Camper English's Blog, page 12
January 6, 2024
Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails Read-Along in 2024
On Facebook, I run the Alcademics Book Club. In 2024 we're reading The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails letter-by-letter, with 2 weeks for each letter. So we're taking the whole year to read 850 or so pages.
Follow the link to join us!
January 5, 2024
Aqua Vitae Vs Arrak, Terminology and History
I am reading The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails in order with the Alcademics Book Club, which you may join on Facebook if you wish. (We're on the A's in early January.)
I've already learned so much new information and also old information I'm seeing in a new light.
One example of the latter is in the terminology of Aqua Vitae, the Latin term for distilled spirits ("water of life") vs arrack, the name of several different spirits.
[image error]Aqua Vitae as a terminology comes from the "alchemico-medical" background - the medical alchemists separating a pure essence of the universal life force (supposedly) from wine. The name refers to the method (distillates were called waters) and (supposed) healthy life-giving impacts to the person who drinks it. It first referred to wine-based spirits but came to mean distillates of all sorts (and is the base of the words for aquavit, eau de vie, and whiskey) but then words like whiskey, brandy, etc came to dominate as spirits differentiated. A thing to note here is that this terminology and technology was from Southern Italy and spread up north in Europe toward the UK and Scandinavia, and eastward into Germany, Poland, and Russia. The technology of distillation of aqua vitae followed the path of knowledge with travelling monks.
Arrack was the Arabic word for distilled spirit, and according to Oxford, "is the first widely accepted umbrella term used to differentiate spirits from fermented beverages." It was first referenced in the later 1200s and early 1300s (the same time, but in different places, as references to aqua vitae). It also referred to several different distillates - palm arrack from Goa, cane arrack from northeast India, rakia from grapes/raisins in the Ottoman Empire/Middle East, and Batavia arrack from Indonesia that was made from palm sap and sugar. Many of these spirits travelled with sailors on the spice trade routes and were made into punch. Though not stated explicitly in Oxford, it seems terms referred to distilled beverages.
"All of these spirits preceded the rise of brandy, genever, rum, and whisky, the European spirits" according to Oxford.
So arrack (in its various spellings) seems to be the blanket term for distilled beverages that came out of the Asian tradition and ingredient set that travelled along Asian-oriented sea and land trade routes, while aqua vitae was more the European term for distilled medicinal spirits from wine and grain that travelled along routes of monastic and medical-alchemical knowledge from Southern Europe north and northeast.
"In general the newer trade networks supplanted the older ones, and the various arracks fell back on their local markets." And the spirits born from the tradition of aqua vitae came to dominate the European markets and evolve into their more modern forms.
January 2, 2024
Did British Gin Come from Dutch Genever? Part 2
[image error]I watched a video by Philip Duff on the history of gin - is gin the British interpretation of Dutch genever? Or does it come from a more or less independent distilling tradition since British spirits were usually based on a neutral base distillate?
I watched a seminar by Jared Brown and Anistatia Miller that claims independence and wrote about that here.
Phil Duff adds some new information about the historical use of botanics in genever and on Dutch distilling styles.
Duff cites a couple key pieces of information:
The most popular style of distillation in Holland was not distilling a beer mash with botanicals one single time [which leads some to the conclusion that gin, based on a neutral spirit base, was born independently of Holland] but 2 distillations then a third with botanicals, which is essentially how gin is made.
The Distiller of London contains a recipe that looks like gin but is more of an expensive medicinal liqueur, and a book published after it to "correct the mistakes" in it says differently
And thus he concludes basically that gin was invented in England after column distillation comes on boaord in the early 1800s, but it's a direct line of invention from Dutch distilling/genever.
Click the link above for Jared/Anistatia's first video, then watch Phil's video below.
December 30, 2023
The Five Best Drink Books of 2023
This year I read more than 40 books, mostly about drinks. My top five favorites are below. This list is not actually the best drink books of the year, but my favorites. (And my favorite technically came out in 2022.) I wrote the title for SEO!
What I want out of drink books is new information or information presented in a new way. I don't need cocktail recipes so recipe books only really appeal to me when they present new techniques.
And if I haven't chosen your book or your favorite here, just assume I haven't read it yet. You make great choices too!
Camper's Favorite Books of 2023
5. Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity by Amy Brady [Amazon] [bookshop]
Amy Brady's book about the cultural history of ice was a perfect pairing to my how-to book on ice cubes, coming out just a month after my own. This has the history of "Ice King" Frederic Tudor, plus how ice fundamentally changed America in numerous ways from food and drink to sports and travel.
4. How to Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life by Mandy Naglich [amazon] [bookshop]
It's mostly about tasting beer, wine, and spirits but it's a book about tasting everything from cheese to chocolate to honey, and approaching it like a professional taster. There are tips of developing your palate and tons of interviews with professionals in many different specialties. It makes me want to host tasting parties for everything.
