Alcademics.com

Curing Olives at Home, Part II

This post is a continuation of this one on how to brine olives at home.

My olives went from this:

To this:

To see the process, keep reading by selecting the link below.

Bars Inside Other Bars

In my latest story for San Francisco Magazine, I talk about bars opening inside other bars.

Photograph by Chris Brennan

Make it a double

These bars within bars offer patrons a choice of drinking styles.
By Camper English

The hottest haute cocktails require a range of syrups, bitters, fresh herbs, several types of gin, a lot of storage space, and extra time to make every drink. One way in which bar owners are handling the demand is by dividing and conquering, opening two bars in a single venue—one to promote quick service, the other for slow sipping.

Until recently, the back room at Dalva was a barren spot more suited for storage than for socializing, and it was often used by customers sneaking illegal indoor cigarettes. But with a fresh coat of paint and a bit of remodeling, including a custom-made bar and wrought-iron accents, this area has been rebranded as a boutique interior cocktail lounge called the Hideout. 

Continue reading the story at the San Francisco Magazine website. 

The Great Debate Continues

You may recall a few weeks ago I wrote a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle about bartenders being less snobby that proved a bit controversial.  Now a few others have taken up the conversation.

My initial story had the following quote from Erick Castro of Rickhouse that touched a few nerves:

"Three years ago it was OK to be rude. It used to be 'I'm not making a cosmo and you're a horrible person.' Now we say, 'I'm not making a cosmo, but I'm making you something better than a cosmo.' And if they like (the drink) they trust you for the whole night."

So then I wrote a blog post called, "Why Can't I Get a McDonald's Hamburger at Chez Panisse?" and that gave birth to more discussion.

The Paul Clarke picked up the topic at Serious Eats in a post called "Serious Cocktails: Is the Customer Always Right?" In it he asks:

Just as it'd be ridiculous to enter a dive bar and ask for a Last Word, isn't there something at least slightly wrong with going to a bar with a spectacular selection of spirits—an ambitious and balanced cocktail menu and a carefully developed mixological aesthetic—and asking for the bibulous equivalent of a baloney sandwich?

This story picked up another 67 comments so far. 

Then Lauren Clark picked up the topic on DrinkBoston.com in a post called "We've Seen This Before" and adds a very good point- that this whole debate is nothing new and has been seen in food, beer, and wine.

I experienced this kind of change first-hand during my brief stint in the craft brewing industry in the late ’90s. Even though craft beer had been proliferating for over a decade at that point, people would still walk into a brewpub and order a Miller Lite. The bartender would explain that there was no Miller Lite on tap, that the establishment sold only beer that was made on the premises, and he would suggest a golden ale — milder than the pub’s other beers but still way more flavorful than mass-produced light lager. The customer would either leave or try the golden ale. If he tried it and liked it enough, he might get adventuresome later on and order an IPA or a porter. It was a process, and it didn’t happen overnight.

This is fun. I hope this discussion continues on and offline.

Valentine's Day Cocktail-Related Activities in San Francisco

Here are some drink-related things going on in San Francisco for Valentine's Day.

First up, a club partnering with a hotel to rent rooms by the hour. Scandalous!

Infusion Lounge and Hotel Fusion are turning the couples only holiday into a celebration of the single life. For one night only, Hotel Fusion offers a special $69 rate for guests who are looking for a short-term intimate setting.  The special rate includes a standard room for up to three hours so guests can get to know each other a little better in privacy.  Also included in the package are two drink tokens to use at the Infusion Lounge.

Details here.

Next up, cocktail classes for couples at Elixir.

Wed, Feb 10^th , 7pm to 9pm – Drinks Guys Like – A class to teach you a bit about what the man in your life probably wants to drink in different scenarios. You’ll learn about brown spirits like whisk(e)y, aged rum and anejo tequila and why men like these. We’ll look at the masculine side of cocktails and the flavors that abound within and you’ll have a chance to buy him something special for his bar. Your sure to surprise him this year when you’ve learned a bit more about how to please him…at the bar. $85 per person includes 4 cocktails and class; Cocktail Tools and Books available for purchase

 

Thursday, Feb 11^th  , 7pm to 9pm – Woo Her with Cocktails  -  In this look into the cocktail psyche of women, we’ll learn a bit about the flavors, aromas and textures of cocktails and spirits that women tend to order. Like anything with your girl, you need to know when to offer her what and why that will work. See if you can touch her the right way with cocktails and you might just find yourself having the best Valentine’s Day of your life…$85 per person includes 4 cocktails and class; Cocktail Tools and Books available for purchase

 

Feb 14^th - Cocktails for Couples – Bring your Sweetheart in for a side-by-side cocktail class where you’ll make and drink cocktails together. We’ll cover drinks he likes, and drinks she likes, as we explore some of the more fun and frivolous side of cocktails. You’ll be welcomed with a champagne cocktail for each of you and a surprise Valentine’s. We’ll cover romantic cocktails as a theme, as well as aphrodisiac ingredients and even a playful cocktail that you can (oh, scandal) bring into your bed…  Tickets sold in pairs for $170 and include 3 drinks each, class and treats.

