slkinsey

Why not contact the North American distributor?

The four things that increase shelf stability seem to be: 1. You can't keep the lavender in the syrup for two weeks. If it's a flavored/infused simple syrup, strain out the flavoring agent after no more than a day or two. It shouldn't take more than a day or so to infuse simple syrup. If it's taking substantially longer, consider infusing the flavoring agent into an ounce or so of high proof alcohol for several hours and then mixing the flavoring agent and the alcohol into the (cooled) simple syrup for maybe a day more of infusion. 2. Increase the saturation. For example, 2:1 simple syrup is more stable than 1:1 simple syrup. Don't go below 1:1. 3. Dose your (cooled) simple syrup with a bit of high proof spirits. 4. Keep the simple syrup under refrigeration. Especially for a commercial operation, two week old simple syrup strikes me as too old, unless you're using the last few drops. Many sugar infusions will begin to lose their bright flavors after around a week. Better to make in small batches and plan on making a new batch on a biweekly basis.

You are? D'oh!

. . . and, let me tell you Dave, if you've never had a duck blood Mojito, you haven't lived.

I think it depends a lot on how the garnish is used. A thin lemon slice floating on top of a cocktail or a flower or a maraschino cherry or a wedge of orange or a non-twisted twist. . . these things aren't often adding much more than visual appeal. And, on the other hand, we have drinks like the Sazerac where some purists hold with the practice of twisting the lemon peel over the drink but not using it as a garnish. I guess that, to the extent that a "garnish" contributes flavor to a cocktail I see it as a crucial ingredient. If it is merely a visual adornment, then it's "just a garnish" and I'll use it or not as the mood strikes me.

I think this greatly depends on the blender. For a conical blender (which I think is the best kind for most blender tasks) like a "beehive" Osterizer, you won't be able to crush ice. I have one, so I know whereof I speak. Other blenders with flatter/broader bottoms like the KA and Cuisinart models may be able to break up ice cubes, but I can see this being very tedious because the ice won't "turn over" in the blender unless it melts enough to get slushy (which we don't want). So, best-case scenario you're crushing maybe 5 or 6 cubes at a time in the blender. Not an optimal situation. Blenders are good at making blender drinks -- not crushing ice. If you want to crush ice, get yourself one of these babies (Rival Ice-O-Matic electric ice crusher with fine/coarse adjustment). That way you can shake with cracked ice whenever you want. I have one at home. I've actually come to believe that the ones with ounces marked on them are a bad idea. It's better to learn how to measure the right way with a jigger or measuring cup. The marked mixing glasses are really only helpful for the most simple cocktails. When you start making something like a Pegu Club with 2 ounces of gin, 3/4 ounce orange curaçao and 3/4 once of fresh lime juice, or anything that includes anything other than ounce and half-ounce measures, the marked mixing glass is useless because you can't measure with that kind of precision very well. The way to mix in a Boston shaker, IMO, is to measure out all the ingredients into the small mixing cup with jiggers or a small measuring cup like the Oxo, fill the small mixing cup with ice, put the big mixing cup on top, give it a whack, shake, flip it over so the big mixing cup is on the bottom, slap the side to loosen the seal, remove the small mixing cup and strain the drink. The precarious bit for the novice is loosening the seal to remove the small mixing cup. When it's glass, it can be a precarious situation. Turns out it's a lot easier with all metal, and you don't have to worry about breaking the glass.

