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Dashing Don Lee and Greg Boehm's Old Tools

On Monday April 5th, Greg Boehm of Cocktail Kingdom and Don Lee of Momofuko Ssam Bar gave a talk at Rickhouse in San Francisco.

Gregboehmtoolsession

Boehm's plane was delayed so Lee gave an impromptu talk on one of his bar science projects. (When I last spoke with him, he was measuring the BRIX count of sugar syrup in all the bars in New York.) Recently he's been trying to determine how much is a "dash" of bitters in a drink.

Lee noted that different bottles of bitters release different amounts of liquid in a dash; not only just between brands but also between different-sized bottles of the same brand, and within one bottle when it is very full or very empty. (I currently have a jumbo sized Angostura bottle and the darn thing spits out a dash before I can tip it over far enough to get it in the glass.)

As a starting point of his experiment, he measured the average size dash (in weight) from the middle 80% of a ten-ounce Angostura bottle, a Regan's Orange Bitters bottle, and Angostura in a Japanese dasher bottle. He found that Angostura released a smaller amount on average than Regan's. He also found that the 90 ml Japanese bitters dasher bottle delivered extremely consistent results (but only 1/4 of the size of a Regan's dash), probably because the long neck allowed for a consistent launching distance for the liquid.

Future experiments might include testing how sensitive the palate is to these minute differences in dash size, so that we'll know how much difference a dash makes.

When Greg Boehm arrived he was mostly playing show-and-tell with his vintage barware. Boehm collects functional barware, imports barware from Japan and other countries to sell, and is now beginning to make recreations of vintage barware when nothing as good is being made today. I learned a few things:

  • Patents on cocktail shakers seem to start around 1880
  • Brazil and Argentina are the only two countries that use uniquely-shaped shakers; Brazil's with a built-in strainer that seems pretty handy until you start bashing it with large Kold-Draft ice cubes and Argentina's a conical shaker that's really hard to separate.
  • All of those fancy-shaped shakers (penguins, bells, zeppelins) were launched at the end of Prohibition in the 1930's
  • Japanese barspoons are not really meant for measuring, but for stirring and pulling out a drop of liquid from the glass. I noticed this in Japanese bars in Singapore- that instead of the bartender tasting the drink using a straw, they taste it by putting a drop of the drink on the back of their hand then licking it off.
  • The reason many barspoons (like this one) have the flat end is that they're based on apothecary spoons that were used to crush pills.

Comments

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DJ HawaiianShirt

I, too, cherish my jumbo bottle of Angostura aromatic bitters. Mine tends to spit wildly too... and it sucks, because bitters can stain ANYTHING.

Blair Frodelius

I've noticed this same quandry with bitters dispensation. The current Angostura bottle I have literally puts at least a whole dash in the bottle when i merely tilt it into the glass. I end up eyeballing the amount that goes into, say a Manhattan. With Regan's and Fee's bitters it seems more balanced in terms of amount that comes out per shake. What has surprised me is that The Bitter Truth products actually do take quite a bit of shaking to get the proper amount into a drink.

Re: tasting off the back of the hand. I've seen this in certain bars in Germany, and some on the West Coast of the U.S. I'd say that it looks somewhat unusual, and may cause sticky-back-of-the-hand syndrome. Personally, I'd go with the dip of a straw and see what comes out. But, honestly, with the high quality of bartenders crafting cocktails, I'm sure that very few will go back and try to "fix" their drinks before they are served.

P.S. I'm very much looking forward to Greg's barware recreations.

Blair Frodelius
http://goodspiritsnews.spaces.live.com

陳哲毓念阿彌陀佛往生西方極樂世界

阿彌陀佛 無相佈施


不要吃五辛(葷菜,在古代宗教指的是一些食用後會影響性情、慾望的植
物,主要有五種葷菜,合稱五葷,佛家與道家所指有異。

近代則訛稱含有動物性成分的餐飲食物為「葷菜」,事實上這在古代是稱
之為腥。所謂「葷腥」即這兩類的合稱。 葷菜
維基百科,自由的百科全書
(重定向自五辛) 佛家五葷

在佛家另稱為五辛,五種辛味之菜。根據《楞嚴經》記載,佛家五葷為大
蒜、小蒜、興渠、慈蔥、茖蔥;五葷生啖增恚,使人易怒;熟食發淫,令
人多慾。[1]

《本草備要》註解云:「慈蔥,冬蔥也;茖蔥,山蔥也;興渠,西域菜,云
即中國之荽。」

興渠另說為洋蔥。) 肉 蛋 奶?!

念楞嚴經 *∞窮盡相關 消去無關 證據 時效 念阿彌陀佛往生西方極樂世界

我想製造自己的行為反作用力
不婚 不生子女 生生世世不當老師


log 二0.3010 三0.47710.48 五0.6990 七0.8451 .85
root 二1.414 1.41 三1.732 1.73五 2.236 2.24七 2.646
=>十3.16 π∈Q' 一點八1.34

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