bostonapothecary

1 oz. La Cigarerra Manzanilla Pasada 1 oz. Dammel Gansk (how brynn pronounces it) 1 oz. Special edition cherry campari really really delicious. the gammel dansk supplies enough alcohol to power the cocktail here. the aged style of manzanilla brings all the woody flavors a whiskey might have contributed. the cherry aspect of the campari is pretty subtle stuff but in this context it seems to glow a bit more than usual.

I remade this as: 1 oz. Manzanilla Pasada (La Cigarerra) 1 oz. Dandelion honey Yellow Chartreuse 1 oz. Gammel Dansk in this format it is sort of like an amped up Chrysanthemum from the Savoy. pretty cool. Gammel Dansk is some pretty weird stuff and it is hard to compare to any other amaro. It is high alcohol and doesn't have the sugar/bitter ratio of any other product I can think of making it hard to use in the conventional templates. when I put it in a drink I think of it's sugar content as negligible because it is low and so well contrasted by bitterness. Gammel Dansk is well worth the learning curves.

1.5 oz. Marmite Rye (50% alc. acid catalyzed esterification, max time under heat, fake aged) .75 oz. Special edition Dandelion honey Yellow Chartreuse (40%) .75 oz. Gammel dansk (38%) Some spare projects were lying around so I thought I'd whip up something burly. Something about this just isn't hitting it for me. The alcohol content ends up being massive and I can't quite get a nice glimpse of the sensual character of the dandelion honey. Regrets and missed opportunities, maybe I'll try again after lunch with a sherry in place of the rye.

1.5 oz. jim beam 5 year (back of shelf find. possibly from the late 90's. $10.99/750.) 1 oz. pineau des charentes .5 oz. nocino 1 oz. cashew "heavy cream" really fun. the cashew heavy cream probably doesn't make or break the drink. the combo of the other three is pretty tasty stuff. really great with cream or a suspect a whole egg would also do nicely.

two cocktails: 1.5 oz. le panto XO spanish sherry finished in pedro ximinez barrels 1 oz. brillet pineau des charents .5 oz. real deal wray & nephews "berry hill" pimento dram 1 oz. cashew cream** **the cashew cream was made by blending cashews in water, running them through the colloid mill, centrifuging, separating the fat and the solids, then mixing 150 grams of fat to 350 grams of cashew water then running it through the colloid mill to homogenize. I'm sure it would love a hydrocolloid to hold it together slightly better but whatevs. the running through the colloid mill after blending was to best reduce the size of the solids so I could use them as shaving cream. I might darken the shaving cream a little bit with quinine. you will soon be able to buy it at Neiman Marcus for way too much money. well this was as epic as it reads. ultimately when this is served on monday to some very special patrons of the arts, the le panto will change to el dorado 15. 1.5 oz. generic 100% agave blanco 1 oz. cinzano sweet vermouth 1 oz. special, special edition cherry campari** **the campari is double special edition because the regular cherry campari is rendered from kirschwasser aromatized with wormwood, in this case it is kirschwasser aromatized with yerba mate which is another bitter aroma further into the dark end of my imaginary spatial aroma scale. campari simply is dehydrated to preserve all its legendary non-volatile parts then reconstituted with some algebra from a recklessly executed, low involvement distillate based on the brilliant product, hiram walker kirschwasser. this is just the most sinister agavoni ever. the unique contribution of the special, special edition campari is subtle. you would have to be a negroni enthusiast to notice that "this is the same, but completely different", "this has completely dissolved all my complacency and anxiety and I am ready to be a better version of myself". I was inspired to miss remember that Paul Butterfield song as "Baby, I wanna drink from another cup, too". on monday, for the patrons of the arts, this will become a boulevardier with flaked rye aromatized bourbon.

a few drinks using the elaborated 50/50 template 1 oz. arrette tequila .5 oz. vida mezcal 1 oz. aged hercules rendering (menthe-mate aromatized wine) .5 oz. cynar this was pretty cool and I really believe a masterful menthe-mate aromatized wine on the market would do really well. I wish I tried it with campari but I ran out. the success of my hercules rendering is mostly luck but also following Amerine's guidelines. 1 oz. lagavulin .5 oz. trimbach mirabelle 1 oz. florio sweet marsala .5 oz. russo? nocino (40% alc.) dash peychauds others really enjoyed it and I bet it would be very successful on a menu but for some reason a part of it was stuck in the ordinary for me and didn't hit its full potential. there seems to be a simplistic chocolate character contrasted by an awesome smoke expression. I think next time I would either break the marsala/nocino combo and try bianco vermouth/nocino or borolo chinato/nocino or add a dash or two of angostura. these are just little poems or maybe little puzzles and you rearrange them to make something its most extraordinary and memorable.

