bostonapothecary

an attempt at a collage. .5 oz. boissiere sweet vermouth .5 oz. la cigarrara manzanilla .5 oz. hiram walker kirshwasser .5 oz. del maguey chichicapa .5 oz. plymouth sloe gin .5 oz. cape verdean licor de canela (cinnamon) similar to stuff i've made before and enjoyed but with the new addition of an awesome cinnamon liqueur. complex and eerie. every ingredient is about as unrelated as i could get them but add up to a manageable structure.

the salt didn't pick up any bitter or tannic components. i'd buy the salt if the price was right but everything i had was bought and paid for.

1.5 oz. tequila (el tesoro reposado was laying around) .75 oz. grand marnier (seemed like a good idea) .75 oz. lime juice spoonful of pineapple syrup (i was making it at the time i needed a drink) "smoked" salt rim (salt rubbed with ground lapsang souchong tea) flamed seville orange peel ('tis the season) a simple interesting drink. the pineapple adds very little but was in front of me. the idea was to create a smoky mezcal-like experience but on a budget. even without licking the salt, the aroma is a fun contrast to the other elements. easy enough to whip up the salt that i'd do it again...

Oops, sorry Katie, I haven't checked back here in a few days. I have an amazing Italian cocktail book by Luigi Veronilli, "i cocktails", published by Rizzoli in Milano in 1963. Amazing because it's incredibly well organized, thorough, an alphabetized index (!!) AND has the original spirit labels pasted into the book. (Oh, yeah! Total score....found it in a flea market in Udine). He starts his history of the cocktail with fermentaion, aqua vitae etc and then writes: "All that is certain about cocktails, in the modern sense, was beginning to be spoken about in the 1800's. "On July 18, 1806, in the periodical "The Balance" it was written, "The cocktail is a stimulant drink composed of alcoholic liquor of diverse quality, sometimes mixed with sugar, water, bitter; popularly called a 'bittered sling' and is considered vigorous and exciting." S. Veronilli then denounces this definition by declaring the bittered sling a long drink, as he considers the original cocktails to be short drinks. He goes on to give credit to America for developing the art, or the science of mixing alcohol which developed without rules, but in time it became necessary to establish categories. He defines a cocktail as "un acqua vitae modified and iced. And If I'm following his logic, anything alcoholic or fermented is an aqua vitae. In regards directly to bitters (he sites angostura as a bitter and 'bitter Compari as being a modified bitter) he advocates parsimony. Paraphrasing: "It's possible to use too much, of bitters, or pure amari, usually a spray per drink is normal, or nothing, or 1-2 drops. They have the function of giving a drink the hint, or idea of a culinary recipe." Now, what exactly that means is open to interpretation. He lists only one "Campari Cocktail": 1 1/3 glass of dry gin 1/3 glass of bitter campari 1 spoonful of dry vermouth 2 pieces of lemon peel with nothing of the white ice cubes The Negroni recipe is a standard equal parts dry gin, vermouth classico, bitter campari recipe, garnished with a slice of orange. So, what do you think? I'm hypothesizing that he didn't really think too much about amari v. bitter campari. It's interesting to note that its always referred to as bitter campari, not capitalized and it didn't warrant getting a label in the book, although Angostura bitters did. Digging around on Wiki and blogs, Campari is credited with being one of the premier bar beverage marketers. If you stocked Campari, you were required to post a "Campari Bitter" sign at the bar. "Cocktail Times" has a well written article, which also features the whole marketing aspect. So perhaps, its all a matter of finding a niche and exploiting it. Fascinating, non? Edited because I'm challenged by reading in Italian and writing in English. i have veronelli's book "the wines of italy". in the end it also has quite a lot of labels. quite a few are aromatized wines. he also has a tiny glossary of the most esoteric liqueurs. interesting stuff.

