Camper English's Blog, page 11
February 5, 2024
Clear Ice Football, Golf Ball, and Disco Ball
You can make shapes that are 3D turn out clear even if they don't fit into clear ice molds.
It's as simple as putting them on top of a clear ice system, with the hole side down facing into the tray below.
Resources:
The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts
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February 3, 2024
Colored Hearts in Clear Cubes for Valentine's Day
I made these colored hearts in clear ice cubes.
Resources used in this video (affiliate links):
The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts
https://amzn.to/48V4qzs
Heart Stamp
https://amzn.to/3uljhEk
Clear Ice Trays:
Clearly Frozen
https://amzn.to/3OwGQkp
Dexas IceOlogy
https://amzn.to/491hByM
New Booze February 2024
The end of the year is a slow time for product releases so there are just a few. The LeMone is a new flavor (almond), the DeGroff line just got to California, the Highland Park is cask strength, and Crossfire Hurricane is Rolling Stones-co-branded.
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January 31, 2024
The Moist Future for MSNBC
I was invited to write a story for MSNBC.com about the coming new normal of casual sobriety, aka the end of Dry January.
I made a bunch of points about generational drinking habits, parallels to vegetarianism, and flaws and challenges of serving nonalcoholic spirits in bars.
January 19, 2024
Three New Cocktail Books Reviewed - Late 2023
This story first appeared on AlcoholProfessor.com.
Boozy Book Reviews: Three New Cocktail Books (2023)
This year we’ve reviewed a lot of drinks books. Some books we’ve reviewed this year includes Bourbon 101, The Maison Premiere Almanac, Tropical Standard, Agave Spirits, Signature Cocktails, Holy Waters, The Anchor Brewing Story and many more. Since more cocktail and drink books come out each season than we can possibly cover, we’ve chosen a few of our favorites for this winter and holiday gifting season.
The Encyclopedia Of Cocktails : The People, Bars & Drinks, With More Than 100 Recipes By Robert Simonson
(Ten Speed Press, October 17, 2023)
New York Times writer Robert Simonson is known for accurate, factual, and even-keeled drink reporting in his coverage of bars, bartenders, and cocktails, and in this his sixth drink book he mixes in a bit of judgement along with the dates and names. Previous works have covered the detailed histories of the Old Fashioned and the Martini, and the history of the modern craft cocktail renaissance, but in The Encyclopedia of Cocktails most entries are short, written like a quick story, and they can often induce a chuckle. It’s an encyclopedia with opinions. For the entry on the Bronx cocktail, for example, Simonson writes, “The cocktail renaissance lifted not a finger to save it. It is held in near universal disdain by modern bartenders, who regard it as weak and flabby and believe there is no method within their talents to make the drink palatable.”
That is one point of departure from the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, which is 500 pages longer than this work but an obvious choice of comparison. Another, as Simonson notes in the introduction, is that the focus is solely on cocktails. He writes, “Every entry, be it of a spirit or a particular historical bar or a notable person or a professional tool, is written with a view of how that spirit, bar, person, or tool played a role in the history, progress and proliferation of cocktails and cocktail culture. So, the entry on rye whiskey, for instance, does not dwell overly long on how rye is made or who makes it… but rather how it is used in cocktails, and how that use has changed over time.”
Most entries seem to highlight either the early golden era of the cocktail from the late 1800s to Prohibition, or the modern golden era, which makes sense given the several decades of mixology dead space between the two. The entries are not super obscure topics (at least not to those of us who know a rough definition of the boomerang, bartender’s choice, and the startender) but important stops along cocktail history. I particularly enjoyed reading entries about people and places - how many influential bartenders worked at a particular venue or what was a particular bar’s lasting impact. For something that’s called an encyclopedia it is an enjoyable read in alphabetical order from the bar Absinthe to the recipe for the Zombie.
Every Cocktail Has A Twist: Master 25 Classic Drinks And Craft More Than 200 Variations By Carey Jones And John McCarthy
(Countryman Press, Nov 7, 2023)
There have been several other “classics and twists” books written but this one contains many more of each than all the rest. In fact, if you jumbled all the recipes into random order you might not even notice the theme – it would just be a book of good drinks. Interestingly, some the classics here may are twists on each other: For example the Daiquiri and the Gimlet are essentially the same drink with gin in the latter swapped for rum in the former, but here these two drinks are given their own entries (as is the Mojito – a Daiquiri with soda water and mint).
The variations on the classics aren’t swapping out the base spirit for another one in most cases – the Daiquiri variations all include rum and most of the Gimlets gin – but the authors more often swap out the accent flavors and rebalance cocktails from there. Sometimes the rebalancing requires the addition or subtraction of some sweetener or a new garnish, and the drink doesn’t much resemble the original, but that’s the point of this style of organization: in the variations you can see the structure of the classics and intent of the twists and how it went from one to the other. Without using too much explanation the recipes themselves teach the home bartender about flavor and balance.
Most classics lead to five or so variations, but some drinks like the Margarita in Martini have a dozen or more. The Negroni probably has some of the most familiar variations but other twists in the book are quite original. For example, the French 75 section includes the original with gin and a well-known cognac variation, then spa-like cucumber and mint versions, a fruity blood orange version, a floral sparkling rosé and rosewater variant, a nearly unrecognizable (except it’s in the same section) tropical rum and guava version, plus two more. But they all include sparkling wine, a touch of citrus, and a sweetener. It’s impressive just how much mileage the authors are able to get out of each drink.
