Alcademics.com

The Weird Affinity Between ZU Vodka and Cocchi Americano

 

ZU vodka, known in the rest of the world as Zubrowka, is starting to appear in more serious drinks than just mixed with the usual apple juice.

 

Oddly enough, in each of these better drinks in which I've seen ZU used, it has been used in concert with Cocchi Americano. 

At Providence in Los Angeles:

Ellis Island
ZU Bison Grass Vodka, Cocchi Americano, Gruner Vetliner wine, and celery bitters

At AQ restaurant in San Francisco:

 

Bison Rose
Zubroska Bison Grass Vodka, Cocchi Americano, Meyer Lemon, Rosemary Shrub

At Blackbird in San Francisco:

Golden Glove
Zu vodka, Cocchi Americano, Apple Juice, Celery Bitters

Weird.

Trends in Craft Beer in SilverKris Magazine

My editor at SilverKris, the inflight magazine for Singapore Airlines, emailed me something like, "I hear craft beer is becoming popular. Can you do a story on that?"

"Sure," I said, knowing that boiling down everything going on with craft beer into even a feature-length story was going to be incredibly difficult. 

The story kind of kicked my ass but taught me a lot about beer. I have a feeling for the trends but not a lot of knowledge of the technical details behind the beer styles so this involved a lot of research.

Anyway, I mushed things into categories like Belgian, barleywine, saison, session, flavored, high-alcohol, sparkling, canned, and casked. 

The story is online in one of those online magazine reader formats at this link.

An Unexpected Flavor Trend in Copenhagen

When I visited Copenhagen twice this summer, I was surprised to find one flavor all over the drink menus: eucalyptus. 

At 1105, they serve a drink called the Lady Eucalyptus, made with eucalyptus syrup, gin, lemon, Cointreau, and egg whites. 

At Salon 39, a very creative neighborhood bar/restaurant, they make their own line of bitters. Their eucalyptus bitters I saw all over town, helping drive this trend. 

They use them in their Gin & It, as well as in their version of Sam Ross' Penicillin. 

At the bar Rouge at the Skt. Petri Hotel, the bar program changed literally between me visiting it in the afternoon and the same evening. (Rumor has it they've changed over and over in the past few years.) But the menu that they showed me during the day also had the Penicillin with eucalytpus bitters. By nighttime, it was a short menu of about eight classic cocktails.

At Umami, they also have a eucalyptus drink on the menu. I thought I stole a copy of the menu but I can't seem to find it now. 

At MASH, they use eucalyptus syrup in their Signature Margarita.  

Now I'm wishing I brought some eucalyptus bitters as a souvenir; and odd taste that unites the great bars of Copenhagen.

Stockholm Bar Scene Report

While on a trip with Purity vodka, we were given a talk by Mathin Lundgren about the Swedish bar scene, specifically in Stockholm. This was great because I had just been to Stockholm two months earlier with Karlsson's vodka and had seen a few of the bars first-hand. 

Lundgren says the Swedish bar scene really kicked off about twn years ago, after a few Swedish bartenders moved to london and worked at LAB and other bars, then came home with new skills. More recently, other bartenders have been influenced by working at Milk & Honey and thus Sasha Petraske's influence reaches even to Sweden.

In talking about trends and developments in the Stockholm bar scene, Lundgren identified:

• A return to the respect of the career of bartending
• Hand-crafted cocktails
• Better ice (and the recognition that spirit-forward cocktails with fewer ingredients require better ice)
• Knowledge of spirits
• Better training (As of 3 years ago they have a government-sponsored, year-long education program somewhere outside of Stockholm.)
• Travel - Bartenders are traveling a lot, getting inspired by other scenes, and bringing ideas home. (And as a good example, I've now met Mathin in Sweden, Denmark, and New Orleans within three months.)
• The mixologist trend (bartenders with their heads down cranking out only one drink every five minutes while customers wait) is starting to fade
• The science/molecular trend came and went
• As modern bartenders refocus on both drinks and customer service again, a newfound respect for the older generation of working bartenders
• Bars with standards. Previously drink quality depended on who was working at the bar at the moment, whereas now bars are enforcing better training and standards so that every drink tastes good no matter who makes it.
• The return of flair, but just little flourishes of it rather than juggling.
• Connectedness of bartenders thanks to social media and good bar events. 

Other than a government-sponsored bartender training program, he could be talking about New York or San Francisco. It's a small, small world. 

Global Cocktail Trends at World Class 2011

A month ago I attended the Diageo World Class Global Finals (Facebook group here) in New Delhi India. (Most of my posts on the matter can be found by following the India tag.) But I'm not done talking about it - just getting caught up now. 

There were six challenges in the contest and I sat in on two of them. Peter Dorelli judged the Cocktail Theater and Stars challenge, in which bartenders had to create a drink inspired by a woman; and then perform a fancy version of a bottle service serve. Gaz Regan judged the Gentlemen's Drinks & Fancy Tipples challenge, in which bartenders had to create one of each of those style of drinks. It was these two sessions I observed. 

