A Thermodynamicist Walks Into a Bar

He says to the bartender, "Mix me a martini, but keep the increase in internal energy minimal."

The bartender says, "What kind of vodka do you like?"

The thermodynamicist replies, "Gin."

The above is a classic example of what happens in many places across this country (minus the unnecessarily technical thermodynamicist.) Americans have come to know a martini as containing vodka, often even shake. Bit of a tip: the original James Bond as written by Ian Fleming, Bond was a bit of a buffoon and thus showed his inner rube by ordering his martini "shaken, not stirred." The bit about the thermodynamicist was simply a clever segway to my next point.

Fortunately, there is hope. A growing number of bars, primarily focused in cities like New York, Seattle, and San Francisco, have bar programs intensifying in their mixological academia and attempting to revive and modernize craft bartending. Bars such as Employees Only and PDT in New York City have helped to bring both prohibition and preprohibition style cocktails back to modern bars. Restaurants with serious food programs across the country are integrating serious bar programs in as well. And in response, bartenders have increasingly had to become human encyclopedias o their trade, memorizing hundreds to thousands of details about spirits (and wine and beer, though less for use in the cocktail aspect of the bar.) More attention is paid to technique and precision, prompting the use of well calibrated, graduated measurement apparatus and higher quality mixing tools. Bartending ceased to be simply a quick hand and a cursory knowledge of alcohol that could be learned in some six week course; it became an academic artisan endeavor known as "mixology."

Mixologist is surprisingly not a new term. It is evidenced to have been in vogue in the late nineteenth century, but eventually came to be a term of high class exclusion, the more famous bartenders eventually forming social clubs and cliques. Professor Jerry Thomas, famous for the bitters produced in his name and his bartending guide, may have been referred to as a mixologist. Personally, I am not a fan of the term. Having gone to the trouble of studying thermodynamics, I see "mixology" as the study of the thermodynamics of mixing. However, if a bartender is truly rigorous in their mixological pursuits, I am willing to accept their usage. For my personal preference, however, I have devised the term "barchemist." (Pronounced with the accent on bar, like in "alchemist.")

The intention of this irregular periodical is to discuss, record, and publish my pursuits as a chemist behind a bar. While it is an intense intellectual pursuit, the business aspect of the trade is fundamental to the barchemist, most especially at a fast-paced service bars. I work two separate service bars with two differently focused programs, and the difference the the ultimate mechanics behind each bar is distinct. I will attempt to shed some light on the nature of individuality behind a bar as well as the coalescence of bar and restaurant together. I welcome reader feedback and criticism.

I apologize in advance for the quality of photos in the early phases; I need to gain access to a better camera to get across the true detail of the work.

Let's begin.

_theBarchemist