Camper English's Blog, page 63
June 14, 2017
Fire Inside Ice (Okay, Fireball inside an Ice Ball)
For years, bars including Chicago's Aviary have been serving drinks inside hollow ice balls. The procedure to make one is easy, at least in theory.
Freeze a balloon or an ice ball mold filled with water for a few hours. An ice shell will form on the outside.
Poke a hole in the ice ball and dump out the water. Refill with a (very well chilled) cocktail. Some bars do with a syringe so that you don't have to open a real hole in the ice ball.
Then serve it. I did this at home and thought it would be fun/funny to create Fire Inside Ice - so I filled by ice ball with Fireball cinnamon whiskey.
Then for a bit of a show I filmed dropping it in slow motion. Enjoy.
June 13, 2017
Phylloxera, Gin, and Scotch Whisky
I'm continually researching topics related to bugs and booze, and went looking for some better information on how scotch whisky sales were affected by the phylloxera plague that took down most of Europe's vines in the late 1800s.
Many sources cite that scotch whisky sales really took off in the same time period as phylloxera killed the wine biz as people switched to spirits, and I was looking for more solid information on that: sales numbers, etc.
I've found that it's true there was a huge scotch boom in this period (30+ new distilleries opened between 1880-1900), but I was seeking more information.
Anyway, my office is located above the spectacular Mechanics Institute Library, a membership library dating back to 1854. I have plenty of whisky books in my office, but the library itself has some unique books I've not seen elsewhere. I went to see what I could learn.
I happened across a book called The Whiskies of Scotland by RJS Mc Dowall from 1967. It didn't have any information on phylloxera except for this one fun fact about the Gilbey's wine/gin company: they saw phylloxera happening so invested in scotch whisky. Smart.
Today Gilbey's is owned by Beam Suntory.
Anyway, just thought I'd share.
Related articles
The Range of Kavalan Whisky, Thoroughly Described
How to Make Whisky in a Hot Climate in a Short Amount of Time
June 12, 2017
Pajama Party Drinks and Coloring Book Cocktail Menus
Back in 2013 I wrote a story for Details (RIP) about cereal-flavored and infused cocktails. The trend has only expanded since then in fun new ways. Many more cocktails in 2017 - and cocktail menus- are inspired by morning cartoons, breakfast cereals, and even road trip activity books. It's like a 1980s childhood all over again.
Some drink favorites inspired by breakfast have been the Breakfast Negroni (with cocoa puffs vermouth) from San Francisco's Wildhawk and the Silly Rabbit from The Sixth in Chicago (for which the ice cubes are in fruity flavors of the cereal).
Many other bars are doing cereal, cereal milk, and cereal-inspired drinks as well.
Drink menus have been becoming more juvenile as well. Just in the past two or three months I've received three cocktail menus with childlike themes.
Bitter & Twisted Cocktail Parlour in Phoenix has a richly-illustrated fairy tale menu with illustrations of Humpty Dumpty, Dr. Seuss-inspired characters, Rapunzel, and more.
Polite Provisions in San Diego has a menu based on an activity book: it has search-a-words, mazes, and pages for drawing your bartender. I'm not sure if it comes with crayons, but there are lots of cocktails to color in.
The Raymond 1866 in Pasadena just released their new menu, with a release saying, "Those animated heroes, villains, foils, and sidekicks serve as the inspiration for the new 1886 summer Cartoons & Cocktails Menu, reimagined into twelve technicolor libations, harmonizing those wistful hours spent in front of the TV, with the rewards of adulthood."
The list features cartoons like Foghorn Leghorn, The Tasmanian Devil, and the Flinstones image captures on the menu, along with cartoon-inspired drinks like the Spongebok Martinipants below.
It almost makes me want to put on my footy pajamas and drink these while watching cartoons on Sunday morning. Or better yet, maybe bars should just open for breakfast on weekends.
June 9, 2017
A Proliferation of Stunt Gins in your choice of Blue, Moonrock, or Insect-Flavored
Hundreds of new gin brands launch each year, and each one is looking to stand out from the rest. For a long time, that was accomplished with a unique, and often local, botanical such a seaweed, cocoa nibs, or bog myrtle.
Then a while back several producers (lead by The Cambridge Distillery) started putting ants in their gin. (Supposedly the ants taste like lime and cardamom.)
Soon, there was Unicorn Tears gin liqueur with glitter in the bottle.
The other day I saw the launch of Moonshot Gin, made with "botanicals sent to the edge of space and "actual moon rock muddled amongst the other botanicals."
