bostonapothecary

That's one technique* he really can't claim to be his own. *Ultimately the technique called infusion. the technique is called "enfleurage" and has been practiced by perfumers since the 19th century. are there really any techniques being used currently that do not have such closely tied "prior art"?

1 oz. aquardente de medronhos, nova (strawberry tree brandy from algarve) 1 oz. faux pommeau 1 oz. green chartreuse 1 oz. lemon juice i don't even need to patent this because no one else has medronhos. this is rather epic. the brandy and green chartreuse have serious affinity. the high acidity coupled with the apple aroma create a strange and round "green apple" effect which creates awesome tension with the contrasting aromas of the brandy and chartreuse. a hallmark of medronhos is its "ghost of tabasco" aroma and it definitely doesn't get lost in the drink.

1.5 oz. overholt rye 1 oz. amontillado (bodegas dios baco) .5 oz. cynar .5 oz. "faux pommeau" *** ***faux pommeau was created by basket pressing common american apples then freeze concentrating their sugar using the faux ice-wine technique over many iterations to get a fairly high level. i think i hit 255g/l of sugar and had .5 liters of concentrated juice which took .333 liters of 50% alcohol lairds bonded to reach the goal of 20% alcohol final product. and the final sugar content is 153g/l putting it in the range slightly lower than most sweet vermouths. i seem to have nailed the taste metrics but faux pommeau does have some olfactory symbolism issues on its own. the aroma is kind of common and therefore shows no "bouquet" or enigmatic "space in-between" character from aging (yet!), but will probably be drunk before it could ever develop. this cocktail synthesizes a "bouquet" via the aromatic overtones and internals of the other ingredients. i really liked the drink but it would be more enjoyable if tonight wasn't 95 degrees and only 8:00 p.m.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05Plumpy-t.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp from the front page of the new york times. a patent war for the "plumpy'nut" peanut paste recipe which is used more or less solely to feed malnourished children in developing countries. the recipe for this peanut paste is pathetically simple. its gives some cocktail recipes a run for their money in the pathetically simple. the prior art to me seems to make a patent unjustifiable. if this patent is unethical because people profit from other's charity who seek to help the malnourished lowest members of society, i'd argue that a cocktail recipe patent is also unethical because most imbibers are malnourished in artistic quality.

welcome to the culinary arts "establishment". get ready to become increasingly "hassled by the man" just like any other establishment its got courtiers (brand ambassadors), gurus (spirits reviewers & many authors), and just a few individuals (the increasingly rare "connoisseur") even more like any other establishments, information is tightly controlled to maintain power structures. the establishment is afraid of transparency (books on spirits are usually pretty pathetic because no author is allowed to know very much which is why pacifying photography courtesy producers are emphasized). transparency often tarnishes an image and dissipates their mythology (cognac producers don't want you do know about additives like "boise". champagne teaches everyone about manual disgorgement but then relies on the transfer method). they are not afraid of propaganda and misinformation (vermouth producers created lots of technical misinformation to create barriers to entry). vast swarms of information are maliciously thrown at us from the establishment. all this information is mainly trivia and is used to eat up all our time so we can't get a grip on reality and really understand anything (express doubt and challenge a price). the wine industry seems to be the king of trivia. until more connoisseurs have popped up recently (fighting the good fight), you would have spend your entire life learning only about the cru classifications of french wine and why they are justified but never about the wine itself (its rare examples of tonality, tension, and emotional content, etc.) the establishment has a strong dictatorship of language. marketers have corrupted all our words for communicating (balanced, complex, etc) and forced definitions of categories (gin) to prevent innovation not protect consumers. connoisseurs have lost huge ground in developing new ways of communicating and culinary art isn't really going anywhere because of it. a bartender is supposed to be a connoisseur (doing connoisseural, subversive, establishment busting things) and largely has been in the cocktail renaissance until this new ambassadorship trend has taken many to the dark side. although they use them all day and can love them, a bartender should always have an air of doubt about a brand and i don't see much of that. the demand for IP protection takes everything to a whole new level. unwarranted protection further stratifies the structure strengthening the establishment. i think i have just usurped the word "connoisseur" and now have to strip from it all negative connotations of snooty, boring, dorks. a connoisseur is now an anti-establishment freedom fighter who would not want to see the IP-recipe protection. my recipes are up for grabs. and if in your drunken exploration, you forget the source of your inspiration to put kirshwasser and single varietal honey in everything you drink, don't worry about it. its never the same as if i make it for you.

