Scales, Refractometers and the Bar Equipment Shopping Lists

Weighing: two scales

Drinks are measured by volume, but advanced bar work needs weighing: sugar for simple syrup, hydrocolloids and other powders. Dave Arnold uses grams only. Water is the one liquid that converts easily, 1 gram = 1 millilitre at standard temperature, so he sometimes weighs it. Get two digital scales:

• A scale reading to a tenth of a gram. Ask for a “drug scale”: if you only ask for a scale that reads by 1/10 gram, people often buy one that is not accurate enough. Cheap, and right for hydrocolloids, new ingredients and herbs for tinctures.
• A scale reading to the gram for larger weights, at least 5,000 grams.

You can get a large capacity with tenth-of-a-gram reading only for a few thousand dollars and with patience, and it will be slow. Large platforms are disturbed by even minor kitchen draughts, which move the reading by a couple of tenths of a gram. Hence two scales.

Refractometers

A refractometer measures refractive index, how much light bends on entering a transparent substance. Different concentrations of different substances bend light by specific amounts, so it can tell you the concentration of water-based solutions: sugar in syrups and juices, alcohol in distilled drinks, salt in brines. You do not need one at home, but the bar uses it daily because Arnold prizes consistency. What matters is the correlation to the thing you want, so scales are built for sugar, salt, ethanol and so on. The most useful for a bar is Brix, the percentage of sucrose by weight. Simple syrup at 50 Brix holds 50 grams of sugar per 100-gram sample, which is standard 1:1 syrup, and rich simple at 2:1 is 66 Brix. A refractometer lets you standardise syrups, check that honey syrup matches the sugar of your simple, and learn how much sugar is in a fruit juice.

Which to buy. An electronic unit reading 0 to 85 Brix is fast even in a dark bar and accurate across its range. A manual one works too, but the range must suit you. The usual 0-32 Brix is fine for fruit juice but not syrups. A 0-80 or 0-90 manual unit has the same size scale as a 0-32, so the 0-32 is almost three times more accurate; even so, for the bar get a 0-80 Brix, and check it is a Brix scale, not an alcohol scale. Manual units need a light source, which is awkward behind a dark bar in service. A 0-32 unit also helps outside the bar, to standardise sorbet recipes from fruit of unknown sweetness.

Anything you measure with a refractometer must be considered a mixture of water and one other substance only.

The caveat. It is very easy to misuse. A Brix scale assumes only sugar and water. That is fine for most juices, which hold little salt or ethanol, but a mixture of sugar and ethanol cannot be read, because both change the refractive index and there is no way to tell how much of each is present.

Thermometers and pH meters

For the imbibing experiments later in the book, any fairly fast digital thermometer that reads reliably down to -20 degrees C (-4 F) is fine. His own is an eight-channel, data-logging, thermocouple model, probably overkill but not very expensive. pH meters are rarely useful for cocktails: they show how acidic an ingredient is but cannot predict how sour it will taste.

The shopping lists

Almost no one will want or need everything on the list, and the techniques sections give workarounds. Only the first list is mandatory; after that add as you wish.

1. Hey, I just wanna make some good drinks: two sets of shaking tins, a good jigger set, a hawthorn, julep and tea strainer, muddler, paring knife, Y-peeler, bar spoon.
2. I wanna act like a fancy pro without breaking the bank: add a bar mat, good ice pick, dasher tops for bitters, flat-bladed slicing knife for ice, ice bucket and scoop, 2-inch ice-cube moulds, small rectangular Igloo cooler, glass bottles with eyedroppers, hand citrus press, Lewis bag or other ice crusher. Arnold’s reasons: a mat captures drips and spills, 2-inch moulds make big ice for shaking (and for rocks drinks), picks work large ice, dasher tops make your own bitters bottles, an eyedropper handles saline or tinctures, and a hand press, because squeezing citrus between your hands or reaming with a fork is goofy.
3. This is good for my kitchen too: a high-speed blender like the Vita-Prep, an iSi whipped cream siphon, and a Champion juicer or equivalent if you will make a lot of juice.
4. I’m gonna make recipes that require accuracy: a drug scale (250 grams by the 1/10 gram), a kitchen scale (5 kilos by the gram), a decent digital thermometer and, money permitting, 50 ml, 250 ml and 1,000 ml plastic graduated cylinders.
5. Bubbles: a 5- or 20-pound CO2 tank, regulator, hose and ball-lock connector, and three Liquid Bread carbonator caps.
6. I’m an experimenter or a stickler for accuracy, in this order: a refractometer, then a micropipette.
7. I’m crazy: a professional ice shaver and a red-hot poker.
8. I’m not bankrupt yet, big-ticket tech to get one at a time, if ever, in this order: liquid nitrogen, a vacuum machine, a centrifuge (first, if you are buying for a professional bar) and a rotary evaporator.

Arnold’s basic bar kit lets you make any classic cocktail with style and grace, and the good-to-have photograph shows the Vita-Prep (Vitamix for home use, the only blender to buy if you can afford it), a half-litre iSi whipper and a Champion juicer.