At the Tales of the Cocktail convention, I attended a seminar hosted by Ira Koplowitz and Nick Kosevich of Bittercube Bitters called On Creating Cocktail Citrates & Elixirs.
The seminar lead up to the point that if you want to make lasting kegged (and often carbonated) cocktails, you might need to use citrates.
One of the presenters smartly called kegged cocktails "the new punch," and interestingly, like vintage punch, citrates start with oleo saccharum then add some science.
Citrates are an approximation of sour mix: sugar and citrus combined, but in a form that is predictable, reproducible, and stable. They start with an oleo saccharum (citrus peels and sugar), then add other acids and mouthfeel agents.
This is important, they say, because citrus changes dramatically after being juiced/cut (BRIX level falls, pH rises, organic compounds change and degrade) especially after 24 hours. They also noted that for carbonated cocktails, citrates reduce nucleation points that interfere with good carbonation.
So the goal of a citrate is to replace or reduce citrus and syrup in a cocktail. They noted that citrates are not identical to sour mix – if you just match the BRIX and pH level, you won't get to where you need to be. And you can't just use citric acid either.
Citrates Are Composed Of:
Water
Sugar
Mouthfeel agents (tapioca starch can be used; also pulp)
Natural oils
Acids (this is their basic formula)
Citric acid 95%
Sodium citrate 1% (gives a bit of salty mouthfeel)
Malic acid 4% (gives sourness)
Elixirs, by their definition, are compound flavor citrates plus water.
You can read more about them in this PDF document on the Bittercube website. It gives a good overview of the what and why of citrates and elixirs. It also includes recipes for several citrates, elixirs, and a kegged cocktail.
Many bars that use citrus in their kegged cocktails use a citrate by some form (and often by another name), so you might have unknowingly tried one already.
For more reading on the topic, check out Dave Arnold's book Liquid Intelligence.
Recently I was speaking on a panel based around the era of David A. Embury's book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks, first published in 1948.
Then, they were coming out of Prohibition that ended in 1933 and World War II that ended in 1945.
He notes what coming out of an era of bad drinks into a good one is like:
Most of the present generation learned to drink and most of the present-day bartenders learned their profession during the past thirty-seven years. The first fourteen years of this period were devoted to the famous ‘experiment, noble in purpose,’ and the remaining years have not yet been sufficient to erase wholly the ignoble effects of that era.
During prohibition the overwhelming majority of available liquor consisted of bathtub gin and Scotch "just off the boat" (ferryboat from either Hoboken or Brooklyn).
So unutterably vile were these synthetic concoctions that the primary object in mixing a cocktail became the otherwise emollient and anti-emetic ingredients (cream, honey, Karo, canned fruit juices, etc.) to make it reasonably possible to swallow the resultant concoction and at the same time to retain a sufficient content of renatured alcohol to insure ultimate inebriety.
Just how much dilution of the "gin"-bottle content might be necessary to accomplish this supposedly salutary result depended largely on the intestinal fortitude and esophageal callosity of the particular individual involved.
During the talk, I mentioned how that was like drinking in 2001 or 2005 or so, when fresh ingredients were not the norm. That first fresh lime juice Margarita you had changed everything.
But also it's a lot like being a grown-up drinker as opposed to a college-aged one where you were trying to hide the taste of the liquor underneath brightly-colored sugary liqueurs.
This ice ball process is similar to the method using the insulated mugs and making ice blocks/cubes in a cooler:
You fill the ice ball molds with water, and float it hole-facing-down in water in the cooler.
As the water freezes from the top-down (due to the insulated cooler), it pushes any trapped air and impurities toward the bottom of the cooler, leaving only clear ice in the mold.
Method:
Fill the cooler almost full with hot tap water. Allow it to cool for a few hours until it is about body temperature. Separate the molds put them in the water and re-assemble them under water making sure that all of the air is out of them.
Grasp the top and bottom of the mold keeping one finger over the drain hole of the mold. Take it out of the water and dump the water remaining in the white plastic part of the mold.
Place the mold back in the water, hole side down and release your finger from the drain hole on the rubber side of the mold. This will ensure that air has not gotten in and give the top some buoyancy.
