We’ve gone bonkers for bubbles of late, with our new carbonation rig purring away behind the scenes and range of Hard Seltzers flying out the door. Here’s a little Bubble 101 laying down the science to the the zing in your drink!

Bubbles are more than gas - they provide flavour, they are an ingredient. Think of your favourite brand of sparkling water? Your favourite soft drink? Why does larger from the tap taste so good? Carbon Dioxide has a lip-smacking, tart-tingle of a flavour profile, giving that moreish tang. I’ve heard people drool over Vichy Catalan with a vampiric lust; one customer actually cited that she felt it tasted like blood! How can one sparkling water top the rest? Great mineral water to start plus perfect carbonation. On the flip, nitrogen bubbles are smaller, less dense and sweeter to the palette. In fact, they are so small they are barely discernible in a drink but many a Guinness drinker will yowl for their ‘velvety’ texture, and the nitro cold brew crew rage about how the sweet notes resemble frothy milk in a black coffee.

When you put bubbles with booze there’s a knock on effect. The gas actually gets the alcohol to punch a little harder. We all know the expression “that went straight to my head'“, usually referencing an overly-eager indulgence in sparkling wine. CO2 gets alcohol through your gut quicker, into the small intestine where it absorbs into the blood (second blood reference in this piece - sic!) Beer circles have long droned on about session-ability. Good carbonation allows for more fun at lower ABVs, being good for your pocket and levels of alcohol consumption.

The key is to fizz well. Just as you would measure an ingredient into a drink, different levels of pressure in production provide differing results with carbonation. Champagne drinkers yearn for small, fine bubbles as a sign of finesse. In fact young sparkling wines have bigger bubbles as there is more CO2 in the bottle at the start. Since cork is a porous cap, over time carbon dioxide escapes result in less pressure and finer bubbles in the drink. In general though the theory is sound: sweeter drinks benefit from bigger bubbles and a greater taste presence, whilst tarter, more acidic cocktails prefer finer bubbles to accentuate sweeter notes (like the nitrogen).

One thing we’ve been asked a lot is “why bottles” with our seltzers? The reason is simple. Gas at pressure is trying to escape the drink it is dissolved into, bottles have narrow necks making the top surface area of liquid remarkable small and allowing less room for the gas (an ingredient in the drink) to escape. Glass also has more microscopic imperfections on its surface, creating tiny chinks as nucleation sites for the gas particles to cling to. Everyone thinks coke is best out of a glass bottle, right? There’s a reason for that and it’s not just in the pop!