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Tales Seminar: The Global Drinks Business

These are notes from The Global Drinks Business seminar at Tales of the Cocktail, lead by Phil Duff.

Please don't treat these facts as absolute or fact-checked - I'm typing fast and mistakes could be made. 

• In the Middle East, the duty-free market is enormous.
• "The world drinks locally." The overwhelming majority of spirits are consumed in the country in which they are made. 
• The world drinks whisky (not always scotch, but something that tastes like scotch), vodka (at every level. The first market out side the USA for Absolut was Russia.), and soju.
• In the Phillipeans they drink 27 million cases of one brand of gin, double the rest of the world's total consumption.
• How much does it cost you to make a bottle of a grain alcohol product: about $1 for the spirit. (Grapes cost 30% - 50% more). The bottle (a standard nice one) costs you $1.77 per bottle for a minimum large order.  Screw cap costs 14 cents. Bottling costs 70 cents. Case and divider 35 cents. $3.96 per bottle for less than 4000 cases. More than 4000 cases costs $2.97. 
• 100,000 case mark means your brand could be bought, or could be 'made more efficient.' 
• Producers margin on 1 bottle (for production cost $3.33) and selling price 7.83 is  4.50; or a  57.46 % profit. Then it goes to marketing. (There were a lot more numbers on marketing costs but I didn't catch them. Something about 30% markup.)
• The booze biz is one of the most heavily marketed industries. The best and brightest in marketing want to work in the booze biz. 
• Bailey's is so successful it sells one out of every 4 bottles of liqueur in the world.
• X Rated Fusion Liqueur - Only sold 60,000 total cases before the brand sold for $40 million. This is due in part to technological innovation that allowed the fruit juice in it to be stable.
• Grey Goose - Was  sold for 1.8 billion to Bacardi. For 20 times the earnings. 
• Ciroc - 2003 created. Distiller came up with name. Gave Puffy the equivalent of half the profits. Moved from 60,000 cases to 400,000 cases in one year. This year broke 1 million case mark.    
• Distributors add 30% to the price of the spirit. Retailers add 30%. So a product that costs $3 bucks to make is sold for $30 at retail. 
• "Nobody is making a great deal of money for an $8 cocktail." 

Tales of the Cocktail Seminar: Let's Not Sugar-Coat It

These are some notes from the seminar: Let's Not Sugar Coat It at Tales of the Cocktail. 

• Sugar Beet Syrup: 2 pounds of sugar beets, shredded, 32 oz water: In a pot combine sugar beets and water, over a med heat cook the beets until mixture becomes thick. Remove from heat, strain through fine mesh, discard solids. Should have the consistency of honey. 
• Stone fruit: Great example of fructose
• Rickey Ricardo: 1.5 oz Hendrick's Gin, 1 oz Cantaloupe juice, 3 oz Coconut Water soda, 1/2 lemon, 1 oz Lemon Juice: In collins glass, squeeze and drop half lemon into glass, then add ingredients, fill with coco soda. This drink doesn't taste tart, yet doesn't taste sweet. 
• Do not muddle citrus too much: It gets bitter. 
• If you cut a fruit and leave it, it won't oxidize that much. If you juice it first or shred it, it will oxidize faster. This is due to the sugars. 
• Even in Washington, DC, you can tend bees. 83% full is when you harvest your honey. 
• Situation Rum After-Hours: 1.5 oz Chairmans reserve spice rum, 1 oz lime juice, 1 oz honey ginger syrup, .5 oz coconut espuma, pinch lime zest (so tht coconut doesn't smell like feet). Shake/strain/foam.
• Honey can be damaged by overheating fructose, which is half of the sugars in normal honey, is especially delicate and burns easily. Honey contains protein from plants, so if heated it should be high heat for short period of time.  (Think of cooking meat, how it changes/shrinks.)
• Honey is a very pure form of energy, 64 calories per tablespoon.
• When you charge coconut milk (or anything with protein) with nitrogen, makes it expand and brings out its natural sweetness. 
• (Note: WOW!) Honey is actually an acid, with about the same pH of citrus. It is 3.42 pH. You have to dump a lot of honey in a drink to make it sweet. 
• Lighter honeys are milder in flavor than dark honeys. 
• Honey can be stored for 20 years! (But it's not good when it's old)
• Sugar is like an anti-freeze, so when making a sorbet/frozen things, you can't add too much sugar or it won't freeze.
• Stevia is a plant. You harvest it before it flowers. Can be used as a sugar substitute. Has a slower and longer finish than sugar. 
• Truvia brand is made from a part of the stevia plant. Popular in Japan.  
• Truvia is in Firefly Skinny Tea Vodka
• We tasted a raspberry mint lime drink with Truvia - tastes weird. The flavor of the fruit totally pops but you don't have the body, the texture/weight of sugar. I feel like this stuff could use a thickener/filler of some sort...

