slkinsey
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Posts posted by slkinsey
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You can use apple cultivars that were not designed for cider and/or brandy. This is what Laird's does. But there are specific cultivars that have been developed specifically to have properties that are good for cider and brandy. These cultivars tend to be inedibly sour or bitter and/or have a texture or other properties that makes them unsuitable for eating. In the areas of Europe that have longstanding continuous traditions of making cider and brandy, they tend to use these specialized "cider apples" along with a mix of apples that might be suitable also for eating and/or cooking. The relative dearth of cider apples in the United States may be one reason why our European-style apple brandies don't measure up well.
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I always keep them. Just toss them in a resealable plastic container that you keep in the freezer. Later on you can thaw (they will be thicker than they were before they were frozen) and use in custard or, if you're me, egg yolk pasta.
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These were all the same. Equal parts of [spirit], lime, Luxardo maraschino and Green Chartreuse.
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One time when Audrey and I went to Death & Company, Phil Ward made us a gigantic flight of Last Word variants. I think there was gin, Genevieve, rye, tequila, La Favorite and maybe a few others. I think the one with Favorite was just riffed-up on the spot, but we all thought it was really nice and wondered why we hadn't thought of it before. I don't know if it ever made it onto a menu. We informally called it the Favorite Word, I think (my recollection is a bit hazy, I will admit).
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I should point out that Laird's -- which makes IMO by far the best apple brandy in the US -- does not use obscure apple cultivars developed to be turned into cider and distilled into spirits. As far as I know, they use the fruit of the same cultivars you can buy in the supermarket.
Unfortunately, if there ever were significant numbers of cider/spirit apple trees in the US, there aren't now. This is unlike traditional European apple cider and apple spirit producing areas of the world such as Calvados, Asturias, South West England, etc. that have a more or less continuous tradition of apple-based alcoholic beverages and therefore a more or less continuous population of specialized apple cultivars for these purposes.
Planting and growing apple trees in the US for a supposed future market for apple-based distillates on a large scale? It seems highly unlikely this will happen in the forseeable future. Figure it takes around 4 years before a new apple tree will be ready to bear significant fruit. Figure another 4 years to put some age on the apple distillate. Figure 2 years of planning. Ten years is a pretty long time and a pretty large investment with no guarantee of a return. And if it doesn't work out? The growers have to rip out all those cider apple trees, plant something they can sell, and then wait for those trees to bear fruit.
Ultimately, the reason to ferment alcoholic beverages or distill spirits was exactly because it was the best way to either make money off of your crops, or it was the only way to conveniently preserve the value. Unfortunately, Prohibition gave the US alcoholic beverages industry a huge hit from which it still hasn't fully recovered, and with respect to things like apples, refrigeration and improved transportation changed the economics. This is why we still don't have one of the great American spirits of all: aged peach brandy. 150 years ago, the best thing they could do with the superabundance of peaches at harvest time was distill them into brandy. Now, making brandy is less profitable than shipping peaches across the country.
Frankly, if Georgia wants to bring out a distinctive, artisinal spirit -- peach brandy is a much more logical place to start than apple brandy. There's a niche where there is literally no competition.
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I think you may be confusing "artisanal" apple growers with farmers who are in it to try to make money -- which is most of them.
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"Ideally, you will use unsprayed, organically grown grapes; if you leave the grapes unwashed, the culture can take advantage of beneficial wild yeasts that cling to the grape skin's waxy coating. If you can't find organically grown grapes, wash the grapes you buy." (p. 32, ISBN 679-40907-6).
Right. This implies that yeast from grape skins can form the basis of a sourdough culture. This is incorrect and was known to be incorrect at the time her work was published. Not that she is unusual in perpetuating myths and misinformation with respect to sourdough microbiology. This sort of thing is the rule rather than the exception. But it's a fact that people read these things and believe they can use apple slices in starting their sourdough culture to "take advantage of beneficial wild yeasts" that live on apples and will end up with a distinctive "apple starter," and can use juniper berries in starting their sourdough culture to "take advantage of beneficial wild yeasts" that live on juniper berries and will end up with a distinctive "juniper starter" and so on. This is not correct.
I should hasten to point out that, while I think its disappointing that Silverton perpetuates this myth and misinformation her her book, I don't think this is a particularly major flaw. The recipes work, after all. It's just too bad. A far greater flaw, in my opinion, is the instruction to keep impractically large amounts of starter. This, too, can be explained by the fact that she is a commercial baker and probably didn't give enough due consideration to the realities of casual home sourdough baking. But, again, while this is a criticism of the book, it's still a good book. The recipes work well and they are very good. But we do find that people who use Silverton's starter techniques and have an understanding of how starters work based on her books do tend to run into trouble with certain things because they don't have a particularly good understanding of how starter cultures and sourdoughs in general work.
