21/28 December 2019 | New Scientist | 77Star Trek captain
James T. Kirk
boldly drinking
what no one has
drunk beforeT
HE most effective science fiction
creates an entire world you can imagine
living in – and a world I want to live in
needs delicious drinks.
Think of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster,
created by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy and described as the best
drink in existence. No matter that drinking
it is said to be “like having your brains
smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped
round a large gold brick”, I want to try it.
Same with the intoxicating ambrosia enjoyed
by the ragtag fleet of surviving humans in
Battlestar Galactica.
Then there is the frothy blue Bantha milk
served in the wretched hive of scum and
villainy that is the Mos Eisley cantina in
Star Wars, possibly the most famous bar
in the universe. And what about the warm
beer served on the frozen planet Gethen
in Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness?
It comes with a spoon to crack the layer of ice
that forms on the surface between sips,
making it a truly multisensory experience.
At New Scientist, we aren’t content with
merely imagining what these drinks taste like.
We have teamed up with cocktail-designer
Zoe Burgess at award-winning Atelier PIP in
London to bring them to life. Burgess and
her team use the techniques of molecular
mixology to investigate taste. “We love to
explore how the best flavour can be extracted
from ingredients,” she says. “This is where
science comes into play. Our centrifuge and
vacuum distillation units are the heart of our
lab. They allow us to work precisely and achieve
our flavour goals.”
The Atelier PIP team has tested a range of
flavour and alcohol combinations to recreate
these science fiction drinks – in their signaturestyle – and, in an act of supreme altruism,
we at New Scientist have volunteered to test
them. When our little embassy of three
crosses interstellar space to visit the firm’s
kitchen, I am delighted to see that the vacuum
distillation units are named Pris and Rachael
after two of the replicants in Blade Runner.
We have clearly come to the right place.
While some technical kit can be used to
prepare these drinks, they can all be recreated
at home, and Burgess has avoided the use of
exotic ingredients such as liquid nitrogen.
They can also all be made alcohol-free: either
leave the alcohol out altogether, or use a non-
alcoholic substitute for the spirit or beer.
In retrospect, that may be a wiser
choice. Stumbling out after sampling all four
high-strength concoctions, I feel like I’m on
a planet with a different gravity than ours.Rowan Hooper gets a taste of science fiction’s most intoxicating
beverages, and reveals how you can make them at home
Turn the page to discover the recipesCB
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