slkinsey
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There's an interesting articles in the Health section of today's New York Times entitled When People Drink Themselves Silly, and Why, by Benedict Carey. Some excerpts:
. . . the dynamics of bingeing may have more to do with personal and cultural expectations than with the number of upside-down margaritas consumed. In their classic 1969 book, "Drunken Comportment," recently out in paperback, the social scientists Craig MacAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton wrote that the disconnect between the conventional wisdom on drunken behavior and the available evidence "is even now so scandalous as to exceed the limits of reasonable toleration."They detailed the vast differences in the way people from diverse cultures behave after excessive alcohol. In contrast to nearby tribes, for example, the Yuruna Indians in the Xingu region of Brazil would become exceptionally reserved when rendered sideways by large helpings of moonshine. The Camba of eastern Bolivia would drink excessively twice a month. Sitting in a circle, they would toast one another, more lavishly with each pop.
The article goes on to detail how binge drinking behavior -- not to mention binge drinking itself -- changes depending on the cultural millieu and the attendant expectations of the binge drinkers. Interestingly, studies have shown that people exhibit expected binge-behaviors even when they have been tricked into thinking they have been consuming alcohol (and even more interesting, the reverse also appears to be true).
This got me to thinking about how binge drinking, binge drinking behavior and attitudes about the same have changed over the years. If you check out the second Thin Man movie (After the Thin Man), for example, you see that Nick and Nora return to their San Francisco home to face an uproarious cocktail party with everone getting pickled and acting out. Part of this is for effect. But my mother, whose parents threw plenty of swank cocktail parties back in those days and who remembers some from her early childhood, told me that it wasn't all that uncommon in those days for people at a typical upper middle class cocktail party to drink themselves to complete inebriation. This wasn't considered embarassing, as it would today among similar company, but was rather tolerated and even expected.
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I think it was a labeling/branding issue rather than a production issue. Apry (now apparently called "Apricot Brandy" in the US) has been back on the shelves for quote some time in NY.
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Only one way to find out! You'd have to liquify the cheese in the alcohol somehow, though.
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For example, PDT is also doing a drink made with popcorn-and-butter-infused rum. Don has also done a drink made with a foie gras-infused spirit.
Beyond animal fats, there are plenty of other possibilities. Olive oil infusions come to mind. But also something like avodado-infused tequila might be interesting.
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perfumer's have used the technique for ever and call it enfleurage.
My understanding is that "enfleurage" refers to infusing aromatic compounds into fat, not infusing flavors out of the fat that are already in there.
The classic enfleurage procedure involves passivelty infusing aromas from flowers (enfleurage = "enflowering") into cold neutral fat until the fat is saturated with aromatic compounds (the "enfleurage" part) then washing the "enfleurage pomade" with alcohol or some other solvent, and and then letting the alcohol evaporate leaving behind the essential oil. It's an extremely inefficient and costly method of extraction, and most everyone uses straight solvent extraction without fat these days.
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This isn't that different from the thread on weeniecello. To me, there's something a little amusing but not all that interesting about the typical "duuuuude! have some relish-flavored vermouth with that hotdog-flavored vodka" scenarios. It's nothing that I'd really want to drink other than as a temporary amusement.
But fat-washing is a powerful and compelling technique that is far more interesting than mere novelty infusions. Just about every taste and aromatic compound that is soluble in fat is also soluble in alcohol. All that is needed is to mix the fat with the alcohol, wait a while, freeze the alcohol and skim out the congealed fat. Substantial taste and aromatic compounds will have transferred from the fat to the alcohol. Right now, Eben Freeman at Tailor and our own donbert at PDT are doing the most interesting things with fat-washing of which I am aware.
A good example of this would be PDT's Benton's Old Fashioned, which is built on a foundation of bourbon infused with fat from rendered Benton's bacon. It's not a punch-in-the-mouth of bacon right up front, but, especially after the first few sips, rather a subtle hint of smokey pork in the finish. This is a unique, interesting and delicious cocktail that is much more than a novelty.
Part of the trick, of course, is picking the right spirit into which the fat will be infused. Vodka is not particularly interesting, in my opinion, and will typically yield a product that doesn't have much potential for serious mixology.
Perhaps at some point we can start a serious thread about fat-washing. It's a technique that is only just beginning to be explored by mixologists. I'd like to learn more about it, and I'd also like to popularize the technique (which is not difficult to execute).
