bostonapothecary

i'd put two things at the forefront of craft: empathy and problem solving. every drink solves a problem and all the ingredients in the drink should be united with empathy. not many people have serious empathy for the ingredients they select meaning that they can barely taste the drink in their mind's eye before they make it. so much of drink making is done randomly which is bad for problem solving when ingredients are so expensive. there are vast amounts of problems to solve and hopefully bartenders out there are dot connectors and outside the box thinkers. we of course rank the importance of potential problems. some problems to solve: i need to relax somebody and dispel their built up anxiety. the solution will be an acquired taste which contains one of the various forms of "dryness". i need to teach somebody about expanding the harmony of their palate so that hopefully they will see the benefits of expanding the harmonic range of other areas of their life (cocktails fight racism!). the solution yet again is an acquired taste. i need to use an ingredient i inherited because it is bought and paid for. the solution is to contemplate it and understand it is aesthetic properties so you can use it in a beautiful context. i need to strengthen the youth culture of my city. the solution is to create places they can meet and consume beautiful drinks they can actually afford (without accepting horrible profit margins for the business). dollar an ounce spirits will not solve this problem. there are zillions of stunning cheaper options, but you will have to learn to create that luxury symbolism yourself. i need to shut someone up and make them a lame drink so i can triage other more pressing problems. the solution is to make a lame mono-fruit-sweet-cran-tini so you can shut someone up. the positive exemplary pressure of your acquired-taste-dryness-therapy will build and they will eventually be ready to join the program. but first they have to see you helping to solve other people's problems.

the creative linkage strategy they use on the site is to create overtones of certain aromas. i just picked up a book about it; "taste buds and molecules: the art and science of food with wine" by francois chartier. the idea is kind of billed as the end all be all of aroma pairing techniques, but i think it is over hyped. the creation of overtones is just one creative linkage technique among many. if all aromas can be classified in terms of gustation (because of a synaesthesia-like sensory linkage), you can also link aromas from different divisions across olfaction and gustation. (ie. sweet aroma, bitter aroma, but you can also have something like many dry wines... sweet aroma, acid gustation) two ordinary tones that have the potential to form an overtone can be combined to create the extra-ordinary. extra-ordinary sensoriality is very important to beauty. cocktails are a good way to illustrate the point. i think its best to prove an avante-garde pairing in a drink (simplified texture) before you try is with textured food. orange ordinary 2 oz. gin 1 oz. orange liqueur (300g/l sugar) 1 oz. lemon juice apricot ordinary 2 oz. gin 1 oz. apricot liqueur (300g/l sugar) 1 oz. lemon juice orange-apricot extra-ordinary 2 oz. gin .5 oz. orange liqueur .5 oz. apricot liqueur 1 oz. lemon juice the orange and apricot create an overtone and because it exists between two known spaces we often find it more compelling. this is very commonly done with aromas that increase the perception of sweetness. corpse reviver no. 2 1 oz. gin 1 oz. triple-sec orange liqueur 1 oz. lillet 1 oz. lemon juice spoonful of absinthe lillet is orange peel aromatized so the triple-sec linkage is almost like alliteration. the result is a spectacular overtone (the aroma of the wine base is also a significant contributor to the overtone). the anise in the absinthe is another aroma that increases the perception of sweetness, but it is perceived as a distinct interval. we like the sensation of these intervals because we are attracted to the space it takes up within the mind's eye when we perceive the drink. it is harder to create overtones from aromas that decrease the perception of sweetness (it is also hard to classify them) because you usually end up with distinct intervals. an interesting example of an overtone might be the linking of juniper and angelica which is common to gin. the tonality of gin’s drying aromas likely becomes more extra-ordinary when angelica tonally modifies juniper. besides beautiful overtones we also enjoy the tension between sweet aromas and the anti-sweet, but not everything "works" (is harmonious). to use a cross sensory analogy, the aroma of smoke (anti-sweet) might be inharmonious with very "light" sweet aromas like muscat, but "darker" aromas like blackberry with the smoke might be harmonious. margarita 2 oz. blanco tequila 1 oz. orange liqueur 1 oz. lime juice tequila is laden with aromas from a particular part of the umami spectrum which as we all know is delicious with the grapefruit-like overtone produced by the sweet aromas of the orange liqueur and fresh lime. all these examples are simplified. not all of the units we pair are composed of one single division like only sweet or only umami. most everything is a set of aromas. to go back to the pairing website, it seems like their linkages work not because of the things they have in common, but because of the extra things in the set. besides the overtones some linkages might create, a lot of the pleasure might come from the tension of every other aroma that rides along. satan's whiskers. .75 oz. gin .75 oz. sweet vermouth .75 oz. dry vermouth .75 oz. orange liqueur .75 oz. sour orange juice 2 dashes orange bitters. every component here has some degree of orange aromatizing which might make them seem to go together, but what really makes the drink (aromatically anyhow) is the tension between the orange overtone and everything else (juniper in the gin, various drying botanicals in the vermouths, and cardamom perhaps in the bitters). .5 oz. kirshwasser .5 oz. mezcal .5 oz. sweet vermouth .5 oz. dry sherry .5 oz. yellow chartreuse .5 oz. sloe gin the aromas of this drink are seemingly unrelated and create a vast collage of the different divisions, all fairly harmonious or an easy to acquire acquired taste. i do not think using a microscope to see various common molecules in ingredients is going to tell us what "goes together" (is harmonious). we probably need to deconstruct the multi-sensory perception of flavor, categorize aromas (probably with raw human empathy), and develop a theory of acquired tastes and harmony. a delicious journey.

