Kohai

The more I think about this the more ludicrous it begins to seem. Does Freemen own solid cocktails or fat-washing (neither of which, as some have noted above, he can be said to have really "invented" in a truly meaningful way)? Does Uyeda own the Hard Shake? Does Fosbury own the Flop? Who owns the curve ball? Who owns deep-fried ice cream? Someone had to invent all these techniques - they just did it before IP lawyers existed. Can simple techniques and tricks like these really be called enforceable IP? I think Freemen is less concerned with getting paid (which is obviously not going to happen) and more concerned with getting credit. (Not that I'm calling him attention-seeking or anything....) And credit is his due. I talk about him every time I tell people about fat-washed cocktails on our menus. At the same time, it's absurd to suggest I shouldn't be fat-washing because it's not "my" technique. It's sad that people don't get credit for stuff they invented (or just popularized) but as you say above, FG - "that's the way it is".

What if we approach this from another angle... What if bars couldn't, er, "borrow" from other creative bartenders without royalties? It seems that no other bar would be able to do (for example) bacon-washing or maybe any kind of fat-washing if IP rights were stringently enforced. Can you imagine the drinking landscape if you had to go to only a few bars in the country (or the ones who could afford to pay royalties) to get the really good, creative drinks? Someone mentioned a "chilling effect" above but I think it's more like an Ice Age. Ideas are passed around. People share, riff, play, tinker. They steal. The best chefs do it. Picasso did it. Eben Freemen is just the most vocal claimant of the IP for fat-washing but bartenders were doing bacon vodka for years before I even heard of him.

But I think the point is that there are plenty of creative bartenders who don't own bars. Would you support their creative drinks being viewed as works for hire and therefore owned by the bar rather than the bartender who worked there?

Dave Arnold and them have done it again, it seems. By simply putting a base spirit in an iSi cannister along with an ingredient to be infused, then charging them (with N2O, not CO2) one can achieve potent infusions in less than 2 minutes. Has anyone tried this yet?

I have been wondering the same thing about the Monte Alban. I bought some (and some Cusano Rojo, shudder) but the stuff poisons absolutely anything it touches. I thought maybe I was just doin' it wrong; glad to see it might be the mezcal, not me. Guess I'll have to wait until Del Maguey gets to Minneapolis, which I'm told will be this fall.

I must say, as someone who hand-chips lots of ice almost daily, this is not consistent with my experience. Generally, the colder the ice, the more controllable I find it to be. Ice that has been sitting out for even a relatively short time has a layer on the surface that I can only describe as slightly "mushy". It takes more strokes to cleave (the pick has to get through to the hard core of the ice) and it just doesn't behave quite the same way. A caveat to the above is that I am using homemade ice (see the block ice thread) and it is nowhere near the quality of the sculpture ice that you're using, Sam. That might cause some difference. But even in Tokyo I found that (extremely high quality) ice which had just come out of the freezer was much easier to work with than ice that had been sitting in the bin.

Anyone had the chance to try Oxley yet?

Just to nitpick, fault lines aren't created by air trapped in water. They're caused by the pressure of expanding water in a rigid container. Cloudy ice and aeration are two different things; you can have cloudy ice without fault lines; you can also have fault lines in otherwise clear ice. As far as whether M&H's double-freezing method works, I am certainly not the person to be vouching for it since I've only been there once. But I have heard it verified by multiple sources that I trust, and I have difficult imagining anyone going to the trouble unless it did work.

The guy I talked to at M&H about their double-freezing method said that the second freeze compacts the ice further. I don't quite get that myself (partly because I'm not 100% clear on how they do it there - is the ice completely thawed, or is it only half-thawed?) but it seems like that might apply to this, too. So you could indeed be right. (Though now that I'm wondering, I can't say that I've noticed much difference in the hardness of the ice, meself.)

As observed above, it is somewhat medicinal; it almost strikes me as a Raspberry Heering in that respect. I think my problem with the stuff is that usually there's way to much in any given drink. Like Creme de Violette, I find that less is more.