Details here.

And a big beer party in Berkeley:

Trumer Brauerei Hosts Closing Party for San Francisco Beer Week

San Francisco’s Beer Week closing party at Trumer Brauerei in Berkeley, California.  20 local breweries sampling their brews, BBQ, music, silent auction and FREE shuttles from the downtown Berkeley BART to the Brauerei.

Over 20 other breweries will pour favorite brews as well. Meet Celebrator writers and beer industry luminaries, including pioneer figures in the craft beer movement. Catering by Emergency BBQ and beer are included! Breweries pouring include 21st Amendment, Anchor Brewery, Anderson Valley, Beach Chalet, Bear Republic, BridgePort, Lagunitas, Marin, Moylan’s, New Belgium, North Coast, Ommegang, Pacific Coast, Pyramid, Rubicon, Russian River, Sierra Nevada, Triple Rock, Trumer Pils, Valley Brewing, Widmer/Redhook and more.

Info here.

Another Class in SF:

“Love Mixology” Cocktail Class Saturday, February 13 4 – 5 p.m. The Westin St. Francis Caruso’s (Tower Lobby) 335 Powell Street San Francisco, CA $50 per couple To make reservations for the “Love Mixology” class call (415) 774-0264. Getting just the right balance of ingredients to complement each other is important for any relationship, and certainly the best drinks! Guests will shake, stir and blend as they learn how to make romantic cocktails at the “Love Mixology” cocktail class. At this specialty cocktail-making course, lead by The Westin St. Francis “Love Mixologist,” couples will learn how to make three cocktails (with tastes of each) and will then choose their favorite cocktail to create together in the class. Cocktails include “Agave Kiss,” “Cupid’s Arrow” and “Love Potion #9.” Guests will snack on “love bites” (tasty edible treats) and will depart with a copy of all three drink recipes to recreate at home.

Wet Week in Vegas, Continued

This is the second post of my brief trip to Las Vegas to check out the new CityCenter. Part one is here.

Our group had a big private lunch at the new Michael Mina restaurant American Fish. The food was interesting, but you don't come to Alcademics to read about meals. The drink menu at American Fish is probably the most ambitious in City Center, featuring many of my favorite classic cocktails like the Vieux Carre, Monkey Gland, East India Cocktail, Brandy Crusta, and Pegu Club. We weren't being served cocktails during lunch but I managed to sneak in one Vieux Carre that was dry and delicious. Vegas cocktail jackpot!

Next we went to the adjacent hotel in CityCenter, Vdara, and had drinks at the lobby bar called, shockingly, Bar Vdara.

  The drinks at Vdara included two with a 'house East India fixer' a spiced syrup. We ordered one with that and rangpur gin and maraschino liqueur, one with chartreuse, rum, and kaffir lime leaves, and a pisco drink with guava liqueur. Two out of the three drinks were far too sweet for our liking, but that is a theme in Vegas.

Keep reading...

Nice Casino, But How are the Drinks?

Greetings from Las Vegas! I'm here visiting the new CityCenter that is made up of the Aria casino and hotel, the Mandarin Oriental hotel, and Crystals shopping center. The place is pretty classy, but you don't come to Alcademics to read about gambling, except taking a gamble on potentially delicious cocktails.

I'm staying at Aria. Here is the view from my room:

I got here late yesterday, so I only had time to visit a few things. I dined at Union, a steak and lobster-centric restaurant in Aria. There are about 12 restaurants in Aria so I'll visit a few of them.

Union has a small cocktail menu with 9 drinks on it. Some look better than others. I avoided the ones with flavored vodka and had one with bourbon a grapefruit, one with tequila, passionfruit, and fresno chili, and a strawberry-basil Caipirinha. They were all not-too-sweet and quite juicy.

 

I checked out the new Cirque du Soleil show Viva Elvis, and visited the nearby Gold Lounge, where the cocktail list was no good. 

Wandering around the casino I stumbled into Bar Moderno for the best drinks so far. They had drinks with orgeat, rhubarb bitters, and caramelized pineapple puree so you know that somebody who knew what they were doing did the cocktail menu here. They had a version of a Pisco Sour, a Sidecar, and a selection of cheeky "morning remedies" like black coffee and Advil.

