There's science to back up our preferences when it comes to bubbly beverages.
SuChin Pak is very passionate about bubbles. In particular, she likes a drink with bubbles that are tiny and tight, going so far as to create her own sparkling beverage mixtures to ensure the highest bubble density possible. Her favorite? Guayakí Yerba Mate Sparkling Grapefruit Ginger cut with a plain seltzer water to infuse more fizz or Gerolsteiner if she’s opting for something flavorless.
“I don’t want a loose bubble,” she said on an episode of her podcast, Add to Cart, back in November 2020. “I want it tight. I want to when you open it up, and you get that first sip, it just tickles your tongue. Like little tiny elves dancing on the tip of your tongue.”
A tight bubble. I haven’t been able to shake the idea ever since. As a longtime sparkling water drinker, I often tried to parse out why I preferred certain brands over others. And now, I finally have a metric. Bubble tightness.
Over the last year every time I would try a new sparkling water, I’d carefully examine the sip, turning it over on my tongue like some kind of carbonation sommelier. With more consideration, more questions arose, and in an existential fit I found myself screaming into a void, “Why do we even like sparkling water at all?!” When the void didn’t respond, I sought answers elsewhere, specifically with a certified food scientist and the queen of bubbles herself, SuChin Pak.
The chemistry of sparkling water is very simple. It’s essentially two compounds, good ole fashioned H2O, which even in bubbly form keeps us hydrated, and carbon dioxide, which is of course the bubbly element. It turns out that the reason we enjoy carbonation is similar to the reason we enjoy hot sauce: we love pain. Dr. Helene Hopfer, an assistant professor of food science at Penn State with a focus in sensory analysis, describes it to me very technically.