Crazy Waters

In the previous column we learned how to make sodas from scratch. Since I tasted my first hand-rendered Italian soda -- a lime soda at the mighty Espresso Royale in Ann Arbor -- making drinks from scratch has been a passion of mine. Many Urban Bar columns have sprung from that passion, but as I always counsel, a barista is a bartender. Learning how to brew and serve coffee and to make cold drinks are just as much a measure of the bartender's craft as are adult beverages.

In this way, the bartender/barista are related to a mostly vanished profession: the soda jerk. Just as coffeehouses and bars grew up along distinctive trajectories, so did the soda fountain. In all three, when a family of consumables - in this case, beverages - became available to the public, local businesses appeared to give the populace a place to drink those concoctions. Today we think of coffee, soda pop, beer, wine, and spirits as widely available both outside the home and for home use, but they were not always so. Broadly speaking, all of them traveled a path of being discovered and becoming a commodity that in turn became an offering for sale locally. Before you could buy coffee beans to brew or a bottle of booze to guzzle, you had to go to a coffee- or publick house to drink them. Soda pop bubbled along the same path, and the public house where it was vended and consumed was the chemist's, which you and I know more commonly as the local drugstore.

In the nineteenth century, chemists compounded a lot more than medication - they compounded and vended almost any chemical compound the individual consumer wanted or needed for which there was no large-scale manufacturing process firmly yet in place. They made everything from headache powders to rat poison, from bath salts to silver polish. Chemists had been interested in carbonation -- the natural process that inbues water with bubbles -- since the middle ages. At that time, the effervescent water of mineral springs was thought to contain healing properties, especially for the nerves, and both the bubbles and the healing were revered as being caused by spiritus mineralis -- the spirit of the mineral waters. As early as the Renaissance, chemists investigated the question of effervescence to identify that the bubbles were the result of a unique gas, confirm that the gas was carbon dioxide, and invent and perfect apparatuses that infused water with the gas. When you pop the top off of your favorite bottle of bubbles, be sure to toast Jan Baptista Van Helmont, Antoine Lavoisier, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Henry, John Mervin Nooth, and the individual who is widely credited as the founder of the soft drink industry, Jacob Schweppe.

That industry exploded into a phenomenon in the 1800's. Carbonated water was vended primarily, though not exclusively, as a health tonic. This related to the original carbonated waters that bubbled forth from Mother Earth in the form of mineral springs, and it also relates to how chemists retained influence over the soft drink industry. For while there were numerous manufacturing and bottling businesses, those bottlers vended their product with the narrow, albeit profitable, focus of being a tonic or a novelty. It was logical progression that the local chemist install a spigot to dispense the carbonated waters that were known variously and interchangeably as soda water, mineral water, fizzy water, or crazy water.

Crazy waters became very popular, and chemists -- whose role was evolving in reflection of modernization -- installed counters, stools and tables in their stores. There, aside from the medicine and household chemical business at the window in the back, they made and dispensed crazy waters, often experimenting with additive compounds and flavors that have given us everything from phosphates to Coca Cola. An entire menu of crazy waters evolved to encompass any number of additives from fruit juice to ice cream. As it did, the soda fountain evolved from a place to stop in for a quick medicinal tonic to a dispenser of novelty refreshment to a social center that provided everything from national newspapers and magazines to local opinions and gossip, all enjoyed with a sweet serve sipped from a soda glass.

It should be noted that crazy waters, though an ingredient in soda pop, were different from soda pop. Soda pop, though it was becoming available as an individual consumer commodity, was mixed from drums of syrup supplied in reflection of local, and increasingly national, specialties and tastes: Moxie in the northeast, cola in the south, sarsaparilla in the west, etc. This increasing popularity along increasingly nationalizing local identities is the core of the neverending argument about just what terms to use to refer to carbonated drinks. Strictly speaking, any carbonated drink is a soft drink, but though it must be carbonated to qualify, a carbonated drink is not soft because of the carbonation -- it is soft because it contains no alcohol as a hard drink does. Soft drinks can be soda pop which can also be soda, pop, or at the extremely local level, just the name of the local fave. Even the etymology of pop is open for debate, as some say it is from the bubbles and some say is from the POP! sound the can makes when you open it.

