You’re a grown-up now, so drinking no longer has to involve doing shots of rotgut and sipping MGD from red Solo cups. At the same time, raising your game to a more sophisticated means of imbibing doesn’t mean you have to track down a bar that requires a password and/or reservations. In fact, you can experience higher-end mixology in the comfort of your own home. Just add your favorite high-grade hooch and a couple of these high-tech gadgets, all designed to bring your drinking into the current age of mixologistic indulgence.
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Vaportini
Why bother with the effort of lifting your arm to drink that fancy single malt when you can inhale it instead?
The final frontier of drinking will come when we no longer have to drink at all. And the Vaportini ($30) is a clever yet surprisingly low-tech way of accomplishing just that. This simple kit revolves around a glass sphere with a small hole in it. Pour a shot of your favorite tipple through the hole, and place a tea candle inside a pint glass. Ignite candle, place sphere atop the glass and wait. Five minutes later the contraption will have heated up enough to turn the alcohol in the sphere into boozy gas. Stick a straw through the hole and breathe deep. You are now inhaling your drink, literally.
Mind you, we’re not talking about post-modern piezoelectric alco-fogs. We’re talking about pure and simple vaporized booze that you consume through a straw, chasing the dragon as the hip kids say.
Why would anyone do this? Vaportini offers a number of reasons. First, it is drinking with zero calories, as you get the effect of the booze while bypassing the digestive tract. Second, the effects are (purportedly) immediate, since you are taking a shortcut to the bloodstream via the lungs.
If getting very drunk very quickly is not your thing, you might also find this novel enough to give a try for more discriminating reasons. True to the company’s claims, you really can taste the essence of what you're drinkhaling -- in fact I might even argue you can experience it more distinctly than you can when consuming a spirit in liquid form. After all, 80-proof booze is still 60 percent water; with Vaportini, you are inhaling almost nothing but alcohol vapors. The water is left behind in the globe. But the effect is fleeting. After one or two puffs, the vapor is depleted and you have to start over.
After the fun wears off (Vaportini again says the buzz vanishes faster than with drinking), the cleanup begins, and here’s where the device shows its biggest weakness. Cleaning a glass sphere with a straw-sized hole in it? That’s madness even when you haven’t been breathing all night!
As for the psychoactive effects, I still can’t say that a shot from the Vaportini is more impactful than a shot from a glass. That said, it did make World War Z a lot more interesting.
WIRED Fun for parties, and it sure beats vodka enemas!
TIRED Cleaning difficulties alone relegate this to novelty status.
Molecule-R Margarita R-Evolution
Foams, flakes, and soils remain staples of the molecular gastronomy movement, and more recently these wacky ideas have begun to migrate to the bar. "Molecular mixology" brings the pipette into the arena of grown-up drinks, and with Molecule-R's "R-Evolution" mixology kits, you can get in on the fun at home.
A variety of kits are available. I checked out the $30 margarita-centric one, which contains tools, ingredients, and recipes to create three different molecular cocktails. Well, let's step back a bit: You still have to provide most of the actual ingredients yourself, including tequila, limes, fruit juices, liqueurs, and even, in one striking recipe, mango juice and coconut milk. (Now that's a margarita!) What the company provides you are the items you won’t find at Safeway: soy lecithin, sodium alginate, and calcium lactate, in the case of this kit.
Be warned as well that you aren't likely to be making "azure bursting pearls" as part of your nightly constitutional. Unlike the typical cocktail, the tipples in this kit require a substantial amount of time, effort, and patience to pull off correctly. Plan on dirtying a half-dozen dishes and relying on both the stove and the freezer to create most of these drinks.
In the end, the results are…mostly unimpressive to look at. My margarita with citrus foam was fanciful fun (and tasted great), but I was never able to achieve the towering cotton candy-like foam pile that's shown in the picture on the box. My spherified margaritas (the one with the coconut and mango) fared far worse, looking like the saddest fried eggs the world has ever seen.
WIRED Short of pulling out the 30-year-old hooch, there's no more impressive way to make a splash with a cocktail (if you nail it).
TIRED When you get finished, you're too tired to drink the things. Instructions are often misleading and difficult to follow; could use more pictures, not that your creations will look anything like them. But still…
Rating: 4 out of 10
Purefizz Soda Maker
The SodaStream, a countertop device which lets you make your own sparkling beverages at home, has become a modest phenomenon that's now sold just about everywhere. The problem is one of portability: It's a heavy device that's not designed with mobility in mind.