Place the cooler in the freezer for 48 hours. The ice will form at about 1 inch per 12 hours. The block will not freeze all the way through and that is exactly how you want it!
When you remove your cooler it will look like this:
Chip away the surrounding ice using the ice pick. Reserve the ice as you will have some nice, clear rocks for other cocktails.
You will get a block out with the molds frozen in it. Work on the shammy or tea towel so it does not slip around.
Remove the sphere from the molds, they will just pop out no need for running water over them.
Tempering The Ice
Allow the spheres to temper (sit out) on the towel for about 10 minutes. Tempering them is an important step so that they don’t crack when liquid is poured over them.
You can store them in the freezer but remember to temper them when you remove them.
When they come out of the mold or freezer they will be dull on the outside. You know they are tempered when they are clear all around.
Thanks much to reader Jason F. for the method, the text, and the pictures!
The index of all ice experiments on Alcademics is here.
Here is my packing list, without multiples. 99 things, dayumn.
ice cream maker balls
cream
lemon + lime juice
knife
sugar
simple syrup
eggs
orange flower water
East Imperial soda water
East Imperial tonic water
batch container
measuring containers
rock salt (1/2 cup container)
ladel
ice cracker tool
Bar towels
pipettes
Clamp post
clamps
plastic poster tubes with perforated red caps
aquarium filters- bio bags
coconut charcoal
mavea charcoal
coffee filters
Unfiltered cake vodka
Filtered cake vodka
dehydrated cake vodka
Milk
Bar spoon
Funnel
Clarified Zacapa
Test tube rack
Test tubes
Dehydrated blueberries
Dehydrated strawberries
Annatto seeds
Saffron
Cochineal
Magnifying glass
Blure
Tonic syrup
blue water
Acid Phosphate
Isi Siphon
CO2 cartridge
Blacklight flashlight
Salt
Black sheet
Cooked agave
Small plates
Wet naps
Clear bucket
Ammonium nitrate
Stir bar
Thermometer gun
2-liter bottles
white wine vinegar
baking soda
funnel
U-Fizz hoses
U-Fizz bakind soda tube
big pitcher
measuring cup
Burton Water salts
piloncillo pyramids
piloncillo syrup
clarified piloncillo syrup
Bottle of chill filtered scotch
Bottle of not chill filtered scotch
Juniper oil
Infusion of DJ blanco with baked pine shavings
Oak essence
Grape seed extract
Caramel coloring
Glycerin
pine shavings
baked pine shavings
Bonne-O Carbonator
Extension cord
Carbonator pills
Long tube with cap on one end
soda water
Insta-Foam
Bottle opener
Nuun for Alka-seltzer demo
Zacapa Rum 2 bottles
Don Julio Tequila Blanco 2 bottles
Don Julio Tequila Reposado 1 bottle
Don Julio Tequila Anejo 2 bottles
Don Julio Tequila 70 (70th anniversary clear anejo) 1 bottle
Label Maker
Extra Label Maker Tape
Sample cups
Tripod holder for poster paper
Tasting straws
Cinchona bark
Microscope attachment for computer
Bamboo Straws
2 Ice chest/bucket
White background paper/Black background poster paper
Plus I packed 200 baggies of dehydrated liqueur for my other seminar and some other stuff. Perhaps the greatest achievement was fitting it all into 3 suitcases.
If it were easy to make good whisky anywhere, it would be made everywhere. And if it were easy to make good single-malt whisky in four years, everyone would do it. But Kavalan makes some very well-respected juice in four years in the mostly-hot country of Taiwan.
On my trip to the Kavalan whisky distillery that you can read out here and here, I spent a lot of time asking questions about what the differences in production are between Kavalan and scotch whisky, and other places where they had to compensate for their unique aging environment. Here are a few observations:
Preparation
They know that that they'll only be aging their whisky for 4-7 years, most of it closer to 4. They also know that their climate is hot and humid, though there can be a temperature range during the year that will suck the whisky into and out of the barrels causing interaction. They also know there will be a significant evaporation rate (angels' share) so that's another reason not to leave it aging too long.
