thirtyoneknots

After fifteen days of soak, today I was able to go to the next step with my Abbott's and was somewhat surprised to only extract about 5 cups of liquid from the 8 cups of booze that went into the jar. The dried spices used, I would imagine, accounted for a lot of that. I'm somewhat curious if cooking the solids with water is going to extract any of the alcohol from the cloves and such. I guess the heat involved would cause most the alcohols present to boil away? So I have no scientific way to measure the proof of my finished product, only arithmetic, assuming the the liquid came out at the same proof that it went in (120). My tiny bottle of old Abbott's indicates a proof of 100, but a smaller sample bottle apparently of a later formulation states 90. Modern Angostura is 90, Peychaud's is 70, as is Regans. Most aromatic bitters lower in proof than that are not generally highly regarded products. I'm kind of interested in any opinions others might have... lower proof would of course yield more bitters but a higher proof would theoretically result in more concentrated and intense flavors. Thoughts? Edit for update: The more I thought about this the closer I came to settling on 90 proof and then whaddya know the amount of water that resulted from cooking solids came out to pretty much spot on to do that very thing. Proceeding to the next step now.

So, I decided to try a Charlie Chaplin, with TPMA in lieu of sloe gin... 1 oz TPMA 1 oz Apricot liqueur (Rothman & Winter) 1 oz lime juice The discovery? It's tasty. Mighty damn tasty. ← Bravo to you sir, my purpose for my entire batch this year had been to test that line. Sounds terriffic.

Certainly in the Jerry Thomas era raspberry seemed to be most common but pomegranate syrup in the form of grenadine and orgeat syrup (is that a fruit?) have been more or less common in the prewar era as well. Pineapple syrup not unheard-of and indeed is included in the highly delicious East India.

Unfortunately I found out a few months ago from Spec's that Velvet Falernum is no longer being distributed in Texas and they've sold out of their stock. Looks like I'll be ordering online. ← Kent, hang tight, I think it's on the way back in with a distributor set to start selling our favorite importer's portfolio in-state pretty soon.

If you use the Harry Johnson Daisy formula and sub the St. Germaine for the Yellow Chartreuse I could see it working very well indeed.

Had a Picon Punch this afternoon while doing some cleaning, using my bottle of old Torani Amer touched up with a few dashes of orange bitters. Way nicer of a drink than I remembered, but hooboy watch out for that brandy float! Gets to you before you even get to the rest of the drink if you're not careful.

Apparently that pun frustrates Bobby somewhat but I think it's kind of amusing in a cheeky way. Doesn't help with the image they are trying to project so I can understand the source of frustration. As far as the rest of the state, we have quite a ways to go and the guys at Anvil seem extremely aware of the fact that they have to educate their customer base to a greater or lesser degree (usually greater) and so the list is down-to-earth and the drink I saw made most was a whiskey sour with egg white and a mist of Angostura on top...they aren't trying to beat people over the head with things like infusions or off-the-wall flavor combos although they are equipped for that as well when the need (and appropriate customer) presents itself. Perhaps the most interesting drink (out of many interesting drinks) was a mix of Chamomile-infused Pisco and bianco vermouth in wet Martini preportions with orange bitters. The highly innovative and distinctive take on a concept that is mostly noted for the subtlety of it's differences in variation* really sort of summed up the experience for me. *For an idea on how many variations there are on the formaula of Spirits+vermouth+bitters, head over to the Spirits & Cocktails forum and browse the Stompin' Through the Savoy thread.

Harry's in Paris would not have necessarily been using British measures, though? Or would they? I've thought before about the whole 5/6 oz thing, since interestingly that is equal to 25ml, which seems to be the standard amount for British cocktail measures today. 1/6 of 4.5 oz though is .75oz, hypothetically the 1/3 end of the "gigger". Very confusing, very interesting.

That is my understanding as well, and if the supposition of a 1.5/.75 oz "gigger" is in fact true then it shows that cocktails hadn't changed much in size in the intervening 60+ years.

So you're suggesting that the McElhone's jigger might contain 1.5 oz. with both ends combined (i.e., "2/3" is 1 oz. and "1/3" is the remaining half-ounce)? I think Andy's suggesting that the 2/3 end is 1.5 oz. on its own, and the 1/3 end is half the volume of the 2/3 end; i.e., 3/4 oz. ← That is in fact what I was trying to say, thanks. The fractions are, I think, not fractions a 1.5 oz jigger but fractions of the amount of liquid normally used in a drink (about 2 oz in this case).

