Alcademics.com

Book Review: Bartending Basics by John C. Burton

John C. Burton runs the Santa Rosa Bartending School and is an avid collector of local and Californian bar tools and vintage cocktail books. 

His latest book, Bartending Basics: Everything You Need to Know to be a Working Bartender is a manual for new bartenders. The book contains 100 pages of recipes and about 150 pages of instruction and definitions.

It is most defnitely not a book for home mixologists, but for people with a first bar job. It has lots of infomation on bar set-up and practical matters such as changing out kegs, washing glasses in different kind of bar sinks, using an automated glass washer, and cutting twists and wedges. There are chapters on responsible service and liability, job responsibilities/cleaning/inventory duties for day/night bartenders and cocktail servers, and computing pour cost. Further chapters are focussed on product knowledge of all categories of drinks - beer, wine, and spirits. It could also be a reference or refresher book on product knowledge and a recipe reference for standard bars. 

It's a good book for a very specific audience. 

The Sugar Spirit Project: Enter the Sugar Beet

In studying sugar and sugarcane (go here for the project index) we need to study the sugar beet; sugarcane's competitor. 

Here we'll look at the sugar beet's early history. 

Sugar beets were not economically important as a source of sucrose until the mid-1800s. 

In 1774 a German scientist discovered the sugar from beets was the same as from cane. 

Napoleon, due to the economic and real war with England, bet big on sugar beets. In 1811 he supported vast increase in sugar beet production. Within 2 years they built 334 factories and produced 35,000 tons of sugar.

To process sugar beets, they are sliced, dried, drenched with alcohol (I know the feeling some nights),  heated to boiling, and filtered. Then crystals formed after several weeks. But this technology was later refined.  

By the end of 1800s sugar beets were planted in North America. Sugar beets best regions to grow in the US are part of California extending east to Michigan, and in Canada from British Columbia to Ontario. 

The Mormons tried to grow sugar beets as part of their independence movement, but they failed to produce any crystallized sugar with it.  There were many other successes and failures trying to grow sugar beet in US.

By 1902 41 factories produced over 2 million tons of sugar from beets. by 1915, there 79 factories in operation, partly due to high war prices. 

The first American farm workers’ union strike was over sugar beets in 1903 at the American Beet Company in Oxnard, California. It employed 1000 Mexicans and Japanese, who went on strike basically against the white workers who formed organizations to keep the wages of the others low. 

During the Great Depression, sugar beet harvesting provided lots of jobs. 

After Pearl Harbor, thousands of Japanese and Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps: actually sugar beet farms in Oregon, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Alberta, and Manitoba, to work the fields. 

 

Later we'll look at sugar beet production in recent times. 

 

The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

GMO-Free Liquor? Not As Far As You Know

So the TTB released the little bombshell below. Basically, you can't put "GMO-free" or something similar on an alcoholic beverage label, even if the product is.

For the most part if you're drinking anything made from corn in the US (all bourbon, some vodkas) you're drinking genetically modified corn. Spirits from other crops too. In many (most? all?) export markets, however, you can't use this. Thus many (all?) bourbons make a GMO-free version for export.

Because most of Four Roses bourbon is sold in Japan, however, their product is GMO-free, even in the US. However, distiller Jim Rutledge said he didn't think there would be enough GMO-free corn left in a few years so things might change. 

Now, does anything from the GMO crop pass through distillation? I don't know; I'd guess probably not. But people may want to support non-GMO farming. It's the same with organic booze - you probably can't taste the difference, but you're putting your support behind organic farming. 

News From TTB
Sep 1st
WHAT IS TTB'S POSITION REGARDING THE LABELING STATEMENTS ABOUT ALCOHOL BEVERAGE PRODUCTS THAT ARE NOT BIOENGINEERED OR THAT DO NOT CONTAIN INGREDIENTS PRODUCED FROM BIOENGINEERED FOOD? (FOR EXAMPLE, "CONTAINS NO GMOs," "GMO FREE-ZONE," OR A SIMILAR REFERENCES ON ALCOHOL BEVERAGES.)

TTB has received several Certificates of Label Approval (COLA) applications proposing to display bioengineered-related information on alcohol beverage labels. Terms frequently mentioned in discussions about labeling alcohol beverages with respect to bioengineering include "GMO free" and "GM free." "GMO" is an acronym for "genetically modified organism" and "GM" means "genetically modified." The terms "genetically modified organism" and "genetically modified" are not synonymous with the term "bioengineered foods." Plants can be genetically modified using any number of techniques, new or traditional.

