bostonapothecary

yeah i've seen substantial amounts of oils separating from distillates before. no doubt whatever you separate has tons of aroma. i bet the guys that chill filter collect enough of it that they know what the oils smell like. does any of that information make it into any of the book on whiskey? i think that smokey aromas only come very late in the distillation run when the temperature starts to really climb. lots of stuff that can louche probably comes through as well so i think if you want all that smokey aroma you have to tolerate potential louching.

i don't know if diluting in advance by simply pouring a measured amount of water in spirit will yield any short term differences, but i have heard of strange techniques for integrating water in spirits. integrating at too fast a rate can sometimes cause solutions to louche and become visibly cloudy. i'm not sure if it is just a change in clarity or if easily perceivable things happen to the aroma as well. some distilleries use equipment that slowly integrates water into a spirit with the goal of disturbing the solution as little was possible. i think they are trying to prevent something like "bottle shock" that happens to wines that haven't been able to settle after traveling. some distillers report that their spirits taste significantly different in short periods of time after they have come out of the still. you'd think that all that has changed is the temperature by a small amount. my guess is that dilution and any aeration that happens in the action of making a cocktail essentially "bottle shocks" the spirits (influences the aroma), but so many other competing attentional features are added that we cannot perceive the changes.

i endorse a malt mixer behind the bar. frothes up some nice egg drinks.

one of my favorites. i'd say one of the greatest rums relative to price. for unaged fresh sugar cane rums, i think the most interesting are the rums of cape verde and the cachacas from salinas in minas gerais, brazil. the technique i endorse for learning about rum is just to buy one of each and clear out a book case.

1 oz. fresh passion fruit juice spoonful light brown sugar 1.5 oz. wray & nephews old tom gin .5 zo. blackwell's jamaica rum wow. fresh passion fruits are amazing. this drink reminds me of zingingly dry reislings and ultra crisp chenin blancs. the only thing that could push this further would be angostura bitters.

jamaica flip 1.5 oz. jamaica rum .5 oz. wray & nephews "berry hill" allspice liqueur (30% alc.) 1 oz. water half spoonful of sugar (light brown. found locally) whole egg stir to dissolve sugar then dry shaken and re-shaken with ice. we drank these while all the married men tried to teach me the art and importance of having other women on the side. next up is soursop with sweetened condensed milk and i was gifted some backyard passion fruits.

wray & nephews old tom gin = approve (it is basically just common gin) wray & nephews jamaica brandy = disapprove (nothing about it leads you to believe it came from a grape) today's after construction cocktail 1.5 oz. wray & nephews old tom gin .5 oz. blackwell jamaican rum 1 oz. lime juice (strange yellowed variety) .75 oz. wray & nephews allspice liqueur .25 oz. local honey (hopewell)

well i'm in jamaica for the next few weeks. 2 oz. black well's "fine jamaican rum" this is from chris blackwell of the island records company fame. strangely the back of the label does say "aged and infused with tropical flavors" it is delicious with very enigmatic hard to pin down aromas. the rum is dark and rich (but not simplistic and vanilla-y) with some sort of penetrating arrack like aroma. i feel like the rum has some acidity which might be what "infused with tropical flavors" is all about. i didn't find much variety down here, but i did find the wray & nephews old tom gin as well as their allspice liqueur.

bumping this thread... i will be in montego bay for the next three weeks housing sitting. where should i be eating? and what should i look for?

a rendering of cocktail epic: norwegian wood 1 oz. linie aquavite 1 oz. double fermented apple brandy** .75 oz. sweet vermouth (carpano antica because it was all i had) spoonful yellow chartreuse **the double fermented apple brandy is made from ascetic acid neutralized apple cider vinegar that is redistilled 8:1 with vodka (and re-soured with non volatile acid (citric) so as not to react with copper). the second fermentation improves the chance of producing extraordinary aromas.

1.5 oz. smoke paprika aromatized tequila (25g/l spanish paprika) .75 oz. sour orange juice .75 oz. 1:1 simple syrup the idea was faux mezcal but the smoke is tricky. heavy molecules. you have to go to higher temps than you normally would. i would even go to 40 or 50 g/l next time.