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Distilling is not the easiest thing in the world to do. It costs a lot of money to start up, there are lots of licensing and technology costs, etc. And making a flavorful-and-good spirit is difficult to master (which is why most small-scale distilleries start out making vodka -- aka neutral alcohol). On top of that, if you want to age your spirit, that not only adds lots of cost (you have to get the barrels, there is some loss during aging, you have to pay for the warehouse, etc.) but it then takes you several years to find out if you've made something good.
The apple growers, meanwhile, don't care who they sell the apples to, so long as they are paid the going price. If someone wants to make sidra or apple brandy in Georgia, nothing is stopping them from trying. The fact that only Laird's seems to be able to make an American apple brandy of quality at a reasonable price suggests that it's not so easy to do.
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I've on very rare occasion used pre-peeled garlic, usually when I needed somewhere on the order of 20 cloves of garlic. Unless comparing to hardneck garlic or fresh green garlic from the greenmarket, I think the flavor difference is minor.
I did find that, in the jar, the cloves tended to get funky after around a week or so. Perhaps I could have taken measures to mitigate this, or perhaps I could have bought cloves that were packaged in smaller numbers of cloves rather than a gigantic jar.
My main objection to them over simply buying heads of garlic is that the convenience win is minor unless you really need to use a lot of garlic. But, more importantly to me, I think it creates unnecessary plastic waste. This is an issue people are thinking about increasingly and, frankly, our need to think about ways to reduce unnecessary plastic waste is only going to increase.
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Right. But what I find interesting is that at just a touch over double the price of Laird's bonded, Clear Creek's "eau de vie de pomme" is . . . not quite as good.
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My only criticisms are that she perpetuates mythology about sourdough microorganisms that are known to be untrue.
I think I'm still missing this: what are the untruths?
I see differences of opinion, but untruths? Mythology?
Untruths and mythology such as, for example, the thought that sourdough microorganisms can come from grapes -- which is known to be untrue. You will not find any sourdough microorganisms on a grape.
I defend against this because I have 5 years and 1000 loaves launched by these mythological untruths.Lots of people throughout history have been able to do great things based on premises that turned out to be untrue. That doesn't make the premise any less untrue.
I think this an opinion, and opinions are fine, but they're not fact.I'm not sure what you refer to, but it's a fact that sourdough microorganisms don't come from grapes -- not an opinion. Scientists have been looking for these things for a long time, and have looked at countless grapes (among other things) looking for sourdough microorganisms. None have been found, and people who make their careers studying this sort of thing on a scientific basis do not believe that grapes are or can be a source of sourdough microorganisms.
What grapes will do is provide a ready supply of easily fermentable sugars, along with grape microorganisms to eat those sugars, that will provide an apparent early boost of fermentation activity. But none of the microorganisms providing this initial fermentation is capable of surviving in a continually refreshed sourdough, and they all die off within a few generations.
As for burden to home baker, I don't agree.It's a burden to me because I'm juggling 3 starters in volume. I make volumes of bread and need volumes.
If you don't think it's burdensome to keep around and continually feed on a daily basis as much as nine quarts of sourdough starter, then we have a difference of opinion as to what constituted "burdensome." It has been quite common since the publication of her book for people to criticize Silverton's starter feeding schedules and amounts for being too burdensome. This will always be a matter of opinion for the individual baker, of course.
All I can say is that I have in the past maintained as many as three separate sourdough cultures which retained identifiably distinct fermentation characteristics. I maintained these at around one cup total of each culture, and on days when I was not baking with those cultures I kept them in the refrigerator and fed them perhaps twice a month. When I planned to bake with one of the cultures, I would let it come up to temperature, inoculate however much "new starter" I needed to use, feed the storage culture via 1:20 dilution and return it to the refrigerator as soon as it started to show the first signs of life. Because my starters were fed for optimal growth conditions (meaning that it had the maximum number of live and healthy sourdough microorganisms per gram) the "new starter" would come up to full activity in a few hours and I could bake with it. This is my idea of "not burdensome."
