two down, two hundred to go

[by john]

i've been doing a lot of traveling lately, which means a lot of new bars to visit. rough, i know.

in my latest trip to nyc, i practically had to drag my guy to two cocktail bars. (with cheap happy hour specials and gimmicks like 5 shots for $10, why pay the equivalent of 75 dumplings for a drink? which is a valid point - despite all the cheap food and booze establishments in new york, why are cocktails 50% more expensive than in boston? suffer on, drink geeks.)

pegu club

'man, i had no idea how asian this place was.' i uttered this to te and steven at some point after noting in the geometric wooden window screens, the waitresses' kimono-esque dresses, and, uh, our bartender. apparently, the place is inspired by an old officer's club in burma.

i got a kill devil (rhum agricole, green chartreuse, sugar, bitters), which was agreed to be 'odd'. my guy got an improved strawberry daiquiri with thai basil (it came through great) and an omniscient-third-person view of a first date. steven stuck with a little italy (rye, sweet vermouth, cynar), which was solid, and apparently a pegu original - surprising since i've seen it elsewhere.

the bartending was slow. inefficient, i would say. we were sitting at the half empty bar, so we saw the slow assembly, one restart (cardinal sin of adding the liquor first and then messing up on the syrup amount), stirring one drink at a time, even though he was using wide beaker mixing glasses, and then letting the stirred drinks sit with ice while the citrus one got shaken. eek! if it weren't for the name on the door, i wouldn't know this is one of the top bars in the world.

overall, unimpressed with the skill and the tepid drink list.

mayahuel

after a wtf moment outside death & co (closed for a private event? on a saturday?!), we rallied and got some vegetarian banh mi before heading to the tequila mecca, mayahuel.

the kitschy (yet somehow believable) glazed tile and wrought iron decor felt cozy, minus the icy blasts of snow whenever someone new entered.

i got a red ant river swizzle (mezcal, sugar cane, absinthe, lime), and my guy continued his variation on a theme with a fresa brava (muddled strawberries, jalepeño-infused tequila, and yellow chartreuse). both fine, but not transcendent. no significant complaints, except for the enormous menu, which is almost necessary with such an unfamiliar family of ingredients (except to mike).

but the hipster bartenders commented on my hipster moleskine, so that made it worth the trip.

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.

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.

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.

Cocktails in the Rough

[by Mike]

Last week I was down on the Cape, spending the days listening to lectures about particle physics and the nights socializing with other grad students from New England universities. While free beer was provided every evening, I could not leave well enough alone and decided to attempt a cocktail.

Brainstorming began on the drive to the local liquor store. Azul would provide an inexpensive but quality base spirit, but secondary spirits could I find without pulling too much from my wallet? Browsing around the store I found a four pack of local ginger beer, and I jumped on the idea of a tequila/ginger/lime rickey akin to a Dark and Stormy. By dinner I was mixing together my first trials and trying to contain my disappointment.

Marked by a pungent bitterness, the limes were clearly past their prime and the ginger beer was weak and watery. No matter the ratios, the drink ended up less than appetizing. The only redeeming quality was that it was so watery to dilute the off flavors.

Through dinner I contemplated alternative plans; azul is great in a drink, but mediocre sipped by itself. Recent exposure to "Famous New Orleans Drinks and how to mix 'em" and Good Eats inspired thoughts of a punch. The basic recipe (one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, and four of weak) laid the foundation and some quick thinking filled in the details. With the lime juice, ginger beer, and tequila providing the first three ingredients I brewed a few bags of Earl Grey tea to provide the weak and went back to the make shift bar.

The lime juice proved too terrible to be salvaged, so I quickly dropped it and focused on the ginger beer, tequila, and tea. Warm ice and weak ginger beer necessitated altered ratios, but eventually I iterated to a half-way decent recipe. Overall, not quite a success but a fun adventure none the less. Given fresh juice and homemade ginger beer, the basic recipe might even have promise.