Tales of the Cocktail Seminar: How to Build a Cutting-Edge Ice Program

Here are notes from the first seminar I've attended at Tales of the Cocktail.

How to Build a Cutting Edge Ice Program

• Christy Pope - Cuff & Buttons, worked at Milk & Honey
• Chad Solomon - Same as above, but also Pegu Club
• Richie Boccato - Opened an ice company out of Dutch Kills
• Joseph Schwartz - opened little branch

Notes

• Glacial ice: because of the pressure from accumulating snow, the ice is compact and squeezes out all the air in it. - 
• Water and Bismuth are only atoms that expand when they freeze. 

Good Ice vs. Bad Ice

• Good ice: Big rock, holds its shape, slower melt rate, preserves drink at optimum balance (doesn't turn to slush in the glass), better aeration (because shaking longer because ice is bigger), bigger window of error between over- and under-shaking; both strong and petite bartenders can make the same quality drink. 
• Though Harry Craddock said never to shake twice with the same ice, or serve with the same ice you shook with, but maybe with big ice you can. 
• At Milk & Honey - started freezing, barbacks cutting them, putting ice into glasses and putting back into freezer. 
• Milk & Honey - started with hotel pans - for 40 seats had 3 chest freezers plus one for cut ice. 
• Little Branch has upright freezers (for the footprint), mak Collins spear - Tovolo ice cube tray, cutting out separators to get four spears from each. This saved time cutting up ice, wasted ice and effort. Takes 2 hours to prepare the ice for the shift each day, including all ice work and setting the bar. This serves 500-600 cocktails on a busy night. 
• Also they have different cut ice for shaking but now use the Tovolo "King Cube" trays. They use this ice for shaking and for a single old-fashioned. 
• To set up they pull molds out of freezers along with pans of ice (just switched to delivered slabs of ice instead of freezing them) - these slabs of ice are cut up and used for double old-fashioned glasses - plus fill them up after cutting for next day.
• Upright freezers, slab delivery, King Cube molds helped increase capacity and speed of ice program at Little Branch.
• Scotsman ice machine - pellet ice - better than crushed ice. 
• At Pegu Club - Kold Draft ice machine, double-stacked. Seating for 100 plus standing. At another bar, added chest freezer to a similar program for high-volume. 
• Water for an ice program. Water source and quality varies greatly between cities. Southern Cali - reverse osmosis with ion exchange filter for ice program. Everything else (for ice machines) used a water softener system. 
• Richie of Dutch Kills: Queens water is "disgusting." So bought block ice. Both cut in advance of shift start and during slow times in bartenders' shift. 
• To make clear ice: hot water and filtered help a little, but the solution is buying it made from a Clinebell machine. Okomoto Studio in NYC - provide the nice ice for Dutch Kills.  
• Clinebells - Need to put it in a good spot, but can get a block every 2.5 to 3 days. Freezes from bottom up from a cold plate. A pump rotates the water. The tank never fully freezes fully. You scrape off the top where the impurities are. 
• Weatherup - has one Clinebell machine in Tribecca that is the entire ice program. Make shaking, stirring, glass ice. 
• This one is cost-effective. If you have a half-way confident HVAC tech it's quite easy to maintain. Clinebell $6000 brand new, but you can buy refurbished and get an 8 year warranty. $2800 or so for refurbished. You can also get a hoist from Clinebell or buy one from an auto-parts store. Buy one there. 
• The hoisting process is th emost physically dangerous to humans. 
• Chainsaw is only $50 or so, other tools are common carpentry hammers and chisels. "You don't need fancy tools; you can buy it at the hardware store."
• Zane Harris now uses a vertical bans saw that has a teetering platform. 
• Hundred weight - another place Richie has that has 2 Clinebell machines. Climate-controlled room (cold). They make, cut, and store the ice all in an insulated room. 

• Ice handling - don't set a block down on a room-temperature table; the block will crack. "Ambient temperature is very important." 
• Don't shake with ice fresh out of the freezer - will crack and thus make the point of large ice moot. 
• Keep big ice on top of crushed ice in a metal pan at the bar.
• Aviary in Chicago uses blast freezers. $5000 - $15000 cost.
• It's pointless to have an ice program like this unless you have glass frosters for every piece of glassware! - Christie
• Breaking down a block: Consider the glassware for size, and use that to determine what kind of cuts to make. Start with your largest cubes, becuase if you break them you can use it for other purposes. 
• Don't let ice sit in Tovolo trays too long with ice in it or it picks up silicone flavors. 
• Keep your Kold Draft tuned, or you get bad ice. 
• It might be more cost-efficient to rent a Kold Draft machine that comes with maintenence rather than to buy it. 

