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Cognac Cocktails in the Los Angeles Times Magazine

My first story for the LA Times Magazine is now online. It is in the Sunday, December 7, 2010 print edition. 

(Photo by Bartholomew Cooke)

The story is a brief airing of a pet peeve: Why are there so few cognac cocktails being served when we're supposedly in the midst of a classic cocktail renaissance? 

The article also includes four recipes from Damian Windsor of the Roger Room. 

Read and enjoy!

Mile-High Mixology: Delta and United Create Same Cocktail

On one hand, it's great that airlines are getting into cocktails. On the other hand, there's not a lot to work with when you're limited to the selection of liquids already on the cart.

 

This month both Delta and United announced  their new cocktails.

Delta [via jaunted via Forest]:

Bourbon Breeze  (Woodford Reserve Small Batch Bourbon/Cranberry & Apple Juice/Splash Orange Juice/Lime Wedge Garnish) 

United [via MarketWatch]:

United Airlines is offering customers, beginning today, a refreshing new signature cocktail, Sunrise Sunset, on all United flights that offer beverage service. The sweet and tangy cocktail, developed by United flight attendant Tita Martin, is a mix of cranberry apple juice, a splash of orange juice, a squeeze of lime and vodka.

So:

1. These are the exact same drink with a different base spirit.
2. They're both just variations of a Madras. 

Nice work? 

Off-Topic: Cell Phone Data Plans Abroad

I travel a lot visiting distilleries around the world. I need to check my email at least at night, but I also have fantasies of uploading pictures and video from my phone as I roam about during the day. When I'm in a place without wi-fi, I'd have to use an international data plan. So I decided to price those out for the top three US carriers. 

These are only the data plans, not voice roaming. I hardly use the phone for phone calls so I don't worry about that much. As far as I can tell the international phones and cards are good for phone calls and maybe texts but not data. 

Verizon

• Has a separate email plan for POP3/LAN accounts for $65/month unlimited use 
• Global Access for web/data $129 for up to 100MB in Europe, or $20.48 per Megabyte

AT&T

• In 90 international countries, packages cost 20M for $25, 50M for $60, 100M for $119, 200M for $200

T-Mobile

• $15 per Megabyte in Europe

Conclusion: It seems Verizon would be best for business travelers who communicate via email only. I need more general data transfer (web use) though, and for that it appears AT&T has the best data rates. 

I already have AT&T so I guess I'll just stick with that, but I still may not use it for international data. 

When I was in Jamaica a few years back I bought one of these data plans but unfortunately the phone (same iPhone I still have) didn't provide any realistic way of tracking data use (wifi and non-wifi data use recorded together so couldn't tell which data you were paying for vs. getting for free) so I went way over my limit and ended up with a huge bill on top of the plan. 

Anyway, just thinking out loud over the internet and thought I'd share in case anyone else was wondering the same thing. If I'm wrong, let me know! 

Does Refreezing Clear Air-Free Ice Result In a Large Clear Block?

This is an experiment in my ongoing project to make clear ice. I've figured out a way to do it using an Igloo cooler. This experiment is an attempt to make clear ice without one. 

A long time ago, I tested the theory that freezing, thawing, and refreezing water makes clear ice blocks. After 13 tries I determined that it refreezing water does not make clearer ice. 

However, it recently occurred to me that I could test out something else. If we take just the clear part of ice (leaving behind the cloudy, air-rich stuff), melt it and refreeze it, will the new ice be clear? 

A bar in San Francisco refreezes their Kold-Draft cubes. One bartender told me he thought it makes clearer ice than with just tap water, but still not completely clear. 

If this experiment works, then someone anyone could refreeze small bits of clear ice into large blocks. Efficient? Nope. But interesting.

(Oh, and long story short: this experiment was inconclusive. Don't want to make you read if you're not into it.)

Anyway, step one was to make clear ice, as I do using the Igloo cooler method. I made two partial blocks of ice. I let the water freeze in the cooler, then knock off the thin skin that forms around the bottom of the cooler (full of water).

