bostonapothecary

i'm trying to ban canadian whiskey from the bar.... the bar manager of course thinks i'm crazy.... i want to get overholt rye bar mats and napkins/straw holders.... i'm a whiskey nationalist.... i don't care if the flavor is different. the cost to benefits to me are particular flavor at the cost of supporting local culture semi artisinal industry etc.... but i can't run my mouth that much because i'd still rather mix and serve rum.... anyhow i think bars need to promote more "when in rome" this is what we drink here and you should too... isn't that how the sazerac and many infamous house drinks got started? canadian whiskey, here anyhow, really isn't in that picture....

i don't use any of that mono flavored fruit stuff. some things that are real just really happen to taste artificial. either due to the lack of acid or just because its a creepy flavor (concord grape). isn't a lime defined by a huge amount of acid? therefore if it doesn't have it you don't really have a lime, just the ghost of one.... i wonder if a concord grape ever tasted good to anyone? or is it so gross because we are desensitized to its extracts which are put into all sorts of industrial products we consume.... alot of poeple have negative reactions to lavender for that reason....because its in their soap and a strong soapy association is made.... i never had an affinity for orange flavors and it may be because of my years as a child using tom's of main orange toothpaste..... and that is why i love gin......

i made a liqueur with a similar flavor profile.... it is an interpretation of the monastic "usque baugh".... it is driven by anises and saffron.....they used raisins and pounds of sugar....i used dried strawberries and no extra sugars..... its pretty serious stuff. complex with the saffron hitting the tail and lots of fruit and anise on the mid palate to keep it very full. the finish is very long and the proof is really high (80). dried and very concentrated raisinated fruits do very vell with anise and saffron.... its like pairing curried wild mussels and sultanas with a greco from gravina in southern italy..... those people live for that stuff and their wines which on their own are creepy just sing with the food..... the dishes and the wines are not highly acidic so i would use some real restrained acidity in any cocktail modeling it.....

most of those bottled juices suck because they don't presserve acidity so there is very little to define the fruit.... it all tastes like bubble gum.... i'm been enjoying guava in chris schlessinger's guava ketchup at east coast grill.... killer on a turkey melt or their plantains....

i haven't seen moxie in a while else i'd pick some up.... i just did a large serious of highballs for our new cocktail menu. we were way too busy to keep making complex cocktails so i had to make things as cool as possible with too ingredients.... so i use a cool mixer and a cool liquor.... they all focus on a comparison or a contrast.... my favorite which has a real serious cult following is the half & half aka john daily with black tea rum and lemonade..... perfect contrast. i tried to do a "la paloma" with "chocolate bitters" but no one seemed to get it but me.... i made the bitters by basically adding brizard creme de cocoa with straight rye grapefruit bitters from a bitters bottle.... it was supposed to be all about the play on words and method of application.... i thought i was clever. no one else did....it tasted good too....chocolate and grapefruit....hells yeah. the bitter makes the squirt soda seem more real.... lately i go through huge amounts of cynar and soda. i have used up quite a few liquor stores supply.... its light in alcoholic enough that i can drink as much as i want.... i also drink "grizzly's" (kola nut tonic and ginger beer) you can do alot with one liquor and one mixer.... mono infusion is awsome. sometimes your liquor will seem like it sucks and then when you mix it you will see how things like sugars unlock flavors and fill their roles as flavor carriers / flavor enhancers.

most all ethnic syrups i've bought have been composed of too much glucose for the sake of preservation.... i try to find syrups or sodas that are based on cane sugar.... i've now gotten to the point that i won't use any syrup i didn't make myself in a drink. but you can study any other product as a model. i just raided a carribean market for everything they had. then we tried to make sorbets from some of the stuff and it jus didn't work..... most of the syrups are concentrates to make drinks like "sorrel" or spiced "mauby" you can get a snap shot of what its all about then you need to procure the real ingredients.... i usually make large batches and then put it all in canning jars. i wish i could find some sort of micro batch carbination bottling machine to make small batches of well carbonated avante garde sodas....i only know how to induce natural carbination....

flor de jamaica soda.... celray soda.... clayton's kola nut tonic.... squirt soda.... tamarind.... sparkling apple cider.... lambic beer (sacriligeous to mix but it tastes so good....) personally i just make a bottle cocktail and throw the whole thing in a soda siphon and carbonate the whole mess..... though i was banned from doing it at work because on a couple of occasions i drank too much of it and got all messed up.... pisco with carrot orange consome (ferran adria) full sparkling espresso martini (all me and the main catalysit for the ban) fully sparkling mojito paired with my falernum sorbet (real serious) blah blah blah flavor of the week.... i think next week i'm gonna get krunked on some mauby bark soda with some rhum agricole....

we just put pimms on the cocktail menu... we needed a new sour.... i wanted pisco but the bar manager wanted pimms.... we compromised with a peruvian pisco & pimms sour.... aka the fitzcarraldo.... marrying europe and all liquid things bourgeois with jungle sensibility and sincerity.... make your own proportions to taste.... add an egg white or not.... strain up into a small canning jar.... serve on fresh rocks in a larger canning jar.... add orange bitters.... then sit back and listen to some caruso....

a great drink! but the mexican's call hibiscus "flor de jamaica"..... i've been doing a study of the flowers across cultures. it is huge everywhere but not well understood in america.... my favorite use... bottled jarritos "jamaica" soda & blanco tequila...

