bostonapothecary

wow, i would never pay that... i'd go with the unibroue... making soda is virtually free. all it really costs you is time... there are lots of things to learn but someone just needs to document them in a modern format to save people alot of time and experimentation... i've been working on it for a while. i didn't want to waste my quinine until i nailed the process in my hibiscus soda...

nope. oh well. but cocktail contests are fun... i wish more spirits companies would do them... i have a weird feeling averna didn't know what they were getting into... without rules there is barely anyway to try a drink submission that would use avante garde or specialty ingredients... so noone can really express themselves... some dumb it down to off the shelf stuff while others are over looked because it couldn't be recreated... well i enjoyed reading the thread. thanks to anyone that posted...

I wouldn't say it's a great drink. Interesting enough, in a sort of academic way to me, between the flavor of the HC Anejo Blanco and Northshore, that I wasn't tempted to pour it down the sink. The Northshore #6, unfortunately not very widely distributed, does do some interesting things with apricot, that make this a bit more interesting than it would be with a more traditional gin. A more full flavored rum would probably lose the subtlety of the apricot. Though, something like the Park Slope, with an aged rum, apricot, and sweet vermouth, would probably be interesting. ← i like apricot drinks but they are dangerous in mixology... if they don't have rugged flavor contrasts or boundary pushing doses of acidity everything becomes merely apple juice... so many wines run into the same problem...

is there really enough flavor contrast to the fruit in the drink to make it interesting? i make one similar style of drink with one low sugar fruit liqueur contrasted with st. james rum... should end up with the sugar content and strenghth of a manhattan... works well and doesn't get boring... i could see it working well with an immensely flavored white rum and a botanically loaded gin... so what is the fullest flavored white rum?

i haven't done it so i don't know for sure but fat might extract the flavor of only the nut and not pick up the tannins... which you could then integrate into the alcohol... alcohol alone may strip out too many negative components...

I was sort of thinking that, seems like it is sweet enough anyway. Would take it in a completely new direction, though (as they always do) ← that much dry vermouth is alot of acidity... an orange is more or less self balancing... so to get any vibrancy out of your spices you need sugar... else they would taste flat like they were barely there... my cousin gave me an old family recipe for "peach brandy"... it was basically peach beer... the term doesn't seem to mean much in certain cultures...

chambord is very different from black raspberry or red raspberry "brandy" i make both and keep them more or less unembellished besides black tea... chambord has these midevil flavors... it is very different... there is alot of heaviness to it. they add alot of honey and vanilla bean as well as cinnamon, clove, etc... on the market matilde's liqueurs would probably be the closest choice... and i still have yet to find dolin dry vermouth around here... congrats on the WSJ shout out...!

last night i had batavia arrack with alpenze alspice liquer,demerara sugar syrup, and lemon juice served over crushed ice and a lemon peel cut for a crusta... (it was actually presented as a "crustacean" exotic flavor contrasts were real serious... the bartender (ben @ no. 9.) tried to create something elegant by splitting the pimento dram up with syrup but i kinda like the intnese full on roughneck style of a 2:1:1 drink... it was still worth drinking again... tonight i had some "rum" (Grogue) from capo verde... this is some clear moonshine style stuff... they actually have the sense of humor to label it as aguardiente... this had a serious funk to it like wray and nephews but something else indescribable... the importer was labeled as a super market in new bedford... i also picked up a bottle of cruzan's "black strap" navy rum... very disapointing... to me and my tastes it was like guiness compared to an artisinal stout... i'm used to lemon heart and gosling's old... this had no complexity and wasn't full on the palate... i will have no problem drinking it but i expected so much more from the smart people at cruzan...

his picture looks beautiful... i more or less gave up on using xanthan gum because it would stick to my glassware... i made the most beautiful sorbet a couple days ago with my pastry chef from the left over seville orange juice from the charity bar thing i did... i thought i knew how to make sorbet but apparently not... i would have easily obscurred its potential on my own... sevilles have the most beautiful orange identity and i think they work magically in a sorbet because you don't have to embellish their acid identity... part of it was even accented and intensified by creole shrub i made from the previous case of sevilles... its strange how harold mcgee's tables show sevilles as being less complex as the sweet orange but they still bring some kind of strange magic and intensity... they barely have any juice maybe they struggle like good wine grapes?