Thanks for the encouragement! The projects are fun and I really enjoy doing them. I would love to make things in more of a commercial context some day but I haven't really figured out how to do that in Boston. Some day... I apologize for the poor formatting of my blog. I spend so much time reading, writing, and playing that I've never really learned how Word Press works. It is kind of embarrassing. Some day there will be pictures and a way to organize the mountain of older content but I can't spare the time to learn that yet. The blog has taken a break from cocktail topics to republish eight distillation research papers from Australia that were more or less lost during WWII. The papers point to some parallel forgotten work done in South Africa that I can't for the life of me find (yet). Next up is more advanced (but simpler) kegging techniques. Hopefully it will help the next generation of super high volume places up their composed cocktail delivery and a la minute places that don't believe in batch-o-rama can just use them as de-aerated storage vessels for infusions, house made aromatized wines, and other oxygen phobic projects. The champagne bottle manifolds are selling at a trickle but to some of the coolest bar programs in the world. Hopefully more beautiful carbonated cocktails will be out there in the wild pretty soon. Modern bar tending is heating up and almost ready to pass through its gimmicky phase. When we can legally practice distillation in small bar programs I'll be ready!

vesper template 1.5 oz. walnut oil aromatized slivovitz 1 oz. citadelle gin .5 oz. cocchi aperitvo americano really tasty for a booze bag style pile of alcohol. the cocchi americano has a way of illuminating the nutiness of the experimental distillate. all the beautiful tones here have a sympathy for the cooler weather we've been having lately.

.5 oz. campari (slightly super**) 1 oz. m&r bianco vermouth .5 oz. aguardiente de medronhos 1 oz. walnut oil aromatized slivovitz **slightly super campari is campari that was freeze concentrated one iteration which based on its sugar content I estimate only concentrates it 10%. it is not exactly amazing but I still have to finish the bottle. this elaborated 50/50 is delicious but it doesn't exactly highlight the walnut aroma. I might have to try the vesper template next.

"left for dead" .75 oz. walnut oil aromatized slivovitz** .75 oz. peruchi spanish sweet vermouth .75 oz. der lachs danzig goldwasser .75 oz. lime juice posthumous dash quinine tincture **the slivovitz was distilled with the walnut oil as part of my project to hunt for new aroma sources. after seeing the success of fat washing nut oils seemed like a good candidate. I actually left the stuff for dead because at first it was so unremarkable yet somehow a year later it has really transformed. I suspect a good deal of the transformation is post distillation esterification and the spirit approaching various equilibriums after the big shake up of distillation. It would be so cool to explore more of non-traditional esterification but the projects really need a year of foresight and investment. I recently put 8 lost distillation papers on my blog that delve deep into aroma creation within the pot still. I found them in the archives of Roseworthy agricultural college in Australia and convinced the school to digitize them. I think they were forgotten due to WWII and that is why they were never collected by U.C. Davis. this might read interesting but before the quinine was applied it tasted like Tang brand fake orange drink. I suspect it is from the alliteration of orange aromas in the sweet vermouth and goldwasser. quinine's bitterness added an adult edge but I'd still call this a failure. I need to come up with a new context to show off the remainder of the funky distillate. a redeeming feature of the drink is that I put the goldwasser through the colloid mill a long time ago to mince all the gold. it didn't became as small as I thought but somehow in this drink it forms a beautiful suspension of gold dust instead of just sinking to the bottom like usual. it might be worth exploring a little deeper.