In short, they don't have much time to get it right. There is no "fix it in the barrel" mentality, as too long in the barrel will taste just as bad as too little time in the barrel. They've basically got one shot to get it right so they go into it with cautious perfectionism.
Ingredients
American oak barrels give less tannin absorption than do French oak. So their ex-sherry, port, etc. barrels must be made from American oak.
Like other top whisky producers, they fly over to Spain and Portugal to personally source the best barrels.
Yeast – They use an alcohol-producing yeast and a flavor-producing yeast. I am not sure if this has to do with climate at all, or is just a unique method. See fermentation below.
Process
Fermentation is temperature-controlled to ensure consistency in batches. It is a long fermentation using 2 different yeasts and an additionally long period for lactic fermentation. This contributes to the signature fruity flavor profile Kavalan is after. I am guessing that given the short amount of aging time, they want the fruit notes to be most forward and the grain notes (signaling too-young whisky) less prominent.
Heads and tails cuts are different: A tight heart cut (so less heads and tails overall), but a little bit more of the heads and way less of the tails. Most whiskies that will sit in barrels a long time include a fair portion of the tails, as they break down/interact with the wood/oxygen over time and turn into good stuff. At Kavalan they don't have that much time.
Larger barrels (ex-port and sherry) are stored mostly on the hotter top floor of the aging warehouse. Larger barrels take longer to age the whisky inside them, as there is less wood-to-liquid ratio of smaller bourbon barrels.
Cautious Rechar. They do rechar barrels but the whisky aged in them is used for the base-level single-malt and the 46% version of that, not for any of the (so much better) Solist bottlings. Which helps explain why I like the single-cask bourbon barrel bottling so much better than those other two.
The sherry barrels come off a real solera after 20 years or so, then they are seasoned with 20 years old oloroso before Kavalan gets them.
Budget
Kavalan is a small part of a huge company, so they have budget advantages that they have certainly used.
I have sipped so many failed experiments over the years, many from otherwise quality distillers. I hate it when otherwise-quality producers put their failed experiments into bottles and try to pass them off to consumers. At Kavalan they purchased I believe 8 hybrid pot-column stills when they first built the distillery, which that they stopped using after they found that they didn't produce good whisky. (Don't worry, I think they have found another use for them that we'll hear about later.) That was an expensive decision; clearly one of many.
They hired whisky doctor Jim Swan, who is certainly not cheap, to get things running and continually checking in. He was there during my visit distilling a peated malt.
They throw away (or rather, recycle into the next batch) a lot of heads and tails.
The shave-toast-rechar process used on the Vinho Barrique barrels is also quite precious and must be super expensive, as they have to rebuild all those barrels in the process. I don't know too much about this process but have heard it is done in the wine industry (probably minus the recharring).
Consistency/Computer Control
Computers control washing, fermentation, and distillation.
They test everything along the way.
So, I'm sure that's not quite everything they do at Kavalan to make good whisky quickly in a hot climate, but it's a lot of it. So you might not want to run right out and set up your distillery in Sumatra just yet.
This spring I had the unique pleasure of visiting the Kavalan single-malt whisky distillery in Yilan, Taiwan.
This is a long post, so get comfy if you want to read, or just scroll through the pictures.
The week previous to my visit, their Vinho Barrique Solist whisky won the World's Best Single Malt Whisky award from the Beverage Tasting Institute, so everyone was in a really good mood. I think we were the first American journalists invited to visit, so that was double awesome.
The young distillery already receives 1 million visitors per year, 30% of them foreign. It's free to visit and to get a whisky sample at the distillery, which also has a gift shop and a huge cafe.
Kavalan's History
Kavalan is located in the county of Yilan, not far from Taipei, and the name Kavalan is the name of the indigenous people of the region.
Our hosts for the trip were master blender, global brand ambassador, and director of global business development Ian Chang; and consultant whisky maker Dr. Jim Swan.
Kavalan whisky is just one small part of the multi-billion dollar King Car company. (King means "gold", so it's supposed to represent a golden car rolling in to the future.) This company and Kavalan whisky was founded by Mr. Lee Tien-Tsai, whose 50-year old son we met for an epic banquet later in the trip. The company has many different divisions including, in part, consumer products (Mr. Brown Coffee, cans, cleaners and insecticides, instant noodles), health supplements and biotech research, food safety analysis, horticultural research, and more.