TTB believes it is not necessary to mandate any bioengineered food labeling requirements at this time. We also find that it is misleading to refer voluntarily to those bioengineered food labeling terms or any similar references on alcohol beverage labels. This is consistent with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's position. (See Draft Guidance: Voluntary Labeling Indicating Whether Foods Have or Have Not Been Developed Using Bioengineering-January 2001 at FDA.gov.)

TTB will continue to monitor the domestic and international impact of the use of bioengineered foods on the labeling of alcohol beverages, as well as any international trade barriers that occur because of the mixed reactions surrounding the use and potential use of bioengineered foods.

Interestingly, they say their guidelines are in agreement with FDA labelling rules for food, but I seem to recall seeing non-GMO written on food labels. Am I wrong? According to this story, there is a "Non GMO-Project Verified" label available. 

They also say that it could be misleading to refer to these terms on the label, and I could certainly see that. For example, if your rye whiskey was labelled as "from GMO-free rye" yet the corn in the mashbill were GMO-rich Monsanto corn, that would certainly be misleading.  

On the other hand, if you buy certified organic foods, they should not contain GMO ingredients. Here's a good story on the labelling issues with GMO foods and the potential or negligible health risks. Of course the health risk to the planet is another issue that could be taken into consideration. 

Great Seminars at SF Cocktail Week

The full schedule of seminars for San Francisco Cocktail Week were just announced, and there are some really great-sounding ones. I didn't know we had so many people coming in from out of town for this. 

The full seminar descriptions are here.

I just want to highlight the out-of-town guests who will be coming in to give talks. 

Don Lee, one of the biggest drink nerds in America, will be talking on The Nerdy Aspects of Gin Cocktails.

 Kirsten Amann, a founding member of LUPEC from Boston, will be part of a talk with scientists called The Science of Taste.

Philip Duff, a great speaker and former Irish citizen, will be talking about How San Francisco Saved The Irish Whiskey Category: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of The World’s First (And Finest!) Whiskey. 

John C. Burton, a guy from Santa Rosa with a huge collection of Bay Area bartending books and memorabilia, will be giving two talks on Sunday. The latter one sounds awesome: Bartending by the Bay: an Historical Tale through San Francisco’s Saloon and Cocktail History.

Have fun learning!

 

Solid Liquids: Campari Syrup

In the last post in the Solid Liquids project, I used dehydrated Campari to make a non-alcoholic Campari & Soda. 

Then it occurred to me that for that purpose there was no need to dehydrate the liqueur completely. I could just burn off the alcohol and have a non-alcoholic syrup. 

So that's what I did. I filled a pot with Campari and took its temperature with a candy thermometer when heating it. Alcohol boils at 172F as opposed to 212F for water, so I tried to keep the temperature between the two. 

It started to bubble around 175 and I could smell alcohol vapor. It began boiling around 183F. When it got to 189F it began to look thicker, as plenty had boiled off.

After an hour total I cooled the liquid to check the volume and found it to be reduced by 50 percent. And since the alcohol content of Campari is 24 percent  alcohol hopefully all the booze and some of the water burned off as well. 

After cooling and storing it, I made another non-alcoholic Campari & Soda. I added about an ounce of Campari syrup to about 3 ounces of soda water. 

It's good, probably better than the powdered liqueur version. But campared with regular Campari & soda, real Campari still tastes better. Again the real deal has more of an orangey flavor, so the non-alcoholic version can use an expressed orange peel added to it. 

I'm guessing that the volatile citrus orange (oil?) in Campari burns off in the cooking and that's why it's not present in the syrup/solid version. 

So: What else should I use this Campari syrup for? 

Update: I just remembered that I saw Campari syrup on the menu at Nightjar in London. I'm not sure if their syrup is the same thing or something else, but it's in two drinks from the summer menu (forgive the funky formatting, it's their font):

bRick lane cocktail
g’vine floRaison gin
campaRi syRup
dolin dRy veRmouth
fResh squeeZed mandaRin
chambeRyZette jelly

baRnaRd’s bRew
nut-infused chaiRman’s ReseRve Rum
nightjaR faleRnum
caRibbean bitteRs
campaRi syRup
fResh squeeZed lime

The Solid Liquids Project is sponsored by Skyy Spirits. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

 

Sugar in Early American History

In studying sugarcane and sugar, we've looked at its biology, origins, spread to the West, association with forced labor, how it was processed in the olden days, and how the English developed a taste for it. (Go here for the project index.)

Now we'll look at sugar in America. Again I have used these resources for my facts and understanding of history, as I'm certainly no expert and I welcome your comments.

Jamestown, Virginia was founded in 1607. Sugarcane was brought there by 1619, but the colonists couldn't make it grow. 

As it was a new country, the United States started their sugar production late in the game versus the forces of England, France, and Portugal. However they had their own sugar islands in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Hawaii, and The Philippines. 