3. Tropical Standard: Cocktail Techniques & Reinvented Recipes by Ben Schaffer and Garret Richard [amazon] [bookshop]
This is the only recipe book on my list, because it introduces new techniques to old drinks. Tropical Standard will probably be known as a book of tiki cocktail recipes made with modern techniques like clarification and isolated acids from Liquid Intelligence, but many of the drinks include no such razzle dazzle: It is really a book on raising the standard of tropical cocktails, optimizing them with everything we've learned in the decades since they were first invented.
2. A Field Guide to Tequila: What It Is, Where It’s From, and How to Taste It by Clayton J. Szczech [amazon] [bookshop]
The title and cover copy really undersell it: This is the tequila book the world needs. About half the book is about the production of tequila and the historical circumstances and sometimes-ridiculous regulations that lead to it being made that way. Tequila is a moving target in many ways, but Szczech has done a great job at nailing the parameters that make it what it is, along with highlighting some of the largest and most traditional players in the category. This is now the first book I recommend about the category.
[image error]
1. Modern Caribbean Rum by Matt Pietrek and Carrie Smith [buy]
This came out at the end of 2022 but I read it - all 850 pages of it - this year. And it seems like it was written just for me. I am a production nerd and want to know all the ingredients, equipment, and regulations that go into making something and how those things impact how something tastes. Here we get the information on the specific stills- down to the manufacturer- used at every distillery, plus that level of detail about everything from every producer in the covered region. It's a lot, and I like it. So it is all of that wrapped up in a huge heavy package with terrific photos and design - a pleasure to flip through too.
Super Bonus!
The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts by Camper English [amazon] [bookshop]
Okay I lied again. Those weren't my top five favorite books of 2023. They're the top 5 books of 2023 that I didn't write. My favorite book of 2023 is The Ice Book, by me!
Learn to make very good ice and shape it into all sorts of amazing cubes, spheres, blinged-out diamonds, and more. I hope you'll pick up a copy if you haven't already.
Materials:
December 27, 2023
Black Caterers in Food and Cocktail History
[image error]In a nice coincidence, right after reading Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice that I reviewed here, [amazon][bookshop] my other book club chose High on the Hog [amazon] [bookshop] as their pick for the month.
I just finished up the book (haven't seen the Netflix series yet but will watch next month- having only heard the title, I thought both were cookbooks/cooking shows instead of history book/show) and it's super interesting.
One thing I noticed in Juke Joints was how often the author mentioned caterers and their recipes for food and drink. In reading lots of cocktail history I hadn't come across caterers that I can recall. So I made a mental note of it.
In High on the Hog, the author explains a little better why caterers were often Black businesses- coming off of domestic work skills and training but lacking the capital to open restaurants.
It was nice to have a question and then get it answered in the next book.
Here are a couple of pages from High on the Hog in which I got my answers. It's worth reading High on the Hog in full though - it looks like the overlapping history of food and Black history in America.
December 22, 2023
Nonalcoholic Alcoholic Things Are Just Things
First there was nonalcoholic alcoholic seltzer.
To help drinkers in their sober curious exploration, White Claw is introducing a new way of drinking. Introducing White Claw 0% Alcohol - a new, non-alcoholic premium seltzer boasting the complex taste and feel of a real drink. Made from ultra-refined seltzer and blended with iconic flavors and hydrating electrolytes, White Claw 0% Alcohol is a new way to drink.
And now have nonalcoholic alcoholic sparkling iced tea!
Today, Loverboy announced their first-ever non-alcoholic take on the brand’s top-rated sparkling hard teas: Non-Alcoholic White Tea Peach and Non-Alcoholic Lemon Iced Tea.
Perfect for dry January, mocktail, and healthier resolutions stories, Loverboy is bringing the taste without the buzz to redefine how you imbibe – boasting full flavor, zero sugar, and only 10 calories per can.
[image error]Now, my math is a little rusty, but I think it goes something like:
December 19, 2023
The Mystery Pillar and Ice Spikes
This is a video about "ice spikes" that form in the freezer, and as explained it does so due to the expansion of water when it freezes.
He is talking about ice forming in a standard ice cube tray but those of us who make clear ice cubes in trays know this phenomenon as the "mystery pillar" - one cube (or sometimes two) pops up and starts forming upward out of a tray suspended atop an insulated cooler.
Interestingly in this video the host cites three factors that help ice spikes to form: distilled water, warm freezing temperatures, and a fan blowing on the surface. Well in the case of directional freezing, the water freezes out impurities so that the ice near the surface is basically frozen distilled water; the cooler impacts the rate of freezing; and fans are usually in the way.
