Octopus Punch Bowl - I haven't forgotten about this punch bowl since I saw it at Bellocq in New Orleans a couple years ago, and then Imbibe magazine had a picture of it in their November 2013 issue. It's available on the VagabondHouse website (for a mere $2640) along with a whole bunch of other cool octopus stuff.
Cynthia Rowley Flask Bangle - For a mere $365 you can have a bracelet you can drink out of. It's so obvious that nobody would think to check your jewelry for contraband liquor at any event for which a giant bulbous gold or silver bracelet wouldn't be out of place (I'm thinking that football games might not be a smart choice).
Bev-Cam Flask - Hide your booze in a fake digital camera, since you only use your phone for photos anyway. It holds 5 ounces, which is better than most. And it costs $14.97. Buy it here.
Tampon Flasks - Hey, you have a niece in college, right? That's about the only person for which this would be an acceptable gift, and even still, no. More info on Amazon here.
Tumi Mixology Backpack - I don't suppose there is any bartender or liquor carrying case that is perfect for everyone. I've yet to see one that was perfect even just for me. But this fancy ($695) backpack from Tumi is rather glam. You can get one at the Tumi site here.
Le Nez Du Whisky - This kit is only ridiculous for its price ($399) because it seems super awesome. It contains 54 aromas commonly found in whisky, developed by expert and author Charles MacLean. The aromas are: Blackcurrant Bud, Geramium, Honey, Rose, Tabacco leaf, Hay, Green grass, Pineapple, Cherry, Peach, Pear, Apple, Lemon, Mandarin, Orange, Pomelo, Dried fig, Walnut, Prune, Oak, Resinous, Sherry, Toasted almond, Toasted hazelnut, Coconut, Caramel, Chocolate, Custard, Vanilla, Anise, Cinnamon, Ginger, Herbs, Mint, Nutmeg, Allspice, Black pepper, Liquorice, Earthy, Biscuit, Coffee, Toast, Malt, Butter, Leather, Broiled meat, Smoke, Peat, Seaweed, Seashell, Medicinal, Rubber, Tar, Sulfur. Get one here.
Coastermatic Coasters - Make coasters from your Instagram photos. Link here.
Vermouth Refrigerator - Okay technically it's a wine refrigerator, but it would be so much cooler if you only used it for vermouth, don't you think? Free shipping from Amazon here.
One day science says drinking will make you live forever. The next day science says it will kill you tomorrow. Good Booze, Bad Booze is an Alcademics category where I put all these stories together.
12/02/13: Caffeine Energy Drinks 'intensify heart contractions' [link]
From BBC News: "Energy drinks packed with caffeine can change the way the heart beats, researchers warn."
Previous Good Booze, Bad Booze
9/16/13: Alcohol does not cause depression: Study [link]
9/10/13: Does Wine Drinking Protect Against Depression? [link]
8/30/13: Teenage Drinking Raises Breast Cancer Risk, One Drink A Day Increases Likelihood By 13 Percent [link]
8/23/13: Alcohol intoxication major risk factor for dementia [link]
6/17/13: Red Wine "Wonder Pill" Undoes Effects of Exercise [link]
Writer Kevin Liu attended the Maximum Flavor event in Richmond, VA. Here he reports on the food and drink amplified with a touch of science.
Crafting "Maximum Flavor" into Food and Cocktails at Heritage Restaurant, Richmond, VA
Kevin Liu likes to drink science and study cocktails. Wait, that's backward. He's the author of Craft Cocktails at Home and his writing has also appeared on Serious Eats, The SweetHome, and Popular Science.
I recently had the chance to attend a special dinner put on as a collaboration between Chef Joe Sparatta of Heritage Restaurant and Alex Talbot, author of the just-released Maximum Flavor.
Talbot is best known for the Ideas in Food, the innovative culinary blog he runs with wife Aki Kamozawa. The headline of the evening might have been the food, but I paid careful attention to the cocktails as well. Bar manager and owner Mattias Hagglund teamed up with Thomas "T" Leggett of The Roosevelt to offer up six custom drinks designed to suit any palette and to perfectly complement the five courses of the dinner.
Leggett and Hagglund, respectively
Whereas the trend in modernist cooking tends toward fantastic presentations and unexpected textures, the Ideas in Food team focuses on creating intense and memorable flavors. An otherwise traditional-looking ramen dish with seared octopus featured an intense broth flavored with—of all things—pepperoni. Yet somehow the flavors blended harmoniously, without any hint of forced "fusion" in the presentation.
Likewise, tiny tender gnocchi sardi accompanied a dish of braised lamb shoulder. The dish would have been worthy of fine dining regardless of how it was prepared. But, these gnocchi were remarkable for another reason—they were made completely gluten-free. To achieve the springy light texture, Talbot uses a multi-ingredient custom flour blend he designed himself. But does the menu boast of this incredible detail? No, the diner just knows that dinner was delicious.
It seemed Hagglund and Leggett took a page from Talbot's book for their cocktails (no, not literally). The drinks were advertised and served simply, but small touches amplified flavor.
