Cold Sharpens Acid

Same acid concentration. Same sugar. Same ABV. But the frozen version tastes sharper. Why?

Temperature suppresses sweet perception faster than sour. At 28°F, your tongue's sweet receptors are significantly dampened, while acid receptors keep firing. The result: a frozen margarita at 60 g/L citric acid tastes more tart than the same formula served shaken at 38°F.

This is why frozen drink recipes need 10–15% more sugar than their shaken counterparts. It's not about the recipe being "wrong." It's physics. The calculator's frozen mode accounts for this by nudging Brix targets up.