i can't do my taxes without having a drink... some sort of rusty nail... 1/2 african rye whiskey... 1/2 south west france chestnut flower honey liqueur... i'd use ice if i had it... some really full flavored things combine to taste only like chocolate... i thought these two things would be in danger... but in the end it worked out... pipe tobacco with strange chestnut notes... hard to describe but i drank two... the honey liqueur is no scrawny blond dram... this is like a full figured exotic brunette... speaking to you in strangely tongues not used since high school... i think i only wish i bittered it...

i'd drink it... that would make a nice house shot... but is the dantzig sweet? i thought it was just russian eau de vie that had gold flake in it... in the knickebein the chilled sweet liqueur is on the bottom to marry with the yolk... the high proof warm punishment is on the top... plus some other details... delish.

what do people want in a tonic water?? i've been into making soda lately and i just bought a pound of powdered quinine... less sugar... more bitter... acidity? saffron...? yeastiness...? better carbonation...? has tonic water traditionally ever seen any other herbs? an undisclosed whisper of pear juice in the mix to freak people out... homemade soda via bottle fermentation can be seriously artesian... (and i have years to go before getting good at it...) personally i don't think i'd wan't less sugar. i'd just prefer built in, high quality acidity... and i like the old raj style tint of saffron... it reminds me of empire building and decadence... i think i also want the same yeastiness i find in west port rivers vintage RJR champagnes... it also needs to be served out of a frequently used and refilled, scratched up, champange bottles... like schweppes african version of bitter lemon...

i was kinda curious obout the recipe but haven't gotten around to it. i haven't seen much rose at this point in the year... if liquids are hot you kind of dialate the coffee filter and it strains much faster... i have a metal one that you buy at the super market and sometime i just heat it up with hot water so my room tempt liqueurs go through it reasonably well... cheese cloth isn't always fine enough... often i just use cloth napkins... after time small particles clump and strain much easier so like in wine making patience is necessary. in my experience room temp is fine as well as something is out of intense light. for a fortifying wine in my experience corking isn't that official. lately i only use 750 ml beer bottles and have gotten a capper for them... its the cheapest, easiest and most successful seal... your corks will probably work fine. oxidation is very important to vermouths and fortified wines... usually a thorough canning locks it in time so you need to get it to a point you like before you can it... i have stuff i put in beer bottles from a year ago that tastes like the day i canned it... oxidation through a second hand cork probably won't oxidize it to death but you can always transfer its container if you get a better method so don't worry about it too much. the screw tops probably work all right if there is little oxygen in the bottles. before i cap mine i fill them all the way up the neck... if you care nothing of pretention and presentation you can use a plastic soda bottle and squeaze out the air adjusting the size of the container to your liquid... so even if you use one ounce you can squish out all the air out again keeping it fresh... don't tell people about that technique its only for people that make their own... cheers!

i'm really into this anchor steam genevieve stuff... i drank some of it straight last night... (most sippable "gin" ever...) the nose was beautiful with interesting warmth... malty and reminded me of tea leaves in a way... the taste is beautiful, mellow, and delicate. the juniper is rather delicate and more or less melts into the other flavors rather than contrasting them. i need to figure out how to get me a supply of it... eastern standard's "fifty-fifty" with equal genevieve, M&R sweet + a dash of angostura orange(?)... is well worth a trip across the city... the simplicity of this thing makes so many other drinks look over engeneered... i also don't think the increased botanical extract level of my own vermouth would make it look as good... this was light on its feet with eerie exoticism... so this stuff supposedly uses the same botanical formula as junipero but does it have the same level of extracts at the beginning? same forground different background? whats going on here?