From page 5: So Mr. McElhone is describing something we are all familiar with with the addition detail that the small end is 1/2 the size of the large end. If one accepts the standard 1.5 oz quantity for the large end then the small end would be 3/4 oz. Might not hold up in court but in the absence of some better evidence to the contrary it seems reasonable to assume that the fractions in the book (and the Savoy?) are based off of these amounts. It certainly fits with the knowledge that the drinks served were much smaller then...in fact 2 1/4 oz of liquid when shaken or stirred will fill a 3 oz ccktail glass quite handily, which seems to be the common size for the time. edit: fix tags

Interesting. I would have assumed that "Oom Paul" was a strange misspelling of "oop pah" -- as in "oom pah pah" waltz music played by German/Austrian brass bands. ← My first reaction as well...quite interesting the bit about Kruger.

This is exactly where I had seen and thought to re-try the recipe so I was surprised to see that your reported recipe was different than I had used...I have been having quite some difficulty with reading carefully lately. Either that or when I went to try it I got confused with the Savoy. This, it seems, would be even more in line with the modern palate sweetness-wise.

Red tasting straws? Really? I must taste off white or black as any color imparts too much flavor. These days we get 1 oz from a lime and 2 oz from a lemon. I find the yield of citrus has almost as much to do with the temp of the lemon/lime as the size. As the fridges back then were not as cold as they are now, that also might have something to do with the measure of juice. Toby ← Or if the stuff was even refrigerated at the establishment...most grocery stores don't refrigerate citrus, and while we do at work I rarely do at home. Agreed tho about temp, when getting ready to juice I fill at tub with the fruit then fill it with hot water from the spout and let it soak while doing other stuff...50% more juice, at least

Yeah, you are not alone...the mystery deepens when people like Charles Baker (and lots of others) say that the recipe can use half a lemon or a whole lime...this leads me to wonder if something like a Key Lime is what is being discussed. If that is what is meant by a lime in prewar mixology then it has huge implications in all types of drinks, from Daiquiris to Don the Beachcomber.

My recent experiences with this drink have led me to a different conclusion: the formula is not necessarily at fault (with all due respect to Mr. Kinsey) but the choice of curacao is critical. Grand Marnier, Marie Brizzard, etc, these are inappropriate to execute the recipe as written, but I found, almost by accident, that the Sr. Curacao is brilliant. The idea of putting 1/3 of the volume of liqueur in the drink sounds absurd but analysing the recipe makes this slightly less so. Iwe accept the idea that the measure "1/3" is meant to be about 3/4 oz--or 4.5 tsp (a notion backed up in Barflies and Cocktails), then you take your tsp of lime and then if you have Gary Regan's palate you want 2 tsp of liqueur to balance this. This leaves 2.5 tsp. So then take a Jerry thomas recipe for soemthing like a fancy or improved cock-tail where 2 dashes of bitters are being balanced by a tsp of saturated syrup and 1/2 tsp of liqueur...if we accept that the liqueur is as sweet as the syrup (and it definitely is not) then we can then say 1.5 tsp to balance the bitters. This leaves only 1 tsp of (in the case of Sr. Curacao) a relatively dry liqueur left orphaned to 'unbalance' the drink. On top of a jigger of dry gin this is not so much. There are a number of recipes in the Savoy (and in JT, for that matter) that seem to utilize citrus not as a sour agent like we think of it today but as a way to brighten up the profile of the drink, provide a bit of leavity...a brighter balance instead of the dark balance bitters bring. The Leap Year would be another great example of this I think...if you try this with the "modern" balance of adding half a lemon to 2 oz gin and a half oz each of Grand Marnier and vermouth, you have a nice drink but one lacking the particular charm of the one made with a tsp or so of juice. I think the Pegu Club is the same way...the lime is supposed to be there for 'brightness' not as a sour contrast...and you have to use a drier (and brighter-tasting) curacao to let it work. I like it made the other way too, though, but this is just my $.02...ask me again in two months I may refute all of this and say make it as tart as you can stand it

Hah, I would almost say don't go til late in the trip lest you find yourself going back every night! In all seriousness it seems that opening time at 5pm is the time to go if you want to be able to visit with the staff more...we were able to do this the entire night but on a Monday. I would imagine it gets much more difficult on a weekend as the business picks up.

Wouldn't argue with that a bit getting people to think of mixed drinks as a culinary art is not an easy feat...these guys have their work cut out for them but definitely seem up to the task.

I had a co-worker who bought a 12 bottle unit some time back and paid about 70% of what I paid for my 50 bottle unit...the expensive part is the refrigeration apparatus so medium-sized ones are often not appreciably more expensive than small ones. Budget is always an issue and of course space but it is something to consider. I have three 50 bottle coolers (they actually hold more than that) that are the 'Magic Chef' brand, bought them at Home Depot on sale for about $250, and I'm very pleased with them. They have a nice digital thermostat and all that...only thing that's bad about it is the shelf design makes it easy to damage labels if it's full and you're not careful. I'd recommend them though, they used to go on sale pretty regularly but I haven't checked in a while. Cool present though!

The rice sounds like a great idea. No idea how much the steel balls cost, but birdshot is I bet a viable alternative...comes in steel, too. No. 7 1/2 corresponds to the size listed above but would probably be best to find in steel.

