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Everything posted by bacchant036
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thanks for that beans - you are an endless source of web based info, and yes your making me feel lazy. the USDA site and drinks mixer were both very helpful, and yes i guess the original bit of info was borderline stupid, although in fairness sake would seem to have about a 1/3 the calories of say vodka, and on an equal volume about the same as wine, which does seem less than i would have expected. the data on the sites was for a sake with a alcoholic content of 16% which i guess is comparable (almost) to a strong wine (very!). i guess that for a normal serving size 1 sake would have less calories than say 1 beer, or 1 glass of wine, or 1 vodka tonic, so in that respect its probably a lower cal drink. thanks all for your help
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had a sake tasting yesterday (i now know slightly more than the nothing i knew before) and was told quite confidently that sake had almost no calories, due to the absence of natural sugars in rice and that any calories present were due to the alcohol etc etc etc can anyone back this up or disprove it? muchos curious
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on the germana 10yr, its a slightly darker color, the 3yr has a semi gold tinge to it as well, curious monkey's i've known have peeled back the label to peer at what was (and perhaps still is?) a recycled kirov vodka bottle - see they do care about the environment! and freezing? get rid of those yummy agricole flavours? a rum blasphemy surely!
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when training staff completely new to cocktails i always tried to relate modern drinks to 'x' number of classics and found that most drinks were just a variation of older ones, meant that if the bartender new the classic then it was easy to teach a new one by merely relating to said drink, ie a lychee cooler is a vodka collins with a splash of lychee juice and a dash of lychee liqueur. remember a talk from someone years ago at one of the first barshows in london where they suggested there was a base of approx 10 basic styles of drinks and all others could be related back to those, think the list went something like... sour - spirit base sour - liqueur base collins daiquiri martini manhatten rum punch classic champagne and right now my foggy sat morning brain forgets the others at a bare minimum i'd expect a cocktail bartender to be able to make these and then prob modern classics like a mojito, caipirinha, cosmo. if every bartender could make these drinks as a minimum i'd be content
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we started this nasty game called enematography at work, get a shot glass for everyone who plays and make identical drinks in each, as bad as possible. game ends when someone cries enough. worst thing we came up with was olive brine laphroaig campari cachaca and if you have the patience maybe a dash of lime juice and baileys tobasco sounds like an obvious choice but it actually tends to make things taste better
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i see smirnoffs brand as being a bad one these days, which is a shame as it used to be a brand market leader, i guess trends change..... they have just released smirnoff 'penka' which i tried the other day, which is pretty special, but unfortunately not something i'd consider stocking as i fear the smirnoff brand just turns people off these days. at the launch they did this great tasting where we got to try cuts at different stages of the vodkas development from the head to the tails, it was fascinating learning how the flavours change over time
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experimenting with different kinds of sugar is fun to, i tend to use a heaped tablespoon of castor at the bar, dissolves quickly and seems to be about the right amount for a whole lime
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does'nt someone still make old tom gin? i could have sworn i saw someone like gordons put out a new bottling recently(last couple of years?), could be my blurry vision playing tricks though. had a martinez cocktail the other night for the first time, used beefeater with no sweetner and the rest to garys recipe and actually really enjoyed it, i'm not a big gin drinker (actually to be honest had a bad run in with it when i was 18 and have avoided it ever since, that and southern comfort) but since have even ventured onto dry gin martinis, a giant step for me, its made me start a new program of 'a new previously untried classic every night at work' its all research after all.......
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the lemonade most popular over here is the schweppes lemonade, its got a stronger lemon flavour than 7-up or sprite, and tastes slightly less sweet, you could approximate with a homemade lemon/soda/gomme thing. its a real summer drink here, gos hand in hand with hyde park in the afternoon etc etc etc. consumption tends to quadruple (or more) most places in summer, although alot of brits don't seem to equate it with bars, more about a sitting in the sunshine enjoying the great outdoors kind of drink. if i'm going to the park the next day get a big bottle, fill w pimms, cucumber, strawberries, mint, apple and anything else with fructose and leave it in the fridge overnight, then just add it to lemonade the next day in the park! reminds everyone of summer
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not so bad w champagne and strawberries, the complete wimbledon experience in a glass. anyone got any interesting ideas with their vodka cup, and is the plymouth fruit cup any better? see it springing up all over the place here but not a big fan of pimms so have'nt indulged.
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absinthe is available in most places in the EU now, they've restricted the use of wormwood in it to make it more palatable to all those stuffy officials worried about what we may do to ourselves after the odd overgenerous tipple! having said that i have heard that switzerland has some dodgy absinthe brands, the kind which fled to the hills during the ban and have'nt changed the way they make it........ look out for those, if you can find one it'll be special!
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one of our guys came up with a brilliant kaffir lime leaf tequila, you can buy the leaves from sainsburys now and they give the tequila a beautiful aroma and a delicate almost sweet lime flavour, works really well with passionfruit and cinnamon! i've got a three citrus tequila sitting behind the till at work waiting for it to infuse, and i'm having issues with patience (i'd make a lousy buddist)
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anyone know where to get la fee bitters from in london?
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watermelon. for the last 4 1/2 years 1 in every 4 drinks i've made has watermelon in it. everynight i'd get home from work acheing arms with bits of watermelon stuck in my hair. i've got to the stage where when a new seasons melons arrive at the bar i can normally guess where there from. hate them. but i have to admit its the most popular flavour we've come across, i think because in the UK it reminds people of those brief two weeks of sunshine they call summer over here. by far the best way to use the stuff is the simplest thank god, although it really does depend on the quality of the melon. just get a fist sized piece of fresh juicy melon 2 ounces of vodka gomme syrup to taste shake it like its someone you hate who won't stop talking and strain and seive into a chilled martini glass in 4 1/2 years i've come across one person who did'nt like this, and we sell about 1300 of these a week. also tastes fantastic with vanilla or mint as for my favourite summer drink? gotta be a mint julep, heavy on the makers mark.