Only it's no more a Cocktail than it is a Martini, right? So shouldn't it be a Knockhill Sour? ← mkayahara raises an interesting question. When can you append "Cocktail" to the end of your... um... libation? Here's Dave Wondrich from Imbibe!: Where do ye stand, then? I confess to a lack of care here: I named the AAA Cocktail knowing that it wasn't a cocktail by classic standards, but "the AAA" seemed lacking for such a swell drink. ← i thought the AAA was Armagnac After All... 5/10 of Armanac 2/10 of dry vermouth 2/10 of peach juice 1/10 of lemon juice i think something sorta relative to this discussion is whether in a bar scenario you disclose the ingredients or not... if i called the shots sometimes i would and sometimes i wouldn't... i had an incredible cocktail tonight at eastern standard where they don't dislose anything... i think its fun and is useful for dealing with irrational people that have phobias... but i thought i was in some sort of dry martini section but i actually ordered something that was 50/50 anchor steam genavieve and M&R sweet... (orange bitters lemon peel)... it could have been a shock to someone stodgy... the cocktail was incredible and worth discussing in another thread actually... anyhow the surprise worked for me because i like everything thoughtful more or less... i wish i didn't have to disclose ingredients. i'd get away with more vermouth in things... it was the biggest deal last year to stop putting brands on things.

I wouldn't disagree with this. The Corpse Revivers Nos. 1 and 2 are completely different drinks, with the only commonality being that they were either originally or notionally thought of as morning pick-me-up drinks. So why not serve a different drink as a "Corpse Reviver"? My only preference would be that the drink be in the spirit of a short pick-me-up. I wouldn't want a cooler-type drink, or a crushed ice drink to be called a "Corpse Reviver." There were all kinds of drink categories back in the 18C -- although I think that most of them "defined" a feeling and perhaps a style, time,situation or manner of imbibing rather than more well-defined categories such as a Julep. This we have from Notes and Sketches of the Paris Exhibition, by George Augustus Sala (Tinsley Brothers, 1868) on page 374: I wouldn't mind an ice-cold Moustache Twister or One of Them Things myself. (ETA: The quoted work is in the public domain.) ← the corpse revivers one and two are only compeletely different drinks to academic drinkers... anyone else just thinks the drink name "corpe reviver" is timelessly witty... your excerpt from the sketches of paris exhibition is very insightful... those people had a great sense of fun that needs to be recaptured... my shift just ended so i attempted to make myself what one might call a "mustache twister" as a staff drink... apparently to my other team member it was called an i want "one of them things"... (she doesn't have a mustache)... to explicitly describe it, the drink was gin and elderflower-wormwood champagne that i made with a float of barolo chinato...

Amen. ← a rose by any other name is a rose... i wish we could all see more cleverness in names but sometimes the broader market doesn't cooperate... some people in the market need hyphenated and simple names because they are scared of everything and that is sad... i don't hold much of anything sacred but i'd say some cocktail names are more or less sacred and should stay true to tradition and others shouldn't... the jack rose i'd never mess with but that same set of ingredients and ratios would easily become a "corpse reviver" to amuse my favorite, very eccentric, regular at the bar... corpse reviver and names like it to me aren't names for explicit recipes but just synonyms for generic awsome drinks... for people like him (i know quite alot of people like him) that don't really want a classic historical experience we make up all sorts of silly stuff on the spot... he is more amused by frivelous novelty than a historical name... but he does always want a measured crafted drink... he doesn't even want you to tell him explicitly what ingredients are in the drink... he prefers folksy synonyms... kinda weird, kinda challenging... after he drinks something he often renames it, and explains the aesthetic it captured... like its a painting. batavia arrack is usually presented as "some crappy dram that so far hasn't made anyone blind... its sold by indonesian freedom fighters to buy guns... the importer probably is some sort of crazy anarchist" =) cocktails are fun if you like to satarize and romanticize things...

