Alcademics.com

Book Review: Barrels & Drams

I recently read Barrels and Drams: The History of Whisk(e)y in Jiggers and Shots. It's an anthology edited by William M. Dowd. 

The book contains essays by people like Bill Owens, James Rodewald, F. Paul Pacult, Charles Cowdery, Daniel Okrent, and David Wondrich. Most of them have been previously published in distiller biographies, category books, history books, Whisky Magazine, and Scottish Field Magazine, but a few are brand new. 

The book has sections, each with several essays. The sections are on spirits and distilling, famous distillers, American whisky history, Prohibition, global whisky, a few how-tos, and a miscellaneous section. 

I particularly enjoyed the essays in the Global Whisky section, learning about whisky in India, Japan, and South Africa. I got a few ideas from the Home Vatting essay, and picked up new facts here and there throughout that will inspire further research. 

The book isn't a narrative, nor a text book, and it isn't exhaustive in any one section, but is just a group of essays themed around whisky. People like me who are into whisky tend to like to read about whisky (vodka drinkers, not so much) and will probably also enjoy the book. 

Book Review: The PDT Cocktail Book

By now, you've probably heard of The PDT Cocktail Book: The Complete Bartender's Guide from the Celebrated Speakeasy by Jim Meehan. 

With the many wonderful illustrations by Chris Gall, the book is basically a modern Savoy Cocktail Book. Its 300+ recipes include both the classic canon of cocktails and recent inventions, with a particular focus on the drinks served at PDT and in New York by other notable bartenders. And unlike the Savoy Cocktail Book, all of the recipes' creators are noted. 

One unusual aspect to the book is that every recipe includes specific brands to use in it. That's both a pro and a con: By knowing the specific brands you'll know exactly how to make the drink as it is made at PDT, one of the most-respected bars in the world, but this also makes the prospect of making a large portion of the recipes very daunting lest you screw them up with the wrong ingredients.  

Many of the ingredients are are unusual and hard- or impossible- to find. Not just the base spirits (which can be more easily substituted with others if you know enough about the brand called for), but particularly modifiers, such as Clear Creek Kirschwasser, Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyos "Red Label", and Amaro Ciociaro.  As this New York Times story implies, making many of the drinks in the book as directed is a very expensive proposition. 

Regardless of your feelings on that, the PDT Cocktail Book is a new essential cocktail book to own and I'm sure it will be cited in the future as much as many of the books we consider classics today. 

And if you'd like to see a simple recipe, I put one up on FineCooking.com in my weekly blog over there. The drink is the Le Pere Bis, by Jim Meehan. It contains Ardbeg, St. Germain, honey, and chamomile tea. Yum. 

The recipe is here.

 

Book Review: The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook

I recently received a review copy of The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook by Judy Gelman and Peter Zheutlin. 

The book has about 20 cocktail recipes and 50 food recipes. 

Cocktail recipes include the standard Manhattan, Martini, Bloody Mary, Whisky Sour, etc. but also some drinks more stuck in the 1960s like the Stinger, Brandy Alexander, Tom Collins, and Blue Hawaii.

What is interesting about both the drink and the food recipes is that the authors didn't just hear a reference in the show to a Blue Hawaii and then print a standard recipe for it: in every case possible they found the actual recipe as made in the 1960s at the same restaurants or bars in which the the dish was ordered in Mad Men. 

Thus the Sidecar comes fromP.J. Clarke's, the Algonquin Cocktail comes from the Algonquin Hotel,  and the Stork Club Cocktail comes from the Stock Club Bar Book. I didn't see any recipes that blew my mind in their Sixteies-esque uniqueness and cocktail nerds like you have access to these recipes in several books. 

I think people who cook would get more use out of the food recipes, which are more products of their era (Chicken Kiev, Turkey Tetrazzini). And for anyone throwing a Mad Men theme party, this is the book will give you the whole menu. 

Get the book from Amazon here.

Book Review: Drinking Japan

I received a copy of Drinking Japan: A Guide to Japan's Best Drinks and Drinking Establishments by Chris Bunting a few months before I visited the country. The book is useful even if you have no intentions to do so. 

The majority of the book is reviews of 122 bars in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and other cities. Most reviews are given a full page with pictures. It is divied into sections and bar reviews by the type of drink: sake, shochu, awamori, beer, whisky, and wine. There are also sections in bar etiquette, styles of bars, liquors stores, etc.

There is a lot of great information about the alcohol categories and how each of the types mentioned is produced. There are 16 pages of descriptions of sake's history and production before he gets to the bars in which to drink it, for example. 

I learned a ton about shochu and awamori in particular, but I picked up new information in every alcohol section. For this reason the book is a good reference even if you don't have a Japan visit in the plans. 

As I did end up visiting the country, I came with a wish list of bars and beverages I wanted to try. 

A weak point of the book seems to be in cocktail bars, which is a major area of interest for me. He mentions several in a single page devoted to cocktails in Tokyo and gives a full review of Tender (Uyeda-san's bar), but there are no reviews of Star Bar, Bar High Five, or Ishinohana for example.  

