I’ve mentioned the molecular gastronomist Heston Blumenthal before, but I’ve now been introduced to Eben Freeman, the Blumenthal of cocktails: a molecular mixologist from New York.
On the international cocktail circuit, Eben Freeman is a massive celebrity. He is A + list. He is Madonna. He’s the future of cocktails, the future, perhaps, of alcohol in general. He’s a leading light among the very modern mixology set; the handful of men who are busily reinventing notions on what it is to drink and get drunk.
The liquid-nitrogen-treated mint balls are a vital ingredient in Freeman’s Mojito of the Future. Early this year, Bacardi commissioned him to redesign the classic cocktail as a promotional exercise. […] He combined the Bacardi, the sugar and the carbonated water with Xanthan gum, so that the base liquid of the drink is viscous, and the bubbles from the carbon are suspended within it, somewhat spookily. Into that mixture, Freeman introduces the mint beads, along with an equal number of lime beads; they, too, dangle eerily in the cocktail. It looks space-agey, the kind of thing you’d drink at the Torchwood office party perhaps.