Camper English's Blog, page 24

Longlisted for the Andre Simon Food and Drink Book Awards

My book was longlisted for the Andre Simon Food and Drink Book Awards! 

They're in the UK so it's the UK title that is listed - The Perfect Tonic. 

Sounds like a great excuse for you to pick up a copy and find out what all the hype is about!

 

OP Anderson Versus OP Anderson

Here's something. 

I read a lot of books, most of them about liquor, but not all. I am in several book clubs but one of them is my "normal" club in which we discuss non-boozy books. (With exceptions! Once I chose a book on ice; more recently another member chose my book.)

In my normal book club, this month we are reading The Good Lord Bird by James McBride. The book is a fictionalized portrayal of abolitionist John Brown. One of Brown's small "army" members in the book is OP Anderson. But wait, I know OP Anderson from my booze reading!

OP Anderson is a brand of Swedish aquavit - actually the most popular brand from that country, with a recipe dating to 1891. Coincidentally I have recently been tracking trends in aquavit and have a story forthcoming, so this brand has been on my mind.

But the brand's website doesn't mention anything about OP Anderson living in Canada and partaking in John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry- one would think that would be worth mentioning. Did the author of The Good Lord Bird take the name of the aquavit and use it as a character name? Could I get a story out of this? I needed to know more. 

 

There are Two OP Andersons, It Turns Out.

First, the aquavit one. From the company website:

The original recipe dates from 1891, when Carl August Anderson launched O.P. Anderson – an aquavit named after his father Olof Petter. O.P. Anderson Original is made at the O.P. Anderson Distillery in Sundsvall, Sweden.

Images are from Wikipedia:

Now the one from the book:

It turns out that the OP Anderson character in the book is based on a real person, and is not just a borrowed name from a brand of aquavit. The abolitionist OP Anderson (from Wikipedia):

Osborne Perry Anderson (July 27, 1830 – December 11, 1872) was an African-American abolitionist and the only surviving African-American member of John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. He became a soldier in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

So that solves that. It's weird when my two nerd worlds collide. 

 

 

Bar Iris: What Makes It Special

This story originally appeared on AlcoholProfessor.com. 

Bar Iris: A Different Vision of a Japanese Cocktail Bar

Bar Iris is a small cocktail lounge in San Francisco’s wealthy Russian Hill neighborhood. Though it is attached to the restaurant Nisei next door, Iris is its own venue rather than a waiting room for diners, and with a new parklet it has become better integrated into its neighborhood during the pandemic. The beverage program at Bar Iris, led by Bar Manager Ilya Romanov, is inspired by Japanese flavors and cocktail traditions, but not in the same way that other Japanese cocktail bars are.

 

Many bars opened in the last 15 years or so with the intention of becoming Japanese whisky bars, but then Japanese whisky supplies became extremely hard to get: Once-affordable single malts from Nikka and Yamazaki were suddenly too expensive to serve in cocktails, if bars could acquire them at all. A few new blends (most notably Suntory Toki) came onto the market as affordable if not robustly flavored options. Suntory also provided a carbonating highball machine to top accounts, and this device and brand came to define many newer Japanese-style cocktail bars, along with the inclusion of yuzu, shiso, lychee, and sometimes Midori in drinks. These spirits, formats, and flavors became so familiar they came to define these bars.

Cocktails (But No Japanese Whisky)

At Bar Iris, Romanov has built a menu of drinks that includes some of these elements and ingredients, though they are wildly reconfigured. Though there is a highball focus to the menu, the base spirits used in those drinks include calvados, gin, shochu, and aquavit; not a Japanese whisky among them. (In fact, there is only one drink with Japanese whisky at all on the current menu, and it is a split-base cocktail with cognac inspired by the Sazerac.) That gin, however is Nikka Coffey gin, which Romanov says is “really fricking expensive but it’s so delicious!”

Nikka Coffey is also the house gin, aka the “well” brand that is used by default if a customer doesn’t specify a brand. The house vodka is also Japanese: Haku vodka made by Suntory. These are not specified on the menu, as Romanov says his policy is to minimize branding and emphasize quality and simplicity. He says, “I really appreciate the fact that I can just pick up any bottle and feel good about it. We don’t really upsell here.”

On the full spirits list, three out of seven gins they carry are from Japan, as are two out of three vodkas. They offer about thirty Japanese whiskies; they’re just not used in the cocktails. The entire spirits list is tiny compared with other bars, particularly in San Francisco where bartenders have access to an enormous selection of products compared with other regions.

