bostonapothecary

Pardon me if I missed this, but are you saying you made the swizzle stick by supersaturating Campari with regular white sugar, and then seeding with the stick? I realize it raises the (no doubt already high) cost, but why not supersaturate with dehydrated Campari crystals? That way you should be punching up the flavours (including bitterness) and the sugars by roughly the same proportion, right? (Not to say that trehalose wouldn't work; I'm not really familiar with it.) it was already made with "super campari" so there was plenty of campari bitterness in there. the starter liked something like: 2 oz. dehydrated campari 2 oz. campari 45 g. non aromatic white sugar heat in a sealed canning jar to super saturate. let cool to room temp. insert sugar seeded stick which is stuck through another lid drilled with a tiny hole i kept adding a small amount of sugar and redissolving it all every few days. i didn't rely on evaporation to concentrate the mixture like other techniques. the idea of limiting evaporation was to keep as much really volatile aroma as possible. currently i've got a few growing in some rose water to see how much aroma a non alcoholic solution can give up. the trehalose just arrived so i'll see how it goes. it was much hyped as a cure all to everything by a scientist friend of mine. so far my recent experiments with solubility have shown that small amounts of alcohol can really hold onto a lot of aroma and if the alcohol content gets really high, counter intuitively lots of stuff comes out of solution. what isn't soluble at really high alcohol levels would interest anyone making their own tinctures and infusion. it would be possible with a rotovap to make an angostura bitters 151 and it would be interesting to see what came out of solution at that alcohol content.

1 oz. medronho 1 oz. ponche de madeira (bottled passion fruit rhum punch based from the island of madeira) .5 oz. danzig goldwasser .5 oz. lime juice over crushed ice and swizzled with campari rock candy swizzle stick the drink is really lovely. i hold medronho in the highest regard. the aroma might even be so great that it was wrong to put it up against the distractions from the texture of the crushed ice and the extreme chill it brings. the campari swizzle stick was not the greatest thing i've ever had. i grew it very large like a commercial rock candy swizzle stick. it took on a pink color, but unfortunately did not pick up enough bitterness to warrant the effort. my plan is to start again but switch to the boutique sugar trehalose which i think will crystallize, but bring less sweetness to contrast any bitterness that gets sucked up. trehalose is known for bizarre and miraculous preservative properties when incorporated in dehydrated things. it is what makes the desert bloom in one rain after years upon years of drought. maybe it will grant my rock candy delicious magic powers.

1 oz. tequila (cuervo blanco) 1 oz. cape verdean tamarind ponche .5 oz. pineau des charentes (brillet) .5 oz. lime juice 2 dashes peychaud's bitters this worked out really well. it is sort of a lopsided collage of things yet adds up to a very comfortable gustatory structure. previously something bitter had been used instead of the pineau des charentes, but the swap resulted in spectacular aromatic overtones and a certain sour shape that is quite refreshing. for some reason all i could scrounge up was cuervo blanco. its nice to have your optimal choice, but i like mixing drinks when you are forced to make do. when you have what you have and you're thirsty, symbols like brands and reputation mean nothing and all there is to consider is sensory values.

channeling the burmese pomello (it turned out to be an overripe one) .75 oz. sour orange juice .75 oz. sweet vermouth (cinzano) .75 oz. pineau des charentes .75 oz. mezcal vida 2 dashes deodorized angostura bitters** **the angostura bitters were deodorized by dehydrating them then reconstituting them with the same volume of neutral spirits to the same proof. i had made something similar yesterday as a very dry 2:1:1 mezcal-sour orange-bronx. i enjoyed mine, but my co-drinker was frightened by it. exploring a sweeter structure sounded like a good idea, but i guess i prefer the drier version. maybe it should be dry but have more aromatic contrast to the mezcal like mezcal-cognac. the deodorized angostura bitters were the remnants of another project. a book i've been reading described the tendency for some elderly people to loose their ability to normally engage in retronasal olfaction. adding triggers like piquancy to food helped enable and turn on mouth smelling in those that lost it. i've seen the phenomenon happen with certain other senses and i think the pattern is that they are all trigeminal senses. the tannins of the bitters are received by our haptic sense which also happens to be a trigeminal sense. the tannins of red wines may help to turn on mouth smelling in those that do not function normally. the same may happen with cocktails that feature angostura bitters. the active ingredient of the bitters may not be their own aroma so much as their ability to turn on our ability to smell in general via their spectacular expression of astringency. so recommend tannic reds for your elderly friends and when you make them manhattans, be sure to go heavy on the bitters.