There is simply no reason, unless you are baking every single day with all three of your cultures, for you to keep so much starter and for you to feed them several times a day. And if you are not feeding your nine quarts of starters every day and are refrigerating them until the day before baking day, then there is just no reason to keep that much in consideration of the fact that you can build any amount of sourdough from as little as a tablespoon of storage culture in 24 hours.
I appreciate the other comments. Do you have a source link to the study or studies that from which you quote? To me, yesterday's science is as valuable as mythology. Who knows when, where, how this study was conducted? Who's to say that a strain of yeast from San Francisco has anything to say about yeasts in Denver, for example?We can know these things because, while a Denver strain of Lactobacillus sanfransiscensis might be a little different from a San Francisco strain of L. sanfransiscensis, there are generalized things we can say that apply to all strains of L. sanfransiscensis. We're just not going to find, for example, a strain that is not seriously inhibited at a pH of 4.3 or lower. Now... there are other, less desirable lactobacilli that can survive in a low pH, high-inoculum sourdough, but not L. sanfransiscensis. L. sanfransiscensis is the dominant lactobacillus in virtually all of the best sourdough cultures. (See e.g.,Biodiversity of Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis strains isolated from five sourdoughs, M. Kitahara, S. Sakata and Y. Benno, Lett Appl Microbiol. 2005; 40(5):353-357): "strains were L. sanfranciscensis, Lactobacillus plantarum, Lactobacillus paralimentarius, Lactobacillus fermentum, Lactobacillus pontis, Lactobacillus casei, Weisella confusa and Pediococcus pentosaceus. A total of 21 strains were identified as L. sanfranciscensis. . .")
The other thing we can say is that there isn't nearly as wide a variety of yeast as one might think. The most common is familiar old Saccharomyces cerevisiae, followed by Candida milleri, C. humilis, S. exiguus and Issatchenkia orientalis (see, Occurrence and dominance of yeast species in sourdough, Pulvirenti A, Solieri L, Gullo M, De Vero L, Giudici P., Lett Appl Microbiol. 2004;38(2):113-7.)
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The 10s:50f:50w method is interesting. Mine is more 50s:25f:25w. I'll create one as such and see how it comes out.
On a microbiological basis, we know that your feeding process (1:1 refreshment) is very bad for the health and vitality of the culture, and likely to result in the culture coming to be taken over by less desirable microorganisms. I should hasten to point out that this is not opinion or speculation -- this has been determined by scientific research. For example, in a German study no Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis was found in cultures refreshed at 50%.
Much better for the health and vitality of a culture for the kind of sourdough bread we would like to make is something like 1:5 refreshment. Plenty of people (myself included) simply leave whatever starter remains clinging to the inside of the jar when all the starter is taken out, and fill the rest with new flour and water. This is great for the health, vitality and propagation of the culture.
Thank you for this. Would you have more information on this study?
Back in the old Usenet days, in rec.fooc.sourdough we got some good information from a German scientist studying the microbiology and other aspects of sourdoughs. For example, see here for some of this information.
Some pertinent quotes:
"The optimum pH for lactobacilli is 5.0 - 5.5 (which is the initial pH of a sourdough with 5 - 20% inoculum) . . ." ["inoculum" means "the amount of old starter you mix with the new flour"]
This means that you get optimum growth conditions for the lactobacilli if the starter is refreshed with a <20% inoculum. If you keep your starter at equal weights of flour and water, a 5% inoculum would mean keeping 5 grams of "old starter" and mixing that with 50 grams each of water and flour every time you feed.
". . . in doughs that are continuously operated with a high inoculum (more than about 30%), you'll find more yeasts and fewer lactobacilli. Eventually, the lactobacilli flora may change, with more acid tolerant lactobacilli (e.g. L. pontis) prevailing. . . [in a sourdough culture we studied that] is operated with a 50% inoculum, the pH is never above 4.1 - 4.3, and no L. sanfranciscensis is found in those doughs. . ."
This tells is that it is unadvisable to feed the starter regularly with a >30% inoculum, and very bad to feed the starter regularly with a >50% inoculum.
I have to say I've been surprised by just how little starter is needed to regenerate volumes.If a ratio is healthier, that's even more interesting.
Keep in mind that one gram of active starter contains between 10,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 sourdough microorganizms -- far more than will be found in 50 or 100 grams of new flour-and-water. So you don't have to worry about the culture being "taken over" by some invading microorganisms by feeding with a very small inoculum. On the contrary, you are creating optimal growth conditions for the culture microorganisms.
