Old Block

Looks like I will be moving to Wellington in the immediate future, and will be greatly in need of good bars to drink in (and work, fingers crossed). Anyone here from Wellington? or had any good experiences there? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! After working in top quality bars in the UK and Australia, Blenheim is a bit of a comedown (to put it mildly!) and I'm having to relocate to preserve my sanity! I know of one or two, and I'm looking forward to getting to finally try Smoke & Oakum's Gunpowder Rum and Bob's Bitters, neither of which are particularly common back home.

I'm sure it would go well as some sort of French 75. Gin, Earl Grey, Lemon, Champagne. Maybe with a Chardonnay based Champagne rather than a Pinot heavy one.

I wouldn't use it if you can get hold of (and are comfortable using) real egg white. Even powdered egg whites are good to use, but meringue powder has cornstarch, gumming agents, sugar and additional flavourings added (cornstarch to help stop it from forming lumps, and things like Xanthan gum to help stabilize the foam etc) Due to the additional flavourings you'll end up getting a different result to using egg whites.

I'm going to assume you didn't try, as it seems you didn't read the pages prior as well. The discussion started in reference to diluting bitters to a specific bottling strength, the effect adding water/altering abv will have on the flavour, and the methods employed when adding water to dilute the original maceration. That's about it really... It's crazy how many bars/bartenders are still preparing tobacco infusions even though advice such as Darcy's has been widely circulated. Even crazier how many wish to extract the flavour of cigarettes?!? I never tried to go into the depths of how the debate started, I was simply pointing out that the example you used was poor for obvious reasons. I'm not a smoker, and never have been, but have on occasion have enjoyed a couple of wheezy, girlish drags of a fine cigar and can see why people might want to try use the flavour in a drink. Cigarettes are just a bastardized form, like RTDs. Anyway, off topic.

Interesting thread this... I find this a very flawed example, if you want to test the 2 drops of angostura versus 4 drops of 1:1 angostura:water don't use a drink that has a variable amount of dilution from ice! Unless you can guarantee that you used the same volume of consistent quality ice at exactly the same temperature etc etc. I would also contend that the colour would be exactly the same (once you stir it in of course) for the same reasons as the taste would be exactly the same. The second you mix the drink the ice is obviously diluting everything, including the bitters solutions, and when you're using only 1-2 mls of bitters, in a glass filled with ice, it's not going to take much of a difference in the melting rate of the ice in the two drinks to totally skew the results. To test it in a cocktail situation surely you would have to exclude ice from the equation since we can never have total control over it, and at these quantities it's too big a factor. It may not be ideal but wouldn't using chilled ingredients for, say, a Manhattan and chilled water to dilute be a much better way? In which case yes, the two would theoretically taste slightly different (as one will have 2 drops more water to dilute the tasteful parts) but i defy anyone to be able to taste the difference between the two. Anyway, that's all kind of irrelevant to the original discussion. I won't claim to have all that much knowledge about making bitters, is simply diluting pre-made bitters with water to get a new bitters with half the ABV really representative of how you would go about making two different strengths of the same flavour bitters? If so then I don't see how there is even a debate here.. And it would be against the law to sell it I think. Even to give it away in a bar would be pretty risky legally speaking I'd imagine, but whatever you get up to in the privacy of your own home is nobody's business but your own...