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Don't know of too many cocktails that combine sweet vermouth and citrus, aside from the Bronx.
You're right that it's not common, but there are a few classics: The Blood and Sand and Satan's Whiskers cocktails come immediately to mind. These both include orange juice rather than lemon or lime, which is interesting. There's a version of the El Floridita that includes sweet vermouth along with Cuban-style white rum, lime juice, crème de cacao and grenadine. The Palm Beach Special is a nice one, with gin, grapefruit juice and sweet vermouth. I can't think of any notweorthy ones with lemon juice and sweet vermouth.
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Other than preventing oxidation, it's not clear that sous vide cooking has any particular advantages when it comes to fruit. Using some of the sous vide equipment, it's possible to do some interesting effects with certain fruits -- for example, compressed fruits or fruits that are infused with other liquids by vacuuming the fruit in a liquid bath and then returning the fruit to atmospheric pressure, causing it to "suck" the liquid into the spaces previously occupied by air. But these things require a machine that can pull a pretty hard vacuum. I tried doing Negroni-infused cucumber using a vacuum container and a friend's FoodSaver the other day, and the infusion was only partially successful.
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The varieties of rum you can have are almost infinite. It all depends on the level of specificity you want in your cocktails, and whether you make cocktails that call for certain kinds of rum. No need to have a rhum agricole, for example, if you don't like to make rhum agricole drinks (e.g., Ti Punch).
As a very general statement -- and I'm no Ed Hamilton when it comes to rum expertise -- I'd say that at most any color/aging level there are two broad styles of rum: refined and funky. So, for example, in the mid-amber range you have the funky Lemon Hart demerara rum from Guyana and the refined Appleton Estate Reserve rum from Jamaica. If you were to have one funky and one refined rum at most every color level, you would be able to make appropriate versions of just about every rum drink. Perhaps at the very lightest color you'd only need the refined (Cuban) style, unless you like rhum agricole). And at the very darkest color you might be able to get by with only one example -- again, depending on what drinks you like to make.
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Gold rum to me says just that: Rum that is right around the same color as a lager beer. This will, then, be lighter in color and less intense in flavor/wood than an amber rum, which I see as being right around the same color as a good bitter ale.
Ultimately, though, it's not clear that these are great distinctions to make. All you're really doing is describing the color and approximate degree of wood aging. You could describe Flor de Caña Extra Dry as a "white rum" but you could also describe La Favorite or, for that matter, Wray & Nephew Overproof as "white rums." I think we will all agree that these three are radically different products. Rather, Flor de Caña Extra Dry is a Cuban-style white rum and La Favorite is a white rhum agricole.
Going back to your earlier questions about Dave's description of a certain rum as "Barbados-style" -- that has to do with the fact that different areas have different traditions associated with rum distilling. A Cuban amber rum by Havana Club or a Cuban-style amber rum by Flor de Caña is not going to be the same as a Guyanese amber rum by Lemon Hart or a Jamaican amber rum by Appleton. If you're making a Queen's Park Swizzle, it's just not going to turn out right with the Cuban rum or the Jamaican rum. This is why it's possible to make the full range of stylistically appropriate rye drinks with one or two different brands of rye, but in order to make the full range of rum drinks you need to have around a dozen bottlings of rum or be comfortable with a good bit of stylistic approximation.
I remember going to an rum event maybe 3-4 years ago and running into Dave there. We just so happened to be standing together when we were called in to a side-room to offer some comments on rum for a video they were shooting (which for me involved keeping my mouth as shut as is constitutionally possible for me and looking at Dave). Among the many interesting things he said for the tape was one that stuck with me: He said that rum has by far the widest range of all other spirits. You can go from rums that are so light and subtly flavored that they are practically vodka to rums that are so dark, thick and full flavored that they're practically still molasses -- and ever imaginable variation between those two extremes (this is all the more true when you consider that cachaça could be considered rum as well). So it make a certain amount of sense that we'd need a lot more bottles of rum to cover the available ground than we'd need whiskey, gin or tequila.
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There's a thread on this topic from 2004 that makes for some interesting comparisons. There's been such an explosion in the availability of certain spirits, certain brands and bitters, etc. Back in 2004, for example, practically everyone uses Bacardi. Here's mine from 2004 . . . .