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i suspect that not all roses is made equal. i used to drink vodka gimlets, and only vodka gimlets in NZ then moved to the UK in 97' and could no longer drink them as the roses cordial in the UK tasted to sweet to me, ever since i add a dash of fresh juice to a gimlet just to give it a nice edge, something which admittidly not all of my customers have liked, but then i guess most of them are used to the sweeter stuff?
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ginger rum's pretty good to, makes a great caipirissima. do you use fresh dates or dried dates?
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the feijoa vodka is a tough one. biggest problem i find is that every new zealander who tries it loves it, due to it reminding us of home, and that time of the year when the feijoa tree in the back garden is packed with fruit signalling a couple of months of feijoas evryday, feijoa jam, feijoa juice, feijoa cakes, feijoa muffins etc etc etc you get the picture. where as almost every european who tries it screws there nose up and seems to pull all sorts of unkind references to things things like linament etc, the woman of my dreams runs a club with an australasian night bi monthly where they chewed through 6 bottles in about an hour - what they normally go through in a week, so theres definitly a market for it its kind of like marmite, you either love it or hate it. the ways we use it in the bar tend to be in long drinks where you can dilute the intensity of the flavour a bit. it goes really well with apricot, apple juice and ginger - either fresh or ginger beer also goes well with passionfruit, and we've even experimented with a french 75 style drink. if you want more info i'd reccomend firing off an e-mail to justin bade (justinbade@42below.co.nz), hes the area manager for 42 below over in the UK and has a whole pile of suggestions hes managed to gather from all the bars stocking it in london. another thing to look out for is there new manuka honey vodka, almost earning the liqueur tag due to a high sugar content but i love it!
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flavoured mount gay? bacadi O? malibu lime? its not fair you guys get all the new toys to play with. you guys use KOKO KANU? much stonger than malibu (40%?) and nowhere near as sweet. its the only coconut rum we can use after all those dodgy essex girls w short skirts and no morals started drinkng malibu and cokes (either that or archers and lemonade, maybe its an english thing, and i'm not even english, god i've been here to long!)
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well its a bit of a cop-out but alot of those will make a delicious daiquiri, especially the vanilla. try a vanilla na dfresh ginger daiquiri as well. caipirinha style is another way of playing around w flavoured rums. did a orange creamsicle a while back which was basically a daiquiri made with bacardi 8 and clement creole shrub - a orange flavoured rum/liqueur w a couple of dashes of a nice dry orange bitters (la fee vs hoppe) you could also try a old fashioned style drink with some of the more traditional flavours. pineaPPLE HAS A STRANGE HABIT OF GOING REALLY WELL WITH BASIL, believe it or not, something w that caip style or mojito style could work well. always fun getting new stuff to play with!
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germana's the nicest i've tried available over here in the uk, be warned however....... we went through a faze where we were shooting it straight - nice lift, kind of like tequila - and noticed quality differed alot bottle to bottle, going from a nice round almost banana like agricole rum style to a nasty cheap dodgy chinease whisky flavour , not to mention the fact that the lovely leaves on the outside of the bottle are covering a recycled Kirov vodka bottle. got to say though that never had the same problem with the aged stuff, and it makes a delicious caipirinha!
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we sell alot of caipirinhas at the bar i run, its a fantastic drink both visually and taste wise. over the last 7 years in london its gone from an exotic drink that no-ones heard of to probably one of the most popular cocktails around. its spurned a legion of variations, most of which omit the cachaca and replace with vodka or rum. the big question i have is, has anyone come up for another good use of cachaca except for the caipirinha / batida style drinks? germana does a great aged cachaca (i think a 8 yr old?) which reminds me of rum and raisin ice cream, but it's really hard convincing people to try it! any ideas?
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want to do a cuban theme in the bar for a couple of weeks. in a daiquiri haze i failed to register what was on the list except the daiquiri natural, daiquiri papa hemingway and a mulata. anyone have a copy of the list or know whats on it?
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have a bottle of syrup de antilles in the kitchen the stuff i have is made at the clement rum distillery in martinique in london amathus supply it, i guess that anyone who supplies clement in the US should have the syrup? its not just sugar, the thing that makes it so great with rum is all the spices they flavour it with, cinnamon, vanilla and cloves. all of which complement rum beautifully. very good as the sweetner in a daiquiri with a big punchy rum, in fact pretty awesome in place of sugar in just about any rum based drink. if you wanted to make your own i'd just blend vanilla, cinnamon and gomme syrups and throw in a couple of cloves (one might be enough), monin would probably be better than da vinci as i find the da vinci syrups a little thin. and as for friday mines a bacardi 8 daiquiri
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just picked them up about a week ago and had all 5 safe in the office at work, bought a bottle down each shift to play around with and push onto my rum drinking customers. only one i don't like is the guyana bottling, which to me has to many earthy vegetable flavours almost like germana cachaca (when you get a good bottle) all the others are heaven, can't decide on a favourite between the jamaica and the venezuela, i hope its the jamaica as the venezuela has very limited stock in the UK
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tequila and absinthe mixes surprisingly well as a shot. won't touch it again though as last time i indulged in that combo ended up w a broken collarbone. absinthe pastis or death in the afternoon seem to be the safest way of drinking the stuff, also nice w pistachio + apple, passionfruit, raspberry and in sazerac's, mmmmmmmm sazeracs! think i may have a absinthe problem