Jump Monk

[by Mike]

Last week I had the fortune of traveling to Chamonix, a picturesque little town nestled underneath Mont Blanc in the French Alps, for a statistics conference. The views were amazing, but the food wasn't particularly intriguing. I guess a region known for fondue doesn't offer much for the lactose intolerant.

You do have to respect, however, a town with multiple charcuterie and cheese shops. While browsing one of the better stocked stores, I was amazed to find bottles of Chartreuse, both green and yellow, resting in the rafters above the cash register. Over the course of the week I went back twice, each time leaving with a new product from the Carthusian Monks.

I'm always impressed when I spot a nip of high quality liquor, but this gift set was a revelation. It was worth the bottle of V.E.P yellow alone, a product which I have yet to find anywhere on either side of the Atlantic. The 9th Centenary Liqueur commemorates 900 years of the Carthusian monastery, but isn't much more than a slightly sweeter take on the usual green formulation.

G enepi is everywhere in the Alps. Back in the day montaineers would gather flowers from the slopes and then macerate them in liquor to produce a sweet, herbal, and slightly bitter liqueur. Just about every store sells their own formulation and every restaurant features it on their menu. The Chartreuse offering was actually a bit disappointing; I preferred the versions offered in the local restaurants. Their stronger bitter swallow reminded me of a harmonious combination of yellow Chartreuse and a good amaro.

The bottle that started the string of purchases, however, was the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France Sommeliers, or MOFS, special edition Chartreuse. Confused by the unfamiliar label, I spent the following evening googling around for more information. Information was sparse, especially when limited to mostly French websites and Google Translate, but what I could find was sufficiently intriguing to warrant a purchase.

Once back in the States, the first tastes did not disappoint. Somewhere between yellow and green Chartreuse, in color, flavor, and proof, the MOFS Chartreuse features a rich herbal flavor with an unctuous texture and just enough sweetness to round everything out. While yellow, and sometimes green, work wonderfully in cocktails, the MOFS is something to be sipped, slightly chilled, in the middle of the summer. A porch wouldn't be inappropriate.

Even though I've never been impressed with milk chocolate, I couldn't resist one last Chartreuse purchase.

I need to get to more conferences.

Start Me Up

[by Mike]

We've discussed the very beginnings of a bar before, but a few weeks ago I had a chance to put some of these ideas into practice.

I was in Los Angeles for a conference, and had the opportunity to crash with some friends from undergrad. One of these friends has long been intrigued by cocktails ever since he, John, and I nearly had Craigie to ourselves for a night thanks to a few feet of freshly fallen snow, but never found the time to start his own bar. It would have been a shame to waste an opportunity to help him see that through.

The weekend before my flight I dropped by the Boston Shaker and put together a basic kit: shaker, jigger, spoon, julep strainer, and a set of Tovolo ice cube trays. Upon arrival I presented him with the gift, essentially guilting him into a trip to BevMo and an earnest start to his bar. Although to be fair, I don't think much guilt was actually involved.

We began with two classics that any self-respecting enthusiast should master: the Martini and the Manhattan. Plymouth and the vermouths were easy enough to find, but the Sazerak took some searching before we found a single bottle precariously placed on top of a display case. Not wanting to risk a rye-free night, we took the bottle and quickly paced over to check-out.

Teaching an engineer how to mix drinks is a delight. Given the basic steps, their underlying motivations, and a few examples, my friend was quick to pick up on the technique and by the end of my trip he was well on his way to a great bar.

Cleanliness -Is- Close To Godliness

[by Mike]

I've mentioned fat washing in an earlier post, and while the concept has always intrigued me I had never attempted the technique until over the break. That's a shame, really, because fat washing is perhaps the latest trend most cooperative to the home mixologist; the application is straightforward, fast, and by its very nature cheap.

For the unfamiliar, fat washing is all about hacking booze. When sugars are initially fermented into alcohol, the byproducts are not just ethanol and carbon dioxide. All kinds of molecules can be created, some which give an individual spirit its unique character and others that can contribute off flavors or be outright dangerous. Distillation is all about extracting as much of the desired ethanol and flavor compounds as possible while avoiding those less agreeable to the palette (or health, depending on your priorities).

