In the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, December 18th, I have a story on the category of fernet.
Leopold Brothers has a modern formulation of fernet that should be hitting story shelves this Wednesday afternoon, and Tempus Fugit Spirits has a vintage recreation of fernet coming in the new year.
(Photo by John Storey)
From the story:
While many people call for the bitter liqueur Fernet-Branca by the shorthand "Fernet," they should probably specify "Branca." Fernet is not a single product but a type of spirit, and its ranks are about to become more populated.
Angelico Fernet, from local importers Tempus Fugit Spirits of Novato, launches early next year, while Fernet Leopold, from Leopold Bros. of Denver, should be available this week. They join examples from Stock, Luxardo and R. Jelinek.
At the end of the story, there is a delicious cocktail from Darren Crawford of Bourbon & Branch and Tony Nik's and Scott Brody of Per Diem. It contains fernet, Carpano vermouth, Domaine de Canton, lime juice, and ginger beer.
I haven't created cocktails yet with the dehydrated liqueurs I've been making for the Solid Liquids project, mostly because I figure y'all are don't lack imagination and will find good uses for them.
But here's a drink I've been hankering to create since the beginning.
The Aviation cocktail was originally made with gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, and creme de violette liqueur, but at some point in one cocktail book copying from another, they left off that last ingredient.
For something like 60 years, the recipe was written incorrectly as the first three ingredients only, even through the beginning of the current classic cocktail revival. Then someone figured out they were missing the creme de violette that turned the drink sky blue and gave the cocktail its name.
I decided a fun drink would be to create the drink that is the missing link between the wrong and correct recipes, leaving the drinker the option to have it either way. The cocktail has dehydrated creme de violette sugar around the rim, and what's in the glass is the other three ingredients.
Missing Link Aviation By Camper English
2 oz. Gin .75 oz. Maraschino Liqueur .75 oz. Lemon Juice
Shake and strain all ingredients into a glass rimmed with Dehydrated Creme de Violette.
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.
I had some problems getting some liqueurs to crystallize in the Solid Liquids project. But I did find a fun use for them.
Luckily I have a whole heck of a lot of silicone ice cube trays laying around. So I poured the still-hot, thick syrupy mostly-dehydrated liqueur into the trays.
Then let it cool.
(That's IM for Irish Mist, y'all.)
These are kind of delicious candies to suck on, but they are a bit sticky. I recommend keeping them in the refrigerator so they don't turn back to glop.
Then for additional fun, I busted out my Creepy Crawlers Bug-Maker Oven (yes I've had one ever since I was a kid) and poured it in the mold.
And I made a sugar spider.
Not perfect, but still 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.
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 with sugar cane alcohol (and I assume sweetened with 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.
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 'triplesec' 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.
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.
In the Solid Liquids Project I found that liqueurs sweetened with honey do not crystallize. (At least the honey-sweetened liqueurs that I tried.) I theorized on why and how we might over come this in this post.
However, in reading an unrelated book, I think I found the real reason these liqueurs are not crystallizing.
Honey is a super-saturated solution, which means it has a tendency to crystallize (come out of solution) and turn solid over time. Because of this, most producers filter and pasteurize their honey to prevent crystallization and create a more uniform product.
Eureka! If it's one thing alcohol producers want, it is products that are consistent and don't spoil or separate in the bottle. My guess is liqueur producers who use honey use pasteurized honey, and that this is why liqueurs sweetened with honey have not crystallized in my experiments.
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.
I am one lucky son-of-a-gun. This September I visited Rome and the Amalfi Coast with PalliniLimoncello. Though we began the trip in Rome and went to the Amalfi Coast later, I'll explain the process of making limoncello in the proper order.
The Lemons of the Amalfi Coast
The lemons for Pallini are sfusato ("elongated") lemons, so-named for their tapered shape. They are also sometimes called feminine lemons because each side looks like a nipple. These are slightly different from Sorrento lemons that are more football-shaped.
These lemons are low in acid; very sweet. In fact we had an unsweetened lemonade made with them. It was tart, but still drinkable. Even the pith isn't that bitter- we had a 'salad' made with these lemons soaked in balsamic vinegar and salt - and you could eat the whole thing - fruit, pith, and rind.
But for limoncello purposes, they're interested in the skin of the lemons only. The skins of sfusato lemons are highly aromatic and rich in essential oils.
These lemons grow along the Amalfi Coast in a most improbable way. Actually, the whole coast doesn't make much sense - it is all incredibly steep and rocky, with sharp inclines from the mountains down to the ocean. Picture the drive along Highway 1 in California if people had build houses all the way down to the ocean.
Carved into the cliffs are terraced gardens on which they grow lemons, along with eggplants, grapes, tomatoes, olives, and everything else you can think of. It's a surprisingly productive area given that the base is just rocks.
But the cliff-side growing arrangement means lots and lots of sunshine for these plants. The lemons grow so big and so productively that if these were just normal trees growing on their own, the branches would almost surely snap beneath the weight of the fruit.
Thus the farmers have developed a system to support the lemon tree branches, a pergola made of chestnut wood. This forms a lemon tree umbrella of sorts, with hundreds of huge lemons dangling from above.
(Bonus cat picture!)
