Why 60 g/L?
The citrus recalibration story. Why the cocktail world shifted from "juice of one lime" to precise acid measurement, and why your batch depends on it.
For decades, bartenders measured citrus by the fruit. "Juice of half a lime." "One lemon." The problem? Limes vary wildly. A Persian lime in January might yield 30 mL of juice at 45 g/L citric acid. That same lime in July? 20 mL at 65 g/L. Your "same recipe" just changed by 40%.
The modern cocktail movement fixed this by measuring acid by concentration instead of by the fruit. Fresh lime and lemon juice both average around 60 g/L citric acid equivalent. Once you know the acid concentration, you can standardize.
This matters exponentially when batching. A 5% variation in a single cocktail is barely noticeable. Scale that to a 5-gallon batch, 640 ounces, and you've got a full cup of acid variance. That's the difference between "refreshing" and "face-puckering."
The fix is simple: measure acid concentration with a titration kit or refractometer, then adjust volume to hit your target g/L. The calculator handles the math. You just need to know your numbers going in.
This is why we default to 60 g/L for both lime and lemon in every preset. It's not a guess. It's the empirical average that the industry converged on through years of testing and published research.