There's been some expansion in availability, but -- and I don't want to speak for everyone -- I think there's also simply a greater awareness of what's available. When I look at people's lists, I don't see so many new products as I see products that in 2004 might have been considered obscure but are now the focus of cocktail enthusiasts' interest.
Awareness certainly makes a difference. But if today one can get Luxardo maraschino in the hinterlands, I'm betting it wasn't so in 2004. For example, everyone was using Bacardi back in the day because you just couldn't walk into a liquor store and see bottles of Flor de Caña and Brugal alongside the Bacardi.
To name a few that are either new, have recently seen radically increased availability or radically increased variety since 1994: Laird's bonded, Rittenhouse bonded and any number of other ryes, several new high-end bourbons, rhum agricole, decent cachaça, decent pisco, crème de violette, pimento dram; Saint Germain elderflower liqueur, absinthe!, Bitter Truth orange, lemon and aromatic bitters, Hermes orange and aromatic bitters, Fee's lemon, grapefruit, peach and barrel-aged bitters, Regan's bitters, Angostura orange bitters, homemade bitters too countless to name, Bittermens bitters for those who can get 'em, radically expanded rum choices, etc, etc, etc.
. . . . .Plan to add Luxardo Bitter
. . . . .
Isn't Luxardo Bitter a Campari knock-off? Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I suppose it's a knock-off in the same way that Luxardo's amaretto is a knock off of Amaretto Disaronno. What I get out of Luxardo Bitter is that it's like the "Punt e Mes" version of Campari, with more of everything.
What's a Dutch style gin?Dutch gin, aka "Hollands" is a lightly sweetened, old-fashioned style of gin made in pot still on a base of what is essentially unaged whiskey. Or so I'm told. None is currently imported to the United States, aside from Boomsma, which those in the know say is not terribly indicative of the style.
Damrak?
Not really. Damrak has some genever-like qualities (softer, wetter), but fundamentally it's still within the universe of dry gin.
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I demand that you come over immediately and make me a dozen biscuit dogs.
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Has anyone tried the "Vermouth Classico" from Casa Martelletti? I picked up a few bottles recently and have been liking it a lot. It's made on a base of moscato.
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For cocktailing, I like Krogstad. I think it has an appealing freshness and softness. Aalborg, in particular, really hits you over the head and I've had difficulty getting it to play nice with other ingredients -- much more difficulty than, say, equally assertive gins. (I've had some frustration with aquavit cocktails, which seem like they should work better on paper.)
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You haven't heard that Cointreau is making cognac now?
(D'oh! Fixed.)
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There's a thread on this topic from 2004 that makes for some interesting comparisons. There's been such an explosion in the availability of certain spirits, certain brands and bitters, etc. Back in 2004, for example, practically everyone uses Bacardi. Here's mine from 2004:
Staples for mixing. Hmmmm. I usually have around:- Gin: Gordon's for general-purpose mixing, at least one of Hendrick's, Plymouth or Boodle's for martinis
- Vodka: Luksusowa
- Bourbon: Maker's Mark
- Rye: Old Overholt
- Rum: Bacardi Silver (or off-brand reasonable facsimile thereof), Myer's
- Scotch: Famous Grouse
- Vermouth: Vya Extra Dry (white), Vya Sweet (red), Noilly Pratt (white)
- Bitter drinks: Campari, Cynar, Carpano Punt e Mes, Fernet Branca, Branca Menta
- Bitters: Angostura, Fee Brothers Orange, Fee Brothers Aromatic, Peychaud's
- Etc.: Cointreau, Grand Marnier, Luxardo Maraschino, Cherry Heering, Limoncello (brand differs), absinthe substitute (usually Richard or Pernod), white creme de cacao, cognac or some kind, Calvados, Poire William, Cachaca
- Stuff I happen to have around for specific drinks: Green Chartreuse, Pineau des Charantes
That's all I can think of at the moment in terms of stuff I try to have around pretty much all the time for the purpose of mixing.
Not only have my brands changed, but other categories have radically expanded. Today this is what I have around for all-purpose mixing right now (doesn't include expensive single malts and 20 year old rye, etc):
- Gin: I always have Tanqueray as my all-purpose mixer and Junipero for special applications. Boodles, Beefeater, Plymouth and Gordon's from time to time.