i'm never come across rose vermouth but i suspect it aspires to be similar to chamberyzette but relies on fruit contrast from the wine base as opposed to a fruit infusion. vermouths usually contain a certain spectrum of round, fruity character because there aren't many options that won't overshadow all of the contrasting, angular, enigmatic botanicals. the round character of most vermouths exist in a space between elderflower, moscat, and orange because there are lots of common botanicals that can be used to adjust the tonality and they take on sugar very well. the strawberry-raspberry through watermelon spectrum is probably more difficult to produce. sometimes the wine bases of any rose or a grignolino (an indigenous italian varietal i've read that has been used in aromatized wines) is really dense in flavor and it has great potential to overshadow any contrasts you give it. adding sugar sometimes makes it taste even denser. also not much in the way of botanicals can be used to adjust it tonaly. based on whats available in the market, vermouth producer seem to agree that vermouth should not have overshadowing elements. the mixer should be able to do it for himself (spoonful of x). based on old recipes that had lots of vanilla i don't think that used to be true. anyhow, i'd say pick up the bottle and give us a review...

this is why i don't like the word balance in regards to structure or flavor contrast. it never ends up useful. to me cocktails have "direction". this allows for many more options, some being very popular and meeting the averages of many peoples tastes (usually what many call balanced). it also allows for more intensely acquired tastes. i firmly believe a negroni is not balanced (it doesn't meet the average of most people's tastes) but rather has an awesome sense of direction.

my understanding is that it takes very little caramel to color something sufficiently. i'd be surprised if caramel was used with the intention of creating viscosity because there are lots of other options like malto dextrin or gum arabic. its a interesting subject. producers have quite an arsenal of fun tricks and i have yet to find one i didn't think was greater than the sum of its parts. i think understanding what can potentially be done to create them makes them even more interesting to me.

my take on amari, aperitifs, and digestifs are there are few rules. a wine base is probably only a tool to express a certain tonality of fruit or bring natural acidity. amari are not necessarily about being bitter but rather about the manipulation of bitter substances... (bitters substances are a challenge to manipulate because they are bitter) often times the goal is to express aromas attached to bitter substances without making anything recklessly bitter. these aromas sometimes feel metaphoric and can move you in ways. the grotesque metaphoric juxtapositions in some amari are probably more stimulating that any effect of the bitter principle... for the few that have the schemas to to take it in, amari makers can play with expectation and anticipation of aroma to bitterness ratios. amari artists use lots of tricks. bitter principles are extracted at different alcohol levels to achieve certain levels of extraction and then maybe fortified to a certain level to augment that perception again. or some bitter principles are distilled to remove the bitter (because its not volatile) but capture the aroma then that resulting distillate is re-infused with more of the same botanical to have for example 3x aroma 1x bitter. i'm starting to be convinced that some amari even use thickening agents to play with perception. i sense a viscosity far beyond what sugar could bring in some... (meleti, ciociaro)

i didn't realize a grocery store around the corner from me had sour oranges but a friend was kind enough to point it out... 1.5 oz. st. james .75 oz. sweet vermouth (boissiere) .75 oz. sour orange juice (it was near completely green) flamed twist the acidity of the sour orange is an excellent contrast to the low range sugar ethic of the sweet vermouth. the st. james elevates it all to epic...

"future classic"

so i tried this again by changing the st. james and eau de vie quotient to: 1 oz. overholt rye 1 oz. kirshwasser if your crushed ice is handy this style of drink can be created with almost punch style efficiency. tasty stuff. variation of the theme. 1 oz. lime juice .5 oz. green chartreuse .5 oz. coconut cream (coco real) 1.5 oz. gin (laird's five o'clock) .5 oz. kirshwasser float of cognac to contrast the pungently aromatic chartreuse served over crushed ice so chartreuse and coconut is pretty cool.

so i tried this again by changing the st. james and eau de vie quotient to: 1 oz. overholt rye 1 oz. kirshwasser if your crushed ice is handy this style of drink can be created with almost punch style efficiency. tasty stuff.