Careful distillation produces a finer, smoother product at the expense of yield; aging further reduces undesirable compounds at the expense of time. Because both approaches cost money, the end result is that quality spirits tend to correlate with lighter wallets.

Is there any use for the cheaper bottles, then, besides fueling college misadventures? Like so many things in life, the answer can be found in fat. You see, some of those unappealing flavor compounds are highly fat soluble. Once fat has dissolved in alcohol it will start binding with the molecules, particularly those responsible for the astringent vapors so characteristic of bad booze. Removing the fat then leaves a much smoother spirit at a fraction of the cost.

Almost any fat can be used, but easy removal necessitates animal fats that will solidify in the refrigerator and can be simply strained out of the alcohol with a fine mesh. Because fat dissolves so well in alcohol, trace amounts will be left behind no matter how well the alcohol is strained. While flavor neutral fats such as lard can be used to avoid introducing any new flavors, the real magic of fat washing happens when particular fats are used to impart complementary flavors to the spirit at hand.

The most famous applications so far have been with whiskey, utilizing both bacon fat and butter to round out younger bourbons and ryes while adding a rich note rare to most spirits. When considering my own application, however, I reached for unaged tequila with grassy and vegetal flavors complementary to more savory fats. My fat of choice would be freshly rendered duck fat.

Again, the process could not have been more simple. After picking up an inexpensive bottle of Sauza blanco, I added melted duck fat (75 parts base spirit to 4 parts fat) and let the solution sit overnight. The next day I threw the bottle into the fridge and by the evening I was sipping a smooth, velvety spirit laced with the luxurious taste of duck.

An improvement over shots, no?

Ghost of Cocktails Past

[by Mike]

Could you identify this drink? Transparent, white spirits... maybe a martini? Would you guess a margarita?

Yesterday a friend forwarded me a link to Cooking Stuff, the writings of two technically minded staff at the French Culinary Institute who spend their time playing with food science (and rapidly becoming my favorite blog). Reading through a few of the entries I came upon Stupid Simple Agar Clarification: a straightforward, completely vegetarian technique for clarifying all kinds of liquids. I'll leave the details to the original post, but the short story is that technique allows for the removal of solids suspended in any solution to leave a strikingly clear liquid with all of the original flavor.

Besides requiring no specialized hardware and being extremely simple, the agar clarification is fast: you can have a clarified liquid within a half hour. Other techniques, which require on the order of a day to complete, can't be used with perishable liquids such as citrus.

Once I read about clarified lime juice I was sold. Sneaking out of work this morning, I ran down to Chinatown to pick up some agar and began to clarify as soon as I made it home in the evening.

The excitement implied by the Cooking Stuff post and the past few paragraphs may sound hyperbolic, but I cannot overstate how amazing the whole process is. In fact, the only downside is that the clarification is not total. Some opacity remains, and the transparency fades when looking through enough liquid.

The applications are many, and my mind is still racing with the possibilities. After margaritas I threw together a Mexican Firing Squad for my testers (particular thanks to Leo, who also provided photography coaching), a drink that becomes hard to distinguish from one based on rye based on sight alone.

There's just something pleasantly devious about stirring a margarita, don't you think?

Diabetic Shock

[by Mike]

While at Drink a few months ago one of the lovely bartenders was running through the ingredients in one of their tiki drinks, the Jet Pilot I believe. The usual suspects were there, with a twist provided by the inclusion of cinnamon syrup. While the spiciness of the cinnamon proved a nice addition to the drink, I couldn't help but ponder the use of syrup to draw out that flavor. Was the sugar necessary for extracting the flavor? Was there hope for combining cinnamon with sweet spirits?

Over the next few months I became more aware of the ubiquity of flavored syrups. New recipes were dense with the stuff and it seemed as if syrups were quickly becoming the default when a bartender wanted to introduce new flavors. Why was such a popular technique bothering me so much?

Because scientifically the sugar is inconsequential. The water acts as the solvent, if anything the highly hydroscopic sugar would reduce the effectiveness of the water to dissolve flavors into solution. Infused water alone (possibly heated to increase the solubility of any flavors compounds) should provide as much, if not more, flavor without limited the potential applications; the flavored syrups could be recreated on the fly with the addition of simple or demerara syrups bases.