an egg and some "old engine oil"... 1 oz. lepanto spanish brandy aged in pedro ximenez barrels .5 oz. hiram walker kirschwasser 1 oz. cesar florido moscatel especial .5 oz. cynar .5 oz. la tourangelle huile de noix (roasted walnut oil!) whole egg this was definitely delicious, but the walnut oil is definitely not the greatest sensory attentional feature. some people might call this drink balanced, but i am looking for vitality and that lies in a certain asymmetry which i think was nailed perfectly in the previous tart cocktail. this might actually be my favorite drink with the lepanto which has sat around for years now due to lack of interest.

"roasty toasty" 2 oz. cesar pisco "italia" 1 oz. lime juice 8g. non aromatic white sugar .5 oz. la tourangelle huile de noix (roasted walnut oil!) egg white decorated with bittermen's mole bitters holy wow, is this spectacular. i think the walnut oil helped it froth even more than usual. the cocktail really enlivens and helps carry the aroma of the walnut oil. i debated for a while what type of aroma would pair well with the walnut oil. pisco on paper might not seem obvious, but it supports and promotes and does not overshadow. some dark aromas such as seem more obvious with walnut do not show elegantly in a high acid context. next time i'll add a spoonful of kirschwasser for extra contrast. i just added some boutique olive oils and all the other available nut oils to my shopping list.

2 oz. puysegur bas armagnac 4 g. non aromatic white sugar 4 dashes peychaud's bitters rinse of absinthe (raki-prunelle sauvage-yerba mate) this was a nice drink. the armagnac which i have never seen before was only $25. it has the same aroma as the marmite rye i've been making which leads me to believe they do something distinct with their yeast before distillation. solo, the aroma is unfortunately sort of plebeian and ordinary relative to other pricier armagnacs i've had. in the context of a cocktail its pretty cool. i'll have no problem using up the rest of the bottle.

a rendering of Pip Hanson's (a.k.a. kohai) "Oliveto" 2 oz. vale d'paul unaged cape verdean rum 1 oz. lime juice 8g. non aromatic white sugar .5 oz. evoo egg white wow. olive oil. this is awesome.

i was playing this game the other night with some ladies that run a prestigious art gallery. even though they are at the forefront of modern visual art, they are quite squeamish about their cocktails. they like it when the greatest symbolic attentional feature is also the greatest sensory attentional feature such as a predictable "cranberry martini" with cranberry infused vodka, fresh pressed cranberry juice, and sugar (no lie, they order these). if the drink tastes like it reads they will not end up with an acquired taste. even though they curate and sell visual acquired tastes, they do not recognize them in the other senses. its very sad and they usually drive me crazy (they are redeemingly funny and overall i adore them). somehow (because they overheard me doing it for someone else) the idea of making drinks taste like beautiful fruits that could be real, but do not exist was fun. we made a few, and they slurped them down. we started with the sour orange bronx which conjures the lost burmese pomelo (if it was, it must be behind rebel controlled lines) 1.5 oz. farmer's gin .75 oz. m&r sweet vermouth .75 oz. dominican sour orange juice expressed sour orange peel i was bluffing about burma and only geographically guessing, but when googled they are actually famous for them. then we went with the re-rendered maximillian affair 1 oz. j.m. rhum agricole 1 oz. j.m. (joao monteiro) cape verdean tamarind ponche (no relation to j.m. of martinique) .5 oz. campari .5 oz. lime juice 6 sprigs of mint no one knew what tamarind was so i explained how cape verde was a point on the famous "tamarind belt" that stretches from guyana to east timor. the drink overall conjures monstrous expressions of heirloom grapefruit.