cafe colada .5 oz. coffee liqueur (kahlua) .5 oz. coconut cream ("coco real" brand) 1 oz. lime juice .5 oz. kirshwasser 1.5 oz. st. james amber stir in a glass (iceless) to mix then simply pour over crushed ice. i'm supposed to come up with drink using kahlua for a sponsored event. this is pretty cool and the structure is really nice. a refreshing amount of lime juice contrasted with a enough sugar to be a crowd pleaser. but coffee liqueur just seems to be a flavor black hole. its over shadows everything in its wake so its all or none. i feel like its too easy to like this drink for its tart structure and miss the point of an interesting and challenging to create coffee flavor contrast therefore i'm wasting precious martinique rum.

i just opened a bottle of carpano antica and i'm pretty sure its "corked" like a cork tainted wine... 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA) no vermouth aroma, only musty wet card board anyone else experience this? it was $30. should i be able to return it like a wine?

what kind of honey is it? chestnut flower would be nice.

isn't the brizard just a vanilla-citrus-violet...? vanilla is not my favorite violet contrast. for me in general vanilla is just as bad as too much anise. are any of the bottlings drastically different in chosen contrast?

i started treating the R&W bottling as just a concentrate. i changed the sugar content to something i thought more intuitive so i could make 1:1 acid/liqueur sours with it and i added extra contrasts because as it stands its pretty one dimensional. a small amount of single varietal honey like strawberry tree or rhododendron, a subliminal amount of anise... a killer blue moon.

i don't think alcohol retards oxidation. but temperature probably slows the reactions to some degree. i think the difference lies in a term called the "oxidation reduction potential". the ORP is the potential for a solution to be changed by oxygen. many distilled spirits and some dessert wines are fully oxidized and have nearly no more potential to oxidize and some aren't. sauternes probably need to be protected from lactobacteria in fridges and not oxygen. aromatized products are different and probably have some potential to oxidize. i haven't seen too much writing on the topic but i think oxydation produces terpenes in many common flavors like oranges, and mint. a lot of products we drink use the "terpeneless" oils of those flavors. i think the oils are oxidized then what "reduces" is separated. pretty sure fernet uses terpeneless mint oil. if i understand the concept i think it could be said that lemon juice and lime juice have a very high oxidation reduction potential and that is why they taste and smell to drastically different after a day.

the minimum for keeping a mixture of sugar, water and alcohol preserved i'm pretty sure are the ratios found in vermouths. 15.5% alcohol can hinder acetic acid forming bacteria and 18% alcohol can inhibit the growth of lactobacteria. apparently increasing sugar to around 170g/l, like in a sweet vermouth, allows you do reduce the amount of alcohol to 16% or so. i had thought i've seen mold or bacteria at higher percentages but what i've really observed has been precipitated pectin that has floated to the top. without being frighteningly sweet, a syrup would definitely have to turn into a full on liqueur to be preserved.

needed a refreshing drift after a big lunch... 1 oz. cognac (gaston lagrange vs) 1 oz. unaged cape verdean rum 1 oz. lemon juice .5 oz. cape verdean orange liqueur half spoonful of sugar dash peychaud's bitters i had recently had some havana club 3 year anejo. it was okay but just reminded me of bacardi silver with a splash of bacardi 8 in it. (not a bad thing. and bacardi 8 is spectacular rum for the money). anyhow i was wondering if i could create the same effect by juxtaposing two spirits to find an interesting overtone of flavors. pisco and cognac might be more appropriate but you'd swear the cape verdean stuff is made from grapes if you tasted it blind. the scant amount of orange liqueur adds its own tonal effect and the overall result is awesome. sometimes for me even a VS cognac in a sour is too mature and too rich. blending it down creates something my moods identify with better.

