thegoodist

After running out of tonic to make Baton's with a still very full bottle of Becherovka, I got to experimenting: First step was subbing it for gin in a Last Word and using lemon instead of lime: 1oz Becherovka 1oz Luxardo Maraschino 1oz Green Chartreuse 1oz Lemon Juice Shaken and served up This was surprisingly delicious with the added spice of the Becherovka punching up the herbal notes of the Charteuse - far more balanced than I expected. For some reason the cinnamon-like spiciness made me think of oranges, and the best fit out of all the options in the cabinet seemed to be Grand Marnier: 2oz Becherovka 1/2oz Grand Marnier 2 dashes Regan's Orange Bitters Stirred with ice a good long while and served up This is could have gone either way, but luckily turned out pretty nicely. Definitely a slow sipper though, you couldn't drink this quickly if you tried and it's key that it attain some dilution. Fun stuff

While not immediately relevant to the use of ice in cocktails, this is becoming equally annoying as it is fascinating: Seems to happen once every few trays, and only to one cube at that. The above example is particularly thick, but they sometimes manifest as far sharper 'needles'. Any ideas on what could cause this strange phenomenon?

Interesting, a shaker with a built in CO2 injector. Of course any cocktail you make in that thing with particulate matter (fruit juice) is going to cause a bit of a mess if you're not careful and cause a loss of overall carbonation, especially after shaking!. Have you had the chance to experiment with this thing? I'm really curious how it works out in practice. Love the idea of carbonating the entire cocktail one at a time though - compared to having to carbonate at least 500ml with my Soda Stream. I get that champagne effect as well, and I'm not sure if it's due to the low temp or some other property of the spirit, but it's very very nice. I need to carbonate some Aviation today so I'll try to post pics of the effect later on. My carbonator uses 'food grade CO2 as well', which I assume means it's tested to be free of other potentially harmful gasses, but who knows, could just be marketing speak...

Here in Oregon we have a restaurant/bar/hotel empire called Mcmenamins. They brew their own beer, make their own wine, and increasingly (as is the trend in Portland the last few years - I guess we're getting tired of beer ) distill their own spirits. I spent some time at their flagship property (an old converted poor farm) where they distill their spirits and picked up a bottle of their Vintner's Gin, described thusly: Unfortunately it's been a few years since I've tried it, and didn't really understand that it was in such a different category from typical dry gins. If memory serves it was strong on the juniper with sweeter more pungent botanicals. I'll try to track down a bottle, but it's unfortunately only available for purchase at their Edgefield and St. Francis School properties. Links: http://www.mcmenamins.com/index.php?loc=76&id=427 and http://www.mcmenamins.com/index.php?loc=76&id=432

I've done this with kiwi and apple in my soda club machine, grapes are a great idea though - I'll have to give it a go.

I think the N20 would be a great addition to something like the Ramos. In fact, it looks like the iSi pamphlet in the box has a recipe for a Pina Colada and their site lists a recipe for a Bellini: http://www.espumas.at/recipes/espuma-cocktail/en/ Both of those call for gelatin, but I'm curious what would happen if you skipped that step - I'm imagining something akin to Guiness or any other beer served out of a nitro keg - could be really interesting...

Underfilling the bottle won't hurt, will it? ← Unfortunately the design of my machine won't allow for this - it has to be full to the fill line.

This sounds fantastic! I'll run to the liquor store tomorrow for a nice orange spirit and give this a go. It's a challenge to determine what would be a good cocktail to carbonate and what wouldn't - the criteria being: - What could benefit from a smooth texture of bubbles - What could benefit from the added bitterness of carbonic acid Example: A Martini would likely be ruined by CO2, but a Margarita might be nice. Lately I've been thinking that a Mojito made from carbonated rum and no soda would be interesting. It would be fun to serve a Mojito in a cocktail glass...but it could easily be terrible as well... The risk with all this is that the smallest bottles that Soda Club offers are 500ml - essentially ruining a perfectly fine bottle of booze if things go sideways.

That's been my experience so far, it seems to lose it's fizz fairly rapidly after the 24hour mark, even with a tight seal. Oddly it seems to equalize very very well immediately after CO2 is applied and with the low temp it can take on a greater amount of the CO2. I made carbonated Negroni's during the weekend's festivities and passed the shot glass around right after carbonation to some surprised faces - it seems to almost dissolve on the tongue. Yet, even when kept in the freezer the CO2 seems to escape quicker than it does with water for some reason.

Lately I've been using my Soda Club CO2 machine to put some bubbles in my gin, and although this is s fairly straightforward process, I thought I'd share what I've learned and draw on the collective egullet brain trust regarding a few unsolved mysteries. My findings so far: 1. Start by letting letting the booze cool overnight in the freezer - the colder the booze the more CO2 it can absorb and the more rapidly the CO2 will 'equalize' into the spirit 2. It's more fun to drink booze than to clean it off your kitchen wall - carbonating super cold booze is a very different experience than carbonating water. The CO2 disperses as very tiny bubbles at first, making the spirit look almost cloudy - these bubbles want to escape - don't let them! Wait until the booze clears up again before removing it from pressure. Seriously! 3. Keep the carbonated spirit as cold as possible post-carbonation - typically I'll keep the spirit in the fridge since the carbonating bottle forbids freezing (but what would it really hurt?). I'll try a glass vessel in the freezer and report back with my results. Questions: 1. Why does the spirit seem to loose it's fizz faster than carbonated water? - I could be crazy but it seems that after a day or two the carbonation is all but gone, compared to water that seems to go flat at half that rate. Is a colder temp required to keep equalization in alcohol? More experimenting is necessary on this. 2. How do you freeze the water in a spirit? - A bottle of cheap blanco tequila once separated in my freezer, yet this hasn't happened with any spirit sense - even at the same proof. Any reasons for this? I'd obviously like to avoid this from happening in the future as I imagine it's bad for the spirit (yeah, I know, like carbonating itsn't). Lastly, has anyone here tried this? I hear murmurs here and there about using siphons, but I'd love to hear other's experiences and ideas. Sure, it can be a gimmick, but in two cases I think it really made for some enjoyable cocktails - A 'fully carbonated' gin and tonic: Carbonated Gin and Tonic A lightly carbonated Negroni: Carbonated Negroni I'd even dare to say that I now prefer my Negroni's 'frizzante'. Though only about half of the cocktail is carbonated (since I go 2:1:1 when carbonating), it adds a velvity texture of small champagne-like bubbles and a bit more bitterness from the carbonic acid that really compliments the Campari. Any other cocktails out there that could use a good dose of CO2? Tim Don