So this is half in jest... but therefore half not. I've always regarded Chambord dubiously. Considering the drinks I've been asked to make with it (French Martinis, anyone?) I think that prejudice is somewhat justified. But on the other hand, a lot of things I once imagined undesirable way back whenever (sloe gin springs to mind) now seem like they actually are/could be pretty cool. Chambord, in and of itself, is not hideous. There must be a few decent drinks with it. So I am genuinely curious. Does anyone make any good drinks with the purple stuff?

Right. I've never noticed much difference between boiled and unboiled (tap) water; call it zero difference. Keep in mind, I am specifically addressing block ice, not cubes. With block ice, you get expansion fractures, which the method described above virtually eliminates in addition to making markedly clearer ice. From what we're seeing with jmfangio's and Chris's photographs, as well as what the scientifically-gifted among us have explained upthread, slower freezing (by insulating the molds, for example) seems to be another key. Unfortunately, that is not ideal for a commercial bar application. Wonder if there's a workaround.

Wow. Wonderful pictoral evidence, sir. ETA: I just realized - there's no cloudy core! Is it possible that the impurities in the water (as they were called above) are all contained in that liquid center... and could that perhaps mean that the liquid center would become the cloudy core if it were allowed to freeze... meaning that you can avoid cloudiness just by half-freezing a block and draining off the unfrozen water which contains all the impurities and particulate debris? ETA one last thing: Why did you close the top instead of leaving it open?

Max, thanks for the scientific insight. Those are some very interesting topics for future reading. paul, Circulators and/or agitation are definitely ways to do it; I've been trying to find a way that doesn't involve special equipment. Badiane, I'm sure it's not due (solely) to the hot water because I've already tried freezing boiling water and I've never had satisfactory results. If someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong there I'd be happy to hear but I just can't get any significant difference in terms of clarity and fracture lines than with tap water. Incidentally, in the past few weeks of using this method I've noticed that it is still not perfect. There are occasionally cloudy cores, but they are usually at the bottom of the pan - and they are much smaller. I'm not quite sure what to make of that. It almost seems like if I could just figure out what I was doing wrong, I could eliminate that cloudy core entirely. OK, so here's a crazy idea. Mold an identically-shaped pan out of silicone - effectively a huge, gallon-and-a-half ice mold (the walls might have to be a bit stronger than usual, not sure). Then try making ice in that. The walls would stretch as the ice expanded. This would avoid fractures in the ice... but would it result in less dense ice? o_O

I think most packaging just changes over time. I could be wrong in Aperol's case, but I noticed that Dewar's, for example, just changed its packaging. Stoli recently did the same, as did Beefeater (who also changed to a terrible plastic neck and threads, the edge of which slit my thumb open the other day). Of course, Aperol's formula MAY have changed. But bottle redesigns seem pretty scheduled, to me. There must be some market research showing that customers' eyes tend to slide over well-familiar bottles; minor changes in design/packaging give "stickiness" as it is something the eye hasn't seen before, and cause the gaze to linger slightly longer, increasing the chances of a purchase just that tiny bit more.

Thanks, everyone, for the great suggestions. The only way to properly decide for myself is a taste test. Dirty job etc. etc. OK - somewhat related question: five to ten vital rum cocktails? I ask so that I can put these rums through their paces. I have my own ideas but I would value more input.

Resurrecting this ancient thread to ask a question. I'm trying to improve our rum selection, but I'm still learning about this incredibly diverse spirit. If you were to have only four bottles of rum behind your bar, which would they be? What about five bottles? Six?

