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...