this thread seems to be reinventing the wheel a bit. the machines used to making clear blocks for ice carving are very simple. they basically fill a container with no special water, agitate from the top with pumps, apply cold "energy" from the bottom, and get all the results we are looking for. there are youtube videos if anyone is really curious. there probably is no better way to do this. the question really becomes how can we scale this down in size with off the shelf parts. do we need a temperature differential from the top to the bottom for it to really work, or is agitation at the top alone enough? they never freeze all the water but rather leave a few inches at the top. but what prevents this from happening? if they are dedicated to watching the machine they might just stop the process before the entire things freezes and the pumps become endangered. if all we need is agitation, maybe we could find some sort of pump or stirrer that could be powered by the light bulb socket of the freezer. i do have a small GE reach in freezer that i bought on sale for $120 to help with random catering jobs. i use it to freeze big cloudy & cracked blocks which i crush for the simple catered drinks. i was wondering if i could find an off the shelf pump used to long run times like a hot water circulating pump and convert this freezer into a mini block maker replicating all the principles that makes the carving block machines work. any ideas? i'm willing to drill some holes and spend a tiny bit of money.

had this one mixed up at the Gallows in the south end. 1.5 oz. clement VSOP .5 oz. plymouth sloe gin .5 oz. yellow chartreuse 1 oz. lemon juice dash angostura. i love how these agricole rums just can't be overshadowed...

.5 oz. kuchan blood peach brandy 1.5 oz. unaged rum from paul valley, santiago, cape verde 1 oz. taylor's velvet falernum 1 oz. lemon juice dash angostura i used lemon juice instead of lime to not overshadow the contributions of the falernum or peach brandy. the blood peach brandy contributes to an overall strange fruit expression that is pretty cool. the unaged rum brings serious sophistication with its intensely fresh, sugarcane pungencies. some old books on distillation make the claim that in the olden days rums sometimes would be made with a mix of molasses and sugarcane juice. makes you wonder if that was what made clear rums like havana club special. if its the case, you can get a glimpse of the effect by mixing a fresh sugar cane rum with an all molasses like cruzan. i can't go back to anything unaged and molases. its only cachaca and cape verdean novas for me...

1 oz. van winkle 20 yr. bourbon 1 oz. kuchan indian blood peach eau de vie 1 oz. lemon juice spoonful of sugar this eau de vie has enough aroma to over shadow that of the lemon and make you think you are drinking a glass of peach juice & whiskey. if this were the dead of winter i could imagine the experience being even more refreshing. a great drink, but the van winkle brings some shade of wood aroma that i don't particularly find ideal. i'd either try it again with a younger bourbon or maybe a martinique rhum.

a rendering of fish house punch as a single serving 1 oz. smith and cross .75 oz. cognac (gaston de lagrange) .25 oz. kuchan barrel aged peach brandy 1 oz. lemon juice bar spoonful of sugar this turned out really great. all three spirits add up to an awesome tonal effect. the kuchan brandy is tricky stuff. the distilled peach aroma easily conjures up bubble gum and aromas you would think are artificial. i actually can't enjoy it on its own. it really seems to require a high acid context like fish house punch to escape that negative symbolism. kuchan wasn't really the first modern peach eau-de-vie. bonny doon made a fantastic one using a nectarine cultivar a few years back. however skill fully produced, the product flopped and supposedly there is still a warehouse full of it. for some reason when i wrote about bonny doon's product a few years ago i thought it was an unfermented eau de vie, but a nectarine definitely has enough sugars to make a distillable wine. i have no idea what i was thinking back then.