In the case of the directional freezing system, rather than spikes forming above the surface, we usually get whole cubes popping up. My theory is that the "ice spike" phenomenon is happening not on the surface of the ice, but through the bottom hole in the tray - pushing the entire cube up from the bottom. Often the new ice forming does up around the sides, so you get something like looks like a cupcake topping on your cube. (Other times it seems the new ice forms below and pushes the whole cube up.)
In any case, I think the "mystery pillar" is the same thing as "ice spikes" as it just makes sense.
December 18, 2023
Trending Searches for Cocktails and Mocktails 2023
Google has release its annual Year in Search trends for 2023. Their PR team was kind enough to send me the top trending searches in categories relevant to my interests!
[image error]Note that these are not the most searched, but the trending searches that had a high spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2023 as compared to 2022.
Here they are, with a couple notes from me in the brackets. Note that of the cocktails, only one is new within the last 10 years.
The mocktails? Oh gurl.
Cocktails
Naked and famous [hooray Joaquín Simó!]
Azalea ["the unofficial signature cocktail for the Masters" golf tournament withe vodka or gin, pineapple, lemon, grenadine]
Brown Derby
Revolver [hooray Jon Santer!]
Gimlet
El Presidente
Bee's Knees
White Lady
Last Word
Sex on the Beach
Mocktails
Sleepy girl mocktail ["tart cherry juice, magnesium powder and a fizzy mixer like sparkling water or prebiotic soda"]
Cortisol mocktail ["Typically, adrenal cocktail recipes include fresh orange juice, coconut water, and sea salt."]
Pina colada mocktail
Recess mocktail [Recess is a brand of RTD mocktails]
Pink mocktail
Pomegranate mocktail
Strawberry mocktail
Cranberry mocktail
Barbie mocktail
Tropical mocktail
Recipe
Grimace Shake [Lolllll]
Lasagna Soup
Chicken Cobbler
Black Cake
Pumptini [from Vanderpump Rules]
Hugo Spritz
Cowboy Butter
Coronation Quiche
Brazilian Lemonade [made with limes and sweetened condensed milk]
Cottage Cheese Ice Cream
Alcohol in Latin America - Book Review
I recently read Alcohol in Latin America: A Social and Cultural History, edited by Gretchen Pierce and Maria Áurea Toxqui. [amazon] [bookshop]
[image error]The book is a little pricey ($35 for paperback) for everyday casual beverage readers, so you might want to do what I did and request that your local public library order a copy. You can find it at the SF Public Library, or probably get it as an interlibrary loan from there now that I've done the hard work for you.
The book is an academic work, a collection of chapters written by different authors rather than a textbook or history book written in chronological order. The book's description from the publisher is:
Aguardente, chicha, pulque, vino—no matter whether it’s distilled or fermented, alcohol either brings people together or pulls them apart. Alcohol in Latin America is a sweeping examination of the deep reasons why. This book takes an in-depth look at the social and cultural history of alcohol and its connection to larger processes in Latin America. Using a painting depicting a tavern as a metaphor, the authors explore the disparate groups and individuals imbibing as an introduction to their study. In so doing, they reveal how alcohol production, consumption, and regulation have been intertwined with the history of Latin America since the pre-Columbian era.
Alcohol in Latin America is the first interdisciplinary study to examine the historic role of alcohol across Latin America and over a broad time span. Six locations—the Andean region, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and Mexico—are seen through the disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, art history, ethnohistory, history, and literature. Organized chronologically beginning with the pre-colonial era, it features five chapters on Mesoamerica and five on South America, each focusing on various aspects of a dozen different kinds of beverages.
An in-depth look at how alcohol use in Latin America can serve as a lens through which race, class, gender, and state-building, among other topics, can be better understood, Alcohol in Latin America shows the historic influence of alcohol production and consumption in the region and how it is intimately connected to the larger forces of history.
When I wrote Doctors and Distillers, I wasn't able to find as much information about alcohol and medicine in South America as I would have liked, particularly not of cachaca, pisco, or tequila in their homelands. This book added a few items I could have used (tequila was rumored to cure the Spanish Flu!), but more importantly it put a lot of other things in context.
Here is the Table of Contents:
I didn't read every chapter but learned a lot about chicha, cachaca, and other fermented spirits, as well as distilled spirits during the colonial and post-colonial eras. Several chapters of the book look at the association of beverages with specific segments of the population - how indigenous people and enslaved people drank one thing while imported wine and some distilled beverages were associated with European heritage.
For me, the most interesting chapter, which looked at this issue in detail, was the one titled, "Tequila Sauza and the Redemption of Mexico's Vital Fluids, 1873-1970." It was authored by Jose Orozco.