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.

how to throw a cocktail bash in four easy steps

[by john]

this past weekend, i threw a two night cocktail fête. it was perhaps the closest i will come to opening a bar, with different guests every night, waves of drink orders, and gourmet bar food. (mad props to mike and andy for the crispy shredded pork awesomeness, gravlax, and bone marrow.) i had tremendous amounts of fun without drinking anything, save for a few dozen milliliters from test-straws. homing in on each guest's taste proved to be a delightful challenge. i will certainly do this again.

now, easily:

create a menu

i put up my menu last time, but gave no indication of how hard it was to make. i tested tens of drinks over the course of a week to see which would appeal to a wide sample of palates. and, in addition to the pet pet, i created two originals - a st. germain/applejack marriage (la pomme rouge), and a constantly varying - popular, too, it turned out - tequila cocktail (the ho[a]rfrost).

everything on the menu got great attention and compliments, except for the poor martinez. being the oldest drink on there, maybe it couldn't hang with this hip crowd. noted. but otherwise, i am elated for converting many guests to the wonders of sloe gin, regular gin, spicy finishes, and flamed chartreuse.

go into debt

having settled on a menu, i then biked around boston/cambridge for another week trying to gather the necessary ingredients. the word is out on rittenhouse, quality bourbon, and old monk rum, apparently, because i had to discover several new liquor stores to hunt them all down.

after all my shopping, i went (a predicted) $200 over my normal budget for the month. i calculated the cost of each drink: usually around $3, and $4 for the tipperary. i figured each guest would go through ~3 rounds, so asked for $10 donations. in the end, i recouped exactly $200, perfect!

for the nth time, i'd like to reiterate how cheap home bartending is, compared to going out.

focus on the freezer

at some point, maybe 10 days before the party, i realized with growing dread that i would need a lot of ice. like, 200 cubes per night. only the brute force solution was viable: i bought two more tovolo trays and pushed out batches each day and night into ziploc bags. by friday morning, i was satisfied with five gallon bags, four trays in reserve, and five non-cubical trays in super-reserve.

some further creative maneuvering allowed me to fit cocktail glasses in there, too, so they could chill before service. good thing we weren't serving gelato or something.

stand around

the hard parts are done. now you only need to stand in one place for three hours and shake or stir the shit out of lots of drinks. stand, and also listen, steer, cajole, charm, engage, introduce, rinse, muddle, crack, and pour.

i had not expected the rush i got from bartending. it's like being on a kitchen line, but colder and solo. some hardcore multitasking - remembering orders, mixing, chatting people up, and monitoring the glassware situation all at once, with outward aplomb. and the repeated delight on guests' faces with the first sip made it even better.

I'm Giving Summer Just One More Chance

[by Mike]

The rain has left, the sun has returned, and strawberries are coming into season. Who's ready for a cocktail?

Some of my favorite summer cocktails are also some of the most simple. Take the strawberry margarita: fresh strawberries chopped and muddled into a syrup with a little bit of sugar and shaken with the standard 3-2-1 margarita recipe. Deviously refreshing and dense with the complimentary notes of agave and fruit.

Cheers.

Cougars

[by Mike]

While I missed out last night's adventure, I was able to convince John, Andy, and a few more friends to join me for a cocktail at Drink before a showing of Pixar's new pleasure "Up".

Having not been to Drink in months, I took advantage of the opportunity to partake in some of the tequila recipes developed recently.  I started with a spicy little number,

Hot Damn

1.75 oz Milagro Silver Tequila

0.25 oz Maguey Mezcal

0.25 oz Agave Nectar

?.?? oz Punt e Mes

Mexican Smoked Salt

Dash Chipotle Tabasco

Neither the heat nor the smoke overpowered the agave, instead complementing the flavors of the tequila and the mezcal.

While enjoying our drinks the conversation with our bartender, Scott, flowed swiftly and easily.  The most informative discussion focused on the standard procedure for syrups at Drink.  Instead of steeping any flavorings in the syrup itself, everything is steeped in water which is cooled before incorporating the sugar.  The reason?  Well common table sugar, or sucrose, is a disaccharide composed of two smaller sugars (glucose and fructose) bound together, and when heated that bond is quickly broken and the syrup breaks down into a myriad of smaller sugars and various by products.  Consistently reproducing the exact same by products, and hence same texture and flavor, is near impossible in a laboratory settings, let alone in a kitchen.  By keeping the sugar away from the heat, the clever bartenders at Drink are able to produce a consistent product each and every night.  It's an interesting concept, but I can't help wondering on what textures and deeper flavors they might be missing out.

Deep thoughts were quickly brushed aside, however, when some ladies down the bar recommended an intriguing drink.  I heard tequila, cocoa, and chipotle and had to place an order.  

