I’ve never understood what dry gin (Gordon’s), dry vermouth, or extra dry beer (Toohey’s) etc means..
Seems very counter-intuitive to me.
In: Chemistry
As everyone said, dry = not sweet.
With vermouth, dry vermouth is a whole different product than sweet vermouth. Sweet vermouth is normally dark, and dry is normally a white vermouth.
Or, if you’re talking martini, dry means less vermouth. In this sense you’re thinking of “dry” vs “wet.”
Source: bartender
Bartender here, just wanted to add a few things to the glorious comment from our resident som and spirits expert.
As far as London dry gin goes, that’s the title of one of five different types of gin. London dry is the most regulated and has very specific parameters it must conform to in order to be labeled as London dry. The other gin types are old Tom, genever, contemporary, and plymouth. You can think of these in terms of whiskey if that helps. For example, both bourbon and scotch are whiskeys, but they have very different requirements to be labeled as such.
Similarly, dry vermouth is a type of vermouth, or fortified wine. There are other types of fortified wine which may or may not be called vermouth, such as cocchi americano or blanc vermouth. The other most popular vermouth is sweet vermouth, which gets its name from the burnt sugar present in most sweet vermouths. You’ll find dry vermouth, the straw colored stuff, in a martini, and you’ll find sweet vermouth, the brown stuff, in a Manhattan.
Cheers!
Edit: it’s also very popular to order a “dry” martini. In that context, what the guest usually means is that they want a martini made with less dry vermouth. It’s frustrating and extremely counter intuitive, but that’s the typical nomenclature used by the average consumer.
In chemistry, “dry” means “anhydrous”. Anhydrous alcohol contains 100% ethanol and no water. This is accomplished by distillation followed by drying over 3Å molecular sieves. Similarly, anhydrous acetone contains no water, and must be distilled and dried with MgSO4.
Drying solvents is a common and necessary procedure in the lab to keep solvents suitable for use.
In this case, however, “dry” gin doesn’t really mean “dry” ethanol
Dry means no residual sugar.
Alcohol is made by yeast consuming sugars and producing alcohol plus carbon dioxide. A “dry” product is one where the yeasts were allowed to consume all sugar. Semi-dry, semi-sweet or sweet are the other options, all based on the remaining sugar content. Yeasts will continue to consume sugars as long as they exist so to make a semi sweet product for example you have to either kill the yeast (arrested fermentation) or allow it to ferment to dry then remove the yeasts and then back sweeten with sugar or fruit juices.
(I work at a cidery)
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