bostonapothecary

i'm in love with sour oranges... .5 oz. sour orange juice 1 oz. clayton's kola nut tonic 1 oz. lemon heart 151 scant dash angostura flamed twist of a sour orange. one ounce of lemon heart brings an awesome concentrated rum flavor to the drink. clayton's kola nut tonic isn't too sweet so this still ends up a sour drink. clayton's probably differs from roses significantly in the sugar department. it also seems to have a lot of acidity and intense lemon-lime citrus notes to it. a sour orange twist is far more potent than a conventional orange and when you raise your match to it without even squeezing fire works go off... a squeeze gives you an orange torch... this batch is different than the last batch i ordered for the bar. they are a lot browner, the peels seem stiffer and more concentrated in oils. a large one only yielded a half ounce of juice...

i've spent the last year or so periodically checking in at tropico in roxbury for clayton's kola nut tonic but have had no luck... i just saw it available on www.barbadosmarketplace.com based out of hyde park on the edge of boston which i'm pretty sure is also the importer that sells clayton's to the local caribbean markets. i placed an order for a couple bottles so hopefully it will ship. clayton's had to reformulate because their coloring was acceptable in the UK but banned in the U.S. so hopefully they are back in action. the product is affordable yet highly amusing and i've had a blast with it.

I've had good success infusing Appleton V/X with Lapsang Souchong. I've used it as a basso foil to the more soprano notes of valencia juice + St. Germain (sorry, I oftentimes think of spirits and cocktail ingredients in terms of musical pitch), and also construct Asian-themed sours with it as the base alongside lime and one of Domaine de Canton/Batavia Arrack/Soju. Any ideas on how I can retain the necessary acidity, while using a more authentic Eastern fruit? ← you could add really good yuzu juice concentrate to saki with some wine makers acid if thats not too creepy and "molecular"... sometimes i invent acids when i have to make drinks for big charity events. usually always dry vermouth as tart as a lemon.

all summer at the bar we've served the "john daly" whom is the alcoholic counterpart to arnold palmer on the course and in the glass.... 2 oz. black tea rum* 3 oz. lemonaide *to make the black tea rum.... put black tea in rum and try to keep small quickly used quantities so the tea doesn't oxidize too much.... 45 minutes of steeping works nicely. newmans own lemonaide is far superior to anything made by hand and really captures the essence of the man in the drink.... as far as a tobacco pairing.... menthol cigarettes are the perfect foil for the drink.... ← The New York Times just wrote about the alcoholic black tea-lemonaide concept today. anyone else having fun with tea in drinks? i'm really into caraway aquavit with spiced hibiscus tea...

Possibly, although I think xanthan gum is preferred for stuff like this. If you can stabilize with gum arabic, I'd love to hear how much it takes. I'm also curious about how to convey to people that just because something separates, it doesn't make it an inferior product. Is it so wrong to have to shake your bottle of orgeat before you use it each time? Are we so conditioned by industrial food that if we see separation or color variations or "refrigeration required" that we assume it's not a good product? Is there a way to battle this perception? ← part of the problem is that all these recipes are perceived as "mad science" when they are closer to rural traditions... an old mans hobby or something someone's grandmother would make...

true, but one takes over and snuffs out the other. i know there are health nuts that are into lacto baccilus fermentation and they talk about minimizing the activity of other types like alcoholic to get the results they want. I used to have a keen interest in the microbiology of sourdough breads, which involves fermentation with both wild yeast and various lactobacilli. So I can tell you for sure that this is not correct. Are there certain conditions one could establish that minimize either yeast or lactobacillus conditions? Sure. But this isn't, generally speaking, one of them. You also have to understand that, in a spontaneous fermentation like this, there are going to be plenty of microorganisms in there fermenting away in addition to yeast and lactobacilli. Think of lambic beers, for example, or any of the many potential contaminant organisms of homebrewed beers. In a sugar-rich environment like this, the lactobacilli eat sugars and excrete acid. For sure, fermentation by lactobacilli will increase acidity (I should also point out that their activity is also largely halted beyond a certain pH). But, you know... all the microorganisms in there will eat a little bit of most things in the mash. ← i looked in amerine's "technology of wine making" but it didn't explain too much about this scenario. fermentation supposedly precipitates pectin then in this case you strained it out... other cool and unique things probably also happened that would not make the technique obsolete. i wish i could taste it!