The terraced lemon groves present some difficulties in harvesting, as you'd imagine. The lemons are all picked by hand as they ripen, then must be carried uphill to the next road that can be pretty far when you've got a heavy crate of lemons on your back.
Processing Lemons
After the lemons are harvested, they're transported by truck along the windy (and terrifying to those of us scared of heights) road to the processing center. We visited the one Pallini uses: CastierAgrumi De Riso.
When the lemons come in to the factory, they are first washed and then sorted. The very best lemons are sold in crates to stores and restaurants. The rest are peeled to make limoncello.
To do this, they use a machine that peels two lemons at a time. It is hand-loaded and seems to frequently jam - no wonder with sticky, oily peels involved. In this video, you can see the machine working.
The peels that come out are then vacuum-sealed into bags and sent to Pallini to use.
Making Limoncello
Pallini's distillery (it's not actually a distillery as they don't distill there but a rectification plant; still I'll call it a distillery for the sake of clarity) is where they make limoncello from the lemon peels.
Though once there were 30 distilleries in Rome, Pallini is the only one left. Originally, the distillery was located a few hundred yards from the Pantheon in central Rome but now it is in an industrial park-type area a good 30-40 minutes drive from the city center.
To make the limoncello, first they soak the peels in high-proof alcohol (I think around 96%) to extract their flavor. Though they didn't tell us the exact time, I inferred the extraction takes less than a couple of days.
Then they blend this concentrated lemon alcohol with more neutral alcohol (that is distilled from Italian sugar beet molasses), water, and a sugar syrup (made from crystallized sugar beet sugar). To make the flavor pop, they also add essential oils from the same lemons.
Somewhere in the process, they homogenize the ingredients so they retain a fresh flavor and do not separate or oxidize. We tasted several other brands of limoncello and most had a slightly musty flavor of oxidation compared to Pallini.
Other Products
Pallini also makes a Raspicello (useful as a Chambord substitute, or perhaps in a Bramble?) and a Peachcello (for the Bellini). These are actually made by distilling the berries and peaches, and adding fruit juice or fresh berries back in at bottling time. The production seemed pretty interesting but we didn't go into it in detail.
Pallini makes around 150 products, which you'd never guess given the size of the distillery. The most famous one, however, is SambucaRomana. They created this brand but sold it to Diageo in the 1980s. They still produce it for Diageo though. It's actually a pretty interesting product on its own; a blend of distillates from three kinds of anise, elderflower, angelica, and other herbs and spices.
Anyway, that's it for my Pallini trip. Limoncello is an incredibly straight-forward liqueur made from very special lemons grown in an absolutely stunning place.
In yesterday's post in the Solid Liquids Project (project index here) I had expanded beyond dehydrating Campari into dehydrating other liqueurs, namely X-Rated Fusion Liqueur, Wild Turkey American Honey, Irish Mist, and Midori. These are all part of the Skyy Spirits portfolio.
Of these four, only Midori crystallized like Campari had. I tried several methods to make the others crystallize but failed for the large part. I went over those in yesterday's post.
(Note: Before you get too deep into this, I just want to warn you that at this point I haven't figured out a solution to this problem and I welcome your suggestions.)
Nothing was working to make the others crystallize, but then inspiration hit.
Inspiration: What Do These Liqueurs Have in Common?
I realized that two of the liqueurs - Wild Turkey American Honey and Irish Mist - are sweetened with honey!
Furthermore, though I have no proof of this, I suspected that X Rated Fusion Liqueur may be sweetened with fruit juice.
Perhaps these other forms of sugar do not crystallize, or don't do so in the same way that cane sugar/sucrose does.
But first, I figured I should test the theory that X Rated Fusion Liqueur does not crystallize in the same way that known fruit juice-sweetened liqueurs do not crystallize. I placed X Rated Fusion, Hypnotiq, and Courvoisier Rose into cupcake cups and baked them at 140F for about 36 hours.
Courvoisier Rose came the closest to crystallizing, being a dense and sticky puck of liqueur. The other two were just gooey.
Though this doesn't necessarily prove anything, it's a clue that fruit juice-sweetened liqueurs don't crystallize the same way cane sugar/sucrose-sweetened liqueurs do.
A Further Test
While I was performing these experiments, I learned of the Stovetop Crystallization Method previously discussed. That method seems pretty foolproof, so I decided to test it on both X Rated Fusion Liqueur and on Wild Turkey American Honey just to be sure they don't crystallize even at high candying temperatures.
X Rated Fusion turned from pink to brown to black.
And even at high temperatures, it just formed a thick molasses-like candy syrup that would solidify as soon as you removed it from heat. These sugar pucks do not make good sugar crystals even after you crush them. The resulting sugar/powder is just as sticky as a syrupy liquid.
Wild Turkey American Honey performed similarly, except it does not turn black. It's more like a caramel at the end.
Again though this doesn't prove anything, it may be a clue as to which type of liqueurs do and do not form crystals when you dehydrate them.
In the next set of experiments, I'll look at a couple other honey liqueurs to see if they similarly do not crystallize while other liqueurs do.
Then I'll try to overcome this obstactle.
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.
and found the following in the section on honey:
Get Alcademics posts via RSS or Email
Alcademics Fan Page on Facebook
Recent Comments