And just today I received a press release for Empress 1908 Gin, a bright indigo color-changing gin made with butterfly pea flower tea. It changes color when the pH changes after you add citrus to it in cocktails. (Bartenders have been using this in recent years for the same effect, but typically as a syrup not mixed in with the booze.)
Personally, I never mind kooky versions of spirits- they keep this industry fun, even if most are not necessarily the best-quality examples of the category.
I think we're at the beginning of a long trend of stunt gins that's going to make grass-flavored vodka look tame in comparison.
Welcome to the future.
June 5, 2017
New Drink Books June 2017: Foraging, Science, Bloody Mary, and Much More
A new batch of booze-related reading for your summer pleasure. We've two Bloody Mary books, one on wildcrafting, rum, and a funky vintage reprint; plus gastrophysics, Bordeaux, and more.
Click on the links or the cover images to read more about or purchase the books on Amazon.
The descriptions below come from the publishers and aren't reviews as I haven't read them just yet.
The Wildcrafted Cocktail: Make Your Own Foraged Syrups, Bitters, Infusions, and Garnishes; Includes Recipes for 45 One-of-a-Kind Mixed Drinks by Ellen Zachos
Meet the natural lovechild of the popular local-foods movement and craft cocktail scene. It’s here to show you just how easy it is to make delicious, one-of-a-kind mixed drinks with common flowers, berries, roots, and leaves that you can find along roadsides or in your backyard.
Foraging expert Ellen Zachos gets the party started with recipes for more than 50 garnishes, syrups, infusions, juices, and bitters, including Quick Pickled Daylily Buds, Rose Hip Syrup, and Chanterelle-infused Rum. You’ll then incorporate your handcrafted components into 45 surprising and delightful cocktails, such as Stinger in the Rye, Don’t Sass Me, and Tree-tini.
The Cocktail Hour (L’Heure du Cocktail): 224 recipes Collected by Marcel Requien Presented by Lucien Farnoux-Reynaud
1925. Marcel Requien and Lucien Farnoux-Reynaud, two journalists who are also bon vivants and aficionados of drink, revolutionise the cocktails book, tackling the subject as nobody in France had before them. With L'Heure du Cocktail, they initiate a new way to understand the world of cocktails in printed form.
A fascinating point of rupture in the French literature devoted to the subject until then, halfway between a recipe book and a manual for the use of the modern young women of the time, L’Heure du Cocktail is thus the first French work devoted exclusively to mixed drinks to address not a readership of professional bartenders, but the general public. Even more, and this may be where Marcel Requien and Lucien Farnoux-Reynaud show themselves the most dazzling witnesses of the first golden age of the cocktail in France, L’Heure du Cocktail blows a private domain into smithereens. The recipes of the greatest names of the French bar of interwar period stand alongside those of writers and/or journalists (Pierre Benoit, Claude Farrère, Régis Gignoux, Marcel E. Grancher, etc.), actors (Jane Renouardt, ex-muse of Max Linder or Vincent Hyspa), a filmmaker (Marcel L’Herbier) and a poet (Jean Cocteau).
Originally published in 1927, L'Heure du Cocktail is without a doubt the most beautiful work ever written on the art of the cocktail in France, so much that, ninety years after its publication, this rare book continues to challenge us with its insolent modernity.
L’Heure du Cocktail is reprinted for the first time by Corps Reviver Editions, in a bilingual edition - translated from French to American English by Doug Skinner and Gaylor Olivier. The graphic design of the book has been completely reworked by the London studio Spin and includes 34 new illustrations by Tony Brook.
Free worldwide shipping with purchase.
The Bloody Mary Book: Reinventing a Classic Cocktail by Ellen Brown
The stalwart cocktail classic has been around for almost a century and continues to be the go-to drink for weekend brunches, parties, and game-day tailgating. The Bloody Mary Book features 65 new and innovative recipes to surprise any party guest.
A basic Bloody Mary requires no more skill than simply pouring, but this book makes use of all possible flavors, different liquors, and a rainbow of garnishes that can be purely decorative or practically serve as a main course. The drinks are a dizzying array of creativity, from the Vegan Mary, which is packed with umami, to a Middle Eastern Mary, adding cumin, coriander and harissa for an extra bit of spice, as well as a Gazpacho Mary, pureed with onion, garlic, peppers and cucumber to yield a veritable meal in a glass. The bar food complements the beverages nicely, with Scotch Eggs, Tuna Poke with Mango and Avocado, Smoked Salmon Spread, and Spiced Mixed Nuts, and the garnishes start with homemade Dilly Beans and pickles and ramp up to Beef Jerky and even Ceviche! Whatever your fancy, the Bloody Mary is the perfect weekend drink.