the article made me wonder how they propose to take the sugar out of people's diets. i think the solution would be to acquire "acquired tastes" which i see as a rebellion against our drive to seek sweetness. if you develop a taste for "dryness" in all of its forms you may be healthier. i stop by the coffee shop every day. i take mine sugarless while i watch so many other people heap on the sugar. we all probably get the same satisfaction out of our cup, but the sugarless coffee drinker is probably healthier. what process got me to crave dryness? in the fall i tried to develop a theory of acquired tastes: Sweet Rebellion: a short theory of acquired tastes and an unsavory explanation of harmony then i tried to explain the mechanics of the change to dryness: “Culinary Aestheticism – A Tale of Two Harmonies” everyone knows the problem, but can we engineer a solution with a cultural change? it is easier to take the sugar out of your diet if you learn to like it less.

.75 oz. lime juice .75 oz. cynar (actually bitter) .75 oz. bianco vermouth .75 oz. kirshwasser dash angostura (not a significant source of bitterness) a synthesis of something grapefruit like. quite extra-ordinary in its tonal effect. bitter sours have been a never ending source of amusement.

i'm curious as to whether cognac can use a "raw" aromatic sugar because they have various sets of laws that try and maintain some artistic constraint. hannum and blumberg's "brandies and liqueurs of the world" (1976) which is the greatest book on spirits ever written, mentions "a 1921 decree forbids 'manipulations and practices designed to improve and increase the aroma of natural eaux-de-vie, in order to deceive the purchaser regarding their substantial qualities, origin, and type.' It is nevertheless permitted, according to both judicial and administrative decisions, to add four substances to cognac prior to bottling: distilled water, caramel, sugar, and an infusion of oak." so they can add sugar but i'd assume to follow the decree it would have to be bleached and non-aromatic. hannum and blumberg say they can add "2% by volume", but i think they mean by weight, but regardless that is in and around 20 grams / liter which seems like a lot to me. my understanding is that these brandies can pick up substantial tannin and acidity (relative to other distillates) from the wood and any sugar might be added in good taste. not to get too far off the sugar topic, but i've been drinking a lot of the renegade rums lately and i'm convinced that one of the ways they are making a market for these rums that some people would deem too "sweet" (probably olfactory sweetness) is to add acidity to them. they have a strange sensation of dryness, that isn't related to the proof or the nature of the aromas. i wonder if there is precipitated tartaric acid in the finishing barrels that gets redissolved by the rum. tricky business if you need to follow artistic constraints but i love the effect. gorgeous rums.