Around the time of the US Civil War, we got half our sugar from Cuba and half from Louisianna. After the American Civil War (that ended slavery), Cuban slave owners wanted to end slavery but wanted to be compensated from Spain for each slave freed. Spain refused, and this lead to the Ten Years War. This didn’t end up freeing Cuba (that was 1898) from Spain but it did end slavery in Cuba in 1886. 

After this, the US imported 82 percent of all Cuban sugar, so sugar interests in Cuba became controlled by American interests. Eventually 2/3 of Cuban sugar was controlled by American interests. 

In the US, it was sugar producers fleeing the Haitian revolution who made Louisiana’s sugar plantations profitable.  

In Hawaii as land leases were granted to grow sugarcane,  native Hawaiians were displaced.  Irrigation for sugarcane cultivation diverted streams from their land, so many younger Hawaiians immigrated to California. 

The US marines, acting for the sugar interests, deposed Queen Lili’uokalani. Hawaii was annexed to the US mostly so that the sugar planters could have free access to the US market. 

At the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, Miss Louisiana was carved from a five-foot sugar lump. Jell-O created new fans. Fairy Floss, aka cotton candy, was also introduced.

In the 1800s in the US, grocery stores had portable mills to grind lumps of muscovado sugar into granules.

In 1858 the Mason Jar was invented and canning took off. Canning required white sugar, increasing the demand for it.

The ice cream craze also increased demand for sugar through mid-1800s.

Milton Hershey, the chocolate guy, built a factory town named for himself. Then in 1916 he duplicated it in Cuba and bought more than 100,000 acres of sugarcane and built the world’s largest refinery. 

Now sugar is challenged by high-fructose corn syrup, which is cheaper to produce and transport. In the US (as of the writing of my source book) it takes only 1.4 minutes of work to buy a pound of sugar. 

 

The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

Solid Liquids: Cane Sugar, Fruit Sugar, and Honey

I hit a snag in the Solid Liquids Project (project index here) as I can get some liqueurs to dehydrate into a powdered sugar, but not others.

In the last two posts, I think I've identified a commonality in the liqueurs that did not crystallize: they are probably sweetened with something other than (or possibly in addition to) cane/beet sugar.

I believe (but am not certain) that X Rated Fusion, Hypnotiq, and Courvoisier Rose are sweetened with fruit juice. Wild Turkey American Honey and Irish Mist are sweetened at least partially with honey. None of these crystallize when heated in the various methods used to make other liqueur powders.

So I decided that I had better learn about these various sweeteners.

Cane Sugar, Fruit Sugar, and Honey vs. Sucrose, Fructose, Glucose

I looked up these different types of sweeteners to see if they could provide insight into why it appears that cane sugar-sweetened liqueurs crystallize while fruit and honey-sweetened liqueurs have not.

Table sugar, which comes from either cane or from sugar beets, is sucrose. Fruit sugar is fructose. Honey gets its sweetness from the fructose and glucose. My first thought was that perhaps sucrose crystallizes readily and fructose does not.

However, sucrose (cane sugar) is also made up of glucose and fructose. And when you heat sucrose, it partially breaks down into glucose and fructose. A syrup of just glucose and fructose is called invert syrup.

Does that mean that there isn't much difference between cane sugar in its hot syrup form and honey or fruit-sugar sugar in its hot syrup form? Or perhaps it is the remaining sucrose in cane sugar syrup that allows for crystallization, while the other syrups have no sucrose so they don't crystallize?

Fructose, or fruit sugar, according to WikiPedia: "Pure, dry fructose is a very sweet, white, odorless, crystalline solid and is the most water-soluble of all the sugars. From plant sources, fructose is found in honey, tree and vine fruits, flowers, berries and most root vegetables... Commercially, fructose is usually derived from sugar cane, sugar beets and corn." Thus, there is definitely a way to get fructose to crystallize- can it be done with conventional oven methods? I need to research this further. 

Glucose is sometimes called grape sugar. If what I understand is true, you don't find it just laying around. Wikipedia says, "Glucose is produced commercially via the enzymatic hydrolysis of starch. Many crops can be used as the source of starch. Maize, rice, wheat, cassava, corn husk and sago are all used in various parts of the world. In the United States, cornstarch (from maize) is used almost exclusively. Most commercial glucose occurs as a component of invert sugar, an approximately 1:1 mixture of glucose and fructose." I'm not sure that helps at all. 

Crystallizing Honey

Returning to honey, we know it can crystallize as we see it around the neck of the jar. To find out how, I again turn to Wikipedia.