The Bloody Mary: The Lore and Legend of a Cocktail Classic, with Recipes for Brunch and Beyond by Brian Bartels
The Bloody Mary is one of the most universally-loved drinks. Perfect for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and beyond, there simply isn't a wrong time for a Bloody.
In The Bloody Mary, author Brian Bartels--beverage director for the beloved West Village restaurants Jeffrey's Grocery, Joseph Leonard, Fedora, Perla, and Bar Sardine--delves into the fun history of this classic drink.(Did Hemingway create it, as legend suggests? Or was it an ornery Parisian bartender?)
More than 50 eclectic recipes, culled from top bartenders around the country, will have drinkers thinking outside the vodka box and taking garnishes to a whole new level.
Rum Curious: The Indispensable Tasting Guide to the World's Spirit by Fred Minnick
Once the drink of sailors and swashbuckling pirates, rum is the most versatile -- and the most varied -- spirit in the world. It is consumed neat as a sipping drink, on the rocks, and in a dizzying variety of cocktails like the mai tai, mojito, and pina colada.
In Rum Curious, author Fred Minnick first takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the world of rum, describing its many styles; explaining the great variety of fermenting, distilling, and maturing processes; and highlighting distillers and distilleries. He then teaches the reader about tasting rum -- revealing the experience offered by brands ranging from the familiar to the unusual and obscure.
A final section provides recipes for classic and innovative rum cocktails from around the world. Rum Curious is the one book the reader will need to understand and appreciate rum in all its glorious variety.
Other Books
I don't really cover wine books, but sometimes they just show up in the mail. I'm also starting to include books that I think will be of interest/relevant to people in the drinks industry for various reasons. Below, I have a book on Popularity (thinking about it for product development), one on the history of antibiotics (which I'll be reading for connections with the history of alcohol and medicine), and one on Gastrophysics, which I'm sure will have significant cross-over to cocktails.
Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating by Charles Spence
The science behind a good meal: all the sounds, sights, and tastes that make us like what we're eating—and want to eat more.
Why do we consume 35 percent more food when eating with one other person, and 75 percent more when dining with three? How do we explain the fact that people who like strong coffee drink more of it under bright lighting? And why does green ketchup just not work?
The answer is gastrophysics, the new area of sensory science pioneered by Oxford professor Charles Spence. Now he's stepping out of his lab to lift the lid on the entire eating experience—how the taste, the aroma, and our overall enjoyment of food are influenced by all of our senses, as well as by our mood and expectations.
The pleasures of food lie mostly in the mind, not in the mouth. Get that straight and you can start to understand what really makes food enjoyable, stimulating, and, most important, memorable. Spence reveals in amusing detail the importance of all the “off the plate” elements of a meal: the weight of cutlery, the color of the plate, the background music, and much more. Whether we’re dining alone or at a dinner party, on a plane or in front of the TV, he reveals how to understand what we’re tasting and influence what others experience.
This is accessible science at its best, fascinating to anyone in possession of an appetite. Crammed with discoveries about our everyday sensory lives, Gastrophysics is a book guaranteed to make you look at your plate in a whole new way.
The Complete Bordeaux by Stephen Brook
The wines of Bordeaux are universally recognized as being among the finest in the world and in this fully revised and updated edition of his classic text, renowned wine expert Stephen Brook provides an unrivalled survey of the region and its wines.
The Complete Bordeaux offers detailed information on the many communes and appellations of Bordeaux as well as descriptions and assessments of all its major properties. As well as incisive portraits of the leading properties and their produce, Stephen Brook provides a detailed look at Bordeaux's lesser-known areas and chateaux.
There is also an invaluable vintage guide to the last four decades. Bordeaux encapsulates an incredible 13,000 wineries throughout 54 appellations and this book includes a thorough explanation of Bordeaux's history, terroir, and winemaking styles.
Miracle Cure: The Creation of Antibiotics and the Birth of Modern Medicine by William Rosen
As late as the 1930s, virtually no drug intended for sickness did any good; doctors could set bones, deliver babies, and offer palliative care. That all changed in less than a generation with the discovery and development of a new category of medicine known as antibiotics. By 1955, the age-old evolutionary relationship between humans and microbes had been transformed, trivializing once-deadly infections.
William Rosen captures this revolution with all its false starts, lucky surprises, and eccentric characters. He explains why, given the complex nature of bacteria—and their ability to rapidly evolve into new forms—the only way to locate and test potential antibiotic strains is by large-scale, systematic, trial-and-error experimentation. Organizing that research needs large, well-funded organizations and businesses, and so our entire scientific-industrial complex, built around the pharmaceutical company, was born.