i buy a columbian "panela" that is also really fudgelike. any idea what is responsible for that character? the columbian panela is also very umami, but just in the same way rhum agricole is. i think one thing that defines some of these unrefined cane sugars is that they come from places that do not have to burn the cane before they harvest it (no venomous snakes is what i've heard). i call these "aromatic sugars". they definitely add gustatory sweetness, but they also bring olfactory tension that can either increase the perception of sweetness or decrease it (umami decreases). using them can be sometimes good, sometimes bad. i hate when very ordinary in aroma (caramel) raw sugars are added to liqueurs. i've seen some amaros and a walnut liqueur fall victim to boring, overshadowing caramel aromas. after witnessing such a waste of good walnuts non aromatic white sugar is nothing to put down. i really like adding the columbian panela to unaged rhum agricoles. it gives the olfactory sensation of age. if you are on a strict budget but need to produce the extraordinary you can add these aromatic sugars to cheap silent spirits (vodka, industrial rum) and synthesize some of the fun of an agricole. aromatic sugars play a big role in certain liqueurs. chambord (honey) yellow chartreuse (acacia honey) amer picon (probably malt sugar) grand marnier (i speculate that they use an aromatic sugar to synthesize the tonal effect of adding older cognac to the orange peels) some amaros like the nardini (something annoyingly caramel) the nocino from maurizio russo (something annoyingly caramel) vermouth often relies on aroma from a "mistelle" which is usually concentrated muscat grape sugars (often very orangey-elderflowery in aroma)

Does the pectin turn it into a jelly, or are there other problems? i've had batches of strawberry infused tequila that have jellied. and i've had lots of batches of dried cranberry infused tequila that develops lots of pectin flecks. i think the difference is the final alcohol content with the flecks developing at higher levels. the acme juicer is known for aerating juices but i've finally got a food saver with the canning jar attachment so i'm going to experiment vacuuming things like pineapple juice to de-gas it. i'm really curious what the results will be for things like apple juice. if i can juice the apples really fast via basket press or acme, add ascorbic acid, and de-gas can i retain their color?

chris, i love the idea. whats it like. the aroma of tequila juxtaposed with corn? are you ending up with any hard to clarify solids or strange PH sensations? it seems like a good candidate for redistillation. i've never worked with nixtamal and i'm not sure in what form you buy it, but if you can give me some more pointers i'd love to join the experimenting.

the discussion here needs to properly separate the aesthetic aspects of a product from the symbolic. i think the original question is only concerned about aesthetic limits. there are things to be gained from larger production sizes. of course you can make a wine, beer, or distillate manipulating only ten variables, but often times there are countless more variables that can be put to use, but you cannot get at them until the size of your production grows. in wine, an example might be "punch downs" and "pump overs" which influence the extract of things like color and tannins. you do not have much control of these variables with a five gallon batch. home distillers have a big disadvantage creating aromatized distillates (gin, absinthe) because it takes so many generations of making the product to abstract something from the aromatic ordinary to the extraordinary. if they or a large group of their friends have to drink all the product before they can start the next generation there is no chance they will get anywhere aesthetically extraordinary (and then reproduce it). i used to make "vermouth" for the bar i worked, but eventually as i learned to take on more variables (closer to "monumentality") my batch sizes would grow and equipment costs. basically i cannot make the vermouth of my dreams for less than $10,000 and a lot of physical space we didn't have so i stopped. you can on the other hand, make small batches (one liter of distillate at a time) of phenomenal fruit brandies with a comparative advantage. the to-be-distilled wine making process is often a simple paint by numbers process because you don't have to worry as much about non volatile aspects like tannins. you can also use tricks to simplify the cuts like constantly separating the distillate into tiny jars to taste and mix later. so the whole process becomes largely about the fruit. you can make a pretty faithful expression of that old apple tree in your back yard that season. terroir is a widely misunderstood term because marketers love to exploit the symbolism of the word. also different abstractions of the winemaking, brewing, and distilling process either accentuate or overshadow terroir. most popular techniques in practice today overshadow terroir for the sake of consistency. terroir and consistency are definitely antonyms. terroir and "acquired taste" are often synonyms.