From our first sip from a mineral spring to that pop-top can, crazy water is a basic element of refreshment. Crazy water is fundamental to the wet bar, from the blat of tonic with which your bartender tops your gin to the seltzer with which your soda jerk fizzes your egg cream. It puts the sparkle in your soda and the rejuvenation in your spa water. Though the previous column provided several summertime uses for crazy water, those were all sweet fruit-flavored drinks that fall, at least in my urban home, under the rubric of bug juice. In honor of crazy water both as a refreshment and a tonic, here is a recipe for the purest expression of the quality of effervescence: classic Aqua Fresca. In this preparation, slices of mildly flavored fruit, vegetables or herbs are suspended in icy carbonated water (prepared with flat water, Aqua Fresca is aqua fria). The carbonation leaches flavor, nutrients and sometimes color from the additives, resulting in a beverage that is flavorful and fun. Place a pitcher of Aqua Fresca on the table at your next luncheon, or on the kitchen counter during a hot summer afternoon. You will see how quickly it disappears. But that is the magic of bubbles: though fun, they are ephemeral. And thanks to the efforts of crazies from scientists and business people, from soda jerks to Mother Earth, crazy waters are easily available for all to enjoy. 

Aqua Fresca

Aqua Fresca works best with ingredients with a high water content or with very strong flavors. The final drink should be sparkling and lightly flavorful. It will strengthen as it sits, so be prepared to replenish during the day. 

Ingredients

2 large bottles mineral water, seltzer, or soda water, plus more if replenishing

Infusing ingredients per below

2 trays ice cubes, plus more if replenishing 

Equipment

1 tempered glass or ceramic serving pitcher, two quart size

1 wooden muddler 

Basic Technique

1. Prepare the infusing ingredients per below.
2. Fill the pitcher with the ice cubes. Gently add the infusing ingredients to the ice.
3. While using the muddler to stir the ice mixture gently with one hand, gently pour the crazy water into the pitcher with the other hand.
4. Cover the pitcher and allow to infuse for 15 minutes.
5. Replenish ice, infusing ingredients, or crazy water as needed. 

Recipes

Citrus Aqua Fresca. Wash 3-4 lemons, 4-5 limes or a combination of lemons and limes; 5-6 tangerines; or 1 ruby grapefruit with food-safe vegetable cleaner. Use a citrus knife to cut the fruit into rounds or wedges. Transfer the fruit along with any accumulated juices to the pitcher.

Cucumber Aqua Fresca. Wash 2 cucumbers with food safe vegetable cleaner. Remove the stem and blossom ends of the cucumber. Use a sharp knife to cut each cucumber into half lengthwise. Safely use a mandoline and a no-cut metal glove to cut the cucumber halves into ribbons. Transfer the cucumbers along with any accumulated juices to the pitcher.

Jalapeño Aqua Fresca. Put on a pair of clean food safe latex or plastic gloves. Wash 2-3 jalapeños with food safe vegetable cleaner. Use a sharp knife to remove and discard the cap from each jalapeño. Cut the jalapeños into rounds. Transfer the jalapeños along with any seeds to the pitcher.

Mint Aqua Fresca. Rinse 6 - 8 sprigs fresh mint under cool water. Rub the mint gently between your palms to bruise it. Transfer the mint to the pitcher. Check the pitcher throughout the day to remove spent mint sprigs and refresh it with new ones.

Pineapple Aqua Fresca. Have your greengrocer peel and chunk 1 fresh pineapple or get a large container of fresh pineapple from the cold case or salad bar of a supermarket. Add the pineapple along with any accumulated juices to the pitcher.

Tomato Water. Wash 2-3 good-sized red, yellow or heirloom tomatoes or 2 dry pints cherry tomatoes with food safe vegetable cleaner. Use a tomato knife to cut the fruit into rounds for large tomatoes, halves for cherry tomatoes. Transfer the fruit along with any accumulated juices to the pitcher. Sprinkle the fruit with 1-2 pinches salt.

Watermelon Aqua Fresca. Have your greengrocer peel, chunk and seed 1/2 pound fresh watermelon or get a large container of fresh watermelon from the cold case or salad bar of a supermarket. Sprinkle the watermelon with 1 teaspoon superfine sugar. Add the watermelon along with any accumulated juices to the pitcher.