Alcademics.com

Two New Contests for Consumers

TravelOregon is sponsoring an essay contest in which the winner gets an all-expenses-paid "cuisinternship" in one of seven professions, including brewmaster, chef, rancher, winemaker, and distiller. Sweet! Contest entries (you have to make a video) due Sept 18th. Details here. 

To launch Martini & Rossi’s new Sparkling Rosé, they're giving away a 3-night spa weekend in New York City, so this is kind of the opposite contest. I'm not sure when the contest ends, but all you need to do is sign up here.

Bartenders Hitting Their Hoes

For some reason, the San Francisco Chronicle didn't choose the above title for my story that comes out Sunday August 30th. I can't think of why.

More bars growing own cocktail ingredients

Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, August 28, 2009

 Victoria D'Amato-Moran grows tomatoes, Asian pears, Fuji apples, blackberries, roses and many herbs in her South San Francisco garden. Sooner or later, everything in it winds up in her cocktails.

"Except the zucchinis," she says. "I haven't figured out how to use those yet."

The Bay Area has long been home to the farm-forward cocktail movement - initially personified by Scott Beattie, then of Cyrus restaurant, who sourced produce from neighbors' fruit trees for his bar. Lately, more bartenders are doing the gardening work themselves, for the same reason that backyard gardeners seem to have appeared everywhere.

The extra effort may not save money, and the drinks may not taste noticeably fresher to the customer, but you can bet they do to the proud garden tender who grew part of your gimlet from seed.

Read the rest of my story in this Sunday's Chronicle about bartenders who also tend to gardens, including Duggan McDonnell, H. Joseph Ehrmann, Daniel Hyatt, Scott Stewart, Thad Vogler, and Lane Ford, and the bars Fairway Cocktail Lounge, Cyrus, Elixir, Alembic, Cantina, Fifth Floor, Bar Agricole, Starbelly, Sprcue, Brix, and Etoile. Gosh I'm thorough.

Also: there's a recipe for Jacques Bezuidenhout's Sagerac, a version of the Sazerac made with fresh picked sage, and Scott Stewart's Lonsdale No. 3 made with fresh basil.

Does Distilled Water Freeze Clearer than Tap Water?

In my last set of icesperiments, I froze, melted, and refroze (tap) water to see if it became clearer on successive refreezings. It did not.

This time I compared tap water with distilled water to see if one would freeze more clearly than the other. I froze it, then melted and refroze it four more times. Though neither froze super clear, there were differences:

 

The tap water seems to freeze either clear or not clear, where the distilled water freezes in more of a bubble starburst. But in the end I'd say there's not enough of a difference to matter. 

After the break, a closeup of the distilled vs. tap ice.

The icesperiments shall continue!

Gin Definitions

A few months back I attended a seminar hosted by Plymouth and Beefeater gins. This was held on the same day the new EU definition of London gin became law.

The law sets down three categories of gin by production method- not by flavor. They are:

Gin- Can be basically vodka with flavors added at bottling time.

Distilled Gin - Flavors are distilled with the neutral spirit, then additional flavors may be added after distillation.

London Gin - Flavors (must be natural, not artificial) are distilled with the neutral spirit, then nothing may be added after distillation except more neutral spirit and water and a tiny amount of sweetener. You will notice that it does not need to be distilled in London.

The full definitions are here. 

I was confused about one point after the seminar so I thought I'd clear it up here. Gins like Hendrick's and Martin Miller's are not London gins because they add flavors after distillation (so they are distilled gins). Gins like Bombay Sapphire that are made in Carterhead stills (and meeting all the other requirements) are London gins, though they are made a little differently than gins like Beefeater and Plymouth.

In the Carterhead still, botanicals can be placed in the vapor stream of the still instead of (or in addition to) putting them in the pot and infusing them in the neutral spirit. This adds a lighter touch of the botanicals to the gin. Initially I thought this disqualified gins distilled in this method from being labeled London gins. (I was thinking that if the botanicals were not in the pot, it was considered post-distillation.) But that's not true. I guess if it's all contained within the still set-up it's not considered post-distillation.

