Our book for January was Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, a rare example where we selected a book that is on top of many of the bestseller lists. I really enjoyed this book, but given the fact that most of the male characters are portrayed in a poor light, I was interested to see how the rest of our group felt.

Cocktail Flight for the Book

For the cocktails, I decided to have a little fun with cocktail chemistry. I made three cocktails, all of which could be changed the addition of a little NaCl (aka sodium chloride aka table salt). I made a saline solution, and mixed up the following cocktails:

• Fresh Lime Gimlet – 2 oz NS Gin No. 6, 1 oz fresh lime juice, 1/2 oz plain simple, shaken with ice. I made it purposefully tart, so that we could see how the NaCl changed the drink – just like putting salt on watermelon makes it sweeter, adding a touch of salt to this cocktail amplifies the sugar and brings it into balance.
  
• Classic G&T – 1.5 oz NS Gin No. 11, ice, tonic water, lime wedge. In articles about salt in cocktails, they discuss the impact the salt can have on bitter notes (such as those from the quinine in tonic), as well as the impact on carbonation. In this experiment, we definitely found changes to the bitter profile, but not so much with the carbonation.
  
• Fly By Night – one of our current offerings, this one is made with 2 oz American Malt Whiskey, ¾ oz Fresh Lemon Juice, ¾ oz Honey Simple, 1 oz Egg White, 2 dashes Angostura Bitters; shake without ice, then add ice and shake vigorously. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. I added salt with the egg white in one version, and did not add it to the other, so we could examine if the salt impacts the texture of the egg white and the drink’s flavor.

Reactions & Responses

By and large, we all enjoyed the book very much – the story was compelling, the characters seemed real and we cared about them. And, we enjoyed the cocktail experiments too – interestingly, the last one was the only one where we did not agree on which one was better.

And, bonus – I posted about the drinks on the distillery’s IG page, and Bonnie Garmus actually saw it and responded!