Striving For Minimalism

Minimalism is the point. Romanov describes the bar’s philosophy, “It is an artisanal Japanese inspired cocktail bar. I try to bridge the tradition and culture of japan and locally sourced ingredients, while trying to serve the best interests of our guests. There is minimalism and craft behind every single part of the cocktails, the ingredients, glassware, and ambiance. It’s a statement.”

The process of achieving minimalism, though, can be very, very complicated. The highballs and most other drinks on the menu are clarified in various ways so that there are no bits of citrus pith, herbs, or anything else getting in the way of the drinks’ carbonation and transparency. Individual ingredients sourced from the produce market may be infused, cooked, milk-washed, juiced, and generally mangled in dozens of different ways in order to achieve the singularity of flavor and texture desired.

Take the Okinawa cocktail, for example. The purple-colored stunner is somewhat like a Pina Colada but includes Okinawan rum and Okinawan sweet potatoes that are roasted for four hours then cooked sous vide with oat milk, in a method that avoids coconut solids clumping up along the sides of the glass. Texture, flavor, and presentation are all controlled in very intentional ways.

 

Highlighting The Subtleties Of Japanese Culture

The Side Hustle, one of the highballs, includes a house cantaloupe syrup along with shochu, fennel liqueur, Aperol, lemon, and egg white. Romanov says the inclusion of cantaloupe gives great texture to the drink and also is a nod to the very close attention and expense paid to and for melons in Japan. He says, “There’s so much appreciation for those fruits and how they’re raised. And you can’t just bring that from Japan. [With the cocktail menu] I try to basically highlight the subtleties of Japanese culture.”

Other drinks on the menu include a Gin & Tonic with snap peas and verjus that is served in a black highball glass, a clarified milk (actually yogurt) punch with gin, hojicha tea, pineapple, citrus, and violets, and an apple-forward highball with calvados, yuzu sake, green apple, sweet woodruff, and fizzy water.

As to why this Japanese cocktail bar’s cocktails look so different from others, Romanov says, “I do a lot of research on other bars and am trying to do what no one else is doing, not necessarily to do it before everyone else, but to challenge ourselves to do things nobody else has done yet.”

 

Book Review: Brand Mysticism

Over at AlcoholProfessor.com, I reviewed the new book Brand Mysticism: Cultivate Creativity and Intoxicate Your Audience by Steven Grasse and Aaron Goldfarb. [buy on Amazon] [buy on Bookshop]

Read the review here. 

 

New Booze November 2022

Below are bottle shots of mostly new- and a few just new to me- spirits products that have come onto the market in the last month. There were a lot this month as many brands release stuff just before the holidays.

These are from my Instagram account and you can get more information about each of them there. 

 

Book Review: Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake

This review first appeared on AlcoholProfessor.com. 

 

With hundreds of color photos and a nearly 40-page illustration-driven introduction section, it appears on the first flip-through that Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake by Nancy Matsumoto and Michael Tremblay will be a quick, light read. It is not – the book is a detailed exploratory tour of sake’s history, geography, production, people, terroir, and hot topics.

The storytelling is engaging, written mostly the style of a reporter on the scene (“Dampness hangs in the air this morning as our train makes its way southwest from Akita City through the rural rice-producing Senboku district.”), layering tales upon tales in each section until the authors pause and discuss what it all means. It is not a quick read, but I was so engrossed in it that found myself reading it very quickly.

The first part of the book is an overview of sake production, tasting, and serving, all presented as charts and graphs akin to a PowerPoint presentation. It was fun to study, but I found the real value to come from the narrative.

The History Of Sake Production In Japan

The bulk of the book introduces us to people and places that have an important role in sake of the past or present, such as a brewer or rice grower with a long family history in a specific region. That provides the opportunity for the authors to reveal that history (sometimes over several hundred years, other times from World War II forward when the industry changed radically) and then discuss what is happening at the current moment. For example, we learn about the history of rice polishing as the process changes from hand-polishing to water-powered to mechanized to very specific modern techniques optimized to polish different rice varietals. We learn that someone has polished rice all the way down to one percent (meaning 99 percent of the rice’s outer layer has been removed), and then discuss if these extreme levels of polishing are even necessary with more scientific understanding of the rest of the brewing process. And thus, we can question whether the official grading levels of sake by its percent of rice polishing are still accurate or useful. And that’s just one part of the process.