On further exploration, it seems a few of the drinks from Bar Moderno are the signature drinks of the casino, available the sports bar and buffet also: the Carmelized Pineapple Sidecar, the Raspbberry Aviation, the Prickly Pear Pisco Sour, the Ginger Cosmopolitan, and the Cucumber Collins.

Off to a second day of exploring. Cheers.

The Residence Bar in San Francisco

The new bar The Residence opened this past weekend in San Francisco. It's on the site of Amber and Zodiac restaurant before that. I believe they have the same owners but gave it a revamp.

The biggest change is that the bar finally went non-smoking after using the owner-operated clause to have legal smoking for so many years. They changed over the entire bar in two weeks and surprisingly they got all the smoke smell out.

 

They freshened up the place with a new paint job and furniture.

The place is equally as casual and comfortable as it was as Amber, with some nicer lighting like half-globes mounted on the wall in the picture below.

They also changed the drink menu. The majority of the drinks on it are renamed classic cocktails like the Manhattan, Martini, Blood and Sand, and Sazerac.  Three others are made with soju or sake.  Cocktail snobs won't be impressed, but it's a step in the right direction. The more comfortable, casual neighborhood cocktail bars the better.

The Residence
718 14th Street at Market
San Francisco, CA

Lazing in the Lounge on the Fifth Floor

The Fifth Floor restaurant in San Francisco has rolled out (har!) their new bar cart and bar program. In the lounge bartenders will roam with a small cart serving classic cocktails like Martinis and Manhattans. The Martini is really the emphasis of the cart menu, with guests given a short menu with choices of gin and vermouth for drinkers to pick their preference. The goal of the cart program is give more of the interaction with the bartender that's not possible at the small bar that serves both the lounge and restaurant. 

I am actually more excited about the new cocktail menu designed by Jacques Bezuidenhout, which is not on the website yet but is available at the bar/lounge. More on that later.

SF Bar Crawl for Haiti Relief on January 19

What:

Cocktail Fundraiser Benefiting the Red Cross and Earthquake Victims in Haiti. Each bar will have special cocktails for the night with all proceeds from those cocktails going to the Red Cross.

When:

Tuesday January 19, 2010

5 to 7 p.m. at Rickhouse

7 to 9 p.m. at Cantina

9 to closing at Rye

Where:

Rickhouse (246 Kearney St. at Bush St., 415-398-2827)

Cantina (580 Sutter St. at Mason St., 415-398-0195)

Rye (688 Geary at Leavenworth, 415-474-4448)

Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=253580102871

How to Make Clear Ice, The Hard Way

Darcy over at ArtofDrink.com has taken up pursuit of clear ice. In his first post, he noted something that I did not consider and that could be very helpful.

As the ice increases in thickness it begins to corral all of the impurities into the center of the block. Dissolved air and unfiltered water will cause a cloudy core, but impurities are not the main reason why ice cubes are rarely crystal clear.  

This expansion pressure is what makes ice cloudy in the center, not minerals and other debris. The visual flaws are caused by fractures in the ice when the last remaining liquid water in the center of the cube freezes and exerts a massive amount of force on the surrounding ice. The cube is basically cracked from the inside out.

This is in line with what I discovered when I tried all sorts of ways to get the air and impurities out of the ice- in the end it just didn't matter that much.

So in his second experiment, Darcy set about making ice freeze from the bottom up, so that the last part to freeze would be the top. Thus there would be no pressure cracking of the ice. His equipment list was:

• 6 ft of copper pipe
• my wife's cookie sheet
• tin-snips
• a bag of nails
• a garbage bag
• an aquarium pump (powerhead)
• a square garbage can
• a coat hanger
• two Canadian winter days and nights at roughly -10°C

As he noted,

The process works, but it isn’t very efficient nor is it practical.

Anyway, there is still more work to be done. Icesperiments will continue!

Up in your Internet

Oh hai. I've been writing a lot of stuff lately on this new fangled thing called the internet.

I did a few things for Tasting Table, like this piece on bartenders swapping out whisky in drinks for mezcal and this other one on where to get a good cocktail during the day in San Francisco. 

For the national edition of Tasting Table I wrote about where you can buy a whole barrel of booze. There are a whole lot more places to buy a whole barrel listed at this Liquor.com article that came out a few days earlier. I didn't write that one (great minds drink alike), but I did write this other one on bitters for the same site a while back.  

For CitySearch I wrote about single-spirit specialty bars, which is supposed to also include this review of Smuggler's Cove but doesn't, because the internet is full of bugs.

A Two-Bar Opening Weekend in San Francisco, and a Restaurant with Cocktails on Monday

Two bars will open in San Francisco on Saturday January 16th.

One is The Residence, on the site of Amber (and Zodiac before that). I don't have too much information about it, but the clues so far are classic drinks and cocktails with tea.

