Alcademics.com

A Map of the Online Drink and Food World Featuring Alcademics

The spring issue of the magazine SAY: is the Food Issue.

In it they have a map of online food and drink influencers. Alcademics was included, which is awesome. 

Here's the map:

 

 

Alcademics is down on the bottom left. 

A blog post about the map is here, and you can read the magazine online here. Thanks SAY: media!

 

Better Tools for the Dry Shake

The "dry shake" is a technique that bartenders use to emulsify the egg in egg white drinks to give them a nice foamy head.

Before adding the ice, they put the egg white and other liquid ingredients in a cocktail shaker and give it a good shake. Then they add ice and shake again.

Many bartenders also put a spring into the shaker with the liquids to help the dry shake along. This spring is taken off a Hawthorn strainer and used. This is a pain in the butt though.  

Audrey Saunders (owner of New York's Pegu Club), speaking at a seminar at Tales of the Cocktail, mentioned in passing a different tool to use instead of the Hawthorn strainer spring: a cat toy. 

 

 

I haven't tried it myself, but it seems there are a lot of good options out there. Some are rubber balls (would a gumball machine SuperBall work?), some are whisk-like... 

And some are even shaped like springs.

 

 

Have you used these? Anything else? 

Hemingway Goes to Mexico

For last week's FineCooking.com blog post, I wrote about a drink from Jessica Maria of the Hotsy Totsy Club in Albany, California. 

 

 

The drink is the Ernesto, which is a Hemingway Daiquiri made with tequila. For as much as there are Hemingway Daiquiri spin-offs and as much as tequila loves grapefruit, I don't think I'd seen this version of the drink before. 

So anyway, here it is. The recipe is over at FineCooking.com.

Vanilla, Orange, Mint

At Tales of the Cocktail in Vancouver last week I went looking for a simple drink I could post on FineCooking.com. I found one at the Fairmont Pacific Rim. 

The drink is made with vanilla vodka, Aperol, lemon juice, and mint. Get the recipe here.

 

Twelve Bars in Vancouver

I wrote up twelve bars in Vancouver during my visit last week. 

They're all on DiffordsGuide.com. Go get some!

Big Changes at Class Magazine/DiffordsGuide.com

I love to read and am happy to contribute to CLASS Magazine and DiffordsGuide.com. They just announced a big lump of changes that will make it even more unique.

The print magazine will now be given out for free at many bars. Paid subscribers are going to get a single-spirit coffee table book (!!) quarterly along with the magazine.  And there will be a new industry-only section of the website. 

Full details are below. 

 

A Simple Spin on the Sour

In a post on FineCooking.com, I did a write-up of the Pisco Sour, and also a spin on the drink using rose water by Duane Fernandez, Jr. 

 

 

The post is here.

Making Hendrick's Gin

At Tales of the Cocktail Vancouver, I stopped in to the Hendrick's Gin tasting room. I've been to about 70 million Hendrick's events, but in this one I first learned how the gin is made. 

It turns out that Hendrick's is the product of two different stills. Botanicals are infused into the spirit during distillation in different ways depending on the still.

 

 

The botanicals go into the column in the still on the left, whereas they are infused into the spirit directly in the pot in the still on the right.

The two distillates are mixed and rose and cucumber essences are added. This makes a gin concentrate. Like many other brands of gin, this concentrate is then diluted both with water and neutral spirit to bring it to the proper bottling strength.

We were able to try each of the distillates, smell the essences, and taste the concentrate.

 

 

And then it was time for drinks.   

 

 

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