5 oz. highly carbonated green apple soda** 1 oz. gin (seagram's) .5 oz. lime juice 2 g. non aromatic white sugar **the green apple soda is made my juicing green apples with an acme juicer (a few at a time) then quickly funneling the juice into a champagne bottle and reflux de-aerating. the juicing happens quickly enough that it doesn't brown. reflux de-aeration purges the juice of any oxygen and prevents oxidative browning. once the oxygen is vented the bottle can under go carbonation. the juice is turbid but could even be racked from most of its sediment if left to sit over night (before carbonating). really really fun. the color is a beautiful green and hasn't browned at all after sitting around for nine hours. this was meant to loosely resemble a french 75. I could probably drink 20 of these. I got invited to do three drinks for a large garden party. I'm hoping to make this or a slight variation one of them. I'll probably need to accumulate 20 clear champagne bottles.

recently under strange circumstances I inherited a large pile of lambruscos that might be a few years too old. they have more sediment than I've ever seen in a sparkler. I thought I would make some sangria with them which has become a runaway success. 400 ml Lambrusco (sparkling red) 400 ml rose (2010 Li Veli rose of negro amaro) 100 ml lemon juice 100 ml honey "syrup" (ames farm honey 1:1 with vodka) 100 ml Matilde Poire (this should be a staple of every bar) this 1.1 liters is put into a champagne magnum bottle and carbonated to about 7g/L. it is then served over ice which de-gasses it to typical soda over ice territory. garnish with a really nice piece of mint. I had been drinking these for a few days with out mint then my co-worker had the good sense to start topping them with the yerba buena. the interesting thing here is that upon consumption when the frontal olfactory top notes of the mint align with the flavour of the sangria the overwhelming aroma of peach is conjured. a peach more real than a real peach. when you approach your second glass aware of the illusion, the mint aroma might be out of alignment and you will just get mint but as your attention vacillates from other focal points everything can be pulled back into alignment and the peach can return. does mint contain any aroma fragments of peach? I don't know. what is really happening I have no idea and can only speculate. I think aroma recognition differs from facial recognition in the way that when you see a fragment of a familiar face you may easily recognize it but you fill in the rest with a symbol like a name of person recognized. you do not end up completing every other detail of the face. but aroma recognition is different, when you encounter just a jaw-bone fragment of a larger aroma object, the mind completes the whole with the missing sensory values from memory not just a stand-in symbol like a name. this is probably how a peach can be so vividly summoned from this pile of flavour fragments.

pantry cocktail 2.5 oz. hopped blue berry maple shrub** .5 oz. campari .5 oz. arrette blanco tequila shaken and double strained into a champagne 375 and then carbonated to 7 g/L **The shrub is a cheater of Sap House meadery's astounding hopped blueberry maple mead, honey vinegar, and non-aromatic white sugar. 1.5 oz. of the mead, 1 oz. of the honey vinegar, and 10 grams of non-aromatic white sugar. The alcohol content averages down to 4%. I justify this blasphemous shrub cheater under the principles of aestheticism. It looks so nice in my Czech crystal flute. I first did the pantry cocktail 7 or 8 years ago and back then it was a tequila drink with verjus and balsamic vinegar. This version is very interesting. There is a unique meeting point of the vinegar acid and the bitterness of the campari. Campari plus typical acids often construct grapefruit expressions but here, at the meeting of acetic acid and vinegar, recollection knows not what to do. If this cocktail cannot retrieve memories I bet it can cement them. Only drink such a rare experience when you want an evening to be unforgettable.

I just finished reading my copy. The book is fun and the drink photography is astoundingly beautiful. The book has some forgivable scientific problems such as what he claims can be done with a brix meter. Unless he uses a technology I'm not familiar with, alcohol obscures a brix measurement and you can only use refraction to estimate sugar content in a sugar/water solution not a sugar/water/alcohol solution. Alcohol will obscure the measurement upwards and you will think sugar is present that is not. He also implies he uses an alcohol hydrometer for solutions that contain more than alcohol and water which would result in inaccuracies as well but he may be measuring ingredients separately then calculate an average. His practices are worded strangely. For some reason he does not list a hydrometer in his tool kit which I've found indispensable for understanding the sugar contents of commercial liqueurs (my two chart method) besides plain distillates. I was never really sure what the Drink Factory crew was working on and they have definitely explored a lot of things flavour wise that I've never dreamt of or been exposed to. When you look at how different their work is relative to the smattering of projects that come out of my apartment-kitchen laboratory modern bar tending has some pretty big potential. Tony isn't afraid of vodka and seems to have mastered the idea that things cannot be more than 10% new which is probably why he is so commercially successful. The book and the drinks are pretty accessible despite all the PR photos of him and his lab tools. The books shows a healthy obsession with coaxing out the most extraordinary tonal expressions from many simple ingredients like fruit juices. Tony meticulously juices, clarifies, and de-aerates in ways that I wish were more popular. Fresh, unpasteurized, self-sugared cranberry juice is an astounding pleasure but few even high end bars keep the tools around to offer it. I do however think he should explore using pressure reflux de-aeration as opposed to vacuum de-aeration to take the oxygen out of liquids. The equipment is far cheaper, smaller in foot print, serves much more double duty, and can be operated in less time. It would also be fun to see Tony and the Drink Factory crew cross pollinate more with drink makers that have the Beta Cocktail's Wild Style. I've had just as much fun over the years mixing up heroic drinks with Macvin du Jura and Batavia Arrack Van Oosten as playing with my centrifuge and distillation rig. It would be cool to see more of the lab meeting ethnic and adventurous already bottled products. With the last few rounds of 10% new behind us modern bar tending can get away from drinks that are "balanced" and "modern palate" and move on to composed, distinct, and well curated acquired tastes. For those that dabble in cocktail making, the book will help anyone of any skill level up their game as well as have the fun of seeing what is possible. All in all, I look forward to visiting 69 Colbrooke Row some day.