an attempt at inverting a sidecar 1.5 oz. pineau des charentes (brillet) .75 oz. compass box "orangerie" (their orange peel aromatized scotch) .75 oz. lemon juice some liked it and some didn't. i did not think the orangerie provided enough orange aroma to really push this into sidecar territory. re-rendered as more of a collage for a unique someone .75 oz. pineau des charentes (brillet) .75 oz. vergano americano .75 oz. compass box "orangerie" .75 oz. lemon juice this went over really well. a gorgeous, but slightly crazy young woman comes in every now and then wanting a last word, but we have no chartreuse or maraschino so i usually just end up making her something like this. she may also have a crush on me (but i probably also have a crush on her). she only wanted half a drink (as her second round) so i drank the other half. the guy she was with was not amused by our obvious prior bartender-imbiber relationship and splitting of a drink (and so read it as flirting), but i got the sense that it was already a first and last date. i instigated nothing, but merely followed her lead... i think she was trying to challenge him to be competitive and he failed. he didn't seem to understand the appeal of the drink when he tasted it. i keep finding that people (particularly well educated women) like ironic & complex service for dates as a test. if someone on a date for example, does not handle a wine list of only esoteric wine varietals well, they may have complacency issues and cannot scale well to the rigors of real life. this morning: 1 oz. tabasco aromatized gin 1 oz. averell damson plum gin .5 oz. cynar .5 oz. lime juice despite the propensity for damson gin to overshadow, the aroma of the funky gin is definitely the greatest attentional feature. it may be more elegant & accessible if the tabasco aroma was diluted more, but i really enjoyed it. in this context, the gin makes you think you are drinking the real deal medronho of the al garve.

http://bostonapothecary.com/?p=304 i invented an abbreviated technique that may help a bit. you basically put some aged spirit in a dehydrator, dehydrate, then reconstitute with un-aged spirit. it abbreviates a lot of the process, but the results are fun and can be done on the nono-scale. the post explains better.

1.5 oz. lactic acid acidulated malt aromatized bourbon 1 oz. cesar florido's moscatel especial 4 g. non aromatic white sugar yolk the moscatel especial is really cool. it probably has the same sugar content and acidity as a port wine. never having had one before, i expected an aroma like a marsala, but was wrong. the aroma is spectacular and more akin to an old tawny. a complete pleasure to drink on its own. the yolk (leftover from preparing lunch) turns the aromas of the moscatel and whiskey into something enigmatically nutty. perhaps not too distant from walnut.

chris angel's milk of manhattan 2 oz. lactic acid acidulated malt aromatized bourbon (two of my favorite verbs!) 1 oz. carpano antica dash angostura bitters like when the magician pushes the playing card through the plate of glass, the volatile constituents of the acidulated malt are forced in between evan williams. it is like the ghost of a milk maiden controlling a wigi board. creaminess haunts, perches, and lurks just over your shoulder. the specter of prohibition also haunts this drink. but maybe we could all have one together, join hands, and simultaneously cast out all evil like an exorcism.

1 oz. los abuelos blanco 1 oz. "poncha da madeira" (from back of label; contents: rum, sugar, alcohol, water, honey, lemon, orange, passionfruit) .5 oz. campari .5 oz. lime juice dash peychaud's bitters this tastes like their is meat in it. no doubt from the strange agave expression that is los abuelos. you'd think there was mezcal in the drink, but there is no smoke. the bottled punch from madeira is pretty wild. the color is unreal and i bet is mostly a product of the passion fruits. between portugal proper, the azores, madeira, and cape verde there seems to be a trend of high acid liqueurs. those that love st. germain will adore them. the ingredients curiously distinguish between rum, alcohol, and water. which makes me wonder if they either dilute the rum for economy or the citrus are extracted first with an everclear and then blended into the rum (or maybe it is rhum?). i could totally be happy running a portuguese themed cocktail bar. the recent finds from madeira have really pushed the theme over the edge.

inspired by the "art of choke" (bitterness + mint) 1 oz. gin (farmer's organic) 1 oz. cape verdean tamarind ponche .5 oz. campari .5 oz. lime juice 6 sprigs of mint shake with mint and double strain. garnish with mint to provide top notes. someone asked for a gin & mint cocktail last night so i made him the above. i've never seen someone order a second so quickly. i made one for myself later to see what it was all about. sort of bitter and sort of sour, with gorgeous aromatic tonality. some rare grapefruit like fruit is conjured. the tamarind ponche had sat on the shelf for quite a while. it has a ton of its own acidity so it cannot make comfortable 2:1:1 sours, but seems to lend itself well to this template which i think i borrowed from the "Maximilian Affair". there is no jamaican rum at the office, so i think i may try making it with armagnac next. i think the tamarind ponche could best be synthesized by subbing 1:1 st. germain & plymouth slow gin.

