Frozen Margaritas... and Science!

Limeade Frozen Margs ala Ben's Uncle

• 1 can frozen limeade
• Tequila
• Triple Sec
• Ice

Pour/squeeze limeade into a blender. Refill can with tequila and pour in. Refill halfway with Triple Sec and add. Add ice to taste, about 2-3 cans worth. Add a pinch of salt if desired. Blend and drink. I've been told that you should use Minute Maid limeade because the generic stuff will give you green torpedoes, but I have not observed this myself.

I've been a fan of frozen margaritas for years - ever since my college buddy Ben's Texan uncle showed us how to make them from limeade and ice. It's really a great summer drink in so many ways, and combines well with a lack of air conditioning. But I've always been annoyed that the frozen margs at some restaurants (notably Benny's) are much better than my home made margs. So one of my little projects this summer has been trying to create a better margarita.

The biggest difference is the texture. Restaurants margs have a smooth, thick, almost creamy texture. The ones I was making were more icy and granular, like a boozy snow-cone. I looked at buying a restaurant-style continuous mixer, but they're pretty expensive and I'd have to do a lot of drinking to justify it. Which isn't that much of a burden, but I don't want to become an alcoholic solely to amortize capital costs.

Better Frozen Margs

• 1 can Bacardi frozen margarita mix
• Tequila
• Triple Sec
• Ice

Pour/squeeze limeade into a blender. Refill can with tequila and pour in. Refill halfway with Triple Sec and add. Refill with water and add. Freeze for 4-8 hours, stirring/blending when you can. Add another can of water, freeze again and blend when possible.

Somewhere along the way I read that some of the commercial mixers took all liquid ingredients, rather than a bunch of ice and booze. So I figured I'd give that a try. And it turns out that's the secret! You just replace the ice with liquid water, freeze the whole thing, and you get a much better texture. The problem is that if you mix it all up at once, it'll separate in the freezer. Then you end up with a lake of concentrated booze and sugar, topped by a glacier that'll take 15 minutes and a pickaxe to pierce. So it's better to add some water and blend, freeze that, then add some more water and blend again. It ends up taking a day or two to make a pitcher of margs, but that's probably for the best anyway. Along the way I also tried out a Bacardi margarita mixer that I like a lot better than limeade, which was also an improvement.

Eventually I sobered up a bit and became curious about why the texture was different. I could probably ask a food scientist or a physicist, but I'm lazy and the internet is right there. So I did some Googling, read some stuff about formation of ice crystals, and made some completely unfounded conjectures which I will now present as "knowledge." Basically I think when you start with ice cubes you have relatively large crystals, which get chopped into smaller ones in the blender but are never very small. But when you start from a mixture of water, sugar, alcohol, salt, etc the water freezes into much smaller crystals because of the freeze concentration. Basically as the water freezes into pure ice, the remaining liquid has a higher concentration of solutes, which makes it even harder for the remaining water to freeze thus preventing larger crystals from forming. I think. Anyway, here are some really fascinating pages on the formation of crystals in ice cream, which seems like mostly the same thing.

So there you have it - better drinking through physics. My next task is trying to make better frozen margs from scratch. I've had one promising batch, but I haven't worked out a repeatable recipe yet. It looks like it'll be roughly the same as above, but replacing the premix with 3/4 cup of lime juice and 3/2 cup of simple syrup, give or take. I might also try extra-strength simple syrup. Anyway, I'll let you know when I figure it out, if I'm still capable of typing by then.

Update - here's my best stab at a good recipe before I call it quits for the season.

• 8 oz tequila
• 4 oz triple sec
• 6 oz lime juice
• 10 oz simple syrup
• 20 oz water

Mix together everything but the water in a large blender. If you're not sure of the recipe, you may want to go easy on the lime juice and simple syrup - you can always add more later. Add 8oz of water. Freeze for 6-8 hours, stirring a couple times if possible. Take out of freezer. Taste and adjust lime/syrup ratio if needed. Add remaining water and blend. Refreeze, stirring a couple more times if possible. Blend again before serving. 

All amounts are easily modified if you like it stronger/weaker, more/less limey, more/less sweet. But if you add too much water it will be more difficult to blend after freezing. 

Use a long serving spoon to mix while blending. Before serving it should be liquid enough to maintain a smooth flow in the blender without assistance. 

Memorial Day Canyons pt 3

One more from Fry Canyon last Memorial Day. Think I'll get through those before Labor Day? Eh, probably not, but oh well.

Anyway, I like this one because it's a somewhat narrow section, but still manages to show the scale of things. It's hard to get all of those at once - usually the narrow sections don't supply good overlooks like this. Plus the light is nice and soft with no hotspots, another rarity.

This is from later in the same canyon - definitely a different feel. Obviously I didn't take one, since that's me impersonating a corpse in the pool. It was just a nice place for a rest, one of the first warm spots after a lot of cold water. Also our fourth canyon in three days (more for some of the others) so we were getting a little tired.

I think I'll probably quit going on about this trip after this post, but if you just can't get enough there are 125 photos here.

Memorial Day Canyons pt. 2

The advantage of only posting once a month (or quarter... or year...) is that I can make photos from one vacation last a really long time! See, there's a method to my sloth madness!

This isn't really a great photo, but I heard some comments about canyons being claustrophobic. Which is definitely true some of the time, but not all of the time. Although that log solidly wedged 30 feet up might cause one to consider what this looks like during a flash flood.

Since I'm already posting photos of questionable quality, here's a canyon selfie. I know you're all jealous of my high-class canyon duds!

Although now that I think about it, that wetsuit might be the second or third most expensive item of clothing that I own. Does that make it high-class? Either way, I consider that to be a true victory in life. The shirt, on the other hand, was two dollars at Goodwill - which is why it's being used to protect the aforementioned high-class undergarment.