We take this journey from the ancient past to the modern day with each aspect of sake production. We learn of regional rice varieties and the impact of newly developed ones, hard and soft water in different parts of Japan’s varied landscape and how brewers learned to control fermentation differently for each, and the development of new and revival of heirloom yeast and koji strains. The authors discuss modern topics in consumer preference for sparkling sake, the difference between American and Japanese-style tasting notes, and how producers might learn from the wine industry’s celebration of terroir and vintages and terminology like natural, organic, and low-intervention. There are parallels (though not called out specifically) with single malt scotch whisky too – if producers can make any style of sake in any part of the country with modern technology, are notions of regionality and terroir still relevant?

Looking To The Future

Along the way tasting flights are suggested with three sakes that highlight the specific parameter being discussed: tastings of sakes that show the impact of different water sources, brewing yeasts, heirloom rice varietals, etc. There are discussions of the new generation of women brewers, sake bars, and they even threw in a few food recipes for good measure. The book accomplishes a great deal, and for me the most valuable part of it is my new understanding of both “how we got to now” in sake, and also “where do we go from here?”

 

Everyone's Favorite Gift Book is Doctors and Distillers

Doctors and Distillers was mentioned in (at least) two gift guides this past week. 

Robert Haynes-Peterson recommended it as a gift on AlcoholProfessor.com.

And Frank Whitman recommended it on CT Insider. 

 

It makes a great gift, that's what people are saying!

 

Take the Alcohol and Medicine Quiz!

I made a (hopefully) fun little quiz based on the information in Doctors and Distillers. 

Fill it out below, or if the formatting is funky the direct link is here.

 

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The Big Nonalcoholic Spirits Rating, Round Two

In 2021 I hosted a group of bartenders to taste a big batch of nonalcoholic spirits. Read that write-up here.

Since then, many new brands have come onto the market or been newly imported into the USA. I lined up 17 expressions and tasted them. Fifteen are pictured below, plus I tried the new nonalcoholic vermouth/aperitivos from Martini & Rossi. 

I am not going to take the time to write out my tasting notes, sorry, but I'll share my favorites.

Note that the previous tasting was blind, mostly in Daiquiri format. For this tasting I tasted them neat and not blind. 

Nonalcoholic Spirits that are Pretty Good from this Group, Kept the Bottles and Will Drink:

Everleaf Marine
Free Spirits Gin [buy]
Spiritless Kentucky 74 Cinnamon Whiskey
Free Spirits Bourbon [buy]
Ghia [buy]

Nonalcoholic Spirits I Think are Good Enough to Maybe Drink Without Mixers, just neat or on the rocks (The Best of this Tasting):

Everleaf Forest
Cut Above Mezcal
Free Spirits Tequila [buy]
Dromme Calm 
Martini & Rossi Vibrante
Martini & Rossi Floreale

The rest I didn't think were worthy. But this list has a lot more winners than the last tasting! 

Notes:

The Free Spirits Gin is the only n/a gin I've tried that I think is drinkable at all, but even this one does not taste like gin. None of them do. I recently found out the reason for this and will share on another post! 
The Martini aperitifs have a base of dealcoholized wine, and this makes for a big difference. I have a story going up on AlcoholProfessor in a few weeks in which I review the details on those products. It's cool stuff.
Dromme Calm is... not calming but it tastes good. It has tons of capsaicin in it I think, so it's super spicy. 
Several of the ones with fruit or vegetable juices in them tasted spoiled or cooked. 

 

Winter Beer & Wine Book Preview: Most Anticipated Titles of Fall/Winter 2022

For AlcoholProfessor.com I wrote up the (okay, mostly my) Most Anticipated Beer/Wine/Cider books out of the many, many, many new releases.

 

In short, the books are (links are to Amazon):

The Anchor Brewing Story: America's First Craft Brewery & San Francisco's Original Anchor Steam Beer
The World of Natural Wine: What It Is, Who Makes It, and Why It Matters by Aaron Ayscough
The Botany of Beer: An Illustrated Guide to More Than 500 Plants Used in Brewing by Giuseppe Caruso
Cider Planet: Exploring the Producers, Practices, and Unique Traditions of Craft Cider and Perry from Around the World by Claude Jolicoeur
Beer A Tasting Course: A Flavor-Focused Approach to the World of Beer by Mark Dredge
To Fall in Love, Drink This: A Wine Writer's Memoir by Alice Feiring
Crushed: How a Changing Climate Is Altering the Way We Drink by Brian Freedman
The Wine Bible, 3rd Edition by Karen MacNeil

Or read the preview with short write-ups on each book over at AlcoholProfessor.com. 

 

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