Flavored waters, however, are not without their own flaws. All of that liquid risks diluted drinks, forcing a compromise between the strength of the additional flavor and those already present in the base spirits. What we'd need is a more powerful solvent, something that can extract the desired flavors in much smaller quantities.

That solvent already plays a critical role in the world of mixology, extracting the essence of berries and herbs into gin and caramelized wood into whiskey to name a few. Alcohol, of course, is the prized solvent. Infusing herbs or spices in relatively bland high proof spirits such as vodka or 151 produces solutions so potent that only a few drops are necessary to impart the desired flavor to a drink. Pretty much bitters without the bitter.

To demonstrate the above arguments I put together a test with kaffir lime leaf. Each infusion placed the same amount of chiffonade'd leaves into one of four solvents: (from left to right) 151 rum, water that was them simmered with the leaves, a simple syrup simmered with the leaves, and room temperature water.

The power of the alcohol is immediately visible in the vibrant green of the 151 infusion, and the taste proves no exception. What flavor dissolved into the syrup is, as expected, dominated by the sweetness. With no completing flavors, the kaffir comes through more clearly in the simmered water, although its not entirely welcome; it seems that many of the bitter compounds in the leaves dissolve readily in the heated water, creating a rather unappealing infusion. The unheated water offered hints of flavor but nothing noteworthy.

As academic as this has been, it has proven tremendously useful at least once.

One of my favorite hidden jewels, The Tequila Book (Gorman and de Alba, 1978) compiles a myriad of tequila recipes ranging from offensive shooters to classically designed cocktails featuring everything from orange bitters to egg whites (just imagine how refreshing this can be after reading through every vintage text without seeing one good tequila drink). A particularly intriguing entry, the Spanish Fly called for tequila, Liqueur 43, and a sprinkling of cinnamon. The agave of the tequila and vanilla of the Liqueur 43 would pair great with the cinnamon, but the ground spice would just clump on the surface of the drink and offer little aside from aroma.

With the inherent sweetness of the Liqueur 43, a syrup would be immediately out of the question. Following the arguments above, I procured cinnamon extract, readily available in the baking aisle of any grocery store, and went to work. Indeed, the spicy extract did the trick, providing all of the cinnamon flavor without any unnecessary sweetness or dilution.

Spanish Fly

2 oz reposado tequila

1 oz Liqueur 43

0.25 oz Benedictine

0.25 tsp cinnamon extract

dash xocolatl mole bitters

A lesson I won't soon forget.

Deck The Halls

[by Mike]

If people hung meat instead of lights (or boughs of holly for the more classical amongst us), would anyone complain about decorations being left up all year?

Adding to the Toolbox

[by Mike]

A few years ago I started making a Good Eats inspired cranberry granita whenever November rolled around. This quick, easy dessert is great to have around not only for its convenience but for its luxurious mouthfeel. The large, pectin-infused ice crystals melt slowly and coat the tongue with the tart cranberries flavors cut by the sweetness of the sugar and brightness of the lime zest. As recommended on the show, the granita also makes a damned fine cocktail. Once the crystals melt they provide a complex cranberry flavor far exceeding that of any cranberry juice, not to mention the added body and texture.

But is there a compromise between the two service options? Tequila and Cointreau would play excellently with the flavors in the granita, but adding the spirits directly to the crystals would only accelerate the inevitable melting. I needed a way to contain the spirits, keeping them separated from the granita until service. A technique from the oft maligned molecular gastronomy offered a possibility; armed with some sodium alginate and calcium lactate samples from Jeff of Cooking For Geeks I started playing with spherification.

A derivative of seaweed, alginate doesn't do much more than thicken liquids. When the alginate solution comes in contact with the calcium lactate, however, the thickening is dramatically enhanced. Submerged in a calcium lactate solution, a weak alginate solution would form a thin skin around a liquid core. Made weak enough, the delicate skin is just strong enough to contain the liquid until popped in the mouth.

That's the theory, anyways. Use too much alginate and the liquid becomes too thick and the skin too tough, rendering the final pearls awkwardly chewy. Recipes trawled from the internet lack any consistency, so the final ratios had to be left to experimentation. Even with working proportions, forming the spheres themselves is nontrivial. Creating small caviar isn't too hard, but larger pearls takes some clever technique. The delicate membranes then require careful handling, lest they burst prematurely.