The factory where Kavalan is located also produces bottled water (from the local mountains), yogurt, and tea beverages. There is also a small conference center on-site. The factory was established in 1995. Then the rather large distillery was built in 2005 – all in 9 months. The first drop of new make spirit was made on March 11, 2006 at 3:30 PM.
Kavalan is so far the only whisky made in Taiwan, though another company has recently announced plans to begin.
Water, Barley, Yeast, and Fermentation
The water comes from the nearby mountains, naturally filtered through the earth and comes out as spring water. Swan said the water is clean and pure and there is plenty of it. It has a nearly neutral pH, and 17-20 ppm Calcium, which is a little higher than in Scotland according to Chang, but overall it’s soft water.
As covered a bit in my Water Project here on Alcademics, Chang notes that calcium, zinc, and magnesium quantities in the water are important for fermentation. (The yeast needs these minerals.)
The mountains not far from the distillery provide the water used for Kavalan.
They use untreated water for fermentation, and then reverse osmosis-filtered water for barrel proofing and bottle proofing, starting with same water source. (Many other distilleries like those in Kentucky use municipal water for the watering to bottle strength from barrel strength.)
The 2-row malted barley comes from Scotland. When it arrives it is ground in a malt mill, then mashed and fermented just like scotch whisky.
Washing is when hot water is poured on top of the ground-up barley to rinse out the fermentable sugars and leave behind the husks (which would burn against the side of the still). The barley is washed three times in the mash tun.
The copper mash tun was made in Scotland. It takes a 4 ton mash 8 hours each. There are three washes: 65 Celsius for the first, 85C for the second, and 90C for the third wash. The water from the third wash goes into the first wash of the next batch rather than into the next barley wash. This is the same process and more or less the same temperatures used in Scotland, according to Chang.
Fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks called washbacks. These are temperature controlled to ensure consistency.
Fermentation is a bit different at Kavalan. They use two strains of yeast, both "dry-pitched" (added dry rather than wet). One is a "core fermenter" that produces lots of alcohol from the grains. This ferments for about 10 hours.
The second yeast they called a "fruit producer," meaning the fermentation with this yeast brings out a lot of fruit notes to the fermented barley. They let this ferment for about 20 hours, after which most of the yeast die.
The yeast then undergoes mostly lactic fermentation for an additional 30 hours, so that it's 60 hours total. "We need that long to get the fruit," said Swan.
Fermentation here is temperature controlled for a slow gradient of heat rise. It begins at 18C and ends at 34C. The beer is between 8-8.5% ABV after fermentation, which is slightly high compared to Scotland.
Distillation
Initially they were using hybrid stills – discontinuous stills with pot stills on the bottom and a short column on top. These are no longer used for whisky production.
Stills no longer used for whisky at Kavalan.
In 2006 they brought in 2 pot stills (a set of wash and spirit stills), and then 2 more stills in 2008. They have three more pair of stills coming.
Today they produce 9 million bottles of Kavalan per year. Wow.
Chang told me that since they know with the hot climate their whisky will not age long in barrels, they have to make adjustments to the heads/tails cuts over what one might do in Scotland. They make a tighter cut overall (less heads and tails), do keep in a little bit more of the heads than is typical, and less tails.
They use less tails because they know they won’t be aging it for very long, and tails take longer to purify as they interact with the wood in a barrel.
As it typical they recycle feints and foreshots into the next batch's second distillation.
Their pot ales (stuff at the bottom of the still that's not alcohol) are treated to neutrality then released into water system.
The spent grains from the barley mostly go to pig farmers as they don’t have a lot of cattle on Taiwan.
The spirit comes off the still around 65% ABV and is diluted to 59.5 – 59.9 % before going into the barrel. (This is the flash point for whisky, according to Chang.) Swan says that this makes no flavor difference to the whiskey as opposed to the standard 63% barrel fill proof in Scotland.
Because of demand they run their stills then 24/7/365. As mentioned, more are on the way.