2 oz. cognac (mason surreine) 1 oz. lemon juice .5 oz. triple sec (citronge is all there is at work) .5 oz. miele amaro (bitter strawberry tree honey dissolved in vodka 1:1) this is similar to a side car but trades some of the triple sec for an exotic honey liqueur. the very unique honey brings awesome contrast to the cognac and the over all experience reminded me of early grey tea. the honey liqueur being sweeter than the citronge averages the drink's sugar ethic into something a little more crowd pleasing. will make again.

more fun with maracuja. hoping for something like a side car... 1.5 oz. cognac (gaston de lagrange vs) .75 oz. maracuja do ezequiel passion fruit liqueur .75 oz. lemon juice pretty cool for the cost basis (i paid $6 for the cognac on closeout and $14 for the liqueur). even though i think the liqueur has more sugar than a triple sec i bet it also has significant acidity making the structure pretty extreme like a normal 2:1:1 side car. triple sec is a great foil for spirits because it hides near nothing in the spirit when contrasted. maracuja is not as transparent and for some reason seems to hide a portion of the awesome cognaciness. fun but not as brilliant as a normal side car.

Moderator note: The original Drinks! topic became too large for our servers to handle efficiently, so we've divided it up; the preceding part of this discussion is here: Drinks! (2007–2009)] i needed some mood adjustment so i went with something very ruthless in structure and flavor contrasts. 1.5 oz. rum jm unaged from cape verde .5 oz. kirshwasser (hiram walker) 1 oz. lemon juice bar spoon sugar 2 long dashes peychauds bitters the rum is more or less sugar cane moonshine. there is no alcoholic burn or uncut fusel aroma like wray and nephews but rather a strange, completely unmellowed, fierce character. incredibly similar to the unaged sample of leblon cachaca i tasted at TOTC. the kirshwasser cuts it down to something manageable and adds awesome fruit contrast. i wonder if crafted american moonshine can be as interesting.

1 oz. rittenhouse 100 rye 1 oz. kirshwasser (hiram walker) 1 oz. taylor's velvet falernum 1 oz. lemon juice dash angostura bitters so i drank this again with a different rye. the rittenhouse is far more potent than overholt and makes the drink really exciting. i had forgotten that i previously used peychaud's bitters but i think angostura may be better to contrast the roundness of the eau de vie, falernum, and lemon juice. i made another similarly themed drink substituing maracuja for the falernum because i thought it was similar in sugar ethic and brought a unique fruit expression. unfortunately i also inverted the acid to lime juice and used a yellowish lime that turned out to be really bitter in a negative way. i guess i'll have to try it again when i'm done metabolizing. in general i was looking for a collage of flavors and was trying to avoid any alliteration which i failed at because of the rye-angostura combo. i think i need some sort of new aromatic bitter that isn't so comparable to rye.

interesting. my ISO of a drink at home has become 3 to 4 oz. of room temp liquid with 5 one inch cubes from the freezer in a 16 oz. "barproducts.com" tin with 8 oz cap. when i move to a larger drink i more or less always change to a canning jar shaker but i do have one slightly larger set i prefer for eggs. that 16/8 seems tiny but my logic is the room temp tin doesn't absorb too much energy from the ice which i feel like larger shakers do. and there isn't too much extra room in the tin so as stuff is sloshing it is in closer proximity to the walls and the ice. if the shaker space is too large liquid is just free falling in no mans land and not maximizing contact. to create "texture" or probably just a frizzante effect, shaking beyond what you think is your terminal cold may have the effect of dissolving increasingly more air into the drink. as liquids get colder they have the ability to dissolve far more air but just like stirring sugar into water it takes time. some times wineries heat up a wine slightly before they rack it into a new container. the tiny gesture dissolves far less oxygen in the simple act of pouring. home brewers also shake their cornelius kegs when force carbonating in the belief that it speeds up the process. a large shaker, ice shape, or a hard shake technique may not help to dissolve gas as much as more time beyond the terminal cold at the risk of more but probably negligible dilution. time costs money so who knows if we will see it happen outside the home.