Reference
The vocabulary, without the jargon
Thirty terms that appear across the recipes, techniques and gear pages. Where a term does real work somewhere on the site, the entry points at the page that uses it.
- Agitation
- Any stirring, shaking or whisking that keeps liquid moving against a surface. It matters most around ice, because every stir replaces the thin cold layer at the ice surface with warmer liquid and speeds up melting. One deliberate stir mixes a drink; six of them water it down.Ice size and dilution
- Batching
- Making a drink in quantity ahead of time instead of building each one to order. Some components batch perfectly and some degrade on a clock that ignores how much you made, so the skill is knowing which is which before you start. Carbonation and foam cannot be batched at all.Batching for a crowd
- Bloom (matcha)
- Wetting matcha powder with a small amount of hot water and working it into a smooth paste before the rest of the liquid goes in. Matcha is a suspension rather than a solution, so compacted powder dropped into cold milk stays as dry lumps. The paste stage is what prevents that.Matcha clumps
- Bore size
- The internal diameter of a straw, and the specification that decides whether a drink can be drunk through it. Around 0.23 in is standard and suits thin drinks; around 0.4 in is jumbo and is what a blended drink needs. Most listings never state it.Straws
- BPA-free
- A label indicating the plastic contains no bisphenol A, a compound once common in food-contact plastics. It is the usual baseline claim on trays, cups and bottles rather than a mark of quality. It says nothing about how well the item does its actual job.
- Brix
- A scale for how much dissolved sugar a liquid contains, measured in degrees and read with a refractometer. Commercial drink production uses it to keep batches consistent. At home it is mostly useful as a reminder that sweetness is a measurable quantity rather than a feeling.
- Cold brew ratio
- The proportion of coffee to water in a cold steep, given by weight. One part coffee to five parts water produces a concentrate meant to be diluted at the glass rather than drunk as it is. Weighing rather than scooping matters here, because volume varies by a third with grind.Cold Brew Concentrate
- Cold foam
- Dairy whipped cold so that air is held in a network of fat and protein, thick enough to sit on top of an iced drink instead of sinking into it. The window between under- and over-whipped is a matter of seconds. It cannot be made in advance in any useful sense.Cold foam that holds
- Concentrate
- A base made at higher strength than it is drunk, then cut with water or milk when poured. Cold brew and chai are both handled this way. It saves refrigerator space and lets one batch serve people who want it strong and people who do not.Spiced Chai Concentrate
- Condensation ring
- The mark left on furniture when moisture pulled from the air onto a cold glass runs down and pools under the base. It lifts the finish on wood, and it is usually permanent before anyone notices it forming. An absorbent coaster removes the water rather than merely intercepting it.Rings on the table
- Cordial
- A sweetened citrus base made by stirring fresh juice into cooled sugar syrup rather than cooking the two together. Heat is what turns fresh citrus into the flat, cooked note marmalade has, so the juice goes in cold. It keeps like a fresh-juice product, not like a syrup.Syrup library
- Dilution
- The water a drink takes on as its ice melts. Some of it is intended — a drink built at full strength with no melt at all tastes harsh — and the problem is only dilution you did not plan for. Surface area rather than weight of ice is what controls the rate.Ice size and dilution
- Directional freezing
- Insulating a container on all sides but the top so water freezes downward instead of inward from every face. Dissolved air and minerals get pushed ahead of the freezing front into the last water to solidify, which you pour away. It is the actual mechanism behind clear ice.Clear ice at home
- Double strain
- Passing a drink through a second, finer filter to catch fragments the first pass left behind. On this site it appears in cold brew, where a paper pass after a mesh pass removes the fine sediment that makes the second sip taste chalky. Pressing the filter defeats the purpose.Cold Brew Concentrate
- Emulsion
- A stable mixture of two liquids that do not naturally combine, held together by something acting at the boundary between them. Dairy is one, which is part of why milk fat can trap air at all. Heat and over-working both break emulsions apart.