Luckily I'll be writing about some of those here on Alcademics in the next few days. 

You can find out more about the book on DrinkingJapan.com and learn about Japanese whisky from Bunting's other site Nonjatta. The book is available on Amazon.com and on other sites. 

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! 

 

 

Book Review: America Walks Into A Bar by Christine Sismondo

I read the new book America Walks Into A Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops by Christine Sismondo. 

The book covers American history that took place in bars and our often-conflicted feelings about the bars themselves.

The stories begin with the Pilgrims and continues on through the Salem Witch Trials, American Revolution, machine politics, Civil War, racism and nativism and the Underground Railroad, political corruption, Carry Nation and the Anti-Saloon League and Prohibition, the women's liberation and gay liberation movements. She finds a bar involved in most important events in American history. 

Also interesting is the discussion of the changing format of the bar through the years; from taverns, saloons, grog shops/groceries, hotel bars, fern bars, gay bars, and dive bars, and what each of these types of drinking establishments signified and to whom they catered. In the last chapter she even tackles the babies-in-bars controversy of last year in Brooklyn. 

Along the way I picked up great information about saloon tokens, various methods attempted to try to shut down bars, how immigrants influenced our drinking culture and how people tried to close bars out of racism (and that the Anti-Saloon League and the KKK worked together), that all bars in Los Angeles before Prohibition were actually owned by breweries, that I most definitely must read John Barleycorn by Jack London, that slumming dates back to the Victorian age, that the Carousel Bar in the Monteleone was known as a gay bar, and so much more. 

I found the history to be interesting if sometimes dry, the level of detail spectacular,  and the information on the changing bar formats and their ever-changing reputation fascinating. If you are interested in American history and bar history, this is your new favorite book. 

Book Review: Citrus: A History by Pierre Laszlo

Citrus: A History by Pierre Laszlo is a weird book. The first two sections contain detailed information about the species, spread, and cultivation of citrus around the world. The third section contains chapters like "Symbolic Meanings of Citrus" and "Image of Citrus in Poetry," which I didn't find terribly engaging. 

So let's dwell instead on the first parts where the good stuff is. Here are some facts I highlighted. 

"If Judaisn accounted for the cirum-Mediterranean spread of citrons, Islam established a major beachhead for the cultivation of citrus to the Iberian Peninsula."

"Sour limes (the kind most often found in the grocery store) originated in northeastern India and were brought by the Arabs to al-Andalus."

Three orange trees planted by Eliza Tibbets in 1873 were the foundation of citriculture in California. One of the trees survives to this day. 

It wasn't until 1795 that British seamen started getting lime juice to prevent scurvy, earning them the nickname "limeys." Scurvy dropped from 1457 cases in 1780 to 2 in 1806. 

Humans don't have the ability to synthesize Vitamin C, but most animals do. 

Nobody used to drink orange juice. It was during an orange glut in California that the idea occured to an ad man to sell more oranges and save trees from being cut down. He created the slogan "Drink An Orange" and sold it to Sunkist. In the early 1920's orange juice became part of the American breakfast. 

Frozen concentrated orange juice was first developed in 1945-46.

So: The book has some good information and some not-so-useful stuff. 

There are a few other books on citrus - has anyone read any? Any good?  

Book Review: Gaz Regan's Annual Manual for Bartenders 2011

Gaz Regan's Annual Manual for Bartenders 2011 has a ton of amazing recipes from bartenders around the world, but unlike most cocktail books I think the additional content is where the book really stands out. 

The "101 best new cocktails" section contains some great recipes, most of which were tested and possibly adapted by Gaz Regan. In skimming the book, I earmarked a dozen or so of them that I feel the need to make eventually. But there is a lot more to the book than recipes. 

The first part of the book is the first part of Gaz' autobiography. The second part is a discussion on "mindful bartending," a sort of zen philosophy on how not to get stressed out and punch a customer in the face. 

Next is the methodology section. He goes over some tips and techniques on basics like pouring, muddling, building drinks, and using citrus. There is a whole section on using eggs in cocktails. The section contains the basic information you can get elsewhere, mixed with modern thoughts on matters like the proper age of citrus juice and the hard shake. 

Another section is the "fabulous bartender awards," recognizing bartenders for their creativity, attitude, philanthropy, etc. 

The "fabulous innovators" section is my favorite, though. It not only recognizes who invented what, but importantly when. With all the writing about cocktails these days, it is getting more difficult to keep a coherent timeline. I imagine someone looking back on this new cocktail renaissance in 50 years and trying to sort it out - it would be a lot of work. 

Gaz recognizes the creators/promoters of fat washing, Martini stones, mist-flaming, herb-spanking, carbonated cocktails, smoked whisky, and aged cocktails in bottles and barrels. 

For this reason, the annual manual is not just a recipe and instruction book, it's almost like a bartending yearbook.