- Genever: Boomsma Jonge (whish I could do better & will stock Genevieve when it comes to NYC).
- Vodka: Luksusowa or Smirnoff. One 1.75L bottle lasts me at least a year.
- Aquavit: Krogstad, Aalborg, OP Anderson, Linie is what I have around. Once these run out (which will take a very long time) I'll probably stick with Krogstad.
- Tequila: Heradura Silver -- a good 100% agave mixing tequila. I also have plentiferous Patron and Don Julio Añejo that I received as gifts or swag (and replenish the same way).
- Pisco: Barsol
- Cachaça: Mãe de Ouro
- Rum: Flor de Caña and Brugal white (Cuban-style white), La Favorite (rhum agricole), Lemon Hart (demerara), Appleton and Myers (Jamaican), Inner circle (overproof)... plus some other ones I can't quite recall. Rum is a category where I find you really need to have quite a few to make the cocktails right. A Queens Park Swizzle made with Flor de Caña just isn't going to taste right.
- Batavia Arrack van Oosten
- Applejack: Laird's Bonded
- Calvados: Busnel
- Cognac: Courvoisier VS and VSOP
- Rye: Rittenhouse Bonded and Old Overholt are my mainstays. I usually have some Wild Turkey rye around, and the occasional bottle of Baby Saz.
- Bourbon: Wild Turkey 101 is always on hand. After that, it can vary a lot. I usually have a few other bottles of bourbon around, although I easily drink 8 bottles of rye to each bottle of bourbon.
- Scotch: The Famous Grouse. Still sticking with the old reliable.
- Irish: Red Breast, Powers
- Aromatized Wine: Carpano Antica Formula, Martelletti Classico and Martini & Rossi (red vermouth), Noilly Prat and Vya (white vermouth), Martini & Rossi (bianco vermouth), Carpano Punt e Mes, Lillet Blanc and Rouge (would love to get some Cocchi Aperitivo Americano); Cocchi Barolo Chinato
- Liqueurs: Cointreau, Grand Marnier, Curaçao of Curaçao, Marie Brizard orange curaçao and Clément Créole Shrubb as orange liqueurs; Luxardo maraschino; Green and Yellow Chartreuse; Bénédictine D.O.M; Licor 43 (vanilla/herbal); Drambiue (scotch/herbal); Marie Brizard crème de cacao; Cherry Heering; Luxardo amaretto; Frangelico; Marie Brizard Apry and Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot liqueur; Rothman & Winter crème de violette; St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram; Velvet Falernum; Saint Germain elderflower liqueur; Strega; Belle de Brillet (pear cognac); etc. I want to buy some Gilka Kümmel and would love to get my hands on some Cherry Marnier.
- Amari: Cynar, Campari, Fernet Branca, Branca Menta, CioCiaro, Averna Amaro Siciliano, Ramazzotti Amaro, Amaro Nonino, Torani Amer. Plan to add Luxardo Bitter
- Absinthe: Nouvelle Orleans, Kubler
- Eaux de vie: Zwack Barack Pálinka, kirschwasser, Poire Williams
I feel liks I'm forgetting something. Unless otherwise noted, these are things I would tend to replace after running out. I didn't bother listing bitters, because that would just get ridiculous.
(ETA: I remembered a few more)
- Gin: Gordon's for general-purpose mixing, at least one of Hendrick's, Plymouth or Boodle's for martinis
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I have the impression that the demand for Rittenhouse BIB is so much higher than expected, that there are shortages and they are having to ramp up production to meet demand. But, of course that won't be ready for several years. So, it's possible that they are confining distribution to certain markets for the time being.
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I've not turned up anything regarding the name, "Gangadine." Might be a last name.
I'm guessing it's a mispelling of "Gangadin"/"Gangadeen" -- both of which turn up plenty of google hits.
I'm also guessing this name was corrupted to "Gunga Din" by Kipling in his famous poem.
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Reading many of the cocktail recipes in Dave's new book got me to thinking about cocktail formulae. As the reader will note, many of the recipes in the book are not recipes at all, but rather generic formulae. For example, the Improved [spirit] cocktail consists of 2 ounces of spirit, 1 teaspoon of simple, 1/2 teaspoon of maraschino liqueur, a few dashes of absinthe and a few dashes of bitters. Plug your spirit into the formula, and you've got your cocktail.
