WITH THE GUY WHO LITERALLY WROTE THE BOOK ON FREEZER DOOR COCKTAILS
Photos by Thor’s Eye Photography
No, we’re not talking about the watered-down vodka that someone unaware of alcohols’ high freezing point tried to pass off by replacing in the freezer. We’re talking about intentionally batched cocktails that are made right in a liquor bottle (or in any empty glass bottle) and stored in the freezer to function as a ready to pour, perfectly-mixed-every-time cocktail.
We’ve seen this concept floating around and knew it was something we wanted to explore in our Cocktail Issue. There’s a lot of talk about the ritual, or ceremony, of making a cocktail in this issue. This is the other side of that. Freezer door cocktails are all about the cocktail itself — sans ceremony. With almost everyone gravitating toward convenience-orientated everything, freezer door cocktails are a practice in instant gratification that can be helpful for instances when you’d rather be in the moment than acting as a bartender. Think of it like meal prepping, but for a cocktail party.
Now, while we may know that gradually adding water to a bottle of vodka and putting it in a freezer drawer — where it’s colder than the door — will result in slushy vodka, there is a science to finding the perfect balance of mixer to spirit to ensure a cocktail will stay cold without freezing. And by “science” we mostly mean trial and error, but also a general understanding of freezing points and ratios. So, rather than fumble about and pour out more liquor than our hearts could handle, we ventured to talk to the guy who wrote the book on freezer door cocktails. Really, he wrote a book on them.
J.M. Hirsch got to thinking about batching cocktails after starting “Uncanned,” a video series on trying canned, pre-made cocktails. Not to spoil anything, but most of them were passes despite the convenience. That thinking about batched cocktails turned to tinkering with batched cocktails and led to a bottle of dry martini in the freezer door.
He set out to make the concept work for other cocktails to replace the reliance on canned cocktails with the convenience of a perfectly tailored and pre-batched cocktail. Because “nothing says dependency like needing a full bottle of your favorite cocktail at the ready at all times,” joked J.M. in an “Uncanned” video.
J.M. is a journalist and editorial director at Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street — a Boston-based food media company — but a scientist he is not. So, he hired food scientists to glean what could and couldn’t be done when freezing cocktails.
“Any bottle of 40% ABV liquor can be stored in the average home freezer without worry (and this includes pretty much all base liquors — vodka, whiskey, tequila, rum,
gin, etc.). But adding cocktail ingredients, such as juices, syrups or even lower-ABV liqueurs, changes the volume of alcohol in the bottle, and that changes the freezing point
of the mixture. To prevent the cocktail from freezing, a freezer door cocktail never should contain more than 20% no- or low-ABV ingredients, such as water or juice. That means you could replace a fifth of a full bottle of 40% ABV liquor with no- or low- ABV ingredients, and it will freeze only if kept at -10°F (-23.5°C) or colder. This is why freezer door cocktails don’t always use the same ratios as conventional cocktails,” shared J.M.
Even knowing all that, it can be a struggle to properly determine measurements for high and low ABVs, especially because many cocktails rely on low-ABV liquids to cut the bite of alcohol. This led to some creative solutions on J.M.’s part, like using cranberry concentrate instead of cranberry juice in a cosmopolitan and instant espresso powder instead of a pulled shot of espresso in an espresso martini.
J.M. said, “The ratios and ingredients of some conventional cock- tails just didn’t adapt well to the freezer, so I needed to tinker with them to make sure they tasted great but held up to below zero temperatures.”
Worst case scenario you can just turn down the temperature on your freezer. Though, that tip has not been J.M. approved.
In his book, he compiled 75 tried-and-true recipes for freezer door cocktails that vary from classics to original creations — two of which are included in this feature. It’s all convenience and none of the guess work for times when the ceremony of making a cocktail doesn’t fit your schedule. “Freezer door cocktails are especially good for two occasions. First is after work, when you just don’t have the energy to craft a cocktail the classic way.
At the end of one of ‘those’ days, it’s so nice to simply open the freezer, grab a bottle and pour your favorite drink, especially knowing it’s made exactly the way you want it. The second is when you entertain. I love having people over, but I hate being a bartender. I want to socialize, not serve drinks. Having a variety of batched cocktails ready for people to pour for themselves means I can focus on the guests, not keeping their glasses full,” said J.M.
As they say, everything in moderation — ceremony included.
If your freezer is on the bottom of your fridge and top loading instead of a door on the side, then we don’t know what to tell you. You’re going to have to come up with your own fun little name for cocktails you keep in your freezer.