my favorite way to make daiquiris is to use a gram measure of sugar per ounce of lime juice. my daiquiris looks like this: 2 oz. rum 1 oz. lime 8 grams of sugar I just put the first two ingredients on the kitchen scale and zero. for the next drink you stay with 8 or go to 7 or 9 or any fraction in between. or you can take your favorite spoonful and see what it weights in grams. when you are drunk but still making drinks I find using grams to be easier.

I finally got around to trying out the raw meat infused demerara rum described by Peter Valaer in 1937. I infused my over proof rum with hangar steak. The meat turned grey fairly quickly and all science I know implies it was sterilized. It has only been three days but I thought I'd give it a try. 1 oz. raw meat infused over proof demerara rum (the water in the meat seemed to dilute the proof far less than I estimated) 1 oz. cinzano sweet vermouth nothing impressive. the rum already has a pungent, concentrated, dense sort of character that is hard to budge. my theory is that fatty acids in the meat might turn into esters in their new high alcohol environment though that could take a considerable amount of time. I de-aerated the infusion, to prevent oxidative rancidity, but maybe it has to go rancid, who knows. I will have to think about this more. It is uncharted territory.

When making liqueurs I've had a lot of great success juicing then fortifying with spirits. I think one reason juicing is not more popular is that people just don't have the tools. I've worked in so many restaurants that don't own a juicer. When I started juicing with the basket press and learning more about wine making for distillation one of the things I started to realize is that the options available make big differences in pectin content. When you make wines to be distilled you want to limit pectin because it produces methanol when it breaks down. Some times fruit infusions can dissolve a lot of pectin and I've made tequila por me amante in the past from super market strawberries that ended up pretty wobbly. Too much pectin in whatever you are making is bad. Lately I juice, then freeze concentrate, then sugar, then fortify. Freeze concentrating helps when you only have 40% alcohol spirits to fortify with. I usually only fortify to 20% which is more or less the minimum of preservation.

I'd drink that. Any idea of the ratios? I'll ask tomorrow, but I'd start with a good French 75 recipe and work from there... Wondrich’s French 75 2 ounces London dry gin (1 oz ea white whiskey/Bourbon) 1 teaspoon superfine sugar (1/4 - 1/2 oz orgeat) 1/2 ounce lemon juice (1/2 oz lemon) 5 ounces Brut Champagne (5 oz Miller High Life) when I first got the champagne bottle manifold up and running one of the first things I did was double carbonate High Life and turn it into the true champagne of beers. there is lots of potential for using beer in these cocktail contexts when you can add extra gas. the other day we ran out of prosecco so we carbonated a few still wines to put in our negroni sbagliatos. muller thurgau was the most prosecco like but we also carbonated a great French chardonnay that was lying around. gassing up the chardonnay seemed to create the brioche effect even though you definitely would not have called the still wine brioche-y. carbonation plays awesome tricks.

chocolate-martini 1 oz. tomatin 12 single malt 1 oz. florio sweet marsala 1 oz. russo nocino (40% alc.!) .5 oz. melted dark chocolate and heavy cream stolen from the pastry dept. a text book chocolate martini. made for a couple of young girls that like to try out a bartender's chocolate martini where ever they go. "best chocolate-martini ever!". I had to make another one for myself and I concur. personally I love hyphenated martini/margarita cocktail names. I've been doing subversive things with them for years. the culinary arts are in a good place right now where I can get away with the walnut/marsla/chocolate combo. I think it was seven years ago deep in the heyday of the chocolate martini that I was making them as: 1.5 oz. vanilla vodka 1 oz. creme de cocoa .5 oz. matusalem 30 year old oloroso sherry the reps could never understand how a small spot with such a big dessert wine list could move so much oloroso. it was all large wedding groups from the hotel descending upon the bar and crushing round after round of chocolate martinis. I miss that place.

