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\f0\fs28 \cf0 Between A Rumba And A Roll: Dissecting A Bartender's Beat\'a0\
\cf0 When you walk into a crowded bar, the sound may not be apparent at first. But before
long, your ears will pick up the rhythm of an unmistakable beat.\
It's a bartender's shake.\ "Some people think I'm listening to a rumba
when I'm shaking," says D.C. bartender Eddie Kim. "I don't think it matters what the background
music is as long as you keep a rhythm."\ Another Beltway bartender, J.P. Fetherston,
agrees, adding that the spectacle helps him keep his audience captivated.\
"You can see the faces on the other side of the bar. Everybody loves to hear that
rhythmic sound of his cocktail shake. "If it has a little bit of flair to it, you can
see people getting into it. They even start doing a little conga dance sometimes. It sort
of helps the whole show."\ Whether a bartender's rhythm reminds you of
a dance beat or a train whistle, these bartenders say, it's fundamental to creating a well-crafted
cocktail. Unless you prefer your cocktail stirred, in which case, see our {\field{\*\fldinst{HYPERLINK
"http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/05/162305178/shake-it-up-baby-are-martinis-made-the-bond-way-better"}}{\fldrslt \cf2 \ul \ulc2 Bond martini report.}}\
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\b \cf0 Function Meets Rhythm \b0 \
The shake makes a drink cold and distributes its contents evenly. But some experts say
there are some factors that may affect the perfect blend. For starters, not all ice is
created equal. And that can affect how long and how hard you should shake.\
\pard\pardeftab720\sa200 {\field{\*\fldinst{HYPERLINK "https://www.jwu.edu/content.aspx?id=7402"}}{\fldrslt
\cf2 \ul \ulc2 Edward Korry}}, who heads up Johnson and Wales University's beverage and
dining services program in Providence, R.I., says most cocktails reach their prime at 15
to 20 seconds of shaking, but the timing can also depend on the quality of the ice.\
"The worst kind of ice is hollow ice. We tell our students if the recipe calls for a 15-second
shake and you're going out to the field and you've got hollow ice, well, you're going
to have to reduce that to a five- to seven-second shake because of the water dilution," Korry
says. "The ice just starts to disintegrate really, really fast."\
Fetherston, bar manager at D.C.'s Rappahannock Oyster Bar, also says that ice is key. He
prefers large, dense cubes that won't break apart.\
"If the machine is not working at full capacity, they'll be a little more brittle and you can
hear that in the shaker. You can hear that ice is breaking apart very easily," says Fetherston.
"Whereas if it does what it normally does, they stay in big pieces much longer. You can
really shake it a lot harder."\ Fetherston, who often shakes his drinks directly
in front of him instead of over the shoulder, says his shaking style has been influenced
by other bartenders, like his former employer, Derek Brown, who owns The Columbia Room, a
reservations-only D.C. cocktail bar, and Japanese bartender, Kazuo Uyeda, who's known for developing
\i0 : "I introduced a more forceful three-point shake in order to thoroughly mix the ingredients.
To create a more complex motion, I introduced a snap and then a twist while I held the shaker
diagonally. And that's how the hard shake was born."\
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\b \cf0 Does Style Matter? \b0 \
While Uyeda is influential, not everyone believes that his shake creates the best cocktails.
In fact, not everyone agrees that maintaining a rhythm in your shake or using perfect ice
creates a better drink.\ The challenge with the bartender's shake is
that while everyone has an opinion, there's not really much definitive data. Back in 2009,
a trio of New York cocktail friends \'97 Dave Arnold; Alex Day, a partner at the Manhattan
bar Death and Company; and Eben Klemm, a molecular biologist turned bartender \'97 unveiled the
findings of their own {\field{\*\fldinst{HYPERLINK "http://www.talesofthecocktail.com/matt-robold/the-science-of-shaking-up-controversy/"}}{\fldrslt
\cf2 \ul \ulc2 experiment}}, which found that neither the style of shaking nor the type
of ice had an impact on the temperature or dilution of the cocktail. At 20 to 25 shakes,
they say, everything reaches equilibrium, no matter what.\
Arnold, who is the host of the online radio show {\field{\*\fldinst{HYPERLINK "http://www.heritageradionetwork.com/programs/51-Cooking-Issues"}}{\fldrslt
\cf2 \ul \ulc2 Cooking Issues}}, says they even conducted what he calls a "crazy monkey
shake" \'97 tossing the shaker around haphazardly \'97 and they still got the same results.\
So, why not just have a machine or a monkey stand in for a bartender? Even Arnold says
it wouldn't be the same. "I think the theater of the bar is important. It's one of the reasons
that you're not drinking at home."\ \pard\pardeftab720\sa200
\i \cf0 See our video above to meet some of these bartenders and hear their shaking philosophies
in their own words. \i0 \
}