there are tons of "finger prints" of what was drank at even the beginning of the 20th century. vermouth was economically very significant and techniques of studying it were very sophisticated. really common measurements were alcohol, extract (broken down into its components), total acid (broken down), PH, alkaloids (which i think implies bitterness), and tannin from Amerines abstracts.. in 1889-1890 Boireau, R. distinguishes sweet and dry as well as "mellow aromatic and ordinary vermouths" in the annual report of the board of the state viticultural commissioners. by 1905 there were papers being published on defining vermouth mainly to enforce a percentage of wine that had to be present. from 1904 there is also a paper by mensio, c. and a. levi that analyzes twelve turin vermouths from the paris exposition of 1900. the paper notes that there were large differences between minimums and maximums of the metrics they measured. another few papers from the beginning of the century, show that many of the vermouths had more volatile acid (acetic) than we would tolerate today. so basically we can know a lot about what was being consumed. in the modern era, one important distinction is vermouths made from real wines that evolve when aged or opened and near neutral wines that are basically inert vessels for alcohol and natural acidity. in the inert wines all aromas comes solely from the botanicals. i've collected lots of these research papers on vermouth, but what i'm really looking for are similar papers on aperitifs and liqueurs. the old sugar contents could really tell us a lot.

for me i don't need some establishments authoritative definition of gin. i'm a connoisseur. i'm my own authority. i don't even need bottles labeled to conform to my opinions. we probably don't need consumer protection from bad art. if people want to make "sprite eau-de-vie" and call it gin let them. as long as i have buying options. any liquor establishment would have a hard time regulating gin because we don't even know enough about the nature of aromas to force a quantifiable definition. "a gin must have X grams of extract from juniper per liter." this wouldn't cut it. the "dry" in london dry refers to the tension between aromas that decrease the perception of sweetness (and contributions from alcoholic proof) and aromas that increase the perception. its beyond our means to force a sense of tension and it constrains innovation. many potential gin botanicals exist on either side of that tension. my definition of gin is: 1. contains juniper. my favorites being the juniper dominated. though i also like hops as an juniper alternative. 2. cheap. gin is full of opportunity for ingenuity. so many producers waste effort and money making their own intensely neutral spirits at poor economies of scale when the creative linkage of their botanicals is weak. you can make gins i'd call great for low dollars. 3. gin is full of protectionism and high art exclusivity. and its part of the fun! the science of producing gin is barely public knowledge. which is why so many new producers struggle to produce anything great. established producers also create barriers to entry by claiming the usage of botanicals that are insignificant to their recipes. new producers apparently fall for it. so many new products smells more like sprite or black pepper because bombay saphire tricked everyone into thinking their success was due to botanicals like cubebs and grains of paradise. the evolutions of a less dry style to appeal to the vodka convert doesn't sum it all up for me. i believe it is because the most economically significant gin drink is/was the martini and many producers internalized the aromatic contributions of dry vermouth (stole vermouth's market share in the drink) and the lemon twist. for the last several decades barely a bartender knew how to effectively use a lemon twist. they only served inert pieces of rind so there was an incentive to internalize their effect. now that the vermouth free martini is less economically significant, demand will grow for truly dry gins that create pleasurable tension when mixed with loud adjuncts (think grenadine) that increase the perception of sweetness (we love the tension). people are also back to acquiring acquired tastes. through great bar experiences, the dissonant pine tree is becoming the consonant soul purifier.

Can you clarify this part? If you freeze concentrate, then the alcohol separates out? What do you do with the resulting syrup? I suppose you could mix it again with the infusion at service. Which press did you buy? How much did it cost? my understanding is that those electric dehydrators rely on heat and they can therefore influence aroma. some fruits are tougher than others. i've used sugared-dried cranberries for years now. i press the fruit and concentrate pre-alcohol. you can do all sorts of things to serve. immediately adding only alcohol to stabilize is an option and gets you in the territory of the typical infusion. you can also add alcohol and more sugar to create a liqueur. only sugar would get you a syrup. i use a no. 25 ratcheting basket press from northern brewer. it was $300 but i've already gotten a ton of use out of it. a basket press is the perfect solution for hard to juice things like pineapples and strawberries.

you can always start with a higher proof spirit if you want to go the infusion route and have more stability. unfortunately there aren't many overproof options. at work we only use dried fruit because of their lack of water content. the problem i see in theory with second-iteration infusing is that the second round isn't as efficient as the first because there is already aroma in the solvent so less will be removed from the strawberry to create equalibrium. yet lots of water and alcohol will trade places lowering the proof in greater magnitude than the gaining of aroma. this does assume you are not pressing the fruit afterwards. but if you have a press, (one of the best toys i ever bought) you can create a non alcoholic juice concentrate with the freeze concentration method then be free to make syrups or high proof preserves like tequila por mi amante. a nice feature of the concentrates is that they take up very little space in the freezer.

if your alcohol content is over 20% you don't have to refrigerate. you only have to worry about oxidation so use only jars that you can fill to the top if you want the most vibrant color and freshest aromas. fruits have a significant water content and it will come to equilibrium with the alcohol cutting your overall proof. there are tables of water content for fruits that you can use to estimate how much of their water you are diluting your spirit with. the fruits you are using are about 85-90% water so don't add more than 50% fruit by volume to your infusion and you'll be fine.