I think the evidence is that it's still possible to taste a Julep just fine even after it has reached a low thermal equilibrium. Certainly there is an effect in which flavor sensations are changed by low temperatures, and overall "more" things will be tastable at warmer temperatures. But that's not always a bad thing. I don't think so... Do people really think that adding sugar to room temperature cognac would give tasters "more time to experience the nuance"? I've never heard that theory. One reason to add sugar to cocktails is that perceptions of sweetness are inhibited by low temperatures. Therefore, a spirit that tastes balanced at room temperature may not hafe sufficient sweetness to be balanced when it is chilled. This is easily observable at home. Take a couple ounces of rye whiskey and tip in a short dash of bitters. Taste it at room temperature. It tastes just right. Now, dump the rest of the whiskey and bitters mixture into a shaker of ice and shake the crap out of it. Strain and taste it again. Suddenly it doesn't have enough sweetness to be balanced. This is why a Whiskey Cocktail includes teaspoon or so of thick simple syrup -- to bring the chilled drink back into balance. When the cocktail warms up, voilà!: it is now too sweet. ← very interesting.... so the colder the better to negate any cloying effect.... but it still stretches the sensation on the tongue giving you time to taste more..... i always thought that is what the sazerac and the mint julep were all about when using really fine spirits....

Heh. I agree. Seems like, from what you describe, that extra-fine ice would be important if you're going to make it in a 12 ounce glass. ← mechanics of it all..... if its too cold is your tongue too numb to taste any of it....like an over chilled white wine?? isn't the theory of adding sugar to a fine spirit to stretch the flavor on your tongue so you can have more time to experience the nuance?

isn't tequila cosmo commonly known as "rude cosmo" ?? i'd drink one.... eastern standard does something called the jaguar.... blanco with green chartreuse and amer picon i think.... it sounds completely decadent and is probably only drunk by people that use those cigarette extender holder things.... and drive alfas, MGs, and fiats etc....

la mojada.... (the wetness) 2oz. "tequila por mi amante" (my recipe for aphrodisiac flower tequila and an exercise of synonymous flavor depth.... anejo into apple into manzanilla (earth apple) into damiana (baja aphrodisiac flower) all sweetened to a calculated degree with the nectar of the agave....) .5oz. creole shrub (nothing else has enough sincerity for the drink...) juice of a lime! (one oz.) shake it up, serve in a canning jar, then propostion any pretty lady drinking it with the dirtiest thing you can think of and have your barback cover the rest of the night for you.... damiana flowers can be dangerously bitter if not properly handled.... i seem to have gotten it down and fly through liters of the stuff.... the liqueur has an evocative herbal quality that is in harmony with the tequila's natural character....the nectar is merely there to carry the flavor and stretch the finish giving you time to savor the depth.... at no point is it cloying on its own.... the half ounce of shrub must be measured because over pouring would be disasterous.... garnish the drink with a decent size wedge of lime.... if she uses it, she is sweet enough, likes a tart drink and is therefore my kind of woman....

the people of tlaxcala make a drink called "verde" because of its mint... but they are not like east coast peasant people so they add lime.... i made about a 100 or so of them yesterday and 86'd every brand of blanco tequila in the house.... i told everybody they could only have beer or my cinco de mayo drink and most were so impressed by my arrogence (and taste of the drink) that i got a couple rounds out of them.... it helped that i was drinking them while working and of course that it was served in a canning jar....

mint juleps.......wednesday's food column in the new york times.......check it out... i love having wednesdays off. there is a nice gin article also.....