- Expression
- Squeezing a strip of citrus peel skin-side down over a glass so the oil sprays across the surface of the drink. It is the first thing anyone smells and it does more for a citrus drink than the juice does. Held too close to the liquid, the oil lands in one spot instead of spreading.Expressing citrus oils
- Food-safe silicone
- Silicone rated for contact with food, used for ice trays and mats because it stays flexible at freezer temperatures. Certification marks vary: BPA-free is the common baseline and LFGB is a stricter European standard that some listings state. Wash new silicone before first use.Ice trays and molds
- Ice budget
- The total weight of ice a gathering needs, counting both what goes in the glasses and what melts in the tub while waiting. Roughly 6 oz per iced drink plus a weather allowance is the working figure. Ice is the one item on a drinks table that cannot be improvised at the last minute.Party planner
- LFGB
- A German food-contact safety standard, stricter than the usual baseline, that some silicone products are tested against. Where a listing states it, it is telling you something more specific than BPA-free does. Where it does not, that is not evidence of a problem.
- Muddling
- Pressing an ingredient in the bottom of a glass to release its flavor. It suits sturdy things like ginger and citrus wedges and ruins soft herbs, because torn mint releases chlorophyll rather than aroma and turns vegetal within minutes. Slap herbs between your palms instead.Ginger Lime Mule Mocktail
- Oleo-free
- Describes a citrus preparation made without an oleo-saccharum, the sugar-and-peel maceration traditionally used to extract oil. Everything on this site is oleo-free: the aroma comes from expressing a fresh peel over the glass instead, which takes seconds rather than hours.Expressing citrus oils
- Pebble ice
- Small ice, roughly half an inch, with a very high surface area for its weight. It chills a drink almost immediately and then keeps melting, which makes it right for anything drunk quickly through a straw and wrong for anything nursed. It packs densely, so a glass holds more of it.Ice trays and molds
- Pith
- The white layer directly beneath the colored skin of a citrus fruit. It carries no aroma and a great deal of bitterness, so the entire skill of working with peel is taking one without the other. Check the back of every strip before it goes near a glass.Zest tastes bitter
- PP vs PET
- Two plastics used for cold cups. PP is more flexible and tolerates a little warmth; PET is stiffer and glass-clear, which is why layered drinks look better in it. Neither is rated for hot liquid, and a hot drink in either softens the wall enough to be a hazard.Cups and lids
- Rich syrup
- Sugar syrup made at two parts sugar to one part water instead of the usual one to one. It is sweeter per ounce and adds about half as much water for the same sweetness, which makes it the better default for anything served over ice. It sits near the limit of what stays dissolved.Syrup ratios
- Simple syrup
- Equal parts sugar and water, warmed only until the liquid turns clear. It exists because granulated sugar does not dissolve properly in a cold drink, leaving grit at the bottom and thinness at the top. Boiling it is the most common way to ruin it.Syrup library
- TDS
- Total dissolved solids — how much material is actually dissolved in a brewed drink, usually given as a percentage. In coffee it is the number behind whether a brew reads strong or thin. At home the grind, the ratio and the time are the levers that move it.Cold brew concentrate
- Tempering
- Letting something come part-way toward room temperature before working with it. A block of clear ice straight from the freezer is brittle and shatters unpredictably; five to ten minutes on a board, until the surface goes from frosted to wet, and it splits along the line you score.Clear ice at home
- Turbidity
- Cloudiness caused by suspended particles or trapped gas rather than by anything dissolved. It is what the white core of a home ice cube is, and what a fruit syrup develops as it ages. In ice it is a freezing-direction problem; in a syrup it is usually a sign of age.Cloudy ice
- Viscosity
- How thick a liquid is, and therefore how hard it is to pull through a straw. It is the reason bore size matters: a straw that works in lemonade will flatten under suction in a lassi. Blended drinks also thicken as they stand, so viscosity changes between pouring and drinking.Straw collapses in thick drinks