(Tea service as bottle service.)

I noticed several trends in ingredients among the 32 competing bartenders (and two cocktails each). I found it pretty interesting that despite wide differences in product/ingredient availability in different parts of the world that there would be any patterns at all. Yet there were many commonalities among the cocktails I saw.

Top Flavor Trends at World Class Global Finals 2011

•  Chamomile. I saw chamomile tea, chamomile flower garnish, chamomile syrup, and chamomile-infused vermouth. This flower was everywhere at World Class.
• Tea. Chamomile, of course, but also Indian tea, breakfast blend tea, and other flavors. Also, tea service: tea pots, cups, and tea time rituals.
• Infused Vermouth. Again, chamomile-infused vermouth but also cardamon and other flavors. 
• Dry Ice. I'm not sure if this is a real trend - that all these bartenders planned to use dry ice in their drinks from the beginning (close to half of bartenders did, but keep in mind I was sitting in the theatrical judging) or if they just decided to use it because it was available in the supply room at World Class. 
• Chocolate. Many bartenders used chocolate syrup, liqueur, bitters, or gave the judges a side of solid chocolate (all high-cacao content chocolate; none of the milk chocolate stuff) to accompany their drinks. 
• Smoke. Several bartenders used the Polyscience Smoking Gun to smoke cocktails. They smoked the mixing glass, smoked the cocktail glass, and smoked a bell jar to put over the cocktail. Other bartenders burned herbs or wood chips directly. A couple of drinks were made with a rinse of smoky Lagavulin scotch. No mezcal was in sight, but that may very well have been a supply issue. 
• Sherry. I'm delighted to see that sherry is a global bartending trend. At World Class they had only oloroso/cream sherry available to use, but I think someone made an approximation of Pedro Ximenez with it as well.
• Yuzu. Not a ton of it was used, but enough to be noticeable. 
• Coriander and Cardamon. These spices were muddled, infused into spirits, or toasted fresh into several drinks. I almost want to call it a 'gin spice' trend.
• Coffee. There was a bit of coffee liqueur used, but more often coffee tinctures or grated coffee beans used in and on cocktails. 

(Jamie Mac uses dry ice for a smoke effect.)

Chefs Get Into the Gin Game Before and After Distillation

Two stories have popped up recently on the intersection between chefs and gin. 

Before:

Roxor gin is made in Texas and was developed in part by Robert Del Grande, a James Beard-awarded chef with a PhD in biochemistry. The gin  contains the usual juniper, corriander, orris, grains of paradise and citrus including grapefruit and lime; plus hibiscus,  cocoa nibs, Texas pecans, and cinnamon. 

The chef developed the gin, and it is distilled to his specifications at San Luis Spirits in Dripping Spring, Texas. 

After:

Chef Peter Smith of PS 7's in Washington DC uses the spent mash from gin distillation- the botanicals left in the bottom of the still - to cure meats for the restaurant. He uses the mash from both Bluecoat Gin in Philadelphia and Catoctin Creek in West Virginia. Then:

 At the distillery, the fresh, non homogenized botanical spices are boiled down and melded together into a balance of flavors that is mellow but intense. Peter mixes this leftover, tea-like compost, with oil, leaving it to sit for a month. Then, he strains it through three times to get it pure, clear, and compressed. 
 
He has created a “Ginola,” a play off breseola, by rubbing his beef with the spent botanicals and hanging it to dry and cure for about a month.  The beef develops a gin-like taste and is included on his tasting menu.  He has been curing “GinBelly,” similar to pancetta, a cured pork belly covered with the gin mash botanical and then rolled and dried for two-five months.  PS 7’s also now features a halibut dish in which the fish has been treated with his gin-mash powder, giving it a light and unexpected gin flavor.  He has also worked with Catoctin Creek to develop a gin salt. 

You can read the press release here.

A Whipped Cream Frenzy

Though dessert and pastry-flavored liqueurs are all the rage these days, I am amazed at the amount of alcoholic whipped cream products coming out.

There are now at least two brands of whipped cream flavored vodka (Burnett's Whipped Cream flavored vodka and Pinnacle Whipped Vodka) and two brands of alcoholic whipped cream (Whipped Lightning and Cream Alcoholic Whipped Cream).

I can imagine college bars will soon start serving shots of the whipped cream vodka with alcoholic whipped cream on top. Woooot!

 

 

Called It: The New Absolut Vodka Flavor

The new flavor of Absolut vodka was just announced, "an exotic blend of all-natural green, red, and yellow apple with fresh ginger combine to create ABSOLUT ORIENT APPLE."

Apple and ginger, who could have guessed? Oh right, I did.

In this post I finally put it together that all of the Absolut city flavors eventually become regular Absolut flavors with minor tweaks. I said:

I'm gonna make a guess that the next Absolut flavor will contain red apple and/or ginger.

Because that's what's in Absolut Brooklyn. 

BINGO.