another way to look at 25 and 32 brix is 275 - 363 grams per liter of sucrose. bianco vermouth probably has between 160 - 175 g/l though these ranges aren't good guidelines until they also state how much acid contrasts the sweetness. 363 g/l sounds cloyingly sweet without an intense amount of acid. another thing to consider (if you want to exploit every variable possible) is the "sweettart" phenomenon. as sugar and acid increase (greater tension), so too does extract (dissolved aroma) or the result will taste hollow like a sweettart brand candy. this is something that dessert wine makers worry about; the trifecta. extremes of temperature do distract us from paying attention to gustation of which sugar content is a part, but i wonder by how much. years ago a pastry chef i worked with made a breathtaking bianco vermouth-bergamot orange sorbet for the james beard house. and recently i just had a stunning sorbet of a flavor i can't remember served with dolin bianco as an accompanyment which was a lot of fun. keep us posted on your results.

at my house because i'm always shaking triples and larger, i swear by the canning jar. quart for three drinks (9oz.) and a half gallon for six (18oz). fill them to the brim with ice. double strain into another shaker tin or pitcher then pour it out for everyone.

Have you had a chance to look through [amsazon=0771022530]Taste Buds and Molecules: The Art and Science of Food With Wine [/amazon]? Interesting! Thanks i'd say the fairly equivalent book on wine making is maynard amerine's "the technology of wine making" love it or hate it, most of the modern wine industry is built from amerine's books (the road to hell is paved with good intentions). if you are good at connecting the dots yourself, the text is a treasure trove of information that can be applied to the anthropology of food, sometimes a restaurant kitchen, and especially a bar program.

snip... "spatial effect" implies that the drink was composed with the aesthetic, sensory, side of beauty in mind as opposed to the symbolic, exemplary side and it was also composed using spatial intelligence instead of linguistic. snip... the divide between the symbolic and the aesthetic can also be used to explain most of the new cooking that is happening. what we call things like "molecular gastronomy" or "modern cuisine" could very usefully be called "aesthetic cuisine". this new cuisine can be undeniably delicious and beautiful, but is detached from traditional techniques (sometimes no longer economically viable) and "if it grows together, it goes together" juxtaposition. this new cooking is mostly powered by spatial thinking. hopefully i did the idea justice? Thanks. I had to read this a few times and let it simmer. I think I was with you up to the "molecular gastronomy" part. It seems to me that all that making food look like something else or have completely different texture from that we normally associate with the taste is much more symbolic than anything. I can see that the two aren't mutually exclusive but I would think that bacon flavoured bourbon is more about the (symbolic) surprise of the taste of breakfast in a glass than about the aesthetic that diner breakfast pairs well with with bourbon. anytime you abstract food into something like a new texture you create both aesthetic and symbolic change. when you go so far as to make food look like something else (looks like a this, tastes like a that), you add elements of expectation/anticipation which makes the food "expressionistic". all food has expression, but when you label it "expressionistic", it just means that things are very loud, very deliberate, and you use every trick in the book. that bacon aromatized bourbon can be thought of as poor man's single malt scotch. if you enjoy the aesthetic tensions of certain single malts, but cannot afford them, you can synthesize them somewhat with a little bacon fat in a bottle of bourbon. i'd say the whole reason its worth attempting to classify things, even if you have to learn some basic art history jargon, is that it helps us to figure out what art does, and so when we create it, make it do more. when you connect with people through the aesthetic side of beauty, you can encode subversive messages using beauty's other side and create change.