.75 oz. lime juice .75 oz. brandymel honey liqueur from the algarve 1 oz. vale d'paul "nova" cape verdean rum .5 oz. armagnac (forget the bottling) quite the sour. refreshing structure, exotic pungencies. the vale d'paul nova could have just become my all time favorite spirit pushing batavia arrack van oosten to no. 2. i also made this with ames farm single source elder flower honey instead of the brandymel (plus a dash of angostura). the honey is astonishing with a focused elderflower aroma and an overall paleness. you wouldn't know you were tasting honey. if i can get more i don't think i'll use st. germain ever again. though if you want a pale honey with a focused aroma, bass wood is where it at.

definitely. no refrigeration necessary. 20% alcohol will give you shelf stability even with low sugar contents (think dry vermouth). increase the sugar content beyond 170g/l (an estimate, think sweet vermouth) and you can be stable at as low as 16%. the honeys are fairly expensive and we keep a big library of them so people can try stuff. nothing ferments. nothing spoils. it would otherwise because the sugar content is cut down to a point where it doesn't desiccate the yeasts and bacteria. also you can easily make tiny quantities if you don't want to invest too much. the bar at work only has one gin (and one aquavit) so keeping many honeys has been a great way to add significant variation to our small program.

[quote name=Kohai' date='17 June 2010 - 04:24 PM' timestamp='1276813484' post='1747311] Can you elaborate on the "usual alcohol-preserved syrup" technique? I am curious what you're using here. Is it just honey syrup with a float of vodka or something more?

bees knees 1.5 oz. linie aquavit .75 oz. lemon juice .75 oz. ames farm bass wood honey from minnesota (usual alcohol preserved syrup technique) the ames farm bass wood honey is in my top five of coolest honeys out there. it is pale in color if not green tinted and has strange focused aromas that remind me of lime aftershaves (in the best possible way!) a lime-like aroma might make some choose lime juice as an acid, but i didn't want a competing comparative aroma obscuring the honey's expression (i also prefer lemon juice with taylor's velvet falernum). aquavit is a spectacular foil for honey's aromas. aquavit is simple stuff. an arrangement of a few aromas with serious attention to the tonality of each. the simplicity yields serious emotional content. this rendition of the bees knees did everything a perfume aspires to do... but this drink was like those simple near mono-aroma colognes and aftershaves that you see sold at smoke shops. they often end up being more powerful and emotionally charged than all that overly "complex" "unique" stuff you see at saks 5th ave. i just wish i had some mono quinine bitters to throw in the mix...

le panto is a really cool brandy which is aged in pedro ximenez casks. quite the spirit to sip on late in the evening. i've never had much luck putting le panto in cocktails because its aroma is so rich. it over shadows so much and doesn't seem to be flattered by acidity. but it is excellant in simple flips and b&b like creations such as equal parts le panto & walnut liqueur. i've bought lots of strange brandies in the past from countries like georgia, but too often they are raisin brandies and the aroma is too simplistic like a box of california raisins. i haven't really explored armagnac but everyone i've had i've loved. they all reminded me of what jamaican rums were aspiring to be, but were much wilder and more potent. i really want to explore putting a few bottlings through some cocktails designed for jamaican rums and see if the comparison has any merit.

the pineapple syrup was a fun recipe and i used it quite a few times on a large scale for some catering. i'm sure the "pure juice method" (concentrated or not) is much more intense than the infusion method. when you start to turn freeze concentrated juices into syrups its easy to make them aromatically too intense. it only takes a little more aroma to make the syrups really exciting. now that spring is in full effect i've been having a lot of fun with strawberries... the basket press is the perfect tool.