If it produces a starter that leavens a loaf in 7-8 hours instead of 3-4, then that will be a problem.I mean, healthier is great, but how does health of the starter contribute to leavening strength, flavour.
The healthier the starter culture is, the more active the sourdough microorganisms are. More active microorganisms equal faster leavening, faster activity, more souring, etc.
The refreshment I use, again, is Silverton's and it just makes some of the best bread I can turn out.Silverton's recipes are good (although, as a sourdough purist I wish she didn't have so many "hybrid doughs" that are boosted with commercial yeast). My only criticisms are that she perpetuates mythology about sourdough microorganisms that are known to be untrue, and that her starter feeding instructions and volumes are unduly burdensome for the home baker. Using the "storage culture" technique I outlined above actually offers you much more flexibility. One thing you will note is that different bakers and different recipe writers all seem to have a different starter formula. Some of them call for a stiff "chef" starter, some of them call for a thin "poolish" starter, some of them call for a very large inoculum in the final dough, some of them call for a small inoculum, etc. If you're locked into keeping 3 quarts of "Nancy Silverton Starter" going at all times, then you are effectively prevented from making any sourdough recipe by another writer who uses a different starter formula. Using the "storage starter" technique, not only are you freed from the time-consuming and wasteful practice of keeping 3 quarts of starter going all the time, but you can make up anyone's starter recipe by simply whipping up a batch of their starter sponge, chef, etc.. inoculating it with a bit of your starter culture, and then letting the new batch of "so-and-so's starter" come active.
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Exactly. The only purpose of the "storage starter" should be to perpetuate and preserve the culture. And there is no reason that maintaining as little as a cup of storage starter should be limiting. You just have to change your paradigm for thinking about how the starter works. Think of the storage starter like a "packet of sourdough yeast" and use it that way. With that understanding, you can see how it is possible to use the storage starter to inoculate larger volumes of dough or batter and "make as much starter as you need" only when you need it.
For example: Let's say you're making 30 boules in a day, and each boule contains 1 pound of flour. That means you're using 30 pounds of flour. Okay, so let's say that your recipe calls for 20% of the flour to come from the starter. That's 6 pounds of flour. No problem. Mix up 6 pounds of flour with the amount of water you want to use (depending on whether you want to use a sponge or "chef" technique), scoop the 1 cup of starter out of your jar and mix that in. Put more flour and water into the storage jar and mix it together with the little bits of "old starter" stuck to the sides. Not only is this small amount of "old starter" sufficient to perpetuate the culture, but these are optimum growth conditions. So long as the starter is healthy and active, your 6 pounds-of-flour sponge or chef should be fully active within 8 to 12 hours (i.e., overnight). Now you can bake your 30 boules. If you want to get fancy, you could "build" the sponge by mixing the cup of starter first with 2 pounds of flour, letting that come fully active, then mixing in the remaining 4 pounds of flour, letting that come fully active, then making your main dough. I have not found this to be necessary, however. Either way, this is in no way more burdensome than maintaining a quart each of three different starters, and is likely to result in a healthier, more stable and active starter culture.
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vice has the right idea. All the thermal transfer and melting that happens when we shake a cocktail also happens when we stir a cocktail, it just happens at a slower rate. Why does it happen at a slower rate? Without getting too technical, we can say that the faster we move the liquid and ice around, the faster the rate of thermal transfer and the faster the rate of melting. So, yes, dilution does continue while the cocktail "cooks" (and so does chilling) -- it just happens at a much lower rate compared to when the mixture is being stirred.
Think about it for a minute: We can use whole ice cubes and stir the cocktail for perhaps as much as 60 seconds to get proper dilution and chilling. If we shake the same cocktail with the same ice for 60 seconds, we are going to get a lot more dilution.
So... when the booze is just sitting on the ice and not being agitated at all, we have the condition for which thermal transfer and melting are at their lowest possible rate. This may be useful if you need the extra time to do something else (e.g., a busy bar). But when you do have the time to stir the cocktail, letting it "cook" has no usefulness.
For example, say you are shooting for a Manhattan with 25% dilution. You stir Manhattan #1 constantly until it reaches 25% dilution and then strain it; and you stir Manhattan #2, then cook it for a while, then stir it a but more, and then strain it. . . How, exactly, would you think these two cocktails would be different? And if they are different, in what way would Manhattan #2 be an improvement over Manhattan #1, or in what way would Manhattan #2 have characteristics or qualities that couldn't be achieved with a constant stirring technique (e.g., by cracking the ice more)? One can, by the way, make a "stirred" cocktail without any stirring whatsoever. I've done this a few times with Martinis: Start with a frozen heavy glass mixing glass filled with medium-fie cracked ice that has been kept dry in the freezer. Pour in the booze. Let it sit for a while. Pour it out. No stirring required, and so long as you understand your materials and are consistent with your cooking time you'll get the right amount of chilling and dilution every time.
