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Blue Cocktails on Details.com

I attended an awesome seminar on blue drinks at Tales of the Cocktail this weekend, lead by Sebastian Reaburn, Jacob Briars, and Phil Duff. 

Then I wrote a piece about it for Details.com, the website of Details magazine. It's my first story for the website. 

I learned a lot more in the seminar than is in the story, which is more of a trend piece.

Fun facts:

• Phil Duff worked at the same bar Tom Cruise trained at to prepare for the movie Cocktail (not at the same time)
• The first known blue drink was a non-alcoholic soda called Soyer's Nectar, from 1851. It was created by Alexis Soyer, the first celebrity chef. 
• Blue cocktails were futuristic. "In the 1860s people were excited about the future; now we're merely afraid," said Jacob Briars.
• The first known blue cocktail was from 1908.
• Modern blue cocktails may start with the Blue Hawaiian from 1957 - at the end of the classic rum-heavy tiki drinks at the beginning of the silly ones.
• Blue cocktails are popular in countries that either never had a super serious classic cocktail phase (Asia) or in places and with people that have gotten beyond it, like New Zealand and the top cocktail bars mentioned in the story.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story on Details.com!

 

Dehydrated Liqueur Flavor Pills and Champagne Cocktails

As an ongoing part of my Solid Liquids Project, I have dehydrated various liqueurs into flavored powders and am now experimenting with new ways to use them. 

In yesterday's post I described how I bought a pill press to make tablets out of the liqueurs. 

I started with Angostura bitters, but then made additional "flavor pills" out of Campari, Midori, and Aperol. 

I was thinking that these would be fun flavor enhancers for drinks, especially champagne drinks. 

A cool presentation might be to give a guest a glass of champagne and a variety of flavor enhancers from which to choose. To make it extra fun, I put some in a pill box.

Then you pick your pill and add it to the sparkling wine. It fizzes up nicely.

And eventually it breaks down and colors and flavors the drink.

It does take several minutes for the flavor to become noticeable in the champagne. I tried to speed up the process by experimenting with adding baking powder to the mix, but this affected the flavor of the drink. 

Thus this works best with the most strongly flavored liqueurs, and using rather large sized flavor pill tablets. It could also be a fun addition to hot tea. 

Sometime soon I'll do some experimenting (I've run out of sparkling wine for now) to see which flavors work best in this format. 

I hope this inspires some fun experimenting!

 

A Brilliant Idea That Didn't Quite Work

You'll remember I spent a few months figuring out the best way to dehydrate liqueurs into flavored sugars.

Now I'm finding new ways to use those liqueur-flavored sugars.

Typically bartenders who use these dehydrated liqueurs sprinkle some on top of an egg white foam or use them as a rimming sugar on a cocktail glass. But I had the idea to use them as an optional flavor enhancer to cocktails - give the customer a drink and some powdered liqueur and let them add it if desired. (Some bars do this with bitters and tinctures.)

So I bought some vegetarian capsules and filled them with dehydrated liqueurs.

They look awesome, right? 

But unfortunately, they didn't perform as expected. When adding them to a cocktail the capsules didn't dissolve. I tried a boozy cocktail, a fizzy cocktail, and an acidic cocktail in the hopes that these would help speed up the process. I even tried a hot cocktail to see if that worked. 

In all forms, the capsules dissolved eventually, but if you want to wait 20+ minutes for that to happen you're a more patient drinker than I. 

Ah well, it was a cool idea that didn't work out. 

But in tomorrow's post, I'll talk about a technique that actually worked...

Read more about the Solid Liquids Project and how to deyhydrate liqueurs here.

Easter Cocktail Ideas

Today I'll link to two previous posts I did for Easter. 

The first is this colored ice that looks like Easter eggs, made with water balloons and food coloring. Go here to find out how I did it. 

If you're looking for a cocktail to use with this colored ice, may I suggest the Double Rainbow? 

And the second post was a use for bunny Peeps, because those things aren't really all that good to eat. The original post is here.

Check Out This Amazing Cocktail Chart

This poster is pretty darn amazing. Click to enlarge in a pop-up. 