In the end, there are good and interesting gins in each category, and the categories don't account for flavor. Increasingly people are referring to gins as traditional vs. "new west" in style; boldly juniper-forward in flavor versus lighter in style with non-traditional flavorings and usually less dominated by juniper. So perhaps a gin officially labeled as a London gin can also be "new west" in flavor.

SFO <- -> OAK

It's time for Bay Area residents to start making plans for Labor Day weekend Sept 4-7. Why? Because the Bay Bridge will be closed for seismic upgrades. This is not a bad thing at all: BART will run trains 24 hours during the interruption, and that means drinkers can party in either city and get back home safely.

For city residents, a visit to Oakland is probably long overdue. I know it is for me. Here are some suggestions of places to visit from my own "bars to visit" spreadsheet. (Of course I have one, don't you?)

• Camino: A restaurant with a cocktail menu designed by Thad Vogler using only spirits from non-industrially grown crops and in-season citrus.
• Sidebar: The cocktail menu was designed by Jonny Raglin of Absinthe. Each drink is available in a classic and locavore version, made with local ingredients.
  
• The Den at the Fox: This newish bar is attached to the Fox Theater. 
• Pican: A restaurant with a focus on bourbon. 
• Adesso: a gastropub with cocktails.
• Grand Tavern: A restaurant with classic cocktail list. 
• Penelope: Another gastropub with an interesting cocktail menu.

Congratulations on your Liver Transplant and Get Well Soon!

Finally, the perfect gift!

 

Now you can give a floral bouquet to your friends who would rather you buy them a drink instead. 

These attractive arrangements are currently offered in your choice of Strawberry Floral Margarita, Margarita Bouquet, Cosmopolitan Bouquet, Beer Mug of Blooms, Mini-margarita Bouquet, Apple Martini Bouquet, and Champagne Wishes.

Alcademics Giveaway: The Bubbly Bar

I'll be giving away five copies of Maria Hunt's book The Bubbly Bar: Champagne and Sparkling Wine Cocktails for Every Occasion. To be eligible to win, just sign up for the Alcademics A-Plus email list here. I'll pick a random winner from the list later this week.

Author Maria Hunt is responsible for the website TheBubblyGirl.com. She's also a CIA-certified wine professional and freelance writer. I first met her when we judged a champagne cocktail competition together.

The Bubbly Bar, which comes out August 25th, is a recipe book for cocktails made with champagne, other sparkling wines, and sparkling sake. Each recipe specifies the type of sparkler used, which is handy to those of us who don't know our prosecco from our cava. The drinks are pretty accessible, made with liqueurs like St. Germain, triple sec, and the occasional frambois and Campari. The liquor too is mostly everyday stuff- there is lots of gin- but also one each of certain rums, calvados, and pisco. Most of the less common ingredients are fruits and juices, floral syrups, and teas, and Hunt provides a resource guide in the back of the book on where to find them. 

The drinks do not seem super challenging- the average is floral and/or juicy as opposed to  bitter and strong, but there are a lot of delicious-sounding originals. There are a few zingers in there too- drinks with a rinse of Pernod, a splash of black peppercorn syrup, or a touch of jalapeno. The final chapter has dessert drinks and desserts.

Another nice aspect of the book is that Hunt lists recommended brands of bubbly by price- a shopping list to take to the store.

Jason Wilson recently wrote about the book for the Washington Post and included a recipe that was inspired by Joel Baker of Bourbon & Branch: the Aperol Flip. 

To be eligible to win, just sign up for the Alcademics A-Plus email list here.

Does Refreezing Ice Make it Clearer?

I am trying a series of experiments to find the best and most practical way to make clear ice in my home freezer. Future experiments include distilled vs. tap water, boiled vs. not boiled, hot vs. cold water, different shapes of containers, etc.

For this experiment, I started with plain tap water. I then froze it, took a picture, let it thaw back into liquid, and repeated the process. 

The test was to see if freezing and refreezing tap water would make it become clearer on successive freezings (due to the release of oxygen trapped in the ice) each time. 

So did it become clearer? The short answer is No. The long and visual answer is below.