This little sentence over in Dave's thread on putting together a portable bar for his family vacation got me wondering about what happened a month ago that got him interested in exploring cocktails. I thought it might make a pretty interesting thread. For me, I grew up in a family with a pretty strong cocktail tradition. My mother's father was a great fan of the Martini and cocktails in general. Being born in 1897, he had been just the right age to experience the last gasp of the great pre-prohibition age before prohibition as well as the brief resurgence of cocktail culture after its repeal. It was a tradition in the Kinsey household to have a cocktail and play a hand or two of cards before dinner, and that tradition continues today. I continue it in my household, albeit minus the cards. So it was a natural for me to believe that developing an affinity for a well made cocktail was all a part of growing up and learning to enjoy the better things in life. Since the opera business, and my repertoire in particular, involves a certain amount of historical exploration, it was also not surprising that I developed an interest in exploring the history of the craft. In many ways, the aesthetic of the current cocktail revival mirrors some of the elements of the revival in early 19th century Italian opera: Some things have changed, and there is no going back to "the way things used to be." But it's all about understanding the way things were done and doing something today that respects the spirit of the original times and that, to the extent possible given the times in which we live and the fact that we can't ignore the history that has passed and traditions that have evolved, presents the work in its original form. This is what sparked my interest in cocktails and continues to hold my interest. What about you?

Yep. The hinge snapped in half maybe the third time I used it. Now there are a few chips in the enamel around the holes as well. That said, I still use it on a near daily basis with a nail holding the hinge together and it works just fine. Without a doubt, it's a 100% improvement on the "fork and squeeze" method I had been using previously. For that I'll be eternally grateful to JAZ, who turned me on to the world of citrus squeezers for cocktails after seeing my pathetically inefficient and labor intensive citrus squeezing methods when we made a few drinks together. I'd still like to check out one of those Oxo squeezers, though.

Here's another thought: How are you fixed for recipes? Another way of figuring out the bottles to bring would be to look through a good book (and for relative newcomers to mixology, you won't find one better than this book), find 5 cocktails that sound tasty and use more or less similar ingredients and buy those.

Hmm. I've never had a commercial citrus oil that tasted like something I'd want to use in a cocktail. I guess I also don't think it's any trouble to drag a vegetable peeler over the skin of a lemon to make a twist, either. I'm also becoming interested a bit in flaming citrus twists, having consumed a number of cocktails in recent days that were garnished this way. It really does make a difference, as the burnt citrus oils contribute a distinctive note. I'm with you with respect to Manhattans. I've always preferred them with an orange twist. When local sour cherries start coming out, I'm going to try making my own "old school" maraschino cherries by marinating them in maraschino liqueur. That's a hard one. At some point, if a garnish is integral to the success of the drink, it ceases to be a garnish and becomes an ingredient, no? For example, I would argue that the "aromatic garnish" of tipping a few drops of Angostura bitters into the foam on top of a Pisco Sour is essential. What about the profusion of mint on top of a Julep? Certainly a Ti Punch is not right without it's peculiar kind of lime twist. And a Whiskey Old Fashioned wouldn't be right without a twist. But, again, one could argue that these are ingredients rather than garnishes. If one takes the definition that a garnish is a purely decorative adornment, then none of them would be essential.

Forget this unless you want to make "blender drinks." Even most of those can be done very well by shaking the liquor with crushed ice and pouring the works into a glass. How do you get the crushed ice, you ask? Simple: Bar towel. Hammer. Place ice in bar towel (or get a small canvas bag). Whack with hammer until desired degree of crushification is desired. Use ice. Surely you have a meat mallet around the house. It's worth it to invest in a canvas bag for this, because cocktails really are better if stirred/shaken with roughly cracked ice rather than big pieces of refrigerator ice. You can get around 15 degrees F colder using the cracked stuff. BTW, if you are going to use a Boston-style shaker (a reasonable choice), I recommend going all-metal rather than using a glass mixing glass. The metal is more durable for traveling and, more importantly, the drinks will turn out colder with all metal (there is a sound thermodynamic reason for this, but it's probably beyond the scope of this discussion to get into it). I'd suggest using one each of the 15 ounce and 26 ounce stainless steel containers you can buy here to make your Boston shaker.

The problem with the enameled ones, in my experience, is that contrary to cdh's experiences of durability I found the hingepin to be especially weak. I think I snapped mine the third time I used it. It's been working fine for me ever since with a nail through the hinges, but I'd of course prefer that the hingepin had never broken. Perhaps the thing to do is buy one of the enameled ones and replace the weak hingepin right away with something stronger. I also wonder about the reactivity issue. Aluminum is, of course, highly reactive with acid, and citrus is acidic. One would think that this would make aluminum a very poor choice. However, it's possible that the contact period is simply too brief for the aluminum to taint the flavor of the citrus juice. I don't know. I've never used one of the heavy duty aluminum ones, although I have resolved to buy a few the next time I find some for sale in a NYC shop.

