Boston Apothecary

lately i see the words “dry” confusingly placed on all sorts of spirits from gin to rum and i don’t really understand what it means. dry is even confusingly used in wine speak. many people can’t make heads or tales of whether a wine is sweet or not… is there unfermented sugars or are people referring to levels of acidity? many people think rums are sweet because they are made of “sugar”. well whats the deal?

if like wine, dryness often ends up referring to acidity, what is the acidity of spirits? should unaged spirits mostly be the same and there be some difference in aged spirits? is there “perceived” sweetness due to high extracts in spirits like some times is encountered in wine?

the UV vodka website proudly claims their product is close to PH neutral relative to other budget produces who acidify their product for some spirits tax loophole… this makes really no sense to me but the budget producers would definitely have some “dry” booze. could these practices in neutral spirits be born out of some sort of tradition. should my C.J. Wray “dry rum” be fairly low in PH? and if it is, would the result be due to additives or stuff naturally going through the still?

maybe to solve some of the mystery i should calibrate my Hanna Instruments PH pen and have a go at the spirits that are laying around…

calibrated with fresh solution…

whole foods distilled water… PH??? well my distilled water was below 7 which is kind of a bad omen… but maybe acid is attached to my electrode from my cleaning solutions etc? maybe the temperature is messing with things? well i put on a new electrode, calibrated it and i still can’t get a 7 out of this distilled water but maybe its is messed up…

c.j. wray dry rum PH 4.85

gordon’s dry gin PH 6.90 <— switching back and forth and this rockets back to 6.90!

myer’s “platinum white” PH 4.42

clement VSOP PH 3.78

back to the calibrators… things check out… more or less… i tried to go back and forth from samples to dublicate my initial numbers… more or less they check out.

batavia arrack van oosten PH 5.02

seagram’s distiller’s reserve PH 5.13

trimbach framboise raspberry brandy PH 6.80

lemon juice PH 2.37 (time for a cocktail!)

so wow, i don’t really have too much confidence in the tester but i think it can still teach something about what we drink… its strange how drastically different gordon’s and the trimbach are from the others… your choice here would apparently have a large impact on balancing a sour… are the results here the reason the rum & coke is more popular than the fairly acid neutral UV with coke? Harold Mcgree puts black coffee at PH 5.0 and yogurt at PH 4.5. so are the results here negligable because we pile on the sugar with our mixers or are these PH factors important in shaping consumer preference over the long run?

now i’m curious how the more mainstream gins that i work with at the bar stack up… and how does all this acidity get there in the first place… any insights?

i haven’t really put things to test on what comes through my still, but now i’m even more curious and i think i’m gonna have to test some things… distilled, citric, malic, tartaric, and acetic acids… and it was the last of my bottle, but if i added baking soda to the clement would it have fizzed… could i neutralize that acidity?

do some dry gins have more acidity now because the palate needs it in a martini (or maybe not, my assumption from loving dry wine) but no one wants to get it from dry vermouth… so does a great marriage of gin and dry vermouth like you see in weird reviews really have to do with good balancing of PH?

hmm. quite alot of new mixology questions…