Timely, engrossing, and eye-opening, Miracle Cure is a must-read science narrative—a drama of enormous range, combining science, technology, politics, and economics to illuminate the reasons behind one of the most dramatic changes in humanity’s relationship with nature since the invention of agriculture ten thousand years ago.
Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World by Mitch Prinstein
Popular examines why popularity plays such a key role in our development and, ultimately, how it still influences our happiness and success today. In many ways—some even beyond our conscious awareness—those old dynamics of our youth continue to play out in every business meeting, every social gathering, in our personal relationships, and even how we raise our children. Our popularity even affects our DNA, our health, and our mortality in fascinating ways we never previously realized. More than childhood intelligence, family background, or prior psychological issues, research indicates that it’s how popular we were in our early years that predicts how successful and how happy we grow up to be.
But it’s not always the conventionally popular people who fare the best, for the simple reason that there is more than one type of popularity—and many of us still long for the wrong one. As children, we strive to be likable, which can offer real benefits not only on the playground but throughout our lives. In adolescence, though, a new form of popularity emerges, and we suddenly begin to care about status, power, influence, and notoriety—research indicates that this type of popularity hurts us more than we realize.
Realistically, we can’t ignore our natural human social impulses to be included and well-regarded by others, but we can learn how to manage those impulses in beneficial and gratifying ways.
June 1, 2017
A Tron-Inspired Speakeasy Inside an Arcade Bar in San Francisco
Last night I went to the press preview of The Grid inside Coin-op Game Room in San Francisco to have a look and try the drinks. The room opens tonight and will be open for reservations Thursdays through Saturdays.
You enter the room through a fake arcade game door upstairs in the huge venue (that used to be the restaurant Orson back in the day). The space, which has as capacity of 77 people, is mostly done in all white, with one section lit with blue tubing reminiscent of the grid from the video game/movie Tron.
The drinks, on the other hand, were designed to be as colorful as possible to provide a visual pop in the all-white space. They include:
A drink served in The Porthole filled with flowers to change the flavor as the liquid sits inside it
Drinks served on colored ice balls- orange ones filled with orange coloring and blue-green ones filled with chlorophyll
Chlorophyll used in other drinks to turn them dark
Edible flowers served as garnishes to several drinks
A bee bracelet atop a honey-flavored drink
Star Wars tiki mugs
A banana dolphin garnish
Watermelon caviar on one drink
It's all very fun stuff. The menu had a printing error so the one below should be close to what you see below, but with prices ranging from $14 for the G&T to $22 for the Porthole drink (with refills at $12 for it).
The flavor format of the cocktails isn't so avant garde - there are things like an advanced Gin & Tonic, a tiki-style drink with rhum agricole and Batavia Arrak, a drink with Singani (similar to pisco) with sake and watermelon shrub. All tasty, but none so bizarre or challenging that they'd turn people off.
I've been looking for several years for the Big Bright Fun drinks to return to San Francisco (in bars other than tiki bars), and we're finally seeing a return to that with venues like Wildhawk, PCH, and Dirty Habit making drinks bright and juicy again. Death to Brown, Bitter, and Stirred!
Enjoy some photos from the preview below.
May 30, 2017
How to Monogram your Ice Cubes with Ice Brands
It happens to everyone: You pick up an ice cube and can't remember if it belongs to you or someone else. Frustrating! If only your cubes were monogrammed there would be less confusion in the world.
Kidding! But I've seen bars around the world imprinting their clear ice cubes with logos and monograms, so I decided to test out some methods of doing so at home.
Three different easily-getable types brands are below, with pros and cons.
If you're new to Alcademics, you'll want to read up on how to make perfectly clear ice first before you start branding it.
Method One: Use a Wax Seal Stamp.
I bought this brass stamp off Amazon. Copper is the best conducting metal, and I think that's what the bars use to do branded ice in volume, but I found this brass one can easily imprint ice without being heated.
One downside is that there are only fancy versions of letters and symbols available. Oddly, there seems to be a lot more variety/simpler designs for steak brands than for wax seals stamps. The other downside is that it doesn't stamp the ice very deeply.
But still, this is my favorite of the three branding methods.
Method Two: Use a Steak Branding Iron.
I bought this one, with an A for Alcademics. There is a lot of variety in BBQ/steak brands (who knew?) so look around for one that suits your needs.