Heather's (Mexican) Love Affair

2 oz Milagro Silver Tequial

1 oz Marie Brizzard (sp?) Creme de Cacao

6-7 Sichuan Peppercorns

Mexican Smoked Salt

Dash Chipotle Tabasco

The succulent cocktail was eerily reminiscent of a good Mexican hot chocolate (maybe a touch of cinnamon or almond to perfect the analogy) with all of the refreshment necessary for a summer drink.

Sufficiently lubricated, we headed back to the Common to be enamored with Pixar's latest offering.  Even the pretentious movie snob was sold, and it can't have been entirely due to his Mamie Taylor.

Juicin'

[by Mike]

Some time ago, John sent me a site featuring some interesting tequila cocktails.  Intrigued by the concept of muddling a jalapeño, I immediately put together a Don Julio Caesar and was not disappointed.  With the seeds removed and the lime juice hiding any lingering capsaicin, the fruit flavors of the chile shined through and resonated with the tequila.

Those flavors floated around in my head until the thorough discussion of cucumber juice during our last outing to Rendezvous.  Wouldn't a well executed jalapeño juice offer all of the flavors extracted from muddling only more powerful?  After some research, I found a reasonable priced juicer online and went to work.  

I prepped about 20 chiles, using a sculpting tool to make quick work of ribs (capsaicin-rich liquid is produced in glands near the stem of the chile, and as the fruit grows it slowly flows down the interior flesh, coating the ribs and seeds with heat).  A few seconds through the whirling blades of death, the jalapeños (and a bunch of cilantro) were pulverized and I had a fresh batch of juice.  A batch of cucumber-mint juice stands in the background (two English cucumbers, including seeds and skin, with a bunch of mint).

The juices really didn't come into their own until they had been passed through cheesecloth to remove residual, gelatinous flesh (as well as much of the plant proteins that produce the head of foam after a quick shake).  By itself the jalapeño juice is too spicy to be sippable, but once the heat has been shadowed by a little bit of syrup and lime juice the fruity flavors dominate.  The cucumber juice is addictingly refreshing, and right on time for summer.

Of course, what would any of this be worth without cocktails?

The Ultraviolet Catastrophe

1.5 oz reposado tequila

0.5 oz jalapeño juice

0.5 oz lime juice

0.5 oz creme de violette

0.25 oz agave nectar

1 scant dash Angostura bitters

The addition of the bitters really rounds out the flavors, but at the expense of turning the drink an atrocious drab green.  Are there clear aromatic bitters out there?

Baron Thierry

1.5 oz reposado tequila

0.75 oz cucumber juice

0.5 oz elderflower liquor

0.25 oz lime juice

0.25 oz agave nectar

1 dash celery bitters

The name?  Taking inspiration from Misty, I went with historical: Baron Thierry was an Austrian hired by Maximillian to encourage British support of the French occupation of Mexico (I could only find one decent reference, page 195).  Not bad for a physicist, eh?

snoop dogg and my drinking patterns

[by john]

just visited scott holliday down at rendezvous and got him to rant about certain rap stars dropping names and upping prices (as they are wont to do, but with usually riffraff like designer vodka and cristal, not cognac!). i also enjoyed some egg on easter with his cynar flip.

[by Mike]

While John was talking hip hop, my intentions were set on taking advantage of Scott Holliday's experience to garner ideas for the bottle of Creme de Violette I was given yesterday. To this end I started off with something of a Violet Fizz (gin, lemon juice, Creme de Violette, orange flower water, egg white, and soda). The addition of the few drops of orange flower water was brilliant, complimenting the floral notes of the Creme de Violette while at the same time keeping it from overpowering the drink.

The fun really didn't begin until the second round. Inspired by the Cucumber and Mint (Hendrick's gin, mint, cucumber juice, lemon juice, and lime juice) my friend had ordered, I proposed a combination of the vibrant cucumber juice and my favorite spirit, tequila. After some back and forth, we settled on the Cucumber and Mint with Herradura replacing the Hendrick's and I could not have been more pleased.

When it comes to cocktails, my favorite flavor pairing is easily tequila and fruit. While it can be easily abused, the combination can be magical when the taste of the fruit resonates with the grassy, floral notes of a good tequila. Prominent examples include the Mexican Firing Squad (tequila, a good savory homemade grenadine, syrup, lime juice, Peychaud's bitters, and angostura bitters) and a simple strawberry margarita (tequila, in season strawberries muddled with just a little bit of sugar, lime juice, and triple sec).

Sadly, the cucumber was so fragrant that it was all too easy to fall into the illusion of summer which made the cold, windy walk home all the more painful.