Then I took these two clear slabs, broke them into large chunks, and put them into the cooler to melt.

After it melted, I refroze it. 

The ice in the picture above is upside-down from how it was in the cooler. Here's a closeup. 

At first view, it looks a little cloudy in the middle of the bloc- but I think that's because I had to move my refrigerator a couple of times during this process and jostling the container does seem to make cloudier ice. 

Looking just at the cloudy part at the bottom end (top in the picture above), I can't really say whether it's less cloudy than it is with regular tap water. This experiment is inconclusive.

My theory is that as the water cools down or warms up to room temperature it reabsorbs a standard amount of air, and this experiment won't work. However:  

If I repeat this experiment (and I probably will), I should:

• Make the clear ice as normal, but not break up the slab into chunks. This saved time but probably adds air. 
• Use more refrozen water in the cooler when refreezing. Here is was a little too hard to tell what percentage of ice was cloudy, so I could not compare it with the time I did this experiment with regular water. 

The icesperiments continue!

Boozehound by Jason Wilson

I read Washinton Post cocktail columnist Jason Wilson's new book Boozehound. Here are my thoughts.

If you're a regular reader of Wilson's Post column (and you should be) you'll already know a lot of his feelings on false marketing claims and made-up brand stories. In this book he gives a lot of the backstory on his experiences with magical marketing and that's where he's at his funniest- going off about St. Germain, Chartreuse, and Jagermeister. 

Because I know Wilson's writing and the man in person I'm used to all his ranting and raving, so what stuck with me about the book was not the humor in it (don't get me wrong, it's a funny book), but what I'll call "special moments with booze."

One Time at Booze Camp

A point that Wilson makes again and again in the book is that long lists of flavor descriptors of a spirit (or wine) don't do much for the reader, in large part because taste is so personal and subjective. What makes a spirit special is how it is special to you, and this is the core of the book. 

Wilson describes his visits to distilleries around the world, along the way sharing what he learned. (I picked up great new information about aquavit, amaros, pisco, and calvados.) But these descriptions are not dry lists of rules and regulations, tasting notes, and distillation parameters, but really about what made each visit memorable, or how he came to understanding of the spirit, or what sealed the deal, in essence. 

It makes you both jealous and really thirsty. 

You might think that this would get annoying- Wilson bragging about his wonderful adventures like a J. Peterman catalogue- but instead I found myself absorbing those memories into my understanding of the spirits as well. (Just what I need, to be even more like Jason Wilson.)

My Favorite Part

In one part, he talks of tasting genever at Tales of the Cocktail and how it triggered a memory: He was in Amsterdam with a friend and throughout the day they drank at Wynand Fockink and De Dres Fleschjes, took in a live sex show, and had "a heated debate about the nature of friendship and love and memory." 

He continues,

"Yes, this is what genever tasted like to me. Not just "earthy and funky." Not something I could encapsulate into a few tasting notes capped by a three-star versus four-star rating. It was something untranslatable. Genever tasted exactly like that day in Amsterdam, and everything surrounding that day. Genever tasted like seediness and nostalgia itself."

 

The book is available on Amazon.com.

Cutting Blocks of Ice with an Icepick

To cut the large blocks of clear ice that I make at home using and Igloo cooler (methodology here), I have always busted out the saw I bought for that reason. 

However, last week I gave a talk on ice at Portland Cocktail Week with Evan Zimmerman and Jim Romdall. During the talk one of them (Evan I think) mentioned how you use an ice pick to cut apart a block of ice the easy way.

I cringed thinking of all the time I'd spent sawing when this way is like 1000 times easier. I hope I can save you from the same fate.

1. Start with your slab of ice. The one in this picture is about 5 inches thick.

2.  Tap a line across the top where you want the ice to break. The ice will chip off and form a little groove. 

3. Tap in one point in the center. Poke hard. Poke poke poke. 

4. The ice should break in two roughly along the line. Hooray!

5. Repeat the process to break it into smaller pieces.