1 oz. lactic acid "acidulated malt" aromatized "whitened" bourbon 1 oz. cape verdean tamerind liqueur 1 oz. unadulterated regular campari 1 oz. lime juice this is pretty cool bitter-sour. the aroma of the tamarind liqueur augments the tonality of the campari to something really lovely. the whiskey gets lost amid the other more significant attentional features. lactic acid, which is a volatile acid, is important to whiskeys. this one takes it to the n'th degree and a strange & ghostly illusion of creaminess lurks in the whiskey when consumed straight. if you want to accumulate lactic acid for any culinary reason, these acidulated malts are a really cool and affordable source.

houghton street swizzle 1 oz. caninha rhum agricola da madeira 1 oz. perucchi sweet vermouth 1 oz. ponche de tambarina de santo antao 1 oz. lime juice float lemonhart 151 crushed ice swizzle with green chartreuse swizzle stick until the glass frosts over** a great drink. a tincture of ginger or chili is the only thing that could elevate it. the highlight of the drink is licking the residual liquid off of the swizzle stick. the high acid flavor converges perfectly with the angular-crystal-texture of the rock candy stick. **i grew the rock candy swizzle stick in green chartreuse by sugaring the chartreuse an estimated 50 grams per liter over its maximum room temp sucrose solubility. the extra sugar and chartreuse were put in a canning jar and heated in a water bath until it all dissolved. seed points for the crystals to form on were built on the stick by dipping them in syrup, sprinkling with sugar, then dehydrating them in the dehydrator for an hour or so. the crystals take a week to form, making them far from viable in a commercial context. they didn't pick up much of the green color, but picked up some of the aroma. next up i'll see if campari has more non volatile that the crystals can pick up.

dark & stormy 5 oz. guyana style sweet potato ginger beer** 1 oz. goslings 151 quarter of a lime this was pretty cool. i've made it in the past, but it has been a few years. i carbonated the ginger beer with my new custom carbonator. i bought a peugeot champagne stopper and a plastic molding kit. the pump that is intended for use with the stopper basically doesn't work so i molded and recast the threaded plug imbedding in it a gas fitting. with the custom molded plug, i reuse their collar to latch onto a champagne bottle and their food safe seal with one-way valve. it works really well. i've made versions that use standard gas fitting for over night slow carbonation and versions that use chromed "schrader" quick release valves (idea courtesy milwaukee makerspace blog. with the schrader valves you can set your regulator to 55 psi gas up the bottle and shake to carbonate up to 20 psi fairly quickly. i'm using 375ml champagne bottles that can be recapped with 29mm crown caps for aesthetic elegance. the schraders also easily adapt (more easily) to conventional soda bottles. **ginger beer for one liter batch 90grams non aromatic white sugar 300 ml ginger juice (cut across the grain and juice with an acme) 650 or so ml sweet potato water the sweet potato water was made from boiling peeled sweet potatoes with water, blending, then centrifuging to create an aromatic water. you can probably clarify them easy enough by also running them through the acme. don't centrifuge the ginger juice. what ever makes it piquant will come out of solution. if your piquancy fades add a tincture of cayenne dissolved in spirits.

i've used it in the past to make dry vermouth as tart as a lemon. certain abandoned brands like gallo have barely any botanicals and just taste like elder flower-muscat. if you need to make tart drinks for large amounts of people, it works out pretty well. but most of the time i prize the sensory quality of my acid providing citrus above that of my spirits.