The downside to this is that the brand does need to be slightly heated. I held this over the flame on my stove for about 2 seconds, so it doesn't take much heat though. You could probably use hot water, or even a lighter!
Method Three: Use a Craft Hobby Tool/Soldering Iron/Woodburning Tool.
I bought this one, plus a set of letters that attach to it.
There are a couple of downsides to this - first, you can only do one letter at a time. Then you have to let it cool down and switch out the letter on the tip before doing the next letter.
Second, the soldering iron gets very hot, so you barely touch it to the ice and it makes a deep imprint. You lose a lot of the subtlety of the letter design.
And third, with the letters/words you have to imprint them backwards.
So this is probably the least clean way to brand your ice, but you can customize it the most with the full alphabet. Then, just for fun, I put back on the basic needle-shaped tip on the soldering iron (that comes with the original iron; no need for add-ons) and wrote some words freehand.
Because I have the maturity of a 15-year old, this is what I made:
But you know, you can make other designs and words freehand that are better suited to adults.
The full index of ice experiments is here - lots of other fun projects with ice.
May 18, 2017
Trying Out the Roca Patron Ice Ball Press
If you're an ice/cocktail nerd you've probably seen an ice ball press - a heavy metal object that squishes and melts a big piece of ice into a sphere. The first ones out years ago were branded by The Macallan scotch and found in whisky bars, then later became for sale by other manufacturers. Later on, some brands were making versions that were still spheres, but pressed with the shape of a soccer ball, then in other shapes like diamonds and snowflakes.
Just this year I've seen ones made in brand-specific shapes. One of them was made for Roca Patron, the all-tahona-crushed-agave line of Patron tequila. It is in the shape of the volcanic tahona stone that was used to crush the baked agave plant to separate the fibers and expose the fermentable sugars prior to fermentation/distillation. Patron and most all tequila makers that use tahonas now uses cement-filled wheels with a central motor, which you can see in this video I took during a distillery visit a few years ago.
Anyway, Patron kindly lent me one of their ice disc molds to play around with at home. These won't be available for sale anywhere - they're just featured at bar accounts to promote serving Roca Patron over ice - but I think in the coming couple years we'll be seeing a lot of variations as the universe catches up to our ice geekery.
So here's a visual tour of the Roca Patron ice disc press: The press itself is of heavy (probably-copper) metal.
As with all of these, it's in two parts with the mold shape in the middle.
One thing different about this ice ball press is that they sent along with it insulated ice molds to make clear ice pucks. That was always the problem with the regular ice sphere makers - unless you have clear ice going in, you get a cloudy ice ball. These are the clear ice puck makers. They're an insulated box with a rubbery mold insert. Using directional freezing, the water in them will freeze from the top down, so the ice in the mold will be clear, and the remaining ice below it cloudy.
In the pictures, any of the ice that looks cloudy is just frosty. You know I wouldn't allow cloudy ice a place in my freezer ;)
You can see a finished puck being squished into an ice tahona in this video at regular speed:
And in this sped-up one:
Sorry I'm pretty terrible at videography, and also at photographing the resulting discs, but they're pretty "cool."
This is what I do for fun. That was fun!
May 15, 2017
Using Isolated Acids in Cocktails: A Report and Recipes
In my latest article for CooksScience.com, I wrote about bartenders using isolated acids like citric, malic, tartaric, and succinic to amplify flavors and acidity in cocktails.
They're doing this for a number of reasons - to make batched cocktails with non-spoiling citrus flavors, to add a generic citrus flavor to cocktails without specific lemon/lime notes to get in the way, to re-acidify cocktail ingredients that have been centrifuged-clarified, and to make use of tons of leftover orange juice created because uber-popular Old Fashioneds only need orange peels.
My part of the story is the investigation into how and why bartenders are playing with isolated acids; then the team from America's Test Kitchen played around with the actual acids, and creating a couple of cocktails with added acids you can try at home.
May 9, 2017
Edible Flowers Frozen in Incredibly Clear Ice Balls
I'm on a mission to freeze everything I can get my hands on into crystal clear ice balls.
To make them clear, I'm using a thermos and ice ball mold - you can read about the method to make clear ice spheres on this post.
In the past, I've made plain clear spheres, spheres with a spiralized lime, and a whole bunch of other lime slices and wedges. It's been fun.
I also bought a bunch of edible flowers and toyed with those. Note that if you're going to reproduce these at home, it's really important to use edible flowers, not regular flowers that may have been coated with pesticides and such.
I started with edible orchids:
I also tried other flowers:
Once again you can read about how to do that here.
And for more pics of my ongoing ice experiments, check out my Instagram page.