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The 10s:50f:50w method is interesting. Mine is more 50s:25f:25w. I'll create one as such and see how it comes out.
On a microbiological basis, we know that your feeding process (1:1 refreshment) is very bad for the health and vitality of the culture, and likely to result in the culture coming to be taken over by less desirable microorganisms. I should hasten to point out that this is not opinion or speculation -- this has been determined by scientific research. For example, in a German study no Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis was found in cultures refreshed at 50%.
Much better for the health and vitality of a culture for the kind of sourdough bread we would like to make is something like 1:5 refreshment. Plenty of people (myself included) simply leave whatever starter remains clinging to the inside of the jar when all the starter is taken out, and fill the rest with new flour and water. This is great for the health, vitality and propagation of the culture.
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Moderator's note: this string of posts was split off from the Pimento Dram topic -- CA
"Cook" is slang for just letting the booze sit on the ice when you make a stirred cocktail rather than stirring it. Stirring the cocktail increases thermal transfer and melting. So, if you are in a professional situation where you're making several drinks, you can put the booze on the ice for a stirred cocktail, stir a bit and then let the drink "cook" while you're giving your attention to something else (say, shaking and pouring out a few shaken cocktails). Then later you can stir a bit more and strain. It's a practical way of "pausing" the chilling and dilution of the stirred cocktail when multitasking.
In a home situation, or when not multitasking, there is no practical reason to do this. However, for some reason, once this professional practice was described in these forums, people got the idea that it's a meaningful and beneficial technique to be used in preparing stirred cocktails. It isn't really, though. There is no reason not to simply stir the drink until you hit the temperature and dilution you want and then strain it out -- no "cooking" required. All of which is to say: don't sweat it.
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I don't know whether they can specify what blend of apples they use or not. Since they get their apples from the Shenandoah Valley, I can't imagine that there is all that much variation in blend from year to year. Also, the extent of their aging, the use of charred oak barrels and perhaps some blending for consistency probably act to mitigate any large yearly variations.
Your comparison to grape-based distillates may be an apt one. But consider that there really isn't much year-to-year variation in, say, Courvoisier XO. With apple brandies in particular, I find that they tend to increasingly lose a definable "apple character" after 8 years or so of age. I've tasted some 20+ year old Calvados, and it didn't particularly taste of apples. Similarly, Laird's bonded has much more apple flavor than their 12 year product.
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fooey, there is no reason whatsoever to keep that much starter. All the starter is for is perpetuating the culture. Just keep a small amount of starter (say, 100 grams of each) and use that starter to inoculate larger amounts of poolish when you need to "make more starter" for a batch of sourdough.
It is highly unlikely that using an immersion blender did anything bad to your sourdough starter culture. How are you refreshing the starter? Sourdough starters should be fed by high dilution for the best healthy growth characteristics. This is the opposite of what most home bakers do. What it means is that, if you are keeping 100 grams of sourdough starter, when you feed the starter you should discard all of it except for around 10 grams, and then feed that with 50 grams each of flour and water.
Nancy Silverton, while being a talented commercial baker, is notorious among sourdough aficionados for perpetuating a lot of misinformation about sourdough microbiology, for recommending starter feeding practices that are highly impractical for the home baker and anyway not optimal for culture health, and for recommending that home bakers maintain a far larger volume of culture than is needed or practical.
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Laird's makes 2 nice, real brandies...one minimum 7.5 years old and the other 12 years old.
As far as I know, all Laird's products are made from the same apple distillate. The difference is that the applejack is a 4-6 year old apple brandy blended with neutral spirits, dosed with apple wine and diluted to 80 proof. The bonded apple brandy is aged for 6 years or more* and diluted to 100 proof. The 7.5 and 12 year old bottlings start out with the same apple distillate as used in the applejack and bonded products, aged longer and diluted to 80 proof.
* My understanding is that Laird's ability to make quantities of apple brandy is directly related to the availability of apples.** Some years there is an abundant supply and they are able to do a large run. Some years the supply is so limited that they won't distill any at all. What this means is that, while the Bottled in Bond act says that bonded spirits must be aged a minimum of 4 years in a charred new oak barrel*** and Laird's says their bonded product is a minimum of 6 years old. But sometimes they don't have any 6 year old spirit because they did not run the stills 6 years ago. As a result, sometimes Laird's is bottling their bonded product at a significantly higher age. I believe they've been using a 8 year old recently.
