What Einstein Kept Under His Hat: Secrets of Science in the Kitchen by Robert L. Wolke Read Free Book Online

just great at holding the pressure if you intend to shake up the bottle. But it’s entirely unnecessary in less dire circumstances. The lip and the original wire cage were intended to hold the high pressure of gas produced during the in-the-bottle fermentation. That’s what makes the bottle pop when you pull the cork. But after the bottle has been opened, there’s no such pressure. Any cork or bottle stopper will preserve the residual gas in your leftover Champagne, provided that it is kept cold and unshaken.
    (A footnote: Reportedly, a group of scientists at Stanford University in 1994 found that sparkling wine remained bubbly longer when the bottle was left open than when it was re-corked. But they had to do a lot of test-drinking during this prolonged experiment, and their observations may not have been, shall we say, sharply focused.)
    Sidebar Science: Put a cork in it
    WHY DO Champagne corks have that weird shape, like a mushroom wearing a dirndl skirt?
    When planted in the bottle, they were just as cylindrical as the corks used in still wine bottles, only bigger. A normal-sized wine cork is 24 mm (about 0.94 in.) in diameter; it is compressed and inserted into an 18 mm (0.71 in.) bottle neck by a “corker” machine. (Cork is quite compressible.) Champagne corks, on the other hand, are 31 mm (1.22 in.) in diameter and are squeezed into a 17.5 mm (0.69 in.) neck, with the top third of the cork sticking out as a “head” that can be grasped for opening. As soon as it is liberated from confinement, the bottom portion, which is soft and wet, expands back to its original diameter. (Cork is also quite elastic.)
    You can observe cork’s compressibility and elasticity by soaking a used Champagne cork in water for a few days to soften it, whereupon it will expand back to its original cylindrical form along its whole length. It will also revert to its original shape if you soften it by simply microwaving it for a couple of minutes.
    (Caution: Don’t operate an empty or nearly empty microwave oven. Radiation that isn’t absorbed by food or water can bounce back into the wave generator—the magnetron —and damage it. Put a cup of water into the oven along with the cork.)
                        
THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES
                        
    I’ve always wondered about Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee sour mash whiskey. No other states seem to have a lock on their types of spirits. What sets them apart, and why can’t the same products be made in other states?
    ....
    W hat sets them apart is largely local pride, but virtually identical whiskey can be made anywhere. They just can’t use those state names if they were made, for example, in North Dakota.
    First, what is it that makes bourbon bourbon? Bourbon is officially defined by the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which was split off from the ridiculously conceived Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) by the Homeland Security Act of 2002. It is defined as a straight (unblended) whiskey produced at a maximum alcoholic strength of 80 percent by volume from a fermented mash containing at least 51 percent corn, and aged at a maximum alcoholic strength of 62.5 percent in charred, new oak containers. In practice, however, most bourbon whiskeys are distilled to around 60 percent alcohol, and bottled at 40 to 50 percent. And they are made from 65 to 75 percent corn, plus smaller amounts of other grains such as barley, rye, or wheat.
    According to the TTB, the word bourbon may not be used to describe any distilled spirits produced outside the United States. But no names of states are mentioned in the regulations, except for the perfectly reasonable ruling that a bourbon may not be labeled “Kentucky Bourbon” unless it was made in Kentucky. There are approximately 162 distilleries producing genuine bourbon in the United States. Most of them, but by no means all, are located in Kentucky.
    Now