what do people want to see in an advanced cocktail book? i've been penning a book of theory that explains creative linkage (what goes with what) in culinary. all told through the cocktail... the idea is to teach the mechanics of the classics so one can build intuition when ones mixes whatever lies around. when you look at the different ideas of creative linkage that drive the wines we exalt and the dishes we gush over, the same ideas also often take place in the cocktail, but are more portable. i'm trying to tackle more of the "why?" that was left out of the awesome book "culinary artistry" by using techniques from music and painting analysis. the cocktail becomes one of the best places to learn about art in culinary in general. for a thomas keller style book, would anyone mind seeing a recipe if it required a basket pressed-freeze concentrated syrup that has to end up at a precise gram measure of sugar to really execute a recipe? cocktail books seem to have some sort of accessibility requirement.

1.5 oz. vale d'paul aguardente "nova" cape verdean rum .75 oz. sour orange juice .75 oz. unheated "fresh" sugar cane juice freeze concentrated to maybe 300g/l this was an interesting drink. i was hoping that i could abstract some cool aromas out of fresh sugar cane juice by concentrating it in the absence of heat. eh, its not that cool. there are some fun exotic green aromas pre-concentration but they get largely overshadowed by the caramel aromas. overall on its own, the syrup doesn't seem too different than lyle's golden. sugar cane juice can also be tricky in that its so high in potassium it can be laxative, sticking to .75 ounce of this syrup easily keeps you in the safe zone. the cocktail however, surpassed my expectations. i really expected the "stuck" and overshadowing caramel aroma to dominate but it didn't. somehow if i tasted this drink blind, i'd think it was made with a slightly aged martinique rum like st. james, but i bet i could get the same results with a spoonful of turbinado...

bees knees 1.5 oz. montanha genibera superior aromatica (portuguese gin) .75 oz. cristinalda "brandymel" (54 proof) .75 oz. lemon juice this was an interesting riff on a bees knees with some portuguese products. the structure of the drink seemed tarter than what i make at the restaurant due to the difference in sugar ethic of the honey syrup/liqueurs. a cardamom-like aroma was brought into focus some how, and was an interesting contrast to the honey. revisiting the gin alone, there seems to be an aroma like cardamom that rivals its juniper aroma. the tonal effect of the honey is pretty spectacular for a $14/750ml liqueur. brandymel is something i've overlooked for quite a few years now. apparently its been produced for the last 55 years in the algarve region of portugal and is based on traditional folk rememdies for sore throats that use honey. the liqueur is essentially honey (maybe local?) preserved and aromatically contrasted by "medronho", which is a fruit brandy from the arbutus or "strawberry tree". medronho is crazy stuff, though i've never had it by itself. the artisan tradition of its often illicit production detailed by joao mariano's photo book "alembics and alchemy" (i've only seen the photo exhibition published on the web) is the most interesting culinary tradtion i've seen in quite a while. simply wow. as far as romantic appeal, medronho completely surpasses american moonshine. i'm familiar with the arbutus because i've been buying strawberry tree honey for a quite a few years now, but from a corsican source via formaggio kitchen. my limited understanding of the fruit was that it barely had a sugar content, was oppressively bitter and strangely only fit for one of the greatest honeys of the world (a pungent and slightly bitter honey) being related to the strawberry tree makes brandymel interesting stuff. the fortifier has some serious pedigree, but where the hell does the honey come from? it smells wonderful and is definitely not bulk clover. based on my experience with the arbutus honey aroma, its likely not single varietal or something else, but who knows. the area is supposedly crawling with the trees, and no accounts of medronho production i've read describe the fruit as being barely sweet or even bitter so arbutus might be a component in the honey and its just reflective of their unique terroir. i just don't understand how a country can make products of such high quality for so little money. portugal is a gold mine of culinary treasures.

the downside to steeping in alcohol is just a lack of control. most of these modern liqueurs are fortified to near the minimum of stability so they can maximize aroma and not have an aggressive alcoholic hotness. i think they strive to be more like a dessert wine. it also helps if you want to have a precision sugar content. so if you can quantify the numbers of where you want to end up. alcohol, sugar, aroma from juice content. (mimicking another product?) juicing first just helps parse out the problem so your numbers are easier to tackle. if you have a surplus of fruit and aren't afraid of not maximizing your juice yield. the potato masher cheese cloth method sounds good.