Alcademics.com

Camper's Cocktails in Every Day with Rachael Ray

I have a two-page spread in the November 2011 issue of Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine. 

It has a few trends - stuff like fresh ginger and sherry/port in place of vermouth along with some ice cube tricks (recognize that rainbow ice?).

Also it has four recipes I developed- a spirit-interchangeble mint buck, a Grapefruit Vesper, a Sparkling Cinnamon Punch, and a port/espresso dessert drink. Nothing ground-breaking but they're all pretty tasty. 

Run screaming to your local newsstand and pick it up!

A Visit to the Cointreau Distillery in Angers, France

This October I visited the Cointreau distillery in Angers, France. Angers is located southwest of Paris, about equidistant from Paris and Bordeaux. 

I hadn't realized, but Cointreau was not originally famous for orange liqueur, but for Guignolet, a cherry liqueur. Cherries were brought the region by King Rene', who lived at the Chateau D'Angers.

We visited this castle and its tapestry called The Apocalypse; the world's longest. 

(This way to the Apocalypse!)

The original Cointreau distillery was located in downtown Angers, but has since relocated. We drove to the distillery. 

There, Alfred Cointreau explained the process.

The Distillation of Cointreau

Bitter and sweet orange peels are purchased from Brazil, Africa, and Spain. The dried peels at a certain ratio, along with some fresh peels, 96 percent neutral sugar beet alcohol, and water, are placed into the stills. The peels sit on a plate in the stills to make them easier to remove after distillation. They macerate this mixture overnight before distilling.

The stills for the first distillation are shaped like water tanks, made of copper.

After the first distillation, the alcohol passes up and over the tall, curved lyne arm to the second still. 

The second still is a column. 

(The straight pipes going back to the first stills are a type of reflux.)

In this one room they make the world's supply of Cointreau- 15 million bottles annually. 

Due to local restrictions, the Cointreau for Brazil and Argentina is distilled here as usual to make a concentrated Cointreau, but then diluted and sweetened with sugar cane alcohol and sugar cane sugar, while the rest of the world gets beet alcohol/sugar. It would be fun to compare the two to see if one could detect any differences. 

Production Parameters

We were then given a talk by Cointreau's Master Distiller Bernadette Langlais. Some information learned:

• The sweet oranges lend the orangey taste; the bitter peels bring a fresh, zesty lemon/lime notes
• Bitter oranges are harvested when still green
• The peels are either dried in the sun or in ovens 
• There are 220 different essential oils in orange peels
• The bitter molecules from orange pith don't carry over during distillation. Thus they don't worry about the thickness of the peels. However, when something is just macerated (for example, limoncello) and not distilled then it is important to not get pith on the peels.
• When they add water to reduce Cointreau to proof, the essential oils in the peels cause the liqueur to louche; to get cloudy like when you add water to absinthe. They centrifuge the Cointreau to make it clear again. [*Update* This isn't quite true - see this post for clarification on the centrifuge process.]
• Of competing brands, they say that Cointreau has the highest amount of essential oils and the lowest amount of added sugar.
• The used orange peels go for cattle feed after distillation.
• Because of the volatility of the essential oils in Cointreau, bartenders should not leave a pour spout on the bottle overnight- some of the flavor will evaporate.

 History

As mentioned previously, Cointreau originally produced cherry and many other liqueurs. (Today they still produce other products at the distillery but not under their name.) 

As mentioned in this post, the Dutch were the first to make Curacao using bitter oranges from that island. When the French became famous for their liqueurs, curacao evolved into triple sec. 

Cointreau initially produced a product called curacao, and then a 'curacao triple sec' and then a 'triple sec."

Eventually many brands of triple sec came on the market. Cointreau's label used to have a big "Triple Sec" and a small "Cointreau" but later reversed their relative size. Today Cointreau doesn't even use 'triple sec' in its descriptor. 

As we know, the 'sec' refers to the dry, or less sweetened style of liqueur. Their opinion about the word 'triple' (the two arguments being either triple distillation/triple refined, or three times as orangey) is three times as concentrated orange flavor. The company had also produced a 'triple creme de menthe' and other 'triple' products, which I think backs up this argument. 

Charles Joly Wins the Auchentoshan Switch US Competition

Last night I helped judge the Auchentoshan Switch competition in Las Vegas. Nineteen bartenders competed for a chance to work with Tony Conigliaro at 69 Colebrooke Row in London for two weeks. 

They'd submitted videos on YouTube and the top 19 finalists were chosen.

(Headshots of most of the bartenders. Note Charles Joly's hand-drawn entry.)

In Vegas, in the first round they had to prepare a signature drink with Auchentoshan Three Wood.

From those, we had to choose five bartenders to go to the next round. This was really tough to do - the drinks were nearly all amazing. The judges were able to pick our first four without too much arguing, but the choice of the last person was excruciating and each of us wanted a different bartender for different reasons. After a fairly angsty debate, we picked Charles Joly, Steve Schneider, Clinton Terry, Michael Flannery, and Abigail Gullo to go on.  

The next round was Iron Chef-style. From a mystery basket they had to use two ingredients in a cocktail. This round was also tough to judge! Four out of the five drinks were extraordinary and all showed a huge amount of skill. But choose we did: Charles Joly and Clinton Terry went on to the final round. 

The final round was two bartenders giving a master class about Auchentoshan. They took different approaches: Clinton Terry focussed on tasting notes and Charles Joly focussed on production.