Clockwise from top left: fall ol'fashion, rum swiss meringue, pear shrub, Alabama 'slamma'
The Fall Cobbler paired savory sherry with apple cider and housemade toasted allspice liqueur. All three are strong ingredients, yet a light touch and plenty of crushed ice kept the flavors from becoming overwhelming.
The Fall Ol'fashion became my instant favorite. Here, the smoked bourbon (smoked with applewood chips while resting over an ice bath for 14-15 minutes) were cut by a toasted cinnamon tincture (vacuum-infused for one week) and intensified with bourbon barrel-aged Maple Syrup.
Leggett's take on an Alabamma 'Slamma' dressed up the notorious party shot with two types of bitters that added a pleasant and addictive astringency. Carefully-crafted orange foam (orange juice and egg whites) offset the bitterness with a playful creaminess.
The Rum Swiss Meringue also featured egg whites, this time supported in both texture and flavor by a healthy dose of buttermilk. Rather than becoming overly thick, the drink maintained a light consistency while supporting a generous rum-incensed froth on top.
And finally, for the teetotalers, a Pear Shrub (house-juiced bosc pears, apple cider vinegar) preserved enough of the vinegar's bite that I hardly noticed the absence of alcohol.
What's really mind-blowing about Alex and Aki's work isn't the fact that they consistently come up with new techniques and previously untapped flavors. It's that fact that when you eat their food, you know you're barely scratching the surface of their talent. Take a glance at their blog (updated every day for the last 9 years) and you begin to appreciate the underwater iceberg of ideas and experiments that never get published.
Likewise, sipping the cocktails last Monday night made me feel like I was peering through a barely-cracked door of new ideas and techniques that combined seasonal interpretations of old classics with the latest science-backed techniques. Sure, the drinks of the evening incorporated vacuum infusion and foams, but these "modernist" tricks never took the spotlight from the freshness of the ingredients or the balance of spirits.
So whether or not you're a fan of "molecular" or modernist movements in cuisine and cocktails, one thing's for certain: maximum flavor is here to stay.
In my latest post for Details.com, I took a look at the multitude of ways that people are using breakfast cereal in cocktails.
Initially I thought I'd only find it in a few places but I think there are more than a dozen mentioned in the story and they're located everwhere from London to Bordeaux to Miami to San Diego. Some folks are serving them up in bowls with a spoon, while others are infusing cereal into milk or directly into liquor.
In my latest post for Popular Science, I wrote about the Sour cocktail category and how when you understand the basic format, you can make zillions of cocktails in that style.
When writing the story I had a fun and interesting debate on Facebook about how one defines a sour. To some people, a sour is a drink that contains spirit, citrus, sweetener, and egg white. But that was how the sour appeared at one point in time. At another point, the sour always used lemon juice and not lime.
I took the broader view, calling a Sour a cocktail with a base, a sour component, and a sweet component. So technically you could muddle Sour Patch Kids and NutraSweet in a glass of vodka and call it done.
Absolut Elyx is the newish, high-end expression of Absolut vodka. On a trip this past winter to Ahus, Sweden, where Absolut is made, we took a day to learn about Elyx.
Elyx is a single-estate vodka made in Absolut's old distillery (the new one is only 5 years old), in amazing copper column stills dating to 1921. I wish I had more pictures to share but they weren't allowed on our tour.
The winter wheat for Absolut Elyx is grown on an estate named Rabelof. Rabelof is located near Ahus, and everything for the vodka comes from within a 25km radius of the town. Here's a picture of a wheat field.
Like regular Absolut, the water comes from the large aquifer beneath Ahus.
The first distillation of the wheat is actually done at Absolut's newer distillery in Nobbelov. There, they use the same yeast and the same two first columns to distill Elyx.
The old distillery, scanned from a brand book they gave us.
From my understanding, the first stage of distillation is stripping out the liquids from the solids, and then the alcoholic vapors are refined often within the same column. This happens at the top of the column in a bourbon still, where you'd find "bubble caps". Bubble caps are a method of adding more copper into the process, and copper combines with sulphurous compounds so that they don't make it into the final spirit.
Beyond bubble caps, some distillers use a version of Brillo pads (shredded copper) in their stills. At Absolut they use small segments of copper pipe that are further punctured increase surface area exposed to the alcohol. They use this sacrificial copper in regular Absolut, but apparently for Elyx they use new ones for every distillation run.
After the first distillation (in the first two columns) at Nobbelov, the 85% alcohol spirit then travels to the old distillery at Ahus. There it is rectified in column stills dating to 1921. This part of the distillery is rather gorgeous, with huge tall copper columns with wooden insulator jackets surrounding them. The building is filled pre-computer analogue dials, gauges, old pumps, leather belts, and big piston engines.
Here, the spirit is distilled in one extraction column, two rectification columns, and in two methanol columns. As at the new distillery, there is also a recovery column that recycles waste products.
Camper English is a cocktails and spirits writer for publications including Saveur (Contributing Drinks Editor), FSR Magazine (Spirits Editor), Whisky Advocate, Details.com, PopSci.com, Mixology, Drinks International, and many more. Learn about Camper and Alcademics, or read clips of his published work.
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