true, but one takes over and snuffs out the other. i know there are health nuts that are into lacto baccilus fermentation and they talk about minimizing the activity of other types like alcoholic to get the results they want. is there any literature that might explain clearly what exactly the lacto type eats up and spits out? i think acidity would be increased like in certain sausage's fermentation. when pectin is metabolized (by which yeast type i don't know) it spits out methanol too but probably even a lower content than a wine.

do you think the fermentation is alcoholic or a lactic bacteria fermentation? the intention here i guess is to break down pectin but i think either way this fermentation is known to increase aroma...

i know there are lots of books on spirits but when it comes to things distilled, no books really compare to the wine technology books. too many things are shrouded in myth. and too much knowledge is trivia. many people think rum is sweet because its made of cane sugar... we probably just need better teaching resources. to bring it back to creole shrubb. if creole shrubb and say cointreau existed in the wine world there would be analysis somewhere (UC berkely/davis? or florida?) that explained precise guidelines on how to make them. sugar, alcohol, acidity, non sugar extract, and then more what ifs and FAQs like what cointeau leaves behind when its distills it oranges relative to creole shrubbs infusion and then the sensory and chemical differences in the peel types. spirit producers seem to live off myth and superstition.

i just got a bottle of aged citadelle gin. its kind of interesting and really similar to the seagrams distillers reserve. they both have the same mature mellowed juniper character but the citadelle has more orange aroma and a color that shows more evidence of the barrel. anyone doing anything notable with it?

Nowhere. Just one of the MANY things I am not able to get here, including Old Forester Signature, Laird's Bonded, Pueblo Viejo, Carpano Antica, Amaro Ciociaro. Overall, quite disappointing. To answer Andy: you could try Witty's or Shopper's Vineyard, or just see what you find with Google Product Search. ← i know a liquor store that has a large amount of old forester. i think the bonded laird might be finally available because i've seen it in a few bars but most liquor stores won't pick it up. is there a clear reason why antica wouldn't be available in more markets? there is a demand. not even cirace in the northend has the ciociaro. but i will say that boston has lots of cool products that other markets don't. cape verdean rum is one of my staples... the distributor and importer grape moments carries lots of cool stuff that i've never seen in a bar. there are tons of places bringing in spanish and portugeuse products too. some are horrible and some are awesome. lots of raisin brandy.

where in boston are you finding the force 53?

a pink lady sort of drink... 1.5 oz. gin (seagram's!) .5 oz. pear eau de vie .75 oz. grenadine .75 oz. lemon juice egg white tastey!

There are so many issues with this menu. For me, it's just another example of a bar program surpassing fundamentals for pop flavors: rosewater and cucumber with hendricks gin (and a rosewater sugar rim), rosemary, vanilla, basic molecular (sodium alginate, i can only guess) and more rimming than any bartender should ever be subjected to. Everything shouts "look at me! im full of flavor! i won't taste anything like my base spirit!" Not to poo-poo too much, but all goes to show that the naming of their cocktails can't really be held up to classical rigor. ← i think they are afraid of subtlety and the owner must run a vanilla bean plantation or something. at least they are not too brandy happy on their menus.