From this we picked the winner: Charles Joly! 

(Portrait of the artist as a contest winner.)

Man, that guy wins a lot of contests. Probably because he is *that good*. Congratulations to Charles Joly for winning and congratulations everybody else for making this the most difficult cocktail competition I've ever had to judge. 

 More pictures are here. 

Book Review: Bitters by Brad Thomas Parsons

This is a review of the new book Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas by Brad Thomas Parsons. 

It contains pretty much just what you want out of a bitters book - the history of bitters, recipes for bitters, and recipes for cocktails that use bitters. 

It first delves into the history of bitters as cure-all medicines before the were regulated by the Pure Food & Drug act of 1906. It's not a huge discussion and I'm fairly up on my history of bitters so I can't say I learned much that I didn't already know here.

The book then describes the history of some classic bitters brands including Abbott's, Angostura, and Peychaud's, before moving into the modern era. It has an excellent list of about 20 new bitters brands launched since Regans' Orange Bitters in 2005.  I've found myself referreing to this section more than once already. The book describes each brand, who makes it, and what flavors are available.

The next section is on making your own bitters. It has a list of bittering agents - the first time I've seen that list in one place - along with information on where to buy ingredients and tips on drying your own citrus peels for later infusions. There are recipes for about 15 types of bitters ranging from Apple to Root Beer.

There are then recipes for more than 80 cocktails split between vintage ones and modern creations by well-known bartenders. There are a few food recipes too. 

The book finishes with a resource guide of books to read and the websites of bitters makers, retailers, and "spirited sites" including Alcademics. Hey, thanks for the shout-out! 

 

 

Sugar in Italy

As part of the Sugar Spirit project, I am starting to be more aware of types of sugar in other countries. When traveling to Italy recently, I picked up a couple of packets of sugar. 

The "classico" sugar, according to my trip host, would be Italian-produced crystallized beet sugar.

The (slightly racist?) "tropical" sugar is labelled as "zucchero bruno di canna" or "brown sugar of cane," so it's like Sugar in the Raw but the grains are smaller. 

Not a huge revelation but one data point that will hopefully be part of a large collection of others going forward. 

 

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: The Deconstructed Midori Sour

Just for fun in the Solid Liquids Project I put some dehydrated Midori to good use. 

I made a Deconstructed Midori Sour. 

You dip the lemon in dehydrated Midori, bite into the Midori-coated lemon, and then do the shot of vodka. 

With people who do the lime-salt-tequila shot, they use the lime to and salt to hide the taste of bad tequila. In this case, the lemons were so tart that the sugar in the Midori wasn't enough to balance it out, so you need to vodka to chase the lemon rather than the other way around.

Anyway, this is all in good fun. 

 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.

Fall Cocktails: Jasper's Corner Tap and the Starlight Room in San Francisco

Some new fall/winter cocktails at two San Francisco bars.

The Starlight Room

Winter Flip and Prize Pumpkin available on the menu starting Oct 30th, and the Meyer Meringue and Double O Denton available on the cocktail menu in mid December.

Pitch Black Amsterdam

Germain Robin Brandy, Bols Genever, Root, Allspice Dram, Angostura Bruleed Vanilla Foam

The warm foam will prime the palate for a full bodied cocktail with a spicy finish subdued by the remaining foam on your upper lip (and, quite possible, the tip of your nose).

Meyer Meringue

Leopold Gin, Meyer Lemon Cordial, Vanilla Tincture, Warm Cardamom Foam

The Warm Cardamom Foam is more for the aromatic quality of the cardamom to cut the natural sweetness of the meyer lemon .  Meyer Lemon and Cardamom are a classic contrasting duo.  Lets face it,  it like drinking a well made Meyer Lemon Meringue Pie.

Double O' Denton

Bulliet Bourbon, Blood Orange, Olororso Sherry, Cream, Laphroaig 10 yr

As the name indicates the inspiration for this cocktail was Harry Denton.  If you have yet to have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Denton this cocktail is what you can expect from you first encounter;   warm and cordial but he will always leave you with an unexpected and lingering kick. 

Prize Pumpkin

Makers Mark Bourbon, House Made Pumpkin Liqueur, Lemon, Honey, Egg White, Pumpkin Ale.

A fall take on a classic Fizz.  The Pumpkin Liqueur is laced with mulling spice and vanilla and blends will with the bourbon and light effervescence from the Pumpkin Ale

Winter Flip

Cinnamon Infused Pisco, Calvados, Unfiltered Apple Juice, Lemon, Whole Egg

A full bodied version of pisco from Quebranta Grapes and Calvados mixed with just enough citrus to create a light on the palate Peruvian Egg Nog.

 

Jasper’s Corner Tap & Kitchen

Cocktails available on the menu starting Nov 1st

*additional beer cocktails and updated beer list coming!
 
The Great Pumpkin Fizz
Aged Rum, Velvet Falernum, Maple Pumpkin butter, egg white, cream, old fashioned bitters and fresh nutmeg

Black Cross
Black Tea infused Smith & Cross Rum, Dubonnet Rouge, Brillet, angostura bitters

Smoking Gun
Bulleit Bourbon, Bacardi 8, Campari, House sweet vermouth, orange bitters, angostura bitters and tobacco tincture

Three SF Bars Reviewed on DiffordsGuide

I wrote a new bar report for CLASS Magazine online. 

It includes short reviews of Jasper's Corner Tap, Harry Denton's Starlight Room, and Wo Hing General Store. 

The story is here.