It took a few iterations, but I eventually settled into a successful recipe and developed sufficient technique that I could consistently produce large, fragile pearls well suited for the granita. I was using an old bottle of cheap blue curacao for testing, and the bright, contrasting color proved useful for illustrative purposes. Any real application would likely feature translucent pearls hiding within the red crystals.

Have Tools, Will Travel

[by Mike]

With holiday travel coming up I did not want to risk more cocktail disappointment. In order to guarantee a well made drink to accompany my meals at home and at relatives I would have to bring my own tools, and I would need something to carry them.

Following the recommendation of Robert Hess, I started looking for doctor bags but was quickly discouraged by the outrageous prices. If I wanted something amenable to the grad student budget I would have to abandon doctors and think students: nursing students. Bags designed for nursing students are cheap, rugged, and dense with storage possibilities. Comparing features and reviews I went with a model from American Diagnostics, and I could not be happier.

The bag is small enough to be unobtrusive but large enough to hold everything I'd ever need. A large outer pocket holds a towel, sponge, and gloves for keeping clean. The back features a thin sleeve perfectly sized for 8.5 by 11 sheets of paper, small books, notepads, or cutting boards. Deep pockets inside the bag hold small bottles, knives, and other tools, with the remaining space awaiting larger tools such as the imperative Boston shaker. There are even small zippered components just large enough to hold business cards, matches, or the like.

At the moment I've stocked the bag with everything I could possibly need,

• A few small kitchen towels
• Four small flexible cutting boards
• Seven bottles of bitters plus a spray bottle of absinthe
• Tasting straws
• Channel and paring knives
• Pens
• Boston shaker, julep strainer, bar spoon, muddler
• Mexican juicer

When traveling home I'll add my kitchen knives and a few more tools. Heading to a party I'd add freshly squeezed juices, a syrup or two, and small plastic cup for service. In the event a few of us cocktail snobs get together I could fit a few bottles of secondary liqueurs. Yes, the possibilities make me slightly giddy.

Oh, and if you're up for some drinks give me a call. I'll bring the bitters.

Martha Stewart Would Be Proud

[by Mike]

When the Tiki theme was announced for this year's LUPEC party no outfits immediately came to mind. Last year I went all out with a full zoot suit and a Hawaiian shirt just didn't seem sufficient to continue the tradition of over achieving. When the full details of the party were announced, not just Tiki but 1950s Tiki, the ideas finally starting coming.

My initial inspiration was a fusion of a three piece suit and hulu skirt. Weaving a vest out of dried straw wouldn't be too time consuming and properly executed the finished product would be both classy and unique. Dried straw, however, isn't exactly ubiquitous in the city. Banana leaves are another story.

Available in the frozen food section of any Asian grocer, banana leaves are a great freezer staple. After a quick defrost they're soft and malleable, readily wrapped around foods destined for braising or steaming to provide a sweet, fruity aroma. More importantly for this particular application, they're incredibly cheap.

Unfortunately, banana leaves provide little in the way of structural integrity. The leaves easily rip along the grain and those that do survive in one piece are extremely perishable, drying out into a brittle mess in little more than a day. My strategy was two-fold: layering and hemming the leaves would help reduce ripping along the grain while sealing the leaves in acrylic would help retain moisture and avoid fragility.

Without any experience with sealers, I eventually decided upon Mod Podge upon the recommendation of the staff at Pearl. The acrylic sealer was easily brushed onto the leaves and dried with an attractively glossy finish. It would have been perfect if not for a fatal flaw: when exposed to even mild heat the sealant would soften and become tacky again. Once assembled the vest would stick to itself, becoming vulnerable to ripping upon separation.

After initial testing and design, the vest came together in three pieces: the two front flaps and the back. The fronts were quick, almost entirely single banana leaves hemmed along the sides with folded leaves, while the back involved cutting the leaves into strips and weaving them together into a singe piece. I used hot glue for all the adhesion and then sealed the pieces on all sides with the Mod Podge.

The afternoon before the party I completed the assembly and adding some finishing touches: wooden buttons and faux pockets along the front. To reenforce the seams I added some duct tape along the interior, an addition that would prove all too insufficient.