So if you haven't heard yet, Anvil Bar & Refuge has finally opened in Houston, on Westheimer about 3 blocks from Montrose. Its been going about 2 months now but I only just finally made it down there this last Monday...apologies for the delay in the writeup but quite honestly I've spent the intervening time trying to internalize the place. I wasn't sure how my schedule for the evening was going to turn out so a friend (who had been before) and I showed up at opening (5pm) and took our seats at the bar. The interior is of a quasi-industrial look with lots of neat little touches: the foot rail is a recycled Houston railroad track, and the bag hooks under the bar are old iron rr spikes. The space is clearly old (apparently started as a tire shop) and the way they've stripped it down to show the original brick really sets the place off in an authentic fashion. Our bartender, Sebastian, seemed quite proficient and capably made our first round...all from high quality spirits, many of them hard to source in Texas, fresh juices, and mostly house-made syrups and other touches mostly absent from what passes for a cocktail scene in our state. After the first round eGullet member and Anvil manager Robert Heugel (Bobby) came over and we began a discourse that lasted til close and it was really fortunate that the friends I was with were also interested in cocktails, because most people's eyes would have glazed over a few minutes in. He made us the rest of our drinks for the evening as well as answering my million questions about all the spirits I was floored to see behind a bar in Houston...Anchor Genevieve, Tanqueray Malacca, Old Potrero, Rittenhouse Rye, the list goes on. We were also priveledged to get to take a gander at their Kold-Draft ice machine, said to be one of the first (if not #1) in the state. For those not obsessed with cocktail minutiae like ice quality, Kold-Draft is more or less the Rolls-Royce of bar ice, setting the standard all other bar ice must be measured against. The measures taken to baby the tempermental unit in the Houston heat was quite fantastic and is just one of the many behind the scenes touches that most folks would never even notice--but is integral to the concept of the place. The drinks were fabulous (and extremely reasonable for the quality--most were $8-9), setting a new standard for excellence in cocktails for Texas. What was great was not only the profligate use of somewhat unusual ingredients like infused pisco, raw eggwhite, orange bitters, and aromatic mists, but the very real pleasure of watching the extremely personable staff walk folks who came in without any idea of what the place was through their drink options until finding something they would enjoy. As a bartender who tries the same thing quite often, I know how difficult this is to do effectively, and from my vantage point they seemed to have no customers who were disappointed past the first wary sip of the foaming glass set before them. And speaking of foam, while cocktails are clearly and undeniably the primary focus of Anvil, their beer setup is second to none, with twelve individually regulated taps (highly unusual) and a small but carefully selected wine list as well. Having the opportunity to visit with and sample the wares being offered by Bobby, Kevin, Sebastian, and Justin was a true treat, and while they ably demonstrated their ability to wow even this avowed cocktail nerd, they also showed a deft touch with classic formulae and ingredients in a way to make them accessable to even the most dedicated "apple martini" drinker, provided they approach the place with an open mind. I could write pages more about this place, which is now officially the coolest bar I have personally visited, but it would be far better for folks to check it out themselves. If you live in Houston, there's not much excuse, and if you don't (like me), it may be time to plan a trip. I know I'm already looking for excuses to make the trip, and I'm recommending the place to practically everyone I meet. This place is destined to become a Houston classic, and hopefully will help elevate the bar and cocktail scene not just of our largest city, but of the rest of the state as well. Edit: Spelling

I think the big culprit in making the bitters look unpalatable was the powdered benzoin resin. I know others have found a more resinous version -- what have you managed to find? ← I used a liquid resin that came in little jars labelled "Benzoin, Siam Liquid (styrax tonkinensis)" Came from somaluna.com. It's a medium-dark brown with almost a faint blue tint to it, fairly viscous but not nearly so much as the gum syrup I made recently. This may be entirely meaningless, but I would say about twice as viscous as a 2:1 simple syrup.

One possible caveat with my experiment: the stuff from the jar with oak chips was unfiltered, while the stuff I bottled was run through a coffee filter. Unfiltered stuff looks quite a bit less attractive, like water you washed your brush in after painting something black. Maybe in the ugly blackness lies the secret to better flavor. ← I wonder about this myself...Angostura Bitters, for example, are far from clear. To what degree is filtration desireable here?

Question for anyone who has ordered from this site... What quantity/weight is each herb sold by? It only says "$.85," etc. There's no quantity anywhere that I can tell. ← I don't think I've actually ordered from here but I remember being equally confused whole looking at it. The link at the top labelled "Online Ordering" brings up the links on the side to categories but the relevant info is easy to miss even though it's right there in front of you (because everyone is looking for the categories). "All Oils are priced at 1/2 fluid ounce, Herbs are priced at 1 ounce each, and Tinctures are 1 fluid ounce."

Pouring in a healthy amount of kosher salt and soda water and swirling about can help scour too, for those who lack Magic Balls (ahem).