Odd. I have not found St Germain to be acidic. Perhaps it has more sugar that it tastes, partially balanced by its pH? I would not have thought that from tasting it, and I certainly use a fair about of acid when mixing with it. I'm imagining that my experience of this drink would go like this: smoky -> similar to Islay -> wut wait fruit? -> get that out of my scotch. Cultural experience, I guess. st. germain is a distillate of elder flowers cut with an infusion of the flowers then sweetened. they do this because the flowers are so acidic, sort of like hibiscus. st. germain is modeled after things like pinot des charentes but probably with more sugar. the reason i think it often "madeirizes" or turns darker in the bottle is that the acids with the help of a little heat, invert the sugars caramelizing them. i haven't had st. germain in quite a few years now and i wouldn't be surprised if they remodeled it and made it sweeter with less acid. my new favorite place to get the elderflower aroma is ames farm of minnesota's elder flower honey. as far as the aromatic contrasts go culturally, i doubt you could respond to them the way you described. cocktails are a game of aesthetics and we who mix them obsessively just look for raw tension. lots of scotches are finished in secondhand barrels like madeira anyway which is aesthetically similar to the elderflower experience. but for some reason i feel smoke & elderflower is more likely to be aesthetically dissonant than something like smoke & orange. if you try and think of it with the minds eye, there is more "distance" between the aromas of the smoke and the elderflower than the smoke and the orange.

chris, do you really think this drink has olfactory problems (the rum) and not gustatory problems (your sugar/acid/alcohol ethic)? your go to drink, the manhattan, has a drastically different gustatory setup than this one. here you made an above average in alcohol sour with a ruthless sugar/acid ethic. saint germain is largely contrasted with its own acidity, so its sugar does not dent that lime juice much. if i made the drink i'd reshape it like this: 1.5 oz. la favorite rhum agricole .5 oz. chichicapa mezcal .75 oz. lime juice .75 oz. demerara syrup (assuming 1:1) .5 oz. saint germain 2 dashes scrappy's grapefruit bitters if i made it again i'd trade the st. germain for either maraschino, sweet vermouth, or a triple-sec. i've enjoyed mezcal and agricole together in the past.

Green Cuisine in Legoland a great article in times opinion pages about rene redzepi and his "trash cooking" besides cooking food that i'm sure is aesthetically fantastic, noma is reattaching positive symbolic value to food sources that were symbolically bankrupt. this reattachment is very important to beauty's composite nature (aesthetic, symbolic) the sustainability idea that redzepi attaches to all his aesthetic work makes him widely accepted even though he is probably following the "soulless" MC play book in the kitchen. though Noma does appear to have a bigger emphasis on aesthetic substitution than i've ever seen in a cook book (haven't yet seen MC). its easier to feel and to practice than to convert to language and teach. fantastic work. i can't wait to infuse my MC enabled creations with my own symbolic values. the potential is just so vast.

.75 oz. seville sour orange juice .75 oz. brandymel (algarve honey liqueur fortified with medronho) .75 oz. mezcal (vida) .75 oz. blanco tequila (agavales) dash peychaud's float of lemonhart 151 delicious, but quite "extracted" from so much dissolved aroma. i was really on the fence whether i should use an non-aromatic sugar source or not. all the orange peels of course are saved from making a triple-sec like shrubb that is fortified with unaged cape verdean rum.

"soul" might be related to the idea that "beauty", which we are all in pursuit of, is a composite of the aesthetic and the symbolic. MC is part of an un-unified culinary aestheticism movement. most all other branches of art have already been through aestheticism... aesthetic values are emphasized over the symbolic. if you really explore the concepts, you find that symbolism often stands in the way of sustainability. other subversive things also become possible with knowledge of beauty's deconstruction. of course you don't want to throw symbolic values away. aesthetics (raw sensory experience) can be over emphasized and you really compromise a lot of potential beauty. the symbolic side of beauty is really important to cultivating "taste" (converting dissonance to consonance) which is integral to sustainability. you just have to build symbolism back up in a practical way. what is crazy is that if you really analyze the patterns of success in restauranting, symbolism and exemplary behavior usually always trumps aesthetic value. i have yet to receive my copy, but i have a feeling the book's intensely comprehensive look at the abstraction of food never investigates important topics in culinary theory like the order of operations to the multi sensory perception of flavor, creative linkage & "tension", or the patterns of pleasure that exist in what we eat and drink. i am extremely excited about the book, i can't wait to apply all these techniques of abstraction to all my deeper theories of perception and pleasure. i might even give up bar tending to cook...