 

 

Also, it's on sale today, January 30th until noon Eastern Jan 31 for $28.

I can't seem to paste the text of the press release, but here's where to go to buy it from Pop Chart Lab.

 

Rome and Amalfi Miscellany

Here are some random pictures and notes from my trip to Rome and the Amalfi Coast with Pallini Limoncello. 

Rome is a very, very crowded city, especially around tourist attractions. On our second day there we had a guide who was amazing and knew all the ways around the lines. That's the only way to do it. 

I had a gelato at San Crispino, supposedly the best in the world. I can't vouch for that, but my two flavors - whisky and honey- were delicious. 

The view from the King Victor Emmanual II memorial is great. 

(Look kids, it's the Vatican!)

The Colliseum is a lot bigger than I had imagined. I was thinking it was about three stories tall and could fit a couple thousand people. Nope. It's huge, you can see it from everywhere, and it sat 55,000 people.

 (This is the view from my hotel room on the last night, the Hotel Palazzo Manfredi. Wowza.)

(Seating went all the way up to the top. The stage at the end used to cover the whole floor. The stuff below is where the animals and gladiators were kept between fights.)

We went to a bakery called Panella that makes old Roman-style bread once used for travelers. Naturally, they were out of it on the day we went. 

Fried artichokes are a thing in Rome. We had them a few times. 

The Pantheon is an architectural marvel. This and other ancient temples only survive today because they ripped out all the pagan stuff and replaced it with Christian stuff. Good thing gods are interchangeable. 

(At night, outside.)

(Inside, daytime. There is a hole in the roof. This acts as a sundial as well.)

We stopped for an espresso nearby at Eustachio, again supposedly one of Rome's best. Their trick is to use some sort of sugar foam. Maybe they run it through the milk steamer. 

Pallini also used to make a fernet!

I bought a Crodino on the Amalfi Coast. It tastes like a non-alcoholic Campari & Soda. Delicious!

I also bought something called China Martini, which I'm guessing is a sweet vermouth derivative using quinine. 

And speaking of bitter, while at a restaurant called Sol De Riso, I tasted all the amari on the menu that I previously hadn't tried. 

• Amaro de Capo - a locally made amaro with notes of quinine, orange, and saffron. Pretty good. 
• Radis - Tastes like cola, quinine, orange. You could imagine mixing it with soda water to make a cola.
• Don Baioro - Very Chrismassy. Tastes of prune/raisin, clove, molasses, and coffee.
• Petrus - Perfumy yet incredibly bitter. We took pictures of everyone's expression while tasting it. Here was mine. 

An Amusingly Disgusting Way to Drink Vodka in Sweden

While I was in Sweden with Karlsson's Gold vodka, we learned a traditional way to drink vodka. It is called Kaffegök, and it is gross.

You take a cup and put a coin in the bottom.

Then you fill it with coffee until you can't see the coin anymore.

Then you add vodka until you can see the coin again. That's how you know you have enough vodka in there.

Then you drink it. Damnnnn that's some kinda breakfast.

 

How NOT to Dehydrate Campari

I figure, why not try the method that looks easiest first, even if it seems doomed to fail? 

That's what I decided to do as an experiment in dehydrating liqueurs down to sugar: to see what happens when you cook Campari the fastest way possible to get all the liquid out. 

I put two ounces of Campari in a silicone cupcake cup and tossed it in the microwave. After 30 seconds it boiled over. First it came to a rapid boil, then turned to a real frothy boil. 

After the liquid evaporated more, the boil turned more gentle; around three and a half minutes in. But soon enough, at four minutes, came the smell of caramelizing/burning sugar. 

At five minutes most of the liquid was gone, and then the sugar started blackening. The Campari turned black, puffed up, and started smoking. I had to open all the windows in my apartment to keep the fire alarm from going off. 

A black crust formed where the red sugar was. After removing it from the microwave, it cooled quickly then I tried it. Surprisingly, it tastes just like a burnt marshmallow; just a little more molasses-y. There was no Campari taste to it at all. 

In conclusion: That Didn't Work. 

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.