The latter style is definitely the way you want to go for home use. My only advice is to try to go for something with the most heavy-duty construction you can find. Look especially at the pin holding the hinge together. It has a real tendency to break. Of course, if that happens, you can slide a nail through the hinges (that's what I have done at home), but I'm sure you'd rather have one that doesn't break. That raw cast aluminum one looks like the stronger ones I've seen. The size also makes a difference. They usually come in "lime," "lemon" and "orange" sizes. Since one usually juices lemons and limes for cocktails, I recommend getting the lemon sized one, which works fione for limes. If you think you will want to juice a lot of oranges, it may make sense to get a larger one as well, but I don't think it will work very well for limes.

Awesome. If you get a picture to John Stage, I'll be interested to hear his reaction.

http://www.thedrinkshop.com/products/nlpde...php?prodid=1046 Nice to see some attention for this product from Padua -- which, I am given to understand, is a great place to go if you want to wive it wealthily (with apologies to Cole Porter).

Interesting. . . I was just thinking about starting a thread on the possibility of cocktails using good aged balsamic vinegar. "Drinking vinegar," by the way is a fairly common term for vinegar fermented to less than 6% acidity (usually around 3% or less) and intended for consumption as a beverage (usually as a digestif) in addition to use as a condiment. I don't know why this seems strange, since aceto balsamico tradizionale has long been consumed as a beverage. twodogs: How do you think the walnut oil worked in the drink? Seemed like an interesting variation on the lemon oil that one often expels onto the surface of a cocktail by twisting. How much did you use, and how did you deploy it? I could see using an atomizer to mist a tiny bit of oil onto the surface of a drink.

I'm not sure lightweight is what I was getting at, because I'm sure your head wasn't spinning. I've always seemed to be able to absorb larger-than-average amounts of alcohol without feeling the effects of intoxication, but I believe that is different than "building up a tolerance," which I think has more to do with learning to compensate for the intoxication than not feeling the effects. Anyway, depending on the size of your before-dinner gin drink, I don't think anyone would be able to go through a meal like that without some intoxication effects. I hardly, if ever, have a cocktail at a high end restaurant precisely because they're too big. I've never thought to ask for the drink split between two (or even three), but I might do that next time around.

"A generous one" (presumably on an empty stomach) says it all. Here, we're not talking about the effect of a cocktail on your palate, we're talking about the effect of alcohol intoxication on your senses. I would also suggest, based on your recounting, that the primary effect of the alcohol was not to make you "less present" during the dinner but rather to interfere with your storage of those experiences in long term memory. I'm not saying that this isn't important, just that it's not the same thing. Again, we get down to the effect of having too much alcohol. A reasonably-sized cocktail contains no more alcohol than the standard pour of wine. Do you think you would have had a similarly attenuated experience had it been a glass of chardonnay or a bottle of beer instead of the gin cocktail? Or if the gin cocktail had been half the size? People differ widely in their ability to tolerate alcohol. This has to do with many things (sex, weight, age, the body's ability to manufacture alcohol dehydrogenase, etc.). It could be that, for you, drinking that much alcohol in any form on an empty stomach is too much for you to have a "peak attention restaurant eperience." For me, it wouldn't be much of a concern. Most people can metabolize about an ounce of pure alcohol per hour, and I know from experience that I can go higher. A three ounce martini contains right around 1.3 ounces of pure alcohol. So, for me, by the time I got to the restaurant my blood alcohol would be lower than it would have been if I had a glass of champagne at the table waiting for the first course to arrive. Now, if it was a 6 ounce martini. . . different story. But no one is advocating 6 ounce martinis -- quite the opposite. I'm just pointing out that no one asks whether a before-dinner glass of champagne dulls the palate.

It would be interesting to come up with a list of the lowest priced "very high quality for mixing" spirits.