the panama rum is pretty cool. i'm not sure if its typical of anything else from panama. the rum is hard to put into words. fiery and dry. there is not much density to the aromas and everything is fairly light on its feet. the dryness is also subtly contrasted by sweet port wood aromas, but they are not exactly glaringly obvious. i'm not in love with it, but i really don't like rums with ordinary aromas like vanilla or caramel. this rum lies solidly in "extraordinary" territory. "spatial effect" implies that the drink was composed with the aesthetic, sensory, side of beauty in mind as opposed to the symbolic, exemplary side and it was also composed using spatial intelligence instead of linguistic. i was just in a bar where the bartender was trying to make a drink with scotch bonnet peppers. he was thinking of composing the drink of the peppers, scotch, and honey. the logic of the creative linkage was that "scotch" and "scotch bonnets" go together symbolically because of the play on words as well as "bees in a bonnet". he didn't start with any aesthetic considerations like what sort of tension should the drink feature between sweetness and acidity. nothing is wrong with this approach, its just one way of doing things. as an exercise, i went to the opposite extreme. i thought only aesthetically and had no regard for any symbolic aspects of the ingredients (two ingredients from italy wouldn't break the collage). i tried to render the aesthetic points of tension of my ingredient choices within the minds eye to find some pleasurable shape.. this shape was based on my other favorite shapes (sour drinks). what i wanted the drink to be had to match what i actually ended up with and i think i succeeded fairly well. the aesthetic-spatial approach has many benefits. for starters its more sustainable. you can work effectively with ingredients that might not be from classic cocktail books. they can either be brand new or from foreign countries that weren't a part of cocktail culture. you likely only have a comparative advantage with a product when it has no tradition of use. these fringe products are very important with the escalating prices of traditional products. in preserving fragile traditions it is also beneficial to make a market for them. you also can effectively produce beauty among a variety of perception strategies. not everyone will be literate enough to understand the play on words from the symbolic drink example, but whether they know the names, provenance, and lore of their drink's inputs or not, they will find solace in their favorite aesthetic tensions. you can avoid the symbolic aspects of beauty, not the sensory-aesthetic. of course you can compose beauty out of both the symbolic and the aesthetic. the symbolic should never be overlooked because it is the main catalyst for acquiring aesthetic acquired tastes (very important to sustainability!) most bartenders and most chefs use lots of spatial thinking. the problem is that they use it without the spatial vocabulary to translate it into linguistic communication. this is part of why so many chefs yell in the kitchen. they feel things they cannot say when trying to teach. the divide between the symbolic and the aesthetic can also be used to explain most of the new cooking that is happening. what we call things like "molecular gastronomy" or "modern cuisine" could very usefully be called "aesthetic cuisine". this new cuisine can be undeniably delicious and beautiful, but is detached from traditional techniques (sometimes no longer economically viable) and "if it grows together, it goes together" juxtaposition. this new cooking is mostly powered by spatial thinking. hopefully i did the idea justice?

.75 oz. sour orange juice .75 oz. green chartreuse .75 oz. cinzano bianco vermouth .75 oz. 1997 panama renegade rum finished in port wine barrels dash peychaud's bitters we wanted a simple four part collage but lost it when we couldn't find anything but vermouth to hold down the low sugar content quotient of our formula (vermouth is orange peel aromatized). i searched in vain for the pommeau, pineau des chartents or even the rose vermouth, but alas it was all gone... the drink was very successful. comforting gustatory structure. ambitious aromatic tension. epic spatial effect!

Zedoary, Centuary and Imperatoria are all listed in the table of botanicals common to vermouth and other flavored wines from Maynard Amerine's "Technology of Wine Making". Centuary is listed as "European Centuary" and the table lists the whole plant as used. i feel like i've seen a tincture of it at whole foods. Imperatoria is the italian name for masterwort or hog's fennel and the root and leaves are used. Zedoary might be a synonym for turmeric according to botanical.com. they describe it as "The odour is camphoraceous, and the taste warm, aromatic, and slightly bitter, resembling ginger" i couldn't find the "carcamon" listed anywhere.