Not long after arriving at the party, the vest began to rip along the chest. The weight of the vest, especially the weaved back, proved too much for the leaves that laid along my shoulders. Without any backup tape, little could be done to salvage the effort. Well, little beyond lots of hands holding the whole thing together. I don't think anyone caught a picture of the weaved back at the party, so I took a few after the party for posterity. You can already see the banana leaves curling up where the Mod Podge sealant failed and the surface was exposed to air.

Save for the premature structural failure, I was really happy with the effort. Immediately after assembly the vest looked great and with a few improvements it would have lasted long into the night, maybe even through a few dances.

It's Better With Bacon

[by Mike]

This past September I was over at a labmate's apartment for the Boston area celebration of International Bacon Day. As you might imagine, there's not much to International Bacon Day besides lots and lots of bacon, with plenty of whisk(e)y to wash it down. The brilliance of the festivities comes with the creative applications of bacon.

My initial contribution, bacon chocolate chip cookies, wasn't bad but it was quickly shadowed by the collective efforts of the revelers. The inspiration escapes me now, but it wasn't long into the party that we had set our eyes on a practical bacon straw. While the host and his friend went out for reserves I went to business, wrapping bacon around a bundle of buttered skewers. After half an hour in a hot oven the bacon had cooked into solid, waterproof tube that could be used to sip everything from rye to Bloody Mary's.

The pictures documenting that day were lost due to an unfortunately taxi incident, so the telling has had to wait until today when I finally had time to recreate the infamous bacon straw. This time I used 1/2'' copper pipe left over from an earlier project, wrapping two rashers around in opposite chiralities (one a clockwise helix, the the other a counter clockwise helix). The two layers are critical for a watertight seal.

After 30 minutes in a 400 F oven the meat had shrunk around the pipe and formed a continuous piece of succulence. I had suspected the 1/2'' diameter would be too large, but it proved just fine for sipping from the full glass; it only became a problem when trying to slurp up the final few drops.

Beyond the novelty, the bacon straw adds some welcome notes to spirits. In addition to providing subtle smokey and savory flavors, the bacon contributes fat which dissolves into the alcohol quells some of the more astringent vapors*. It's a perfect addition for overproofed ryes such as Rittenhouse.

Of course, the bacon straw is far from finished. Additional flavors can be added by spicing the bacon before roasting; cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, chile, coriander, cardamon... well just about any spice comes to mind. Any structural issues could be remedied by the addition of transglutamtes (think meat glue) in between the two layers of bacon.

The possibilities are near endless. Who's up for some "collaborative research"?

* For those interested in the details: alcohol readily dissolves fat, and once in solution the fat binds with some of the less delicious esters in the alcohol. Once bound, the unfavorable esters don't contribute nearly as much to taste and aroma. Fat washing takes this a step further, adding much more fat and straining it out before serving the spirit.

Random Thoughts

Your friend has his eye on a cute little number sitting at the bar across the room, and after a drink of courage he makes his way over and offers to buy her a drink. Now she can respond to her liking, shooing him away or inviting him to sit at the stool next to her, and then proceed to order that drink, but isn't that a little inefficient? Couldn't the two steps be combined and the entire process streamlined? What if she should just order a "Not Tonight" or a "I've Been Waiting For You All Night" and avoid the awkward conversation entirely?

Now I'm sure there are plenty who appreciate the opportunity to converse, but I think there's potential for a suite of well made cocktails with utilitarian names. Conversations could span loud restaurants, with drinks purchased from across the room serving as the lone communication. Instead of fighting through a crowd to tell a friend that you're leaving, you could order him an "I'm Out".

The logical generalization is to binary shots representing bits that could be combined to produce any message, but decoding binary after the last shot becomes something of a challenge.

geek bar

[by john, mike, naveen, david, aviv, and te]

get a couple drinks in any of us and soon we'll be fervidly discussing science or cocktails, and often both. science (science!) tells us why we like the tastes we do, how to make them better, and how to predict what you'll like next time. bold claims get bolder with each sip until we know that we (we!) can do those things better. yeah, we assert, we could totally open a bar, and apply science to make it amazing. psh, nevermind the economy and all those entrepreneurial hazards...science works.

thankfully, we always sober up, and none of us has quit his day job yet. good ideas have distilled out, though. here are the initial (feasible) ones; feel free to add your own.