imitation savoy cocktail 2 oz. ransom old tom gin 1 oz. vintage 2008 homemade aromatized wine spoonful algarvinha (almond liqueur from the south of portugal) dash regan's orange bitters these seemingly unrelated ingredients have a fun, but kind of advanced sense of harmony together. it reminds me of some of the odd cocktails in savoy cocktail book.

one of the things that used to define "vermouth" was the amount of wine base something had. i guess producers used to dilute their wine bases down with water and rely on botanicals to flavor their product rather than the natural wine base. amerine's annotated bibliography of vermouth has many entries that develop testing methods to prove that a vermouth is of a certain percent natural wine. i think the amount of natural wine base is supposed to be 85%. vermouth is/was kind of seen as the summation of oenology, distillation, and perfumology. vermouth, harnessing all those disciplines, uses as many variables as possible. as you move into the territory of being an "aromatized wine", producers use less and less. by other more useful criteria, products can be compared by their sugar contents. if you can mix it 2:1 and have it enjoyed by most people like most vermouths can, comparing it to vermouth is pretty fare. most amari have too much sugar and not enough contrasting bitterness to be served 2:1.

b.b.s. 2 oz. st. james rhum ambre 1 oz. vintage 2008 homemade aromatized wine* scant spoonful brandymel this was a pretty cool brown bitter and stirred sort of drink. i found a forgotten bottle of the aromatized wine when cleaning out part of house. it tasted like the day i put it in the bottle. it was simply bottled in a 20 oz. beer bottle, filled to the top and crown capped. the aromatized wine most closely parallels bonal or vergano's grignolino based "americano". they both weren't on the market back then. the most significant attentional features are the extraordinary red fruit expressions and the elegance of it gustatory bitterness. i think i remember adjusting the tonality of a montepulciano rose (often referred to a "cerasuolo") with dried fruits. i was trying to mimic the other frappato/nero-d'avola "cerasuolos" of sicily. the fortifier was a blend of grappa and slivovitz. the bitter botanicals were wormwood, gentian, and orris. i also remember there being bergamot peels. the ideas was to be like a super stimulus version of a cerasuolo as is a barolo chinato to a barolo. back then i measured the sugar with a refractometer. i was incorrect about the numbers it generated (alcohol content influenced the measurement), but somewhat accurate in the tool's ability to make comparisons to other commercial products. now i've developed techniques that are significantly easier and more accurate. i'm on the verge of making another aromatized wine. it might be really avante-garde and include boutique brewers grains as botanicals as well as be sweetened by a combination of mistelles and single varietal honeys. i think my base wine will be the bonny doon dry muscat.

mike, you should find a hydrometer and try and measure the specific gravity. with the alcohol content known, we could then extrapolate the sugar content and compare it to other bottlings.

2 oz. st. james ambre rhum 1 oz. cynar 1 oz. sour orange juice i almost made something like a bronx then all this talk of bitterness inspired me to reach for cynar. this might read scary, but by some strange phenomenon it is really elegant. bitterness and simultaneous sourness seem to divide our limited abilities to pay attention to the features of the drink and none seem as aggressive as they can often be solo. it needs a dash of appropriate bitters, but i was too indecisive to pick. a fruit that doesn't exist is conjured and the artifice is compelling. i am reminded of Huysman's character Des Esseintes "He wished to go one step beyond. Instead of artificial flowers imitating real flowers, natural flowers should mimic the artificial ones."...

inspired by eje's endorsement of re-rendering the old pal 1.5 oz. overproof overholt (55%) .75 oz. m&r dry vermouth from a magnum (i only buy the magnums now because i love the decadence) .75 oz. gran classico (i'm pretty sure this is actually gran classico) about a year ago i was gifted a canning jar and i'm pretty sure inside was a sample of gran classico. it has a translucent tawny color, less dark than many other amaros. well the drink is quite lovely. its a keeper. i can't imagine using sweet vermouth instead of dry. i adore semi-dry drinks like the sanru, old pal, sour orange bronx, and the bunch. they have a unique style of being attentional. i reserve them for times of anxiety or deep conversations that can render a drink in hand innocuous. after you start really liking them life gets complicated. most bartenders won't know how to please you because of their inflexible notions of balance and harmony.