** Hardly anyone is growing cider/distilling apples in America any more, which may be a reason why European-style apple brandies do not compare very well to the French versions. Laird's product is distilled from regular old eating apples.
*** I don't know of anyone else who is aging their apple brandy in charred new oak barrels, and I'm not aware of anyone in America who is aging their product as long as Laird's does. I doubt that any of the new American producers are putting anywhere near the 6+ years that Laird's puts on its bonded product.
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Flag Hill Farm makes an apple eau de vie and Sweetgrass Farm's apple brandy is aged only 13 months.
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Well... the Forks of Cheat "Apple Jack" apple brandy is 80 proof and only aged 2 years. Laird's bonded applejack is 100 proof and aged something like 6 to 8 years (believe it or not, they sometimes put older apple brandy in the bottle than the age statement).
My impression is that I'm not aware of too many American producers that are making old school American-style apple brandy (which is to say, in the "whiskey-like" tradition as exemplified by Laird's). Rather, most of them seem to be making either eaux de vie or vaguely European-style apple brandy. And, in my opinion, the European-style American apple brandies don't compare all that well to Calvados. They don't tend to have the suaveness you're looking for in the European style, and yet they don't have that intensity of flavor and bite of a real applejack. And, at the same time, they tend to be pretty expensive. The other thing I notice is that most of the new producers of apple brandy tend to have started out distilling eaux de vie, and they don't tend to use charred oak barrels for aging. I wonder if it's possible that their distillation process is too careful and "clean" -- as it would have to be for the eaux de vie they're used to making -- and then not aged in a particularly character-enhancing way given the raw distillate. Personally, I'd rather see a dirtier (and hopefully therefore less expensive) distillation followed by longer aging in charred barrels. Why try to beat the French at their game when we have our own tradition?
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. . . it references that the product is named for cynarin . . .
I'm going to go ahead and suggest that the article is incorrect in this assertion. Rather, let me suggest that the product is named after the Latin name for the globe artichoke, Cynara scolymus. I'll further suggest that cynarin is also named after the Latin genus, not the other way around.
By the way: Ever wonder how it is that cardoons look kind of like celery but taste kind of like artichoke? The cardoon is also in the Cynara genus, having the Latin name Cynara cardunculus.
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I wonder what the process is by which artichoke is incorporated in Cynar, and whether Cynar actually contains cynarin.
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I think Kent's point is well made. I've never had a dinner/cocktail pairing that I really thought worked. And part of the problem may be a lack of true crossover experience. People who are trained and experienced in pairing beverages with food usually hold 90% (if not 100%) of this knowledge with respect to wines, and usually know little-to-nothing about crafting quality cocktails. Mixologists, on the other hand, know plenty about crafting quality cocktails but frequently know little-to-nothing about pairing beverages with food. More to the point, among the few people who really do have significant knowledge and expertise in both these areas, there is typically not much cross-pollination between these two areas. Most of the best cocktails being crafted today simply can't work with food on the kind of level where one would do a beverage pairing, so even a mixologist with extensive wine-pairing experience may not find that their cocktail crafting experience translates easily into this other area. Sure, a great cocktail like the Gin-Gin Mule is refreshing to have at a backyard cookout and would work great in that context, but not so much alongside something like "veal tenderloin, sweetbread stuffed tomatoes, crispy calfs head terrine with chanterelles, and saffron rice."
Distilled Apples
in Spirits & Cocktails
Posted · Edited by slkinsey (log)
I suppose one should point out that the traditional or "allowed" choice of fruit isn't always because that's what's best. After the phylloxera plague, most of the producers in the Cognac region replanted almost exclusively with ugni blanc rather than the mix of grape varietals they had been using before the plague -- not because ugni blanc was the best grape for distilling into brandy, but rather because it was more economical (higher yields, etc.). Cognac, in particular, is made from pretty crappy raw materials and depends upon maturation in wood for most of its desirable characteristics. This is one reason that some American producers (notable Germain-Robin) have been able to compete with the French producers by starting off with a much higher quality wine and a much higher quality distillate out of the still. Grape brandies in general don't tend to have much "grape character" whereas one would like for an apple brandy to have significant "apple character" (otherwise you might as well have a grape distillate, right?).