Thanks. Yeah, I've seen the ones for Scotch, so that was kind of what I had in mind. I think if someone created one for gin that would be very useful, at least as a guide for when you're trying to figure out where some of these gins and gin species fit into the scheme of things. i think eric asimov's recent article in his "the pour" column is relevant here. he tries to come up with a binary analogy to describe wines at the minimum. a few words to give the gist... i can't say he really nailed it in the article, but the idea is really worth while and i've tried to use it in the past. he is basically seeking an analogy that is as effective as "warm" & "cool" colors (a cross sensory comparison of vision to thermoception) simple analogies lend themselves to spirits really well because compared to wine, gustation is simplified. so we are near only dealing with alcohol content and aroma instead of the additional soup of acids, sugars, tannins, etc. if we can classify all aromas in terms of gustation (a cross sensory analogy), when you think of gin, just think of the distribution of aromas that increase the perception of sweetness and those that decrease it. the tension between these two categories (the anti-sweet aromas could be subdivided but we are not going to) contributes to the emotional content of the gin. emotional content being the spectrum of repulsion to elation. every one interprets this emotional content their own way largely based on all the acquire tastes (dissonance) they have metabolized. you could even use a point scale like 10 points "dry", 3 point "sweet" which might be something like tanqueray. beafeter might be like 8 to 3. bols genever 6 to 6. barely dry american gins which might be 5 to 4 (the only acquired taste in these american gins is the alcohol... boring!). you could follow up with an extra analogy for the spectrum of the sweet aromas because malt "sweetness" is very different to citrus peel. maybe something like "light" or "heavy". malt would have a heavy, sweet aroma.

i've never met someone who actually knows their triple sec from their curacao. of course many will give you a historical/symbolic explanation of them, but that means nothing in a game of aesthetics. ratios increase empathy. you have to have an aesthetic, plane conscious, spatial understanding of ingredients to put them in even ratios and hit your mark. the wacky ratio and adding to the drink after you conceptualize it in your head is the crutch. its a sign that you probably don't aesthetically understand the bottlings you are working with. painters don't add extra canvas to a work after they have started. it would be a failure and mean their concept was off. they pick the canvas and work within its bounds, but use a large palate of colors as well as an intricate knowledge of perception.

cool. i though the color might have come from a few grams of raw sugar in conjunction with a barrel. apparently not. is it correct to say that the ransom old tom has more dissolved aroma than a typical london dry? what is your aesthetic definition of an "old tom"? i wonder if there was an economic angle to old toms creation. were there botanicals significantly cheaper than juniper yet aesthetically similar (olfactory dryness) that they put in the gins? if these these cheaper to produce formulas came out sharper in aroma than juniper, maybe a little gustatory sweetness was needed to tame them. most botanicals that create olfactory sweetness (citrus peel) are probably expensive and therefore not in budget botanical formulas.

a refractometer won't work because they are only calibrated for water solutions so the presence of alcohol throws them off. but every bar should have a refractometer! i'm sick of tasting sloppy homemade syrups with wacky sugar contents! a hydrometer works well (or better yet, a set of narrow range hydrometers) but you need two charts to decode the reading you get. one chart will tell you the influence of the alcohol printed on label and the second will convert the adjusted gravity to an easy to interpret grams / liter. i have the method summed up on my blog in a few posts. advanced sugar management basics… advanced emotional content basics (liqueurs!) the second link has lots of data on products. the limits of the measuring technique are that you cannot find measures less than 30 g/l. so you are not going to get precise measures on old tom gin or that grappa, pisco or cognac that you think they rounded out with a few grams of sugar. it can do wonders for understanding liqueurs, especially orange liqueurs. the chart i link to for finding the impact of the alcohol on specific gravity is not the best and has has no data for solutions under 20% alcohol. the best chart is in the reprint of Irving Hirsch "manufacture of whiskey, brandy, and cordials"