During Hawaii Cocktail Week, I attended a seminar called LA Confidential, held at Thirtyninehotel. Panelists were Julian Cox, Paul Sanguinetti & Cherish Mumme, all of Los Angeles.
The talk was meant to illuminate trends and techniques popular in Los Angeles today. Here are a few notes I took.
A good place to buy molecular mixology/gastronomy supplies is Modernist Pantry.
Using goofy names for cocktails makes them less intimidating to guests.
Julian Cox measured the Brix level of the most popular cocktails, and found most of them to be around 14-15 Brix, so the perception of the more popular girlie drinks as being sweeter isn't quite true.
Cox uses sous vide for infusions with fruit and/or herbs. He says to set it on 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and infuse it for four hours or so, making sure that it doesn't go above the boiling point of alcohol at 173F.
For tea infusions, blanche the tea first to eliminate harsh tannins.
He's been quietly doing pretty cool stuff over there. He implemented one of the first cocktail herb gardens, has barrel aged cocktails that he is able to sell commercially, and now features the "Cocktails Sur Lie" program.
Cocktail ingredients (minus the base spirit) are fermented like wine, then put into champagne bottles and fermented a second time like champagne. Then they pop off the caps to get rid of the yeast and add base spirit in the 'dosage' step.
As he partnered with a winery production center, he now has the winery do the production work after he develops the recipes, which not only ensures consistency in the bottled beverages, but they can legally sell them at retail.
A truly clever part of this system is that the hotel does tons of events, and having these fancy bottled cocktails that pop open like champagne allows them to serve the same quality cocktails as you'd find in the bar at the events- just pop off the cork.
The Fizzy Mary combines the enriching vegetables and hair-of-the-dog booziness of the typical Bloody Mary with stomach-soothing fizz created by Nitrous Oxide. The drink has a wonderful tingle on the lips and better yet, the nitrous bubbles will go right to your head.
After a few experiments I found I liked the Fizzy Mary best charged with whipped cream canisters (nitrous charges), while the garnish I preferred carbonated (soda chargers).
I ended up using the Perlini cocktail carbonating system for the liquid and the iSi whipped cream canister for the garnishes, but there’s no reason you couldn’t use one tool for both.
Fizzy Mary
You will need: Perlini cocktail carbonating system or iSi whipped cream canister Cream (nitrous) chargers
Ingredients: 2 parts Your Favorite or Homemade Bloody Mary Mix (I use Low-Sodium V8 juice) 1 part Vodka 5 dashes Tabasco Pepper Sauce
To the Perlini shaker add ingredients and ice. Charge with a whipped cream canister (NO2), then shake drink. Allow to settle for at least 30 seconds before opening cap. Strain into a wine or Collins glass. Note that the nitrous increases the perception of sweetness, so extra Tabasco or lemon juice will help tame it. Add carbonated garnish.
Note: If making a Fizzy Mary in an iSi whipped cream dispenser, mix ingredients well before adding to siphon, then do shake only lightly, avoiding splashing the top part of the siphon to prevent gunking it up. Release pressure slowly, then open the canister and pour and strain the contents into your glass.
Carbonated Bloody Mary Garnish
You will need: iSi whipped cream canister or Perlini carbonating cocktail system Soda (carbon dioxide) chargers
Ingredients: Various garnishes Vodka Tabasco pepper sauce
Note, you’ll leave these garnishes to carbonate overnight, so remember to begin a day before you need them.
Possible garnishes include cherry tomatoes, lemon wedges, olives, cocktail onions, cucumbers, pickles, tofu cubes, pickled vegetables etc. The more porous the better. Non-porous vegetables like pepperonchini, celery, carrots, green peppers, etc., will not carbonate well.
I added vodka and Tabasco sauce to my charger to infuse the veggies while carbonating. When you eat the carbonated garnish, it tingles in the mouth and the Tabasco enhances the sensation.
Add garnishes to an iSi whipped cream dispenser. Fill with vodka and many dashes of Tabasco up to the level of the fruit. Charge the canister with a Carbon Dioxide charger. Gently shake the canister and place in refrigerator.
Leave to carbonate in the refrigerator overnight. Open canister directly before serving. Carbonation doesn’t last more than a half hour or so, longest in the tomatoes and only 15 minutes or so in less porous veggies.
On the Modernist Cuisine website, they do a shorter-time version (two hours) by using extra CO2 canisters, but I didn't find this so useful for tofu or tomatoes.
Note: another way to carbonate garnishes (and probably the Bloody Mary as well) is to use dry ice and a Nalgene bottle. I haven’t tried it yet but it looks fun.
Here are some other pictures. I didn't mean for them to be artsy; I'm just terrible with white balance.
This recipe was developed with support from Tabasco.
In my latest post for Details.com, I talk about the Negroni. That poor cocktail is less famous than the Martini and Manhattan, yet suffers more at the hand of bartenders.
"Everywhere you look, the Negroni is being deconstructed, smoked, solidified, gelatinized, flamed, dehydrated, foamed, carbonated, frozen, clarified, and subjected to other forms of mixological torture."
The story then goes on to describe some bars in which the Negroni is currently being tortured.
I have a story about smoke cocktails in this Sunday's LA Times Magazine. Go read it!
PHOTO: BARTHOLOMEW COOKE
Now, you're saying, "Didn't I already read that?" Nope, that would be Robert Simonson's excellent story in the New York Times, which I learned about after mine had already been submitted. We cover pretty much the same material, referencing many of the same people and even including one of the same recipes! Compare and contrast.