This chapter traces the perception of tequila via three generations of the Sauza family (Tres Generaciones) and this family's attempt to influence that perception in the popular culture- specifically "how tequila became Mexico's national drink in the post-revolutionary era, [and] why other alcoholic drinks (most notably, pulque) lost out on this prestigious designation."
My very weak summary of the view of beverages consumed in Mexico is:
Pulque was considered smelly and slimy and associated with the 'uncivilized' indigenous/Indians and poor of Mexico
Imported wine and brandy were directly European and aspirational, but didn't exactly evoke Mexican pride and progress
Beer was a foreign beverage that could be made in Mexico [in the 1920s beer companies conducted smear campaigns against the cleanliness of pulque] but still didn't invoke local pride
But tequila could potentially be a beverage associated with a Modern Mexico, advanced and forward-looking, made by a clean, modern industrial process. It was not smelly and could potentially be seen on par with whiskey and brandy (and of course we see many old references to "Mexican whiskey" and "Mexican brandy" that are just tequila). It could indicate pride in Mexican accomplishment with native Mexican plants and be made by modern Mexican people. In short, it was a product that could project the image that Euro-centric Mexican upper class wanted.
The author writes (p191) "By entering his mezcal in the World's Fair [1893] Cenobio Sauza wanted to highlight the ways in which mezcal was simultaneously an authentic product of Mexico and a clean, non-disgust-inducing, civilized, and cosmopolitan liquor like cognac, champagne, or brandy." ... "Because Sauza and his fellow mezcaleros were anxious to sever the viscerally negative connection that Americans made between mezcal and pulque, [the judge]'s praise of their product's purification and deodorization must've felt like not only an affirmation of the quality of their mezcal, but also the confirmation of a larger project, rooted in aspirational racial purity, refined social taste, and improved appearance, and general condition of the Mexican nation and its people." (p192)
Throughout US Prohibition and the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution, mezcal/tequila production dropped, and then towards the 1930s and 1940s, mezcal became associated with revolutionary gunslingers and fighters, rather than upper class farmer-aristocrats, so the image the Sauzas wanted was again challenged.
Eventually, as tequila became the name for the mezcal from the Tequila area, the beverage was promoted to be associated with Mexican Spanish heritage, (p200) "[Sauza] borrowed a version of mexicanness that while acknowledging that Mexicans were the product of both Indian and Spanish cultural and genetic material clearly favored the Spanish side of the mestizo equation."
Into the 1950s-1980s, tequila came to be represented in ads from Sauza by “fair skinned mariachis, bullfighters, horse riding charros, and raven-haired rosy-cheeked damsels” of Jalisco (with a touch of the 'untainted' and often blonde Altenos mythology) of “an idealized rural Hispanic world.”
I had no idea that tequila - and pulque- came with so much baggage.
Anyway, that was my favorite eye-opening chapter. Check out the book for more on that and on alcohol in the rest of Latin and South America.
December 14, 2023
Review of Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice
I recently read Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice: A Cocktail Recipe Book: Cocktails from Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks by Toni Tipton-Martin. [amazon] [bookshop]
Below is my review.
Tipton-Martin has a big library of cookbooks by Black American writers, and they're put to good use here. As far as I know there are only two cocktail books written by African American bartenders before the last decade or so: The Ideal Bartender by Tom Bullock from 1917, and Julian's Recipes by Julian Anderson from 1919. But there are a lot of other books by Black authors in which cocktail recipes can be found - books by caterers and cookbook authors.
This is primarily a cocktail, rather than a history book, so Tipton-Martin often cites three or more authors and their works in reference to a certain drink recipe, then provides either one of the versions from these older texts, or a spinoff of the recipe. Sometimes her choice of drinks are due to cultural traditions and flavor preferences with the Black community (a preference for the sweeter drinks, red drinks of all kinds) moreso than specific recipes from 100 years ago.
I have far too many cocktail books (now over 1000, which is absurd) so I don't read cocktail books for the recipes, but for the information about the recipes. I also try to read articles about Black bartenders and cocktail history from many sources - David Wondrich did a bunch of research and writing about the authors cited above and other famous Black bartenders of old - and Tipton-Martin cites his work as well in Juke Joints.
So I have encountered a lot of the historical cocktails and references to bartenders before, but in this book learned a lot more about the cooks, hosts, and caterers who may have written down only a few recipes. (The same is true for The Cocktail Parlor, a book about the role of women in cocktail history, which comes out next year.)
The value I will get out of Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice is
Having a lot of information about Black American cocktails, bartenders, and cooks all in one place rather than scattered all over the internet.
Having the book's index at my disposal, including dozens of books I've never seen nor heard of, for future research.
Speaking of the index, the index of Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice include photos of many of the covers- a super nice touch.
Buy the book: [amazon] [bookshop]