so i tried the sanru and found it to be very dry and sophisticated... quite the aperatif but i did use manzanilla pasada over an amantillado. the pasada may have more body than other manzanillas but i guess you still get more acidity than can skew the balance of the drink... under the right mood i'd drink it again... i also drank the artists special cocktail... 1 oz. overholt 1 oz. harvey's orange aromatized sherry .5 oz. grenadine (i didn't have the funky currant syrup from the savoy) .5 oz. lemon juice i actually made this three times. first i used the low sugar primi frutti strawberry liqueur instead of grenadine but the sugar balance wasn't ideal. i really enjoyed the rye version but then kicked it up a notch with glen fiddich 15 yr which is rather smokey and seems alittle off balance in a fun way... pairing the sherry with the intense scotch was awesome and added serious depth to the drink... you could really taste the contributions of each to the drink. simple grenadine provided interesting enough flavor contrast but next i'm gonna try some chartreuse. the harvey's orange is a keeper.

i've got my case and half of seville peels steeping... but i did not dry them out. they have a really big moisture content which will dilute your alcohol but i see no advantage to drying them if you were not going to save the peels for later... i put a sugar content, starting alcohol content dissection of cointreau on my blog if anyone wants to make an orange liqueur. the intensity of the peels is up to you!

← It's good no matter what, but that drink really begs for Calvados I think. Also, imo, it should be made as a 2 oz drink but drank in the same time as a 3 oz drink, to better contemplate the flavors. Not something to drink when you are in a hurry. ← the widows kiss is hard to metabolize but so worth it.

it wouldn't surprise me. i asked lots of specific questions and only got a few cut and paste answers. there are only a couple worth while ambassadors out there for big brands. alcohol sales really rely on pretention, mystery, and supersticion. if consumers are too well educated too much sales can be lost to wellers, overholt, cruzan, and gordons...

so i emailed Ludovic Miazga who is the noilly prat brand ambassador quite a while ago about the differences between the american noilly and the european version... he also notes that the "L'Enclos" outdoor aging method is meant to replicate the products early sea journey (like in madeira) that noilly rarely gets any credit for...

SanRu @ saveur.com saveur points out the sanru cocktail from a mid century spanish bar book. 1 oz. amontillado sherry 1 oz. dubonnet rouge 1 oz. gin 1/2 tsp. cherry heering anybody ever try it?

so i just picked up the orange peel aromatized sherry from harvey's. the product was launched a couple years ago as a gateway to get more people into sherry but was unfortunately doomed to obscurity... well its quite tasty. and i'd say probably less orangey than lillet... and it needs a cocktail to show it off... so far i made the dewey d but i only had campari... i'd say it has about the same sweetness as the lustau east india solera. well the drink did show off the sherry but it didn't blow my mind. i kind of wanted to contrast the orange against other things by not mixing it with other orange aromatized products like unfortunately most all amaros. i did mix something like a last word/ward 1:1:1:1 rye, orange sherry, green chartreuse, lime juice.... only slightly amusing and the sherry really got lost... anyone using it? any ideas? 2 oz. rye 1 oz. orange sherry 2 dashes fernet this will be my next try...

i drank this a few times recently... 1 oz. cynar 1 oz. chamberyzette (replica) 2 oz. prosecco kind of like the negroni sbagliato...

i made the bronx again but with carpano antica. the drink brought out all the vermouth in the antica and made everything taste like a creamsicle... kind of weird and not very elegant... i just got another case of the sevilles so i need to find some st. james rhum asap. any savoy cocktail book recipes that may be better with seville juice?

Can you explain this ingredient? ← a ratio of affordable london dry gin contrasted with carribean malt soda to create a new back ground for the gin... simply redistilled to maintain the same alcohol content. malta goya has a really similar shade of "malt" character as what i've tasted in genevars. (but my experience with them also isn't that big). certain beers do awesome things with the various shades of malt. good flavor genre.

i revisited the madeira sour and really enjoyed it. 1 oz. glen livet "nadura" (cask strength) 1 oz. "boston" bual madeira from the rare wine co. 1 o.z lemon juice scant spoonful of sugar egg white. stir to dissolve sugar, dry shake, shake, decorate with angostura bitters... really interesting focused flavors... madeira seems to enjoy the frothy sour medium... i wish i could get cask strength madeira finished single malts...!