Messing with time in a bottle

Getting old isn’t easy. But the bartenders at BC’s Kitchen in Lake Saint Louis are having a good time facing the struggles of aging head on. No, they’re not trying to turn back the clock to party like they did in their 20s. In fact, they’re trying to speed up the maturation process – not for their bodies, but for your drinks.

Bartenders Justin Cardwell and Matt Seiter both have experience infusing spirits, but it can take weeks for the flavors to mellow and integrate. The duo wondered whether there was a faster way to achieve the same results. The solution: a sonicator, a device that harnesses sound waves to agitate molecules using an ultrasonic bath.

The machine that BC’s uses – it had a former life cleaning jewelry – looks like a tiny bathtub with a metal cage inside. Ultrasonic waves move through the water to initiate a process called cavitation, whereby the waves bang against submerged Mason jars filled with alcohol, spices and fruit peels. This agitation breaks apart chemical compounds and causes the molecules to disperse. For these bartenders, flipping the switch is a speedy way to extract flavor-rich compounds that make, say, a cucumber-infused gin taste delicious.

For a taste of cool science, order A Whiskey Soured, a combination of bourbon, orange and lemon peels, sugar and citric acid. Cardwell and Seiter wanted to make a whiskey sour using citric acid instead of juice for a ready-made, shelf-stable product to facilitate quick service at the bar. They sealed the ingredients in Mason jars and gave them a 20-minute, 110-degree bath in the sonicator. Compare that brief dip to the nearly two weeks it takes to achieve the same flavors by letting the jar sit undisturbed for weeks and periodically shaking it to extract the oils.

“It turns the aging process on its head,” Cardwell said after his initial experiments with the sonicator in late fall. Since then, BC’s bartending team has made coffee bitters and falernum using the method, and lavender bitters and limoncello are next in line.

Coffee bitters normally take four weeks to make. At BC’s, it takes 48 hours to infuse Goshen dark roast coffee, golden raisins, cocoa nibs, vanilla beans, star anise, burdock and calamus roots, molasses and Old Grand-Dad 100-proof bourbon. The tastiest application of these bitters is Doctored Kola, a boozed-up, soda fountain-style drink made with bourbon, house-made Kola syrup, lime juice, soda water and a few dashes of sonicated coffee bitters.

For a tummy-warming drink with similar chemistry, order Ligaya Figuears hot buttered rum. Brown butter-infused Jamaican rum lends body, and hot apple cider and lemon provide acidic balance, but it’s the falernum – that sweet, spicy syrup indispensable for making tiki drinks, made in a flash at BC’s – that pulls the drink together. Getting old never felt, or tasted, so good.

BC’s Kitchen
11 Meadows Circle Drive, Lake Saint Louis, 636.542.9090