It looks beautiful How did you make it? I used to date a jeweler. she broke my heart actually. all the cutting and sanding techniques I learned from her but to form the spoon I made a forming dolly and dapping bowl out of plastic. they were based on an old antique julep strainer with great shape and size but a broken handle that I sacrificed. you pound it a little bit with a mallet then press it in the forms then pound a little more. If I was better equipped I could shrink the metal around the sides a little bitter and smooth it all out with an english wheel. as it is I find the imperfections and limited degree of involvement sort of endearing.

bobby burns 2 oz. chivas 12 1 oz. punt y mes spoonful of brandymel limao (lime version) I've been playing around with making julep strainers so I thought I'd put the newest prototype to practice. someone re-gifted me a handle of chivas so I've got some blended scotch drinks ahead of me. this one worked out quite well. I never thought I'd be putting lime aromatized honey liqueur in a bobby burns but this drink is a winner.

aviation. .75 oz. lemon juice .25 oz. parfait amour .5 oz. paolo lazzaroni & figli maraschino liqueur (25% alc.) ("imported in the USA by Laird & Co.") 1.5+ oz. bombay gin I had heard of this maraschino but never seen it before and somehow it ended up on my kitchen counter. I think my room mate bought it at Cirace in the north end whom does a lot of their own importing but the label does say Laird & Co. its pretty bland stuff. very little aroma. I'm really unimpressed. the drink is okay. nice and tart but not exactly memorable. lately I've just been drinking and serving whatever is around without being particular. sort of in the prohibition spirit I guess. de-emphasizing brand and bottle choices and emphasizing other things. well, never de-emphasize your maraschino.

2.5 oz. 1995 guyana rum aged 12 years in oak then finished in chateau d'yquem casks (46%) I'm not having the greatest week so I thought I'd indulge a little. this was the last of it. these Renegade rums were closed out believe it or not and I ended up paying only $23 dollars for them. I used a lot of them as my well rum for a while at work and we only put them in south sides. that may seem blasphemous but they were really tasty that way. the distillery here was Uitvlught: "Originally a dutch estate and pronounced 'eye-flut', meaning 'overlooking the sea', in this case the Atlantic coast west of the Demerara river. This rum was distilled on the famous Port Morant still; the last remaining Demerara vat still." I don't really know how to decode the term "vat still". A Mountain of Crushed Ice, which has some awesome photos describes the still as "The double wooden pot still – used to be in Port Morant Estate that was founded in 1732. A wooden still with a copper neck which was moved to Uitvlught – and then in the year 2000 finally moved to Diamond where it is today." all the strange distillation papers I've collected have me suspecting that wooden boilers might allow distillers to make extra high ester rums by being able to handle distilling material higher in total acidity. copper would corrode and wear out faster than usual but wood I suspect can take all the extra dunder they recycle. I'm not sure that I'm correct because it is never exactly spelled out but something must keep those stills relevant besides nostalgia.

the concentrate probably has 800g/l of sugar which is the big guideline for how most of those are concentrated. i make my simple syrup and grenadines at 400g/l so you can just cut it in half with water to get there. now that you have a normal syrup sugar content you still probably have more than usual dissolved aroma. it will either be a cool effect on a drink or if you want a more elegant syrup, you can just dilute it to taste with simple syrup. when i explored freeze concentrating pomegranite juice to make grenadine, i found i could easily over concentrate the aroma.

the "old rum" was a special bottling that they did. I think it is still around in some markets. I'm pretty sure all their stuff is made in Guyana so it is basically just a nice older Guyana rum. the passion fruit juice we were using back then was something marketed to pastry chefs as a sorbet base. it was delicious stuff with enough acidity that it could substitute for citrus in a cocktail.