Nothing odd about that. Different brands/bottlings of a spirit work better in different kinds of cocktail. I almost never use an expensive "boutique" gin when making a drink with a lot of ingredients, because the delicate notes tend to get lost and they often don't have a strong enough juniper note to sing through. It's not clear to me, for example, that there would be much point to making a Pegu Club with Hendrick's gin. Hey, Gordon's is a really good quality gin. I love Tanqueray and consider it probably the best "all around" gin, but in terms of a good quality traditional gin with an emphatic juniper note it's hard to beat Gordon's. Since it's around half the price of Tanqueray, I use it often in drinks with a lot of flavors going on. Gordon's juniper really cuts through. This is an important point, and ties in with what I wrote above in response to jbewley. You won't often hurt the drink by defaulting to your top shelf mixer, but it's wise to consider whether the drink you're mixing might be more suitable to a less expensive bottling. Sometimes (e.g., a Pegu Club made with Gordon's versus Hendrick's) you're probably going to get a better drink with the less expensive brand. Most of the time I don't see much point in using an expensive spirit in a highball.

Exactly. A jigger is a metal measuring device shaped like two cones stuck together at the pointy end. Usually the big side is twice the size of the small side. Thus you get a 2 ounce/1 ounce jigger, a 1.5 ounce/0.75 ounce jigger and a 1 ounce/0.5 ounce jigger. Presumably, if you want to do a quarter ounce, you fill the 0.5 ounce jigger half way or you use 1.5 teaspoons. Jiggers are very useful when you are mixing drinks in a situation where speed is a major consideration (e.g., a busy cocktail bar). When you want two ounces, for example, you just pick up the 2/1 ounce jigger, fill the big side all the way to the top and dump it into the mixing glass. "Free pouring," in which the bartender measures the liquid by sight or by counting while pouring, is an even faster method of measurement, but in my opinion not accurate enough for fruly exacting formulae (I note that the bars I visit that prepare drinks with any real complexity of formula do not free pour and use jiggers as a matter of course). Personally, at home I am very rarely in a situation where speed is a major consideration, and I find that I like the Oxo cups better. That way I can use one liquid measure for the whole drink.

That's the great thing about the Oxo cups. The angled measure makes it very easy to read.

Interesting question. I'm glad you brought this back up. I think it depends greatly on the size of the cocktail (and they are way too big these days). A properly sized cocktail contains no more than 3 ounces of strong spirits which, as it turns out, contains right around the same amount of alcohol as the average pour of wine. So, fundamentally, from the "senses befuddled by alcohol" perspective, there is little difference between preceding dinner with a martini or a glass of wine. A proper cocktail should be short, cold, bracing and stimulating of the appetite. Unfortunately, when you take that formula and blow up a three ounce drink into a 9 ounce drink, intoxication starts to become an issue. I think people would be best off ordering a cocktail split between two people and served in two glasses.

Very nice, Doc. My main difference is that I don't use jiggers. I find it much more convenient for home use to use the Oxo 2 ounce angled measuring cups. That way I can make the whole drink using one liquid measuring device. I can see the utility of a jigger for professional volume mixing, but personally not for home use.

Do you buy those? I remember hearing a story about an upland Thai village, where there was according to the report a misguided aid program that promoted strong pesticides that ended up making people sick, so the villagers bought only the insect-eaten vegetables at the market and refused to touch the ones that looked perfect. Now, I don't think we're dealing with anything that drastic in these parts, but still, I'm interested to know what you do with that information. I buy on gustatory criteria, not dogmatic or health-related criteria. If the greens look good and taste good, I buy them. If not, I don't. These, to my eye, don't look very good. Given all the other things I am doing to my body (breathing NYC air, drinking too much alcohol, eating too much fat and too many calories, etc.) I am not overly concerned about whatever minute trace amounts of synthesized pesticides I may be getting from greenmarket produce (especially since, as I point out upthread, some of the common naturally-occurring and derrived-from-naturally-occurring-sources pest control substances organic farmers may use are far more toxic).