2 oz. marmite aromatized rye 1 oz. sour orange juice barspoon of non aromatic white sugar 2 dashes peychaud's bitters sour orange twist the bitters help create a drastic divergence of color and aroma. just like blue curacoa but with more positive symbolism. the autolytic aroma is exception in this tart context.

perception of these things is so multi-variable (because its so multi-sensory) its mind boggling. reality is highly "constructed" by the mind and the degree to which it happens in food is quite staggering. the way one sense changes the threshold of perception of another is tied to our reward systems. perception is also tied to our ability to pay attention which is structured for survival. our attentional spotlight defaults in a predictable order across the senses as we engage in multi-sensory perception. the pineapple chunks in the stoli-doli jar may have an alcohol content of only 20%, but they taste like everclear because the haptic textural data added by the fruit changes the threshold of perception of the alcohol. thermoception is also widely known to change the threshold of perception of alcohol. heating the liquor slightly makes it tastes "hotter" while chilling it to extreme levels creates an attentional distraction away from the alcoholic burn. our attentional spotlight therefore gravitates to extreme levels of thermoception over this particular type of chemesthesis. sweetness might have a similar effect on alcohol as it does on bitterness. our reward systems reinforce behavior with their construction of reality. true, campari is bitter, but it is also redeemingly sweet from the perspective of the reward system. the mind reduces the perception of risky bitterness because it has also found calories and wants to reward and reinforce the behavior. alcohol could have a similar relationship and aromas that "converge" with gustatory sweetness could also yield a similar effect. one of my theories is that another reward system that finds value in attentional distractions (distractions dispel anxiety?) eventually over takes the reward for sweetness and that is why many of us eventually prefer and even crave various forms of "dryness". a book i'm reading now is "the handbook of multisensory processes". it has no articles that specifically cover this topic, but what you find is that many multisensory processes work similarly and you can test and apply ideas from one process that is well studied to another. related to specifically to culinary, the book has a phenomenal article titled "sweet and sour smells: learned synesthesia between the senses of taste and smell" by richard j. stevenson and robert a. boakes.

i redistilled the two while at my weekend home in new zealand. Oh. Well, yes, that works too. i have just heard from multiple people that they put nutritional yeast and olive oil on popcorn. is that for the aroma? what else do people do with yeast?

i redistilled the two while at my weekend home in new zealand.

2 oz. marmite aromatized rye whiskey (100g marmite per 750ml rye) half bar spoon of non aromatic white sugar 4 dashes peychaud's bitters horrific looking yellowed herbsaint rinse scant lemon twist (so as not to overshadow too much) very satisfying. i wanted to re-abstract something already highly abstracted and Marmite seemed like just the thing. Marmite wears quite the cloak of saltiness which is a giant sensory distraction from perceiving her gorgeous aromas. if we could remove the cloak, we could see if lady Marmite looked good naked. i was worried though that like the balsamic fiasco, much of the aroma wouldn't be volatile and the result would be weird (under her many garments, balsamic smells like a lobster). the aroma of yeast turn out to be quite volatile. they are also really important to defining many of the spirits we consume. in many spirits, the yeast is carefully racked off the beer so as not to contribute aroma (fruit eau de vie's; some whiskey's?) while in others they let it go full autolytic (explode and infuse) (jamaican rum; cognanc to a degree; armagnac; the rare yeast eau-de-vie's of france; who knows what else..) a Marmite aromatized gin might make a lovely french 75.

unfortunately that woodiness is just the aroma of meyer lemons. you just need to find ways of contrasting it. orange peels might do the trick or use in an iced tea like hibiscus.