OK, so I'm trying to figure this out. I'll put pictures up whenever I remember to get a camera in to work. Chris, to answer your question, there is still a small cloudy core at the center of the block - sometimes. But not always. I have successfully made at least one perfectly clear block of ice using this technique. I have a suspicion that this is a factor of the ice : hot water ratio, which I've been varying to see what gets me the best results. (My guess is that using more ice creates blocks without the cloudy core - but it might have to sit at room temperature for a little while so most of the ice melts.) Even when there is a cloudy core, it's much smaller than what I get using tap water or boiled water. You can pretty much see through to the bottom of the pan at most points in the block. I have tried this method something like six times now and what I can reiterate with certainty is that there are no fracture lines from the pressure of expansion. This is good because those fracture lines affect the way the ice breaks, making clean hand-chipping more difficult. (I have been told that commercial ice in Japan has a "grain" to it, like invisible fault lines that run through the ice. It causes the ice to split evenly and cleanly. This helps the carver create near-perfect cubes. I'm not sure how that part of the ice production is accomplished.)

Has anyone tried the North Shore line? I didn't see any mentions upthread. They seem to be striving for heavy juniper in their products, perhaps much like the Leopold products...

It's a deep third pan. Perhaps 6 or 7 inches deep, maybe 12 across, maybe 6 wide. Volume is about a gallon and a half. It's still too early to tell if this actually works consistently but it seems to be working with the last few batches I've made.

I wanted to share an ice-making technique I stumbled upon this weekend. I may not be the first person treading this ground; I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this. At the restaurant where I currently work, we are cursed with a shell ice machine that turns out the wettest, crumbliest slush imaginable. The vast majority of our clientele doesn't really know the difference, but for those that do, we keep block ice in an ice cream freezer behind the bar and chip it by hand. I have been trying to figure out an easy way to make clear block ice - free from bubble clouds or stress/compression fractures that usually result when freezing large blocks of water. I think I may have figured out a way. Furthermore, it's stupidly simple. Remembering how Milk and Honey double-freezes their ice, I filled a pan with shell ice and poured near-boiling water from the coffee machine over that. Most of the ice melted; there was a thin layer of cubes floating on the surface but I don't think it lasted long. I put that pan into the freezer overnight When I took that pan out of the freezer, the resulting block of ice was not only nearly crystal clear, it was also free of the deep cracks that result from the pressure of expansion caused by freezing. And it took less than half the time required to freeze, thaw and then refreeze ice. I thought I'd share this technique and see if others are able to duplicate the results. Anyone care to try this and report back?

I never heard another word from anyone at the distillery. No replacement bottles were offered. Look, Bluecoat - when it's right - is a lovely product. I enjoy it, with the caveat that it has quality-control problems that are apparently widely acknowledged at this point. I'm a little taken aback at the hysteria around this particular subject. Some guy panned some product in a geeky book that very few people even know exists! Horrors! (And hey, no one's complaining about his savaging of many other Not Recommended brands.) I like reading Pitchfork rip bands to pieces, I like reading panned movie reviews, and I enjoyed this spirit review. And it's probably not going to influence me unduly anyway. I can understand dismay at the undermining of local efforts, but it's not like he bombed the distillery or anything. Let me buy you a drink to soothe momentary frazzled nerves.

I've been using a lot of aquavit recently and it's gotten me thinking about the points you raise. Gin is to juniper as aquavit is to caraway, or so goes my thinking. So what if someone makes a spirit with several botanicals, most prominently cardamom? Or a spirit with heavy lavender notes? What do we call those? It's as you say, Sam - the difference is in the complexity, the layering of botanicals that separates these "gins" from "infused vodka". Perhaps there may be some marketing forces at work there? "Gentian Lavender Citrus Grapefruit Rhubarb Anise Chamomile Vodka" sounds like a train wreck, of course. (On the other hand, in my part of the world, "gin" still sounds like a train wreck to some people.) Whence the need for new, more accurate nomenclature. ETA: With all due respect, Katie, smacks of wounded local pride to me. I'm not sure where the personal grudge would be derived from on Mr. Pacult's part, but if you had experienced the bottles of Bluecoat that I came upon, you would see his point. Suggesting there was a plant in the audience borders on conspiracy theorist.

What strikes me is the growing need for a term that describes some of these new, largely juniper-free gins. "Infused vodka" doesn't capture the thing. Lines seem to be blurring here.