• Richie says you can use an iron to smooth cubes. Google Okomoto Studios - look up video on Martha Stewart, shows ironing of ice.   

 

Live from New Orleans!

I'm here at the Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans for my sixth year in a row. 

I'll be blogging daily here on Alcademics and of course posting stuff to the Alcademics Facebook group. 

And, Back By Popular Demand! I'll be tweeting every drink I have at Tales of the Cocktail again this year. My Twitter handle is @alcademics.

Here is what I consumed last year. 

Wish me luck!

World Class Round-Up on DiffordsGuide.com

I was in New Delhi all last week working both on reporting on the Diageo Reserve World Class Global Finals here on my blog and helping Simon Difford and his (ass-kicking) crew write a special edition of the online magazine and produce the official book that will come out later. Still working on that, actually. 

Over at DiffordsGuide.com, take a look at the write-ups on:

• Short bios of all 32 World Class Competing Bartenders
• The "gurus" and their challenges: Gary Regan, Salvatore Calabrese, Peter Dorelli, Dale DeGroff, and Daniel Estramadoyro. Read here. 
• Quotes about the winner, Manabu Ohtake. 
• A few hundred drink recipes.
• The launch of the new Johnnie Walker Blue Label bottle.
• And a highlight video. 

Plus there are a few thousand photos to look through in the galleries. Or click on the photo gallery link on the top of DiffordsGuide.com.

(Winner Manabu Ohtake of Japan. Image by DiffordsGuide)

A Punch That Packs Absinthe

Over at Fine Cooking, I list a very simple recipe for an absinthe punch, courtesy of Pernod. 

It contains just absinthe, lime juice, water, and cucumbers, and it is delicious as all get-out. 

Check out the simple recipe over at FineCooking.com. 

Manabu Ohtake of Tower’s Bar Bellovisto in Japan wins Diageo World Class Bartender of the Year 2011

Last night was the announcement of the winners of the World Class competition in New Delhi, India. 

The winners of the challenges and regions are:

DIAGEO RESERVE WORLD CLASS BARTENDER OF THE YEAR 2011: MANABU OHTAKE, THE TOWER’S BAR BELLOVISTO, JAPAN

REGIONAL WINNERS 2011: 

ASIA PACIFIC DIAGEO RESERVE WORLD CLASS BARTENDER OF THE YEAR 2011: MANABU OHTAKE, THE TOWER’S BAR BELLOVISTO, JAPAN

LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN DIAGEO RESERVE WORLD CLASS BARTENDER OF THE YEAR 2011: JESUS CABRERA, MEXICO

EUROPEAN/MIDDLE EAST DIAGEO RESERVE WORLD CLASS BARTENDER OF THE YEAR 2011: HEINZ KAISER, DINO’S AMERICAN BAR, VIENNA, AUSTRIA

 

CHALLENGE WINNERS 2011:

SPICE MARKET: MICKEY LEE, WOO BAR, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA

ASIAN FOOD PAIRING: THORSTEN SPUHN, MODERN MASTERS BAR, ERFURT, GERMANY

COCKTAILS AGAINST THE CLOCK: HEINZ KAISER, DINO’S AMERICAN BAR, VIENNA, AUSTRIA

CLASSIC AND VINTAGE DRINKS WITH A TWIST: HEMANT PATHAK, BLUE BAR, DELHI, INDIA

COCKTAIL THEATRE AND THE STARS: ALBERTO PIZARRO, BOBBY GIN, BARCELONA, SPAIN

GENTLEMEN'S DRINKS AND FANCY TIPPLES: MARK HUANG, MARQUEE RESTAURANT AND LOUNGE, TAIPEI, TAIWAN

More observations in later posts! 

Down to the Wire at the World Class Global Finals

Sorry I've been too busy to blog the last couple of days - there is so much going on here in New Delhi that I've been barely keeping up. In about 6 hours, which will be around 9AM California time, the winner of this competition will be announced.

I've been incredibly impressed and sometimes astounded with the quality of the bartenders here, so I am sure the winner will do the contest, his or her country, and bartenders everywhere proud. 

I won't have a chance to blog about it for a day or so, but please tune in to Alcademics's Facebook or Twitter account to see who will take home the prize tonight! 

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World Class Live Twitter Feed and hashtag #worldclass