Aging in a Hot Climate
Between October and March they have cold winds coming from Siberia that bring precipitation and humidity along with the breeze. In fact, the average temperature ranges from 58F (14.4C) in January to 83F (28.4C) in July. So it's not like the region is always the same temperature. However the humidity is always high: 89-94% humidity all year round.
Chang says that the sub-tropical climate of the reason accelerates maturation but it's bad for the angel's share – lots of evaporation. It was either Chang or Swan who said, "Subtropical heat is like sandpaper – it sands away all the rough edges into a soft and round crystal ball of whisky.”
After a particularly hot summer they noticed their angel's share was as high as 18%, but normally it’s 10-12%.
Barrels and Warehousing
They age all their whisky in American oak, which Swan says is better in hot weather because it has less tannins than European oak.
The barrels are stored in a 5-storey warehouse. All the barrels are palletized (stand on their ends rather than their sides) except the large puncheons on the top floor.
The bottom and top floors have high ceilings. The bottom floor's ceiling height was because they thought they were going to put big vats there but then didn’t. The top floor have high ceilings because the sun hits the roof and they want to minimize that heat.
On the 5th floor it gets up to 42 degrees Celsius, while on the ground floor it’s 27 degrees at the same time.
I believe they are using one of two warehouses onsite currently, each has the capacity to hold 60,000 casks.
They do not rotate casks, but they put different sizes of casks on different floors. On the top floor are stored sherry butts (500L) and port pipes (600L). The bigger the cask, the slower the maturation, they say. The first through fourth floors hold mostly the ex-bourbon casks.
Rechar Barrels
As you'll read in the next post for specific whiskies, sometimes they rechar barrels at Kavalan. They are used in certain expressions as noted in the next post.
Because this post is already 2 billion words long, I'll save until tomorrow a post about how all these processes come together to make the bottles of Kavalan you see on the shelf.
During the Golden State of Cocktails in Los Angeles earlier this year, I attended a talk called The Pharmacology Behind Creating Flavor-Addicting Cocktails. It was given by Larrian Gillespie, MD, who also runs the site AddictionMixology. On the site she sells science-enhanced cocktail ingredients and equipment like ultra-sonic infusers and insta-foam for cocktails.
She covered a ton of incredibly interesting material in a short amount of time, so below are just a few notes that I jotted down. I'd highly recommend attending her seminars if you see them pop up in your area. You can sign up for the mailing list on the site to hear about upcoming seminars.
Supertasters are not as sensitive to umami and salt. They are sensitive to items in the nightshade family like eggplant, chili, potatoes, and tomatoes.
I've tried those supertaster strips previously and only came in at a high normal taster, but this time we tried other strips that test for the dominant and recessive genes and I registered as a supertaster on both of them.
In the last 5 years science has shown we have taste receptors all over our body, not just on the tongue, with all of them tasting the environment in some way. Creepy.
Umami signals nourishment to the brain. Breast milk is very high in umami.
Flavor pairing, on a molecular level, allows you to increase the effect of flavors when put together. Mushrooms have no connections to any other flavor, while meat and potatoes share around 170 connections. She has a flavor pairing database launching this summer called The Cocktail Matrix. She told me via email, "Unlike any other database, this one has a living matrix that shows you the precise chemical elements that are matched in a Negroni….or any drink you compose…and it will also allow you to play Mr Potato head and swap out an ingredient for another flavor comparable profile….all the while keeping the ABV intact and the ratios."
87% of Bitters comply with Lipinski's Rule of Five, which has something to do with drug development.
Customers will pay 30% more for pretty drinks than regular ones.
Sound makes you less sensitive to taste, except for umami. (So maybe when the music is too loud in the bar customers taste less. But on the other hand, we know that loud music makes people drink more so perhaps it evens out the effect…)
At this year's Golden State of Cocktails in Los Angeles, I attended a seminar by Giuseppe Gallo called "The Truth About Vermouth."
I knew a few things having visited both Martini and Noilly Prat in the past (follow those links to my distillery visit posts), but learned a lot more about the history and legal categorization of vermouth during this talk.
Below are my notes. You can see most of this information on Giuseppe Gallo's Slideshare page as well.
The word "vermouth" is based on the word for wormwood.