atmosphere

overall: open, not too dark, led lighting, no kitschy beakers or lab coats

• back-lit plates of glass along the walls for scrawling equations
• bunsen burner mood lighting
• graph paper napkins
• low-key plasma screens showing real-time drink trending, and possibly kubrick or bergman flicks (or nova documentaries)
• polarized microscopy posters
• flash cards with tips/conversation starters for shy geeks seeking to chat up their attractive bar-neighbors
• bookshelf of textbooks
• overly simple web site hides the contact info and menu in the html comments

drinks

overall: lots of bartender interaction, backed with powerful statistical methods; restrained use of lab gadgets; precisely made classics and science-enhanced originals

• menu formatted in LaTeX
• touchscreen at tables with machine learning software to suggest drinks
• discreet use of liquid nitrogen when suitable
• vortex mixers
• titrated absinthe cocktails
• pipettes for busy nights
• geeky original drink names: 'feshbach resonance', 'mcmc', 'sag a*', 'mixture of gaussians'
• cocktail shakers with built-in thermometers and timers
• endothermic glassware (an r&d project for now...)
• pH meter for analyzing individual citrus fruits
• bartenders speak perturbative field theory ('i'll have a next-leading order manhattan.')

makes me dizzy just theorizing about it...

To Each His Own (Bar)

[by Mike]

As John just wrote, new inductees into cocktail culture are always curious about the best way to start their own bar. But $100? You're never going find a solution that placates everyone, and John's recommendations certainly raised my eyebrow halfway to the ceiling.

The reason? No tequila! My own tastes hold tequila above the other base spirits, and I think a good bottle (Azul, Sauza Hornitos, Milagro) opens a world of cocktail possibilities more appealing to a beginner. Good tequila, for example, blends wonderfully with fruit (from berries to melons to stone fruit), encouraging experimentation while introducing seasonal ingredients. When the bar is ready for expansions, moreover, tequila provides an ideal base for new spirits. Benedictine, Maraschino, Cointreau - they're all prime additions to the agave liquor.

But where does tequila fit in? Honestly, I think gin can be overwhelming to new enthusiasts. Save the gin drinks for the professions, at least until you've trained your wrists for brisk stirring, and start with sweeter drinks that can be more forgiving in their ratios and exact preparations.

My list, then, goes as follows:

Tequila - $25 (Azul, Sauza Hornitos, Milagro if you can find it cheap)

Rye - $20 (Rittenhouse, etc)

Rum - $20 (Sailor Jerry, Old Monk)

Sweet Vermouth - $10 (I think Martini and Rossi is fine to start)

Bitters - $15 (Angostura and Peychauds, for comparing and contrasting)

Citrus Juicer - $10 (In the Mexican style)

Pick up some limes, whip up some simple and ginger syrups, and you'll have plenty with which to play. Oh, and my hardware goes as: bar spoon, Oxo 2 oz measuring cup, Boston shaker, julep strainer, muddler (I'm currently using the end of a rake handle), and a set of Tovolo ice cube trays.

Now I'm off to go brainstorm uses for my bottle of Midori. When it's tequila time, it's Suntori time?

Beasties

[by Mike]

One of the more engaging elements of the cocktail movement is participation. An amazing drink can inspire you to pick up a new bottle, cook up a new syrup, or prepare a juice you would never have thought of otherwise.

When house made ginger beer started sweeping across Boston bars last year, however, I didn't succumb. I was intrigued, but hesitant to start pushing syrups through my soda siphon lest the increased viscosity cause premature wear on the valves (when you're a grad student on a budget, these are nontrivial considerations). It wasn't until I watched some old Good Eats episodes that a yeast-fermented ginger beer became obvious.

I started with the basic Good Eats recipe (sadly not available on the website), adding cinnamon, star anise, and cardamom when steeping the syrup, and waited anxiously as the two bottles stood on my counter fermenting over the course of a few days. Once the bottles started hissing I had a pretty good idea that the beer was ready. Releasing the initial pressure proved to be slightly chaotic, but otherwise the process was painless.

Unfortunately the ginger flavor didn't really live up to my expectations; while significantly spicier than most commercially available ginger beers it lacked the strong bite to which I have grown accustomed. The texture, however, was a pleasant surprise. Slower, more delicate carbonation produced smaller, softer bubbles that tempted the tongue instead of smacking it around as injected carbonation is wont to do.