i love hibiscus, i put it in my sweet vermouth. it has acidity but when i make soda with it i still need to add huge amounts of malic or citric acid... i like the malic acid because it seems to turn to hibiscus into more recognizable fruits... i tried to make saint germain & wormwood soda but it wouldn't referment when i added yeasts... i cooked all the alcohol out... but i think they may use preservatives... i wanted a elderflower champagne-bitter lemon parody... but the hibiscus sodas are giving framboise lambics a run for their money... are there any other especially fruity flowers out there that i'm missing? ← so i eventually got my st. germain-wormwood soda to ferment... it has dethroned schwepes bitter lemon as my favorite citrusy soda... so maybe they don't use any preservatives after all... sweet! or rather tart... i tested st. germain against creole shrub with a PH strip... as i've found out before, creole shrub was pretty neutral and sorta surprisingly, st. germain was fairly acidic... i have a digital PH meter so i guess i could see how it compairs to wine... at the moment its looking like a spatlese reisling... J.J. Prum... i drank the classic (from which gentleman's companion i can't remember) "bon soir" drink with benedictine, creme de violet, and in place of the gingerale in the recipe... hand made hibiscus soda... it was pretty good. definitely an after dinner drink... if i made an extra brut style of soda it would be much better... i think benedictine with violet becomes too chocolately... but if i changed anything it would be the benedictine over the violet... maybe chartreuse to make it more adult...

i love hibiscus, i put it in my sweet vermouth. it has acidity but when i make soda with it i still need to add huge amounts of malic or citric acid... i like the malic acid because it seems to turn to hibiscus into more recognizable fruits... i tried to make saint germain & wormwood soda but it wouldn't referment when i added yeasts... i cooked all the alcohol out... but i think they may use preservatives... i wanted a elderflower champagne-bitter lemon parody... but the hibiscus sodas are giving framboise lambics a run for their money... are there any other especially fruity flowers out there that i'm missing?

I am working on one for the Rusty Knot right now to roll out in the summer. The trick is to combine it so it reminds one of floral scents wafting on warm tropical breezes russling the grass skirts of a south pacific babe, not the floral scents wafting on warm breezes russling the chic skirt of a Gauloises smoking french babe. Totally different drinks if you know what I mean. Toby ← wow, i am interested to know how that works out. when a cocktail acurately captures an aesthetic its a beautiful thing... its like nietzsche's "painter with no hands" all you have is a shaker, jigger, and pile of bottles... anyhow on the sweetness issue. i wondered if st. germain had some built in acidity. i can't find any reference to the flowers being naturally acidic like hibiscus is. but they each produce an interesting fruitiness for a flower... maybe i will have to test its PH... i've got the little blue strips for wine laying around... i've been making a liqueur (pomegranite seed) with its own degree of acidity... it naturally has too much. i want to figure out how to precipitate it out to make it elegant... at the moment its heaven when a spoonful is added in an oldschool recipe that calls for maraschino or curacao. the acidity provides structure and the flavor is intensely exotic yet familiar. but... you can't make a traditional margarita... too much acid... tricky stuff this liqueur business...

i've used fruit pits in bitters and haven't died... ←

i also endorse those nylon strainin bags... they are the closest thing to the flannel bags that old liqueur recipes refer to when they strain and squeeze...

that sounds like my style... what recipe did your "pistacheat" work best in?

i use alot of pomegranite seeds. you don't want to muddle them. the flavor is in the mucilage on the outside. they just need patience and the alcohol will do all the work... i've been working on experiments for using wine makers techniques to scale to clarifiying batches of liqueurs smaller than a gallon... i prefer cloth to coffee filters and sometimes you do it once. let it sit for a couple months. small particles clump and then you can take huge amounts of it out with the second filtration after it sits...

i've used fruit pits in bitters and haven't died... cassava is supposedly loaded with cyanide. and to create flour its processed in different way to remove the toxicity... heat is one way to remove the cyanide. so i imagine toasting the pits might decrease your chance of poisoning yourself... i can't say for sure that the method works but if you want to learn more about cyanide in food read about cassava and manioc...