution was taking place EXCEPT due to the heat from the room heating your drink. This is actually a pretty slow process, so you don't get a lot of extra diltion on the time frame of seconds or a minute or two--the glass you are drinking from is a pretty good thermal insulator. So when you put the glass in the freezer, the direction of heat flow changes IMMEDIATELY. Suddenly, the "room" is colder than the drink, typically around 10 degrees F for most freezers. So immediatly, further dilution stops, and the water in the drink start to freeze, thus concentrating the drink! That's right--the ABV of the cocktail starts to increase the moment you put it in the freezer. (Well, OK, mayber there is a 20-30 second delay as the outside skin of the glass is cooled down before the cocktail "discovers" that it is in the freezer, but this is a relatively brief and  small trasitory effect.)

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