Purefizz ($60) takes on-the-fly carbonation to go through the use of single-shot CO2 canisters and a smaller carafe. To use the device, just fill the stainless steel container with up to three cups of what-have-you, from plain water if you're making seltzer to a standard cocktail that you'd simply like to add some fizz to. The Purefizz doesn’t rely on (or even offer) pre-packaged flavorings. It's up to you to figure out what you want to make sparkle.
Operation is simple after a couple of test runs. A special head unit with a CO2 canister attachment screws into the top, releasing the gas into the chamber. Then shake a few times and it's ready to drink immediately. You can also use the separate screwcap to store your concoction for future consumption.
The results are good. Sparkling water comes out with a good level of bubbliness without being overwhelming. Insta-sparkling cocktails can also be fun…though you have to make them three cups at a time, so it may be best to avoid the top-shelf stuff. One nice little concept included in the manual: You can make a credible mimosa without Champagne by carbonating OJ and white wine.
WIRED Good fizz level, nice body in finished drinks. Relatively easy once you've gotten the hang of things (Hint: Tighten up all seals and do not overfill the canister).
TIRED CO2 not included ($7 for a 10 pack). Tall, narrow design makes it a bit unwieldy and a cleaning challenge.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Cumulosphere Ice Ball Maker
Serving drinks "on the rocks" no longer cuts it. Now you have to consider the appearance of the rocks themselves. And the cognoscenti are increasingly preferring their ice in the form of giant balls.
The large hunk of globular ice became popular in Japan when it was noted that a single, spherical ice cube maximized the surface area of booze exposed to the cold while minimizing melt runoff. The result: a drink that stays colder, gets watered down less, and looks impossibly cool in a glass.
While high-end Japanese bars were carving balls to order from large blocks of ice with a pick, this kind of commitment wouldn’t fly at even the most upscale U.S. speakeasy, and so the ice press was invented. Ice presses are enormously heavy molds crafted from dense, anodized aluminum. You place a smaller block of ice into the mold, which then quickly compresses it, powered by its own weight as it melts away the ice's corners thanks to aluminum's incredible heat sink capabilities. Eventually only a perfectly shaped ice orb is left in the interior cavity. It's hard to believe, but this happens in the space of 5 minutes, give or take, depending on the size of the initial ice block.
Ice molds like this aren't cheap -- the comparably sized Cirrus Ice Ball Press Kit from Williams-Sonoma costs over $1,000. But the Kickstarter-backed Cumulosphere has managed to create one for just $275 (or $250 if you skip the engraved logo). With a final ball size of 65 mm, it's one of the largest size presses on the market, and the cheapest.
The device works well, though I was not at all prepared for the vast amount of water that comes pouring forth from the thing during the pressing process. When finished, the large ice balls look good and, indeed, do the job they're supposed to…provided you don’t mind having chilly balls pressed up against your nose and lips while you’re drinking. You don’t mind, do you?
WIRED A statement both in your glass, and while it's working.
TIRED Enormously messy; do this in the sink. Ice balls are nearly impossible to remove from tray, even with tongs. Requires preparation via pre-filling ice molds (included).
Rating: 7 out of 10
The Pretentious Beer Glass Collection
How refreshing that a company making pretentious beer glasses actually calls itself the Pretentious Beer Glass Company. Proprietor Matthew Cummings blows glass by hand and mouth, producing an increasingly sizable collection of bespoke and incredibly pretentious drinking vessels that are designed to make your beer-swilling evening a far snootier experience than you've previously imagined.
Cummings' glasses ($35 to $50 each) are designed with various beers in mind. The Hoppy Beer Glass is a gently off-kilter tulip with fingertip etchings to aid your grip. The wacky Malty Beer Glass has three concentric layers of bulbs, one on top of the other, and is designed not just to look cool but to trap sediment as you sip. I'm especially partial to the Aromatic Beer Glass, a snifter which has an "abstract mountain" pushed into its base; this offers cavitation points and is slowly revealed as you empty the glass.
Perhaps the centerpiece of the collection, though, is the Dual Beer Glass, which features a swirling vertical divider that lets you pour in two separate beers and enjoy them either alone or together, on a sip by sip basis. A classic Black and Tan is just the start. Try my personal favorite mix to date: wheat beer with IPA. Or go wild and actually try drinking a Black Velvet. Cummings' personal recommendation is Prairie Gold with sour Duchesse De Bourgogne.