That's for two big slushy drinks. Not so much, when you consider that low temperatures inhibit perceptions of sweetness. ← the list isn't horrible. it is just alot of kitsch.....fake flavors. a billion purees. all toned down for simple audience. there is a couple places like that in boston. the bartenders make serious loot slinging lame stuff. but behind it all are often fairly serious about the stuff they personally drink.... serious bartending doesn't always have the greatest economics. it sucks to try and make intense, beautiful cocktails when you have a service bar that buries you while also trying to serve four course meals.... good looking out on the simple syrup i was worried for a minute.... this is all making me thirsty, punt e mes on the rocks then lunch.....

does the blood and sand work because the cherry interacts well with the sweet vermouth..... cherry being often a component of red wines. and fitting in with the flavor profile..... apricot fits in with the rich whites and dessert wines and may not compliment the sweet vermouth. i don't know what bianco vermouth is all about (and i should probably pick up a bottle tonight....) but you might want to flip the majority of the components and you would still be within your theme..... flip the bourbon into rhum agricole..... clement VSOP.... APRY.... M&R bianco..... OJ still or perhaps another carribean juice??? real pineapple juice with out added sugars.... maybe lillet or the white dubbonet's would fit in.... "sang et sable" "sangre y arena" cheers.

omg. 2 oz. of simple syrup.... i'm sweet enough.... i wonder if the author reads egullet and can enlighten us to the theory of the recipes. aligator pears are cool. it might be more fun to make a drink that specifically paired with them in some sort of tapas.... some ingredients are not meant to go in drinks but rather along side them IMO.... salty rich guacamole interacting with a nice "zero dosage" cocktail.... sign me up!

is the book's writer an authority that should be taken seriously or just some yahoo with a book? i never waste my time with proportions that people propose. they are usually not ideal. when i read those books, i try to focus on the pairing concepts, what you tastee first, second, etc. or how it rolls across your tongue. also unfortunately too many drinkers like margaritas i would consider badly made.... that is a big problem where i work. i'd like to think i could make many drinks to please even you people..... but the red necks i serve don't get it. they need the cloying and void of flavor or the especially one sided.....

i've conceptualized a drink that hopefully i can make tomarrow. on sunday while we should have been working... we cut up a pound of robiola (soft sheeps milk cheese) and kept pairing it with wines until we found magic. "what to drink with what you eat"s advice was not very good but we eventually found magic with an american viogner. the subtle earthy nature of the cheese contrasted with the wine and brought into focus intense flavors of carmelized pinapple. the whole thing was fantastic and i wanted to synthesize it in a cocktail. i want to contrast rich, but not cloyingly sweet flavors of literal carmelized pineapple with a couple drops of earthyness curtesy of massively potent white truffle vodka i had made when they were in season. i put the vodka in an old bitters bottle to portion it because its so intense. i want the drink to have the faintest acidity like the wine but to also use some bubble curtesy champagne to fill the void of the lack of acid which is a technique that some white wine makers use. maybe..... 1/1/2 oz. gin. 1/2 oz. carmelized pineapple syrup 1/2 oz. sparling wine (don't be afraid to stir) dash lemon juice 2 dashes potent truffle spirit will report back if i can get it done tomarrow.... if it seems disgusting in theory feel free to comment....

i use the dornenberg book "what to drink with what you eat" alot. i like parts of it and i don't like parts at the same time. i've gotten inspired by it many times. i'm trying to write a book about flavor chemistry from the perspective of a bartender and the transition from wine to cocktails. you can create so many great cocktails by making them function in the mouth in the same way a great wine functions. a big problem with the book is that it gives so many service people ammunition to talk a good game, but they don't sit down and actually taste the interaction of things for themselves.

i've conceptualized this drink for a while now....i wanted to serve it as an aperatif in a very tiny portion but i actually liked it alot and would drink a normal sized one.... the drink is steeped in mythology, flavor chemistry, apothecary science, and of course frivelous novelty = ) "apple of eden".... the first fermented fruit which lead to the knowlege of good and evil..... 1/1/2 oz. apple jack infused with chamomile....to add that earth apple flavor depth..... 1/2 oz. manzanilla.... a light sherry supposedly adulterated with chamomile hence the spanish name "manzanilla" which also used to mean "chamomile" 1/2 oz. cynar.... artichokes are a classic pairing with manzanilla because the cynarin chemical creates a perceived sweetness which livens the sherry and to the drink, the liqueur provides a nice, slightely bitter edge. not super high in alcohol but complex enought to make up for it..... my proportions probably suck so consider those the aperatif edition. i'd probably need mine boosier.....

i was reading that violette flowers smell great at first but then have a chemical that blocks future olfactory sensation in the short term.... a funky effect similar in scope to that of cynarin in artichokes..... can anyone vouch for this???

i tried to order dried violette flowers....but they were back ordered. i should call again tomarrow.... and i don't think they are bitter at all so you could probably use infusion to make the recipe instead of distillation.... infusion would make it more aromatic. then you find the proof of hermes etc.... and the exact sugar content.... and what acidity it has.... hibiscus flowers for example are very tart tasting.... whether it is perceived or real acidity i have no idea.... then you estimate the depth of the underlying character of the spirit..... most qualitative judgement should come in comparing the degree of violette pungency.....everything else i think can be figured out precisely if you have a hermes to compare against. old recipes like that of christian shultz are kinda worthless....but you can learn good technique of flavor extraction.

that is my kind of a drink....double the benedictine and give me a spoon full of wray and nephews over proof and we'd have a winner.