The first application was an attempt to recreate a drink from Tom at Craigie,

Blueberry Cobbler

Muddled blueberries

2 oz reposado tequila

0.5 oz benedictine

Top with ginger beer

While it could have used stronger ginger flavor, the more delicate carbonation added a nice, dare I say, sophistication?

The beauty of fermentation is that its applications are near endless. As the beer was charging I sat out a slurry of flour, water, and sugar next to my window and waited for Cambridge yeast to make a home and do their thing. It didn't take long for the characteristic bubbles to make an appearance and hopefully I'll have a proper starter by next weekend.

The Fine Art of Reviewing Books

[by Mike]

In order to add some variety to my usual load of summer reading (a stack of textbooks), I took advantage of our last trip to the Boston Shaker to pick up a book on cocktails. While John vacillated on the Jerry Thomas tome, I jumped on one of the new reprints of David Embury's The Fine Art of Mixing Drink. Expectations were high: rarely have months passed without hearing fawning praise or stories of old copies reselling for outrageous prices.

Written not long after the appeal of Prohibition, Embury's text oozes of a definite quaintness, complete with a veiled condescension towards women and authoritative pseudo-science. Not to mention a total disdain for tequila. Pushing on, however, it's easy to see why it was so treasured by the early cocktail revolutionaries. Embury held strong opinions towards cocktails and how they should be made, demanding fresh ingredients and careful thought towards construction instead of blind devotion to recipes.

For someone already indoctrinated into the cocktail movement, however, much of Embury's impassioned arguments are redundant; those likely to pick up a copy of the book are already likely to share his philosophy. The real value of the text, then, becomes something for which Embury is not shy in expressing his hatred: a recipe book. While few of the recipes are immediately phenomenal, they serve as wonderfully fertile grounds for experimentation and play. Armed with calibrated ingredient ratios, an enthusiastic reader can readily attack the recipes and quickly develop an array of diverse, well balanced drinks.

Contrary to what some might claim, The Fine Art of Mixing Drink won't change your life, but it does makes great summer reading.

Laplace Would Marginalize Over Red and White

[by Mike]

It would be odd if we had come so far in academia without being passionate about science. Unfortunately, this means that after a drink or two some of us (i.e. me) find it difficult to keep from talking physics and data analysis. While I'm working to avoid random outbursts of science, especially in mixed company, I can't do it without at least one cocktail memorializing my some aspects of my research.

How do you make the optimal cocktail? One approach would be to find your single favorite recipe, the selection and ratio of ingredients, and stop there. Another approach goes further, considering not just your favorite recipe but also perturbations away from that recipe. You may prefer a 6:1 martini, but how much more do you prefer it to the 5:1 or the 7:1? Or the 1:1 for that matter? The second approach would advocate serving an infinite number of cocktails, the amount of each serving weighted by the preference for that ratio. A similar approach would be taken towards ingredients.

This approach is not as foreign as it might immediately appear. Stripping a cocktail down to a single ingredient, someone with no previous experience would try the same amount of each different variety. But this is just the flight commonly used to taste spirits, beer, and wine.

In practice, preparing more than one cocktail is often prohibitive. When trying to optimize a recipe, however, it may not be a bad idea to compare the different possibilities directly. Consider the choice of bitters in the Monte Carlo,

Markov Chain Monte Carlo

In four shot glasses prepare

1 oz rye whiskey

0.5 oz benedictine

Add to individual glasses

1 dashes Angostura bitters

1 dashes Whisky Barrel Aged bitters

1 dashes Peychauds bitters

1 dashes Xocolatl Mole bitters

Now let's see how long I can go without talking about work...

Unsolicited Advice

[by Mike]

Father's Office, sit down. Look, you have an amazing selection of craft spirits, nearly perfect sweet potato fries, and a decent burger (sorry, Andy, nothing close to the burger at Craigie). But this whole community seating schtick? And having to order from an understaffed, chaotic bar? At least consider designated ordering areas so that lines can form and some semblance of order night be restored, and then we can talk about seeing each other again.