The Residence. 718 14th Street at Church.

The other is John Collins Lounge, which is closing in its old location and moving to another. I don't have any information about the new space other than its address, which is below.

John Collins. 138 Minna Street at New Montgomery.

Bonus opening! On Monday January 18th, Credo opens in the Financial District with drinks by bar manager Victoria D'amato-Moran.

Credo. 360 Pine Street at Montgomery.

Bloody Revenge (Tomato Juice Cocktail Recipes)

The Bloody Mary is not just a popular tomato juice drink, it's one of the only tomato juice drinks. Now the Red Gold tomato products company has a few suggestions for some new tomato juice cocktails.

The National Peanut Board got in on the cocktail trend with peanut cocktail recipes to help sell their wares, and now this tomato company is following suit. I think it's a good idea, and am just waiting for the Milk Processing Board to join in.

Anyway, the drinks sound interesting, if in need of improvements for Rose's lime and "sour mix." 

[Link via Jack Robertiello at Nightclub.com.]

SF Bar Preview: Bar Agricole

Bar Agricole, the South of Market bar and restaurant by Thad Vogler, looks like it's on track to open in May after many months of delays. Vogler is behind many bar programs and consulting projects including the Slanted Door and Beretta in San Francisco, Bardessono in the wine country, and Camino in Oakland. Vogler and collaborator Eric Johnson (currently bartending at Delarosa) gave me a tour this weekend.

Bar agricole will be located at 355 11th Street, right next door to the live music venue Slim's. The building is sheathed in corrugated metal, and designed and updated by  Matarozzi/Pelsinger Builders. The metallic outside is perforated with increasingly large holes, and at night looks almost clear (picture here). The building and Bar Agricole's build-out are all LEED-certified to high levels.

Bar Agricole is to the right side of the building in the above picture. The front of the building holds a fenced-in patio that currently is a plain courtyard, but they will install a biodynamic garden with trees and such so that it feels "peaceful and overgrown" according to Vogler. Interestingly, the gardener is also choosing the wine list for the restaurant.

Running through the patio will be long communal tables, which I imagine will be a great place to sit in summer- because there will also be heat lamps.

The picture below looks from the building entrance out towards the street. The garden will be along the sides and the street view will be mostly blocked by vegetation.

Inside, the 4,000 square foot space is divided into two halves. The lower level, accessed by ramps off to the left of the main space, houses the kitchen and private dining room that should seat about 24 people and have its own bar and AV set-ups.

The lower level is shown below with its freshly-installed plumbing.

The main level will feature two bars: one focusing on people sitting at it and the other a high-volume service bar for the rest of the restaurant. There will be many booths facing the bar going down the rectangular room. 

They partnered with concrete, glass, and ironworks artisans so we should expect to see touches like the bar made from poured concrete and a large light sculpture descending from the skylight that looked like an extended piece of ribbon candy in the mock-up I saw. The back of the room will have more windows out to the alley, so between the front, back, and skylights this could be a really bright space for its size.

Vogler says he's a fan of hot beverages and will have a Slayer espresso machine, one of only a few in the country so far. He's developed a relationship with a Guatemalan coffee farm and is bringing in a biodynamic tea from India. That could be good for business, as I recall from earlier conversations that the restaurant will be open for lunch with a casual vibe.

Other beverage touches will include a single beer on tap to ensure it is served as fresh as possible, and a selection of spirits with an emphasis on local, organic, and biodynamic products from some of our favorite local distillers.

Soon they'll start pouring the concrete for the floors and the space will start to look more like a restaurant than the empty shell here. It seems they're really going all-out on this project and I came away from the visit impressed with the scale of the operation and very much looking forward to getting in there in May.

The Science of Sweet in the San Francisco Chronicle

Here is my latest story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

(A Gin-to-the-fire cocktail was photographed in the SF Chronicle studio on Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009 in San Francisco, Calf. Photo: Mike Kepka / The Chronicle)

Sweetening drinks can be a science

Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, January 8, 2010

Gin that bruises, 500-year-old secret recipes and miracle hangover cures. The world of cocktails is rife with myths and misinformation. As we slowly move out of the Dark Ages and into the cocktail Enlightenment, bartenders are starting to use scientific methodology to disprove hearsay and improve drinks.

Some of that science will be explained Jan. 20 at the Exploratorium. A one-night event (sold out, though the Web site promises to share details for home experiments) will include exhibits on the science behind layering a pousse-café, why absinthe turns white when water is added and how cocktails are affected by the shape of ice.

Having experimented with ice in recent years, many bartenders have moved on to studying sugar. Simple syrup is used to balance acid in many cocktails, so several curious bar types have purchased refractometers and pH meters to measure exact levels of each.

Read the whole story on the science of sweetening drinks here.