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.

a saratoga patch

[by john]

cocktaileers haven't ended their honeymoon just yet with tequila and mezcal. they're reinventing classic drinks (witness the oaxacan old fashioned), they're making new ones (q.v. misty kalkofen's maximilian affair or anything coming out of mayahuel), and they're finding their favorite brands to mix with.

i've been dipping my own barspoon in, with the flux bias and ho(a)rfrost, but hadn't yet tried a tequila twist on a classic. so here's a new take on a saratoga. i forget when i was first introduced to the saratoga, but it was for one notable feature: it mixes two very different base spirits together, rye and cognac. it's kind of one of those average cocktails, better in concept than execution. i wondered if tequila's flavors could improve it:

the saratoga

equal parts: rye

cognac

italian vermouth

two dashes of bitters

the saratoga.2

1 oz rye

1 oz tequila

1/2 oz italian vermouth

3 dashes xocolatl-mole bitters

i like this better than the original. the earthy/herbal flavors of the rye and tequila play well together, whereas cognac is easily subdued by rye. plus, the x-m bitters get their voice heard in the herbal parley. it's not great, though - and it was highly dependent on ingredients. rittenhouse was too strong, punt e mes was too overpowering, and any more vermouth (dolin in the end) is too sweet.

but for now, it can serve as a patch, saving a classic drink from averageness.

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...

the flux bias

[by john]

some truths are hard to swallow - tonight it was that cryogenic experiments can require late nights in the lab, so that precious liquid helium doesn't run out. but thankfully, quality homemade drinks are easy to swallow.

here's what i played with tonight after getting home:

the flux bias

1 1/2 oz tequila (azul reposado)

1/4 oz green chartreuse

1/4 oz maraschino liqueur

3 dashes xocolatl mole bitters

stir and strain.

very sippable, with the different earthy flavors taking turns. the name is a bitter (hah) reference to the little electronic things i was trying to keep cold and characterize - squids.

another hard-to-swallow one: mike may have been right all along - the tequila trend is definitely here, with a new tequila-heavy bar mayahuel in manhattan, the spirit's re-christening at tales (according to misty, tom, and many a blogger), and the great popularity of my sole tequila drink at the party. i'm rolling with the trend, and it's fun. azul, it's worth mentioning, has a great flavor (and no nasty vapors), with a great price point ($23 for my bottle).

p.s. - it is hard to quantify the excitement between mike, andy, and i over the (early, in time for the party [the 1919 was a house special saturday night], thanks to adam) arrival of the xocolatl mole bitters. good things shall come.