Other mixologists have favorite ratios and formulae that they like to use. Here's another one I picked up from Dave:
2 ounces of spirit
1 ounce of aromatized wine (vermouth, lillet, etc.)
1 teaspoon of liqueur
1-2 dashes of bitters.
Dave's Weeski follows this formula (2 ounces irish, 1 ounce Lillet blonde, 1 teaspoon Cointreau, orange bitters), and I have found it to be a good one.
An extension of this idea is:
2 ounces of spirit
3/4 ounce of aromatized wine
1 teaspoon of liqueur
1 teaspoon of some other liqueur
1-2 dashes of bitters
Another formula I have found useful is:
2 ounces of spirit
1/2 ounce of citrus
1/2 ounce of something sweet (either simple or liqueur)
Bitters optional
These modifiers can be increased to 3/4 of an ounce, or even a full ounce. Add an egg white if you like.
People have enjoyed playing with the Vieux Carre formula:
1 ounce of spirit
1 ounce of some other spirit
1 ounce of vermouth
1 teaspoon herbal liqueur
1-2 dashes of 1-2 different bitters
Any other favorites?
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No reply from Campari today. I am going to give them a few more days and then send them a link to this thread; maybe they will see the conversation and feel compelled to contribute something by responding to my e-mails. As Tiare pointed out, this issue concerns me not only because it might be screwing up one of my favorite spirits, but more importantly, the way that the changes appear to have been conducted demonstrate how more companies might attempt to alter recipes without informing the public. If this continues, the subtle threat to our favorite cocktails and spirits grows more concerning. Ok, I think that was a tad too dramatic...but seriously this sucks.
Robert, I wouldn't be so quick to impute nefarious practices to Campari just yet. First of all, Gruppo Campari doesn't "owe" responses to random emails from bloggers and internet forum participants (which, for all intents and purposes, describes almost all of us). Second, although the differences in taste seem quite clear, it is far from conclusive that Campari changed its formula.
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I'm with the no-vodka crowd myself. Why even get into the game to make vodka? And, at least when I think about it, it seems that outfits such as Clear Creek Distillery and Tuthilltown Spirits are better positioned for the future than mostly-vodka makers such as Great Lakes Distillery.
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Perfluoroisobutene (aka PFIB) is produced by the pyrolysis of polytetrafluoroethylene (aka PTFE, aka "Teflon").
Pyrolysis is the degradation of a substance by heat in the absence of a reagent such as oxygen, water, etc. So, if you put your dry teflon pan into an oxygen free sealed container and heat it above 600F/350C, you will likely produce some PFIB.
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As for a bottle's contents changing over time, I did have a Negroni a few weeks ago in Burbank that used a 1930's Campari. Tasty, yes, but with a noticeable lack of bite that I notice with modern Campari.
This is interesting to me, and suggests to me that age may indeed be a determining factor in this puzzle.
I also had a pink gin that same afternoon with Malacca gin, one of my old favorites that I'm always trying to cadge, so unless that line about Malacca still being on the shelves in Manhattan is just a line, we might have a swap to arrange.If you've got a decent supply of something defunkt you'd like to trade, I might be pursuaded to exchange bottles.
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Recently sampled some of Haus Alpenz's St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram at Death & Company, and picked up a bottle at Astor Wines & Spirits to use at home. Like everything in the Haus Alpenz portfolio, it is outstanding.
One of my first thoughts was that it reminded me of the "bay rum" aftershave my father used to wear sometimes when I was growing up. Bay rum is made with rum (originally) and the leaves/fruit of the West Indian Bay Tree (Pimenta racemosa) whereas pimento dram is made with rum and the fruit of the closely related Allspice Tree in the same genus (Pimenta dioica). I always wanted to know what that stuff would taste like.
As it turns out, Ted Haig's column in the most recent issue of [ur;=http://www.imbibemagazine.com/]Imbibe Magazine featured pimento dram, no doubt to coincide with the American rollout of St. Elizabeth Allspice Dram. It featured the Lion's Tail, which seems to be everyone's introductory pimento dram cocktail of choice, and a tiki drink by Jeff "Beachbum" Berry. Lion's Tail was nice, although I'm likely to dial back the pimento dram nex time around. At 2 ounces Wild Turkey 101 to 1/2 ounce pimento dram, the dram was still pretty overpowering.
Morcilla (blood sausage) substitute?
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