Alcademics.com

Better than Heroin

I generally call bulls**t on all hangover cures and preventatives but this is a hangover preventer (okay technically it prepares the body to process the toxins it is about to receive on a night out) that helps heroin growers not grow heroin.

Okay what? There is a beverage called Alibi "Active Pretox Drink" (granted, an awesome name) that has milk thistle and ginkgo and "herbal extracts" and citrus stuff. It is sold in England.

But for the new pomegranate flavor the company donates money from each can sold to the POM354 program, which helps replace heroin-producing opium poppies in Afghanistan with pomegranate plants. Each can you drink prevents one heroin injection, so the more you pretox the more addicts you save.

Or something.

Liquid Dieting

 

Cachaca Intensive

A couple weeks ago, I attended a cachaca intensive with Minister of Rum Ed Hamilton and Cabana cachaca distiller Cesar Cestari. Here is some of what I learned.

Up to six grams per liter of sugar may be added to cachaca without declaring it on the label. Between six and fifteen grams is then called sweet cachaca and you can find it on the labels of Brazilian brands as "cachaca adocada."

Most cachaca (like 90%) is made in column stills, and most of it has sugar added. Multiple column stills allow you to remove more congeners than a single-column still. Cachaca must be bottled at between 38 and 48 percent alcohol by volume.

June through December are the distillation months. At the Cabana distillery, they double distill cachaca in pot stills, but do it in a way I've never heard of before. During the harvest season, they distill all the fermented sugar cane juice just once and store it in large vats. The don't even cut the heads and tails at this point. This stabilizes the liquid, as sugar cane quickly goes bad like an apple that turns brown after you take a bite.

After they're done distilling sugar cane for the year, they mix the low-alcohol spirit together for consistency and do the second distillation. Then afterward, they add water and let it marry for a couple months before bottling.

 Brazilian woods are harder than American/French oak and impart less flavor. There are tons of different woods in which cachaca is aged.

Cane grown for sugar is all about yield, whereas for cachaca it's all about quality. In different parts of Brazil, different types of sugar cane are grown best suited locally to make cachaca. Sugar cane grows in clumps. After you cut it down one year, the clumps become thicker and thicker. Every five years or so, they dig up the clumps and plant new sugar cane (just pieces of old cane) to start the process over.

Cachaca 51, or Pirassununga, is the third largest spirit brand in the world. There are 4000 brands of cachaca and about 30,000 producers. 1.3 billion liters of cachaca are distilled each year.

Molasses-based rums have a high sulfur content, so you need to age even the clear ones to take the edge off.

In order for cachaca to be called aged cachaca (meaning more than one year in wood), only half of the stuff in the bottle has to be aged for that long.

Rum expert Ed Hamilton, Cabana brand owner Matti Anttila, Cabana distiller Cesar Cestari.

Also, there's a great cachaca quiz here at the Ministry of Rum. Test what you learned in this blog entry.

Now Your Sneakers Can Match Your Tequila

You've probably seen the very awesome 1800 Tequila Essential Artists campaign, in which artists get to do bottle designs for 1800 Tequila.

Well now they've hooked it up so you can design a pair of sneakers with the bottle art. It's pretty cool, though the cost adds up the more art you use. Here are a pair I designed.

Want!

The Better Bitters Battle

Bartenders going to Tales of the Cocktail this July can enter a contest to have their bitters be commercially produced and share in the profits. More info is here.

Yr Doin It Right

It is frustrating when I find a product I want to write about only to learn it is only available in New York or one other metro area. I feel guilty writing about it because it's not practical for most consumers to try the product.

On the other hand, when I clearly state where something is available, people won't go into their local liquor mart looking for something that is nowhere in the state, and if they really want to try it they can seek it out online. Disclosure is key.

But often, the availability or lack thereof is not clearly written in a product's press materials, or not clearly stated on the product's website. Or worse, they just announce plans to roll it out it several states this season, then never update the website to say if that actually happened.

The point of this is to say I hope that brands get a little better at this, and that one spirits company is doing it right. Proximo Spirits, which sells 1800 Tequila, Gran Centenario Tequila, Maestro Dobel Tequila, Three Olives Vodka, and Ron Matusalem, now has a store locator with interactive Google maps. It returns the name, address, and phone number of each store and bar where you can find the products.

You can find all of the products on the Proximo locator site, or individual ones on the 1800 Tequila and Three Olives websites.

There will be an iPhone application and locators rolled out on the rest of the brands' websites, but for now those things are just plans. Here's to hoping for follow-through.

Where's Martin?

As many of you now know, Martin Cate of the fabulous famous tiki bar in Alameda, Forbidden Island, is no longer of Forbidden Island. He parted ways with his business partners recently and will no longer be working/managing there.

Martin says he's at work on another venture but won't tell me anything about it. Is it a new bar? A book? Gender reassignment surgery? I don't know because he won't say. Feel free to add your theories in the comments.

This secrecy is cruel and unusual treatment, since I knew about his departure from FI before I was permitted to tell anyone. Keeping the secret was burning holes in my brain! I like sharing, is that so wrong?

Anyway, for all y'all who may want to pay Martin millions of dollars to design your bar menu or have him make drinks at your tiki wedding or be the brand ambassador for your rum, you can find him at MartinCate.com. That's a secret he doesn't mind me sharing.

NYC: Meet Pimm's Number Three

Oops- I've known about this but forgot to post it for all you Pimm's fans in NYC

The Bowery Hotel will begin serving Pimm’s No. 3 Winter (brandy-based liqueur and infused with spices and orange peel) in the Lobby bar. It’s brought in from the UK and not available in the U.S. The Bowery’s director of Food & Beverage, James Stuart, and a Brit is spearheading the project.

Unlike the traditional gin-based Pimm’s Cup that is served with bitter lemon soda, Pimm’s Winter Cup is served warm with Apple Juice, Cinnamon, and Green Apple.

The drink will be available until they run out of their stash of Pimm's No. 3.

Here is their drink recipe:

Pimm’s Winter Cup

1 parts Pimm’s No.3

3 parts Local Apple Juice

Star anise

Cinnamon Stick

Slice of green apple

Slice of orange

Warm the juice with the spices and fruit, gently. In a heavy glass mix with Pimm’s and serve.