Fresh honey is a supersaturated liquid, containing more sugar than the water can typically dissolve at ambient temperatures. At room temperature, honey is a supercooled liquid, in which the glucose will precipitate into solid granules. This forms a semisolid solution of precipitated sugars in a solution of sugars and other ingredients. Since honey normally exists below its melting point, it is a supercooled liquid. At very low temperatures, honey will not freeze solid. Instead, as the temperatures become colder, the viscosity of honey increases. Like most viscous liquids, the honey will become thick and sluggish with decreasing temperature. While appearing or even feeling solid, it will continue to flow at very slow rates.

When sugar syrup is supersaturated, the crystals soon fall out of sollution. Why should honey act differently?

The melting point of crystallized honey is between 40 and 50 °C (104 and 122 °F), depending on its composition. Below this temperature, honey can be either in a metastable state, meaning that it will not crystallize until a seed crystal is added, or, more often, it is in a "labile" state, being saturated with enough sugars to crystallize spontaneously. The rate of crystallization is affected by the ratio of the main sugars, fructose to glucose, as well as the dextrin content. Temperature also affects the rate of crystallization, which is fastest between 13 and 17 °C (55 and 63 °F). Below 5 °C, the honey will not crystallize.

From this I am guessing that in order to make honey crystallize I can either add some seed crystals to it (table sugar), or try to affect the fructose/glucose balance. Possible ways to do this could be:

• Add table sugar (sucrose), which when heated will break down into sucrose and glucose, or
• Add more glucose, or
• Add more fructose

Since I didn't have any glucose or fructose sitting around, I decided to try adding some table sugar. I did this previously using Wild Turkey American Honey and the oven dehydration technique. It did not work. 

This time I decided to try the stovetop crystallization technique, adding extra table sugar to Wild Turkey American Honey. I added some as it was boiling, and then as it hit the candy stage at which a liqueur would normally crystalize, I added more.

I kept adding more and more in the hopes that it would crystallize in some way. Eventually I had probably added more sugar than there was liqueur in the first place but it never precipitated out of solution. 

When it hardened it was hard but still sticky; kind of like peanut brittle. This type of dehydrated liqueur won't make a dry sugar when crushed, unfortunately. 

So I need to think of some new ideas. Any suggestions? 

 

The Solid Liquids Project is sponsored by Skyy Spirits. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link.

The English Sweet Tooth and Ties to Coffee, Chocolate, and Tea

In studying sugarcane and sugar, we've looked at its biology, origins, spread to the West, its previous association with forced labor, and how it was processed in the olden days. (Go here for the project index.)

Now we'll look at how people in England developed a taste for sugar. Much of this information comes from the book Sweetness and Power (resources list here) by Sidney Mintz.

Naturally the British taste for sugar not only drove the taste of the citizens of its colonies for sugar, but also determined how its sugar-growing colonies were used. 

In 1000 AD, few Europeans knew about cane sugar. By 1650 only wealthy British enjoyed it . By 1800 it was costly necessity. And by 1900 it was supplying nearly one-fifth the calories in the English diet. 

Mintz writes that after 1850 price of sugar dropped sharply making it available to everyone. “A rarity in 1650, a luxury in 1750, sugar had been transformed into a virtual necessity by 1850.” In the 1800s there was a fivefold increase in sugar consumption by the British people.

There have been no reports historically on any group with a nonsugar tradition rejecting the introduction of sugar, sweetened condensed milk, sweetened beverages, etc.  

Nearly all mammals like sweetness. Breast milk is sweet and this could have something to do with it.

Sugar in England is closely tied in with three other food introductions: tea, coffee, and chocolate.

• All of them are bitter and are transformed by sugar.
• However none of them were consumed with sugar in their primary cultural settings. 
• The Chinese didn't put sugar in their tea, but Indians did. This probably explains why the sugar-with-tea tradition was introduced to British sailors.
• The first coffeehouse opened in London in 1652. Chocolate was served in coffeehouses also. Typically at this time chocolate was served as a beverage, not a solid.
• Alcohol purifies water and beer tended to be safer than water to drink. But boiling water for tea also purified the water. Temperance drinkers naturally preferred tea and perhaps helped it and sugar become more popular. 
• Mint writes: "Sugar as a sweetener came to the fore in connection with three other exotic imports- tea, coffee, and chocolate – of which one, tea, became and has since remained the most important nonalcoholic beverage in the United Kingdom. All are tropical products, all were new to England in the third quarter of the seventeenth century, all contain stimulants and can be properly classified as drugs (together with tobacco and rum, though clearly different both in effects and addictiveness). All began as competitors for British preference, so that the presence of each probably affected to some extent the fate of the others."

Though the English took to sugar and spread that love for it around the world, at the same time the French (a competing superpower) consumption never neared English levels. One theory is that the French already drank tons of wine and never bothered to switch to tea, which could have called for sugar with which to sweeten it.

 

The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link.