Author: Camper English

  • Making Crystal Clear Ice in Wired Magazine

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    Camper English
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    Run screaming to the newsstand to pick up the June issue of Wired magazine, because there is a story by me in it. Sure it's only 100 words long and it's about how to make clear ice, something you may have read about here, but you can consider it a collector's item.     Update: The…

  • The New Alcademics Banner

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    My experiments with ice continue. I've got a routine down to make clear chunks of ice and now I'm experimenting with freezing objects into it. As you can see I have some room to improve but I did make a groovy, if a bit large, new banner for Alcademics.

  • The Olive Centipede: The Frightening New Release in the Torture Garnish Genre

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    Camper English
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    The Olive Centipede was created by Dr. Heiner, a disturbed German bartender formerly famous for his flair garnishing techniques. The evil Dr. Heiner decided to create a garnish centipede, made from sewing three olives together along the olives’ digestive tracks, pit-to-pimento.

  • Blending Scotch Whisky at Morrison Bowmore

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    After my visit to the Bowmore and Auchentoshan distilleries, our group stopped by the headquarters of their parent company, Morrison Bowmore. (This company is in turned owned by Suntory, and is distributed in the United States by Skyy Spirits.)   There we met with Senior Blender Iain McCallum, who is sort of a legend even…

  • An Auchentoshan Distillery Visit

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    On the last day of my trip to Scotland with Bowmore, we went to another distillery, Auchentoshan. This distillery is located just outside of Glasgow, on a former estate. Auchentoshan is in the Lowland region of Scotland, one of just five single-malt-producing distilleries there. It’s also unique as the only scotch distillery that triple distills…

  • Aging and Terroir on Islay

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    The malting and distillation are only the first two weeks in the life of a scotch whisky: the aging time in barrels is where the liquid spends the vast majority of its existence- and where it gains much of its flavor. In this post we look at the potential influence of place in scotch whisky,…

  • A Visit to Bowmore on Islay in Scotland

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    Hello from Islay! I'm in Scotland on a trip with Bowmore.   After a first night of bar exploration and jetlag adaptation in Glasgow, I was ready for the press trip to begin. I spent the morning blogging about the previous night, then had a day to explore Glasgow. I can't say I learned a…

  • Dashing Don Lee and Greg Boehm’s Old Tools

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    On Monday April 5th, Greg Boehm of Cocktail Kingdom and Don Lee of Momofuko Ssam Bar gave a talk at Rickhouse in San Francisco. Boehm's plane was delayed so Lee gave an impromptu talk on one of his bar science projects. (When I last spoke with him, he was measuring the BRIX count of sugar…

  • California Rum

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    Camper English
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    Last week I visited the St. George Spirits distillery to sample their new rum, Agua Libre, and watch them distill more of it. The new release was distilled from fresh California-grown sugar cane juice (not molasses) and aged for two and a half years in French oak barrels. From the media contact: After pressing 25…

  • How Beachbum Berry Saved Easter

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      My friends were throwing a zombie-themed Easter party (raising from the dead, get it?) and planned cocktails to serve at it. They had a Painkiller, Hemmingway Daiquiri, and Dark n' Stormy on the menu. Obviously something was missing: the Zombie. As they went shopping for booze and mixers, my friend kept texting me about…