The PBGC is adding more spirits-oriented glasses to the collection this fall, including a nifty elongated Glencairn-style nosing glass for whiskey and a "rocks glass that rocks" -- which can only be set down at an angle. They are, of course, equally awesome and every bit as pretentious.
WIRED Sturdy design. Extreme conversation pieces.
TIRED Price will eat into your budget for Pliny. Pretentious.
Rating: 8 out of 10
Vodka Zinger
The Vodka Zinger ($26) is what you'd get if someone were to ask, "What if we combined a standard water bottle with a Slap Chop!?" Believe it, dear consumer, this wild contraption is designed to take the complex task of infusing vodka with fruits and botanicals so much easier.
Here's the idea: Take a 20 oz. steel water bottle and cut off the base. Then, attach a series of (dull) blades that mesh with another set of slicers in a plastic receptacle that screws onto the bottom of the bottle. Drop your fruit or whatnot into this receptacle and connect the two pieces. As you screw them together, the blades spin, chopping and pulverizing the fruit. Now add vodka. It seeps through holes in the contraption to mix with the fruit, creating instant flavored vodka.
The Zing Anything folks have four different Zinger models available, but they're all a variation on a theme. While my first instinct was to wonder how this really saves me any time against chopping up fruit and dropping it into a bottle of vodka, it does seem to be a modestly more convenient (or at least a more interesting) option over resorting to a knife and cutting board. For fruit infusions, for example, the rind doesn’t even have to be removed before zingification.
The results aren't much different than other home vodka infusions you might have tried and will depend on your raw ingredients. My various fruit vodkas were fresh and lightly flavored -- a far cry from the fruit punch you might be expecting. The good news is that the Zinger lets you experiment with different levels of vodka and different amounts of fruit or botanicals, so you needn't commit to a whole bottle at a time like you would in the typical DIY scenario. You can also easily remove the botanicals if you've decided the vodka doesn't need to steep any longer, something impossible with a standard glass bottle.
WIRED Very little prep required. Infusions are ready in about an hour.
TIRED Lots of pieces to clean up afterwards. Base can be difficult to attach; some fruits can jam blade mechanism.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Vinturi Spirits Aerator
Cork dorks know that aeration is essential to bringing out the complexities in a bottle of wine, which is why there's always so much swirling and sloshing going on. But what about spirits? Can a good bottle of whiskey get even better after it's been impregnated with air?
Years of experience lead me to say yes. Pour a fresh glass of high-octane tequila and stick your nose in it. You'll smell some agave, but only if your nose hairs don't burn off first. Let that glass sit for a half hour and try again: The alcohol vapors will have wafted away, leaving behind the real essence of the spirit.
Is there a shortcut? Vinturi, which makes a popular wine aerator gadget, thinks so. You pour your wine from the bottle through this plastic, kazoo-like gizmo. Tiny holes suck air in as it passes through, shooting out the bottom with a whoosh. It's instant aeration, and if you don't mind the lack of pageantry when serving wine, it works fairly well.
The Vinturi Spirit Aerator ($40) works along the same lines. The exact same lines, really, except that this Vinturi has a small button on the side that you press to release the spirit into your glass all at once. Markings on the top half of the device let it serve double duty as a jigger.
So does it work? I've found that spirits aerate differently than wine, so I'm on the fence about the value of this product. I've played with it before with decent results, but this time I took things more seriously by taking a number of spirits and evaluating them blind -- one glass poured from the bottle, one poured through the Vinturi.
My results were mixed, but positive: Vinturified bourbon and tequila saw the biggest impact. These spirits, when poured through the device, were much smoother and less hot than I encountered with straight pours. Vodka experienced the same effect -- clearly sweeter and more luscious when poured through the Vinturi, though I found this robbed the spirit of its trademark bite. I had a similar problem with gin. Going through the Vinturi, many of the more delicate botanicals blew off, leaving the ensuing spirit much milder and less fragrant. Only with a well-aged rum could I not tell any difference between the two samples.
That said, by and large the changes were subtle. With a little judicious swirling and some patience you can easily replicate the same effect you get with the Vinturi in a regular glass. I won't deny it's a quick shortcut to mellowing out nearly any spirit, but are you really in that big of a hurry?
WIRED A quick way to blow bruising alcoholic vapors off your hooch. Integrated measuring marks. Tough, sturdy design.
TIRED Noise produced is not exactly classy. Can be prone to splattering, so wear your larger bib.
Rating: 6 out of 10
Editor's Note: WIRED reviewed the Vinturi previously, in 2011. Read what reviewer Mike Lasky thought of it.
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