Absinthe (also containing wormwood) is based on the Greek word for unpalatable, referring to wormwood's bitterness.
Wormwood-infused wines go way, way back.
The spice trade in the vermouth region was monopolized by Genova in Italy (bordering the Piedmont region in which Turin is located) and Marseille in France (across the bay from Noilly Prat's Marseillan)
Part of Piedmont and part of Southern France were both part of the Kingdom of Savoy at one time. Then the Chambery region (where Dolin was founded; interior of France, north of Marseille) was traded to France, and the capital of Savoy was moved to Turin (where Martini was founded). So both sweet and dry styles of vermouth can essentially be traced to one place.
The first commercial vermouth was Carpano, founded in 1786. Sweet-style vermouth. A legal decree made the official style of vermouth in Turin be the sweet "rosso" style.
Noilly Prat in Marseillan was a dry style of vermouth, founded in 1813. It helped make France the center of dry-style of vermouth.
The EU laws for vermouth (note all legal stuff below is based on the EU law, which is not the same as in the US) are here: EEC No 1601/91 and state
Must be at least 75% wine
Must use artemesia ( of which wormwood is a member) as the main bittering agent [edit: the actual language around it is "the characteristic taste of which is obtained by the use of appropriate derived substances, in particular of the Artemisia species, which must always be used"]
14.5% – 21% ABV
Must be fortified
Categories of Aromatized Wine (all have added alcohol and artemesia) are:
Vermouth – as above
Americano – with gentian as the main bittering agent, and orange peel
Bitter Wine – including Amer Picon. Gentian
Vino Chinato – quinine wine
Vino All'uovo – Marsala and wine-based egg liqueurs like Vuv
Geographical Indications for Vermouth Can Be:
Vermouth d Chambery
Vermouth di Torino (which uses wormwood from the Piedmont region, and produced and bottled within region)
Sugar quantities for vermouth are:
(a) 'extra-dry': in the case of products with a sugar content of less than 80 grams per litre;
(b) 'dry': in the case of products with a sugar content of less than 50 grams per litre;
(c) 'semi-dry': in the case of products with a sugar content of between 50 and 90 grams per litre;
(d) 'semi-sweet': in the case of products with a sugar content of between 90 and 130 grams per litre;
(e) 'sweet': in the case of products with a sugar content of more than 130 grams per litre.
Martini vermouth does all their infusions into neutral alcohol, not into the wine itself
Martini (sweet, I assume) vermouth lasts 28 months after bottling when closed, and up to 8 months in the refrigerator after being opened.
In my latest piece for Details.com I wrote about the history and current status of popcorn in drinks, be it fat-washed in or garnished atop.
It turns out that a million different places are doing it, and I mentioned about half of them and the various ways they're incorporating the movie food into the drinks.
I'm at the very beginning of some research into natural food colorings for my seminar on Prehistoric Cocktail Technology at Tales of the Cocktail this July in New Orleans.
Last week I was in my local hippie grocery store (this doesn't narrow it down much when you live in San Francisco) and saw a line of plant-based natural food colorings called Color Garden. I wanted to see if they declared what they used to make the colorings, and they did:
I am playing around with some of these flavors at home, dehydrating ingredients to concentrate them and adding them to water or vodka to make them liquid again. I'll keep you posted.
But an interesting thing to note is that while some of the colors have added citric acid, others have added baking soda: an acid and a base. Luckily, the website explained why this is the case for natural colors (content edited for clarity):
Warm colors (red, orange, and yellow) prefer an acidic environment. You might consider adding lemon juice.
Cool colors (green, blue, and purple) prefer an alkaline environment. You might consider adding baking soda.
Watch out for cream of tartar (in frosting). Cream of tartar lowers the pH of the icing (makes it more acidic), which is good for shelf-life, but this may limit pure natural food colors to the “warm” colors: red, orange, and yellow.
This could be something to keep in mind if you/I want to use colors in cocktails, as they tend to be acidic rather than basic.
At the Tales of the Cocktail convention, I attended a seminar hosted by Ira Koplowitz and Nick Kosevich of Bittercube Bitters called On Creating Cocktail Citrates & Elixirs. 