Slow Drinks: A Field Guide To Foraging And Fermenting Seasonal Sodas, Botanical Cocktails, Homemade Wines, And More By Danny Childs
(Hardie Grant, October 3, 2023)
This book touches on several simultaneously trending topics: foraging, home fermentation, and attention to amaros. Ethnobotanist Danny Childs first introduces readers to the techniques in the book (fermentation, beer and wine- making, vinegars and shrubs, pickling and lacto-fermentation, kombucha, infusions and tinctures, bitters and amari, and preserves including jam and sherbet). Then he takes us season by season through botanicals ready for harvest and drink ingredients that use each one.
For example, tomatoes are described then recipes provided for fermented tomato water, tomato leaf oil, tomato leaf oil-washed vodka, and then a cocktail recipe for the Nightshade Martini finishes the section. Other botanicals include elderflowers, paw paws, rhubarb, chicory, and figs, so there are a mix of readily- findable ingredients with some regional available ones. Many of the plants can be dangerous at high levels or in certain conditions, and thankfully we are given information on foraging and safety. (I wouldn’t necessarily trust most cocktail book writers to be accurate with this stuff, but Childs really seems to know his stuff.)
Many of the most tempting recipes to me are quite ambitious- the Fall “Genepi” Amaro includes apples, cranberries, sumac berries, rosemary, sage, wormwood, fig leaves, orange, juniper berries, toasted pumpkin seeds, maple syrup, plus applejack. I know that I won’t recreate several of them exactly as described, but I plan to the book as a source of inspiration to make simpler versions from ingredients I can “forage” from the city grocery store.
January 13, 2024
Directional Freezing on The Weather Network
Well here's something I never expected when I started experimenting with ice all those years ago: The Weather Network did a segment on directional freezing to make ice for cocktails.
I wish I was smart enough to have pitched them The Ice Book when it came out!
January 10, 2024
The Gibson is a New York Drink Gone Big in San Francisco
It was believed that the Gibson cocktail was created in San Francisco. In this 2008 blog post I cited what David Wondrich told us on a tour. The information is repeated in the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails:
But now new information has come to light. Martin Doudoroff shared information from a tweet on the Spirits and Cocktails bulletin board.
It is an article from the San Francisco Examiner from 1896, a new earliest first reference to the drink. From this story it seems that:
The Gibson was probably invented in New York
It became popular at The Bohemian Club in San Francisco - maybe not invented there but transmitted from NY to SF there
And then it became popular in New York later, after it was popular in SF
It could have been equal parts genever to dry vermouth rather than dry gin but became famous with dry gin
I always say (to myself): History is a moving target.
January 9, 2024
Absinthe Gaining Popularity For Real Though This Time?
I provided some quotes for an InsideHook story about absinthe called, "There’s a New Generation Embracing Absinthe in America."
Lately, however, absinthe has been enjoying a small but steady burst of interest. Bars are devoting their menus to it, or at least boasting large collections; cocktails like Death in the Afternoon are reappearing; secret societies, meet-up groups and events centered around it are popping up. Could we finally see an era of true understanding, accurate information and genuine appreciation for absinthe?
One of my quotes was:
Even as people like Breaux, Stashak, Newbrough and Osborne work to get the word out about absinthe’s total safety and legality, there’s a flavor hurdle. But that challenge is quickly fading, according to writer Camper English. “When it came back onto the U.S. market, a lot of people had no idea what it would taste like, and a lot of them found the anise notes not to their liking,” he says. “Now not only is a new generation trying absinthe for the first time a bit further removed from that hype, people’s palates have changed and they’re drinking more flavorful beverages than they were in 2007, things like mezcal and amari.”
Read the full story here.
January 8, 2024
A Homebrew and Preserves Store in Oakland
[image error]Some of the equipment used in homebrewing is useful for other projects, so I was bummed with long-time San Francisco craft brewing supply SF Brewcraft closed.
A friend pointed out a place that now carries some of the supplies in Oakland - it's called Preserved. They also teach classes there, including a bitters-making class.
I haven't been yet, but just noting this for the future and in case anyone else might find it useful.
January 7, 2024
The Mystery Pillar aka The Sacrificial Ice Cube
In clear ice cube trays, one cube (or a few) almost always pops up and starts growing upward after some time of freezing. I call this The Mystery Pillar. Others call it the Sacrificial Cube, because it is usually cloudy and must be discarded.
While it would be theoretically possible to build a deformable tray that avoids this, in general I think you just need to live with it. Pull the tray out of the freezer when it starts forming- if you let it go too long, you may end up with the pillar hitting the freezer ceiling and pinning your tray into the freezer. I say this from experience.
As water cools and turns into ice, it expands. In a rigid container, this exerts pressure on the system, and it seems that pressure pushes one or more cubes up from the hole in the bottom of the tray. It seems it's the last cube compartment to freeze that becomes the mystery pillar. A sciency video that explains the phenomenon in ice spikes is here.
I think that sometimes the water pushing up into the tray pushes the existing cube up - so that it's clear on top and cloudy down the cube shaft. And other times I think water squeezes up around the cube and onto the top surface so it grows that way - cloudy on the top.
I've been asked about the Mystery Pillar four times in the past week so going forward I'll point everybody to this post!