1 oz. lime juice 1 oz. maracuja do ezekiel (azorean passion fruit liqueur) 2 oz. batavia arrack van oosten dual float of mezcal & lemonhart 151 a righteous sour.

i touched upon these ideas briefly in my last blog post titled "cup cakes shots? advanced reality construction basics" flavor as a perceptual system works just like the eye. apparently lots of flavors are filled in from past experiences. paintings that illustrate similar concepts hang in museums...

i've had tremendous success simply stirring granular sugar into my liqueurs. it just takes a little patience. for some reason a magnetic stirrer barely speeds up the process. heat will definitely speed up the process but i wouldn't bother tightening the lid and building up pressure. you don't have to get the liquid anywhere close to boiling to get even large amounts of sugar to dissolve. if you must heat just treat it like a bain-marie. liqueurs don't even really go above 500 g/l of sucrose. i wouldn't worry about alcohol evaporating. as volatile as alcohol is, it takes tremendous energy to make a dent in your alcohol content. just keep the water bath under 70 Celsius to be safe.

my favorite ways to test interesting combinations like that: 1 oz. spirit (fresh sugarcane rum?) 1 oz. lazzaroni 1 oz. pimento dram 1 oz. acidic fruit juice (lemon, lime, sour orange) dash X if the result is boring proceed to add a float of lemonhart or other such 151 or 1 oz. spirit 1 oz. dry vermouth or dry sherry .5 oz. lazzaroni .5 oz. pimento dram as EvergreenDan points out, cachaca is an awesome orange & allspice aroma partner.

2 oz. los abuelos blanco tequila .5 oz. danzig goldwasser .5 oz. averell damson gin 1 oz. lime juice this was the first attempt at a damson gin cocktail. unfortunately the most significant attentional feature of the drink is by far the tequila. los abuelos blanco is abnormally pungent. if i re-rendered this drink i'd change the tequila to an odd 1.5 oz. measure. the averell damson gin is cute. the price was only $29 retail. the aromas are very similar to tawny port and there seems to be a murmur of an overshadowed gin-like aroma. next up .75 oz. don cesar pisco "italia" .75 oz. damson gin .75 oz. dry vermouth .75 oz. yellow chartreuse .75 oz. lime juice dash peychaud's (stirred) this drink loosely follows a pattern first used in the "satan's whiskers" and is very lovely. the most significant attentional features are the yellow chartreuse followed by the the damson gin. the aromas are very hard to parse but the pisco seems to add its strange sort of olfactory tension. don cesar is the most intense of the common piscos on the market; my favorite.

1.5 oz. bully boy 40% alc. white whiskey (made in boston!) .75 oz. moscat grape "mistelle" (cut to 390 g/l sugar) .75 oz. lemon juice dash angostura bitters an excellent sour powered by an exciting new distillate.

1.5 oz. gin .75 oz. lime juice .75 oz. muscat grape syrup (aka mistelle)** dash angostura bitters 1.5 oz. los abuelos blanco tequila .75 oz. lime juice .75 oz. muscat grape syrup** the mistelle here is 68 brix muscat grape concentrate diluted 1:1 with vodka to reduce the sugar content and to act as a preservative. the word mistelle sometimes refers to 68 brix grape concentrates and also sometimes to categories of spirits diluted with juice like pineau des charentes, pommeau, or floc des gascones. at 34 brix, the syrup has about 390 g/l of sugar but it also has a nice amount of acidity making the perception of sweetness i'd say most comparable to a triple sec (250 g/l). next up i'd love to try the syrup in a satan's whiskers swapping it for the orange liqueur.

the alcohol content is not in the critical range. you are above 20% so you are above the percentages that bacteria can grow in. your bottle basically got "madeirized" aka "baked". madeira wine gets heat tortured like that for much longer and with less alcohol and lives to tell the tale... so madeirization can be a flaw or a feature, but most typically a flaw. baking wine or spirits has its biggest influence on aroma. the quickest way to sum it up is that the aromas shift to the left or to the right from either the ordinary (aka boring) to the extraordinary or vice versa. madeira usually becomes enigmatic, extraordinary and attractive while most dry wines become "raisiny", ordinary, and boring. st. germain liqueur tends to madeirize pretty easy taking on a dark golden color, but it still tastes pretty good after that happens. its definitely safe to drink so test it out and let us know what you think. good luck.