Alcademics.com

Show Us Your Sugar: The Sugar House in Detroit

 

As part of my ongoing study of sugar in spirits and cocktails, I am curious to know what sugars bartenders are using in their bars - raw sugars, simple syrups, and any other sugars.

 

Bartenders: I'd love it if you'd send me a picture of your sugar and tell me about your program. 

I got the idea for a series from Dave Kwiatkowski of Sugar House in Detroit, who sent a picture of his sugar. 

 

 

Kwiatkowski says, "It's certified fair trade Malawian natural demerara sugar.  It's extremely sweet and an amazingly rich tasting, so instead of a 2:1 we use a 1:1, and often have to dial back the syrup just a bit."

"Before we hooked up with Wholesome, I was running around to all the Mexican markets in Detroit buying up all their Zulka every other day, as none of the food purveyors here seem to know what natural sugar is about.  Needless to say, that got old."

I didn't realize how much sugar bars actually go through. Kwiatkowski says, "We started buying it in mid November, and I've already purchased about 475lbs, with a few bags left." That was in January.

By my calculations that's about 60 pounds of sugar per week!

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Want to show off your bar's sugar program? Please send me an email. 

 

The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

 

Sugar in Mexico: Mascabado

Alcademics reader Warren mailed me a picture of a sugar packet he picked up near Cancun. 

It's labelled "Mascabado," which is the same thing as muscovado.

According to Sugar.org, "Muscovado sugar, a British specialty brown sugar, is very dark brown and has a particularly strong molasses flavor. The crystals are slightly coarser and stickier in texture than "regular" brown sugar."

 

The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index follow this link. 

Solid Liquids: The Missing Link Aviation

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The Aviation cocktail was originally made with gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, and creme de violette liqueur, but at some point in one cocktail book copying from another, they left off that last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 wrote about that here. 

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.  

It tastes delicious.

 Learn how to dehydrate liqueurs here.

 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.

A Fun Use For Non-Crystallizing Liqueurs

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.

Cane and Beet Sugar, Revisited

I keep finding information about sugar in unexpected places. Previously as part of the Sugar Spirit project I read this from Sugar.org, the sugar industry's website:

Sugar is simply separated from the beet or cane plant, and the result is 99.95% pure sucrose (sugar). The sucrose from sugar beets and sugar cane is not only identical to one another, but each is the same as the sucrose present in fruits and vegetables.

But I've come across some contradictory statements in a different book. I've been reading Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food: A Grocer's Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food and learning a lot about buying food. The book is very anti-GMO. In the section on sugar, it says.

Beet sugar falls short in multiple ways: it does not melt as smoothly or caramelize as readily, and in baked goods it produces inferior texture and flavor. For the best flavor, texture, and overall quality, buy sugar that specifically states "pure cane sugar" on the package. 

I suppose the difference between commercial pure cane sugar and beet sugar must be due to processing if once we get it down to sucrose it is identical. Anyone have experience with using "pure cane sugar" vs regular granulated sugar? Maybe I should visit the store.   

Furthermore the Bi Rite book asserts sugar beets are almost always GMO, and any conventional sugar is typically heavily sprayed with pesticides and other chemicals. (Yet that must mean American sugar beets, as there are restrictions on GMO products in Europe.) Thus they recommend buying organic sugar (except when using it to make candy as granulated is better for this). 

Sugar: it turns out there is a lot to know. 

The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link.

Sugar in Italy

As part of the Sugar Spirit project, I am starting to be more aware of types of sugar in other countries. When traveling to Italy recently, I picked up a couple of packets of sugar. 

The "classico" sugar, according to my trip host, would be Italian-produced crystallized beet sugar.

The (slightly racist?) "tropical" sugar is labelled as "zucchero bruno di canna" or "brown sugar of cane," so it's like Sugar in the Raw but the grains are smaller. 

Not a huge revelation but one data point that will hopefully be part of a large collection of others going forward. 

 

The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link. 

Solid Liquids: The Deconstructed Midori Sour

Just for fun in the Solid Liquids Project I put some dehydrated Midori to good use. 

I made a Deconstructed Midori Sour. 

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.

A Note About Dehydrating Honey-Based Liqueurs

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.

I was reading Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food: A Grocer's Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food and found the following in the section on honey:

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.