My story includes recipes by Tim Zohn and Ethan Terry of AQ, San Francisco, Giovanni Martinez of Sadie, Los Angeles, Michael Callahan of 28 HongKong Street, Singapore, Daniel Zacharczuk of Bar/Kitchen Los Angeles, Jacob Grier of Metrovino, Portland, and Sam Ross of Milk and Honey, New York.
Liquid Smoke By Camper English
Between molecular mixology, mezcal, and scotch, the vapor somehow seeped into cocktail glasses.
Back at the turn of this century, when we were all obsessed with the Cosmopolitan, smoke was barely a wisp on the cocktail scene. The genre’s only notable drink was the Smoky Martini, which called for gin and the tiniest splash of blended—not actually smoky—scotch. Then menus started to feature a few vintage scotch drinks, like Blood and Sand and Mamie Taylor, with the faintest tendrils of smoke. But as dark spirits became more popular, the time was right for new flavors to accompany them.
I know that several people are attempting bottle-fermented cocktails. Here's one program from Jeff Josenhans at the US Grant Hotel in San Diego that's about to come online.
THE US GRANT's award-winning Mixologist, Jeff Josenhans, has taken his mad-scientist cocktail crafting skills to a new level: straight to the basement of the hotel. After many hours of experimenting with various bottling processes, Josenhans is the first mixologist to successfully craft bottle conditioned cocktails combining the beer and champagne method of fermentation.
Launching as "Cocktails Sur Lie," (Sur lie is a French wine-making term that means having been rested on its yeast), he has combined the highly complex (and rarely attempted) process of the champagne method with the brewer's method, adding yeast to the bottle and allowing the bottle pressure to create carbonation, then spirits and sugar are mixed in according to the champagne method while the hopping process adds the brewer's flare.
A sneak preview of the Cocktails Sur Lie are currently on the week-long Autumn Mixology Dinner menu (names and ingredients below) but you'll soon be able to find the new flavors of 'Cocktails Sur Lie' on the Grant Grill's January cocktail menu.
-"Mule in a Bottle" made from Garden Flower Infused Vodka, Ginger, Rock Candy Sugar, California Hops and Champagne Yeast.
-"Smokin’ Pumpkin" (a take on his current seasonal cocktail featured on the Food Network, the Smashing Pumpkin) – Pumpkin Infused Rum, Allspice Dram, Applewood Smoked Coconut Sugar, Dash Laphroiag 15 yrs, Saffron and Vanilla (unhopped), Ale Yeast
The next step in the Solid Liquids project is to look at the various methods people are using to dehydrate liqueurs down to sugars. After searching the interwebz, here are some techniques I found.
I don't think the original DrinkBoy forums are online anymore- at least I can't find them- but that's where this technique first came to my attention several years ago. Bartenders in Australia were dehydrating Campari and other liqueurs and making powders out of them.
Oven Baking
Pour the liqueur on a baking pan, perhaps with a silicone matt on it (for easier removal of solids) and bake at a low temperature overnight. Damon Dyer wrote that his initial method (copied from the Australians) was:
"The process as I learned it was to pour the Campari into a shallow baking sheet, then slowly bake in the oven at low, low, low heat. The Campari eventually loses its water and alcohol, and solidifies. Then it's simply a matter of scraping the solid Campari "brick" off the baking sheet, crushing it into a powder, and enjoying a cocktail.
"However, the revised process that Donbert came up with [see below] is much more efficient."
Microwaving
Way back in 2007, Don Lee took up the issue (in this thread on eGullet), and remembering a tip from the French Laundry Cookbook, he dried out liqueurs in the microwave. He was able to boil Campari down to a sludge in about 4 minutes, then further pulverize this into a poweer.
On refining the technique, his observations were:
In the initial cooking stage, the alcohol is boiling off so the boiling is quite violent. Use short heating bursts during this stage.
Also use short bursts of heat at the end, because then the thick sugary liquid can caramelize if you're not careful.
"For Maraschino (Luxardo) I had to use 20 sec intervals for the first 1.5 minutes, then could let it go for 3 mins straight before going back to 20 sec intervals until 303.5F was reached. The result when cooled is an easily removable "puck" of Maraschino."
Using this method, Damon Dyer said he had success dehydrating Torani Amer, Yellow Chartreuse, Peychaud's, Herbsaint, Maraschino, and Canton Ginger.
Liquid Nitrogen
Douglas Williams of Liquid Alchemy consulting used liquid nitrogen to make solid Campari. This is really frozen Campari, and thus will melt again. So it's not a useful technique for my purposes.
But in any case, check out this video of it happening:
Williams told me about some other ways to get alcohol into solid form - sometimes without burning off the booze. I am not completely clear on how it works, but apparently you can use tapioca malodextrin and that will bond with anything fatty. This technique can apparently be used to trap booze into a solid form.
I doubt I'll have time to get into the molecular mixology stuff during the duration of this project, but it would be fun to try.
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 wrote up this blog post over at Tales Blog about one of my favorite talks at this year's Tales of the Cocktail, The Molecular DNA of Classic Cocktails. It was a great talk about how drinks like the Ramos Gin Fizz, Blue Blazer, and Clover Club are all classic cocktails that played with format and presentation, analogous to today's gelatinous drinks and foams.
Camper English is a cocktails and spirits writer for publications including the SF Chronicle, Details.com, Fine Cooking, CLASS Magazine, and many more. Learn about Camper and Alcademics, or read clips of his published work.
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