City of Angels

[by Mike]

Having spent the four years of my undergraduate education here, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Los Angeles. While the diversity, culture, and weather rival any other city, the cocktail scene has always left much to be desired, especially when compared to the renaissance in Boston (and all the other players in the cocktail movement). The last year, however, has seen a slew of new ventures promising to bring LA back into the game and I was eager to try a few out while visiting some friends.

After going through the various articles written in the past few years, I narrowed down the possibilities to the Edison and the Varnish. A few of my friends had visited the Edison before and spoke well enough to pique my interest and place it first on the list. Unfortunately, the Edison's odd hours (closed Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday) exactly conflicted with my stay.

I was initially hesitant about the Varnish because of their sparse website; how could I make a reasonable judgement without seeing the menu? Browsing through Yelp!, however, I discovered that the Varnish is a creation of the Milk and Honey team and my initial hesitations evaporated.

The Varnish executes the speakeasy theme with exquisite detail. Behind a discreetly marked door in the back of a downtown LA restaurant, the bar features wooden walls and booths dimly illuminated by metal fixtures. A sound system hidden from view plays period music, although we were treated to live piano music most of the night. My only criticism of the design is the lack of stools at the bar which has the effect of discouraging patrons from engaging the bartenders directly. Not to say that it stopped me from heading over to the bar to chat.

More impressive than the atmosphere was the menu. About half of the drinks were a little bit conservative and welcoming to the uninitiated, with the second half more creative and intriguing combinations. Of particular note was the "Remember the Maine", bringing together rye and absinthe in an interesting twist on the Manhatten. After sampling most of the menu between the four of us, I went off menu for my last drink and was pleasantly surprised by a "Medicina Latina" that combined tequila, ginger, and lime with a mezcal (must have been del Maguey) float and an impressive chunk of ice.

An unexpected bonus was Tal, the Lucas/Bols VP of marketing, behind the bar, fresh off of his release party in Boston. We chatted a bit about the new Bols Genever while I partook in samples of the spirit neat and in a punch. Andy had brought back a bottle of the Bols Jonge Genever from Europe a few months ago that was less than impressive, but the new genever based on the 1820 recipe was a marked improvement. Unlike a dry gin, which infuses the herbal flavors in the second distilling, the 1820 recipe adds the herbs directly to malted grains, resulting in a malty almost bread like flavor that pushes the herbal flavors to the back of the palette, almost like a sweeter sake. The spirit was sufficiently intriguing that I decided to try it in a classic Aviation where the malty base almost completely changed the way the herbal flavors hit the palette.

I can't wait to see what the city of angles has to offer the next time I'm in town.

Nerd Cred

[by Mike]

While we're discussing the intersection of science and spirits, it seems appropriate to boast about some of the art decorating my apartment.

The images are produced by scattering light off of spirits, in this case a Sloe Gin Fizz (on the left) and tequila (on the right), that have been crystallized with some proprietary chemisty. These and a slew of other, gorgeous images are available for viewing and purchase at Molecular Expressions.

And you thought your drink looked good in the glass.

Mystifying the Demystified

[by Mike]

As John introduced, we absolutely love it when people take a scientific perspective on cocktails. Not only are two of our passions combined into one, but our expertise in one of those passions (science!) opens up the possibility of our making a contribution to the other (booze!). On the other hand, that expertise makes us particularly vulnerable to snobbery.

You know that almost inevitable feeling of disappointment that accompanies a poorly made cocktail at a less than reputable establishment? That's the same feeling I get when I see an article with a poor explanation of scientific principles or abusing data analysis.

To be fair, the former is somewhat delicate. The basic arguments are solid, but the description and application of "entropy" is lethargic. Taking from every bad introductory text on thermodynamics, the authors anthropomorphisize molecules as particles striving to be free when the proper description is a little more subtle but far more enlightening (don't hesitate to request more information, especially over drinks).

The latter? Let's just say that failing to properly calibrate an instrument or posting "errors" without any further description should be as immediately horrifying as a shaken martini. The use of Excel is more like reaching for a cheap triple sec: it'll do in a pinch but if you're going to take the time to make a drink then you might as well make it right.

Of course I'm being particularly picky here. The articles were great fun (seriously, who can't appreciate a thermocouple at the bottom of a Boston shaker?) and I look forward to further scientific endeavors into the world of cocktails.

I just wish there were more scientists involved. We're always looking for a good time.