11 Oct 2012 The dark side of liquid nitrogen cocktails
Following the horrific injuries sustained by a British girl who drank liquid nitrogen, has the trend for molecular mixology gone too far?
One moment Gaby Scanlon was out with her friends celebrating her 18th birthday in a wine bar in Lancaster city centre, showing off the watch she’d been given. The next, she was in Lancaster Royal Infirmary, having her stomach removed.
There are plenty of sixth-formers who wake up feeling the worse for wear after celebrating this milestone, but Gaby’s horrendous incident was not because she had drunk too much. It was because of what she had drunk: liquid nitrogen.
The police and the bar owners are still trying to work out exactly what happened, and there is no suggestion that anyone has broken any laws. However, Gaby’s accident has thrown the spotlight on the increasingly sophisticated world of cocktail bars.
The era of simple piña coladas and vodka tonics has been replaced by molecular mixology, where foams, sprays, jellies and smoking drinks have become all the rage. Martini glasses and highballs are now passé – shots are drunk out of test tubes, gin and elderflower tonics served out of steaming tea pots.
“It really took off about two or three years ago, and the dry-ice effect is exciting,” says Tatiana Mercer, who runs a bar blog, BarChick. “It’s brought the sense of theatre into bars, in the way that Heston Blumenthal did with restaurants. But I had no idea it was potentially dangerous.”
Gaby’s night out was at a pretty basic bar in the university town. Famed for its generous portions of nachos, even this hang-out has taken up the trend of liquid nitrogen, a chemical many of us will remember from childhood science lessons – being handled by a diffident teacher wearing goggles.
The chemical is super-cold and only exists at temperatures of between -210C and -196C; it starts to evaporate the moment it comes into contact with room temperature air, creating a dramatic dry-ice effect. It is completely harmless as a gas – most of the air we breathe is made up of nitrogen – but as a liquid it has the power to freeze objects in a matter of seconds. Touching the liquid can give you severe cryogenic, or cold, burns.
Reputable barmen are appalled by the incident, but also baffled: most of them do not use liquid nitrogen as an ingredient, they use it as a tool to freeze things very rapidly and to a very low temperature.
Tristan Stephenson is a director of Fluid Movement, which helped pioneer molecular mixology – cocktails with a bit of wizardry. At the company’s bar, Purl, they used to make a “nitrogen martini”, which involves cooling the gin down to -40c by mixing it in a cocktail shaker that is sitting in a bucket of liquid nitrogen.
“It is very, very, cold and slightly spicy on the tongue – but perfectly safe,” Stephenson says. He also uses the liquid nitrogen to freeze a twist of lime solid. He then pours a small amount of the liquid nitrogen on top to “garnish” the drink. It immediately starts to evaporate, enveloping the glass in an ice-cold steam. “But you need to wait for it to stop steaming before you touch it,” he explains.
Though the chemical is not expensive, the vessels in which it is stored, called dewars, are very pricey because, if the liquid nitrogen is kept in a standard flask, it would likely explode. He can get through 50 litres in a week, which would cost £2,000 to store – a significant outlay for a small bar.
Some barmen refuse to touch the chemical because of the risks of storing and handling it. A German chef three years ago lost his hand after a canister of liquid nitrogen exploded.
But other chefs have successfully used the chemical to great effect…..