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Aquafaba Experiments Round 3
In previous experiments with aquafaba to replace egg white for froth in cocktails:
I tried chickpea/garbanzo bean water from canned beans, from uncooked and cooked beans, and from chickpea flour both cooked and uncooked.

I found in those experiments that canned water was best for the amount and quality of froth produced, followed by uncooked flour water, followed closely by boiled bean water.

Though I didn't love the taste of unboiled garbanzo bean flour water, I decided to try garbanzo bean flour as a solid – by adding the flour directly to the drink before shaking.

I tried 1/4 teaspoon chickpea flour, 1/8 tsp, amd 1/16 tsp.

I found that 1/16th wasn't quite enough, but 1/8 teaspoon seemed to work just fine. (note this experiment was with vodka and water plus the flour)

One issue with using the flour (rather than water with flour in it that's left to settle as in previous experiments) is that it settles out relatively quickly to the bottom of the glass. That's why I wanted to minimize the amount in the first place.

A second issue is the flavor: though not incredibly powerful, there are notes of raw flour and a slight tannic or metallic flavor.

On the plus side, if only occasionally using an egg white replacement in cocktails, chickpea flour is shelf stable compared with liquid. It might be worth testing to see if the flavor of the uncooked flour and the settling is tolerable.

However if you're hoping to use aquafaba more often or switch to an egg white alternative permanently, I would think you'd want something that doesn't settle in the glass and has less of a flavor impact. For that, I would return to the posts with the technique by Hannes Schmitt or Aquafaba Experiments Round 1 to see a few options.
July 11, 2019
Aquafaba Experiments Round 2
In my previous post I tried some ways to see what preparation method makes the best aquafaba: chickpea/garbanzo bean water used in place of egg whites to make cocktails frothy.

To recap, I found the best aquafaba waters were, in order:
1. From the can
2. Chickpea flour boiled then letting the solids settle off.
3. Cooking water for chickpeas.
In the next set of experiments I wanted to see if I could produce more water in cooking and see if I could use unboiled chickpea flour. So my aquafabas were:
1. Quick-Soaked Beans Cooked for 90 Minutes in Lots of Water: I did the quick soak method this time: I brought the beans to a boil for 3 minutes, then let them soak for 2 hours before discarding the water. This water had only a slight flour aroma.
2. Quick-Soaked Beans Cooked for 3 Hours in Lots of Water. This had a touch of flour aroma.
3. Boiled Chickpea Flour Water: The same sample from the previous experiment. Its aroma was kind of like flour.
4. Unboiled Chickpea Flour Water: I shook some chickpea flour with water in a jar then let it settle overnight. I used only the lightest of this water to minimize solids. It had a fairly yucky "raw" flour aroma.
5. Second Cook Water, from previous experiment: After cooking beans, I reboiled half of them for an additional 30 minutes and kept this water.
For the experiments, I used a Disaronno Sour (2 parts Disaronno to 1 part lemon juice), plus 1/2 ounce aquafaba.

The winners were:
- #4 Unboiled Chickpea Flour Water. The downside to this is that it has the most flavor – I consider it tannic but others might say metallic; plus it's greyish in color compared with the brownish ones.
- #5 Second Cook Water, which was sort of the control. It tasted better than the winner.
- #3 Boiled Chickpea Flour Water. This also tasted fine/neutral.
- Then 1-2, the chickpea water made from long boils with lots of water, didn't produce enough foam to count.
Conclusions:
1. My experiments in boiling less beans for a long period of time failed.
2. Boiled chickpea flour tastes better than unboiled, plus it looks better in the glass. It's not quite as foamy but may be worth the tradeoff.
3. Regular chickpea cooking water is still pretty decent. It would be worth looking at the costs between using dried chickpeas vs the flour.
Future Experiments:

If this chickpea flour is working so well, maybe I should try using the smallest scoop possible I can of it. I did try this previously and found that the solids were too problematic, but it's worth another shot.

I've now tried it and here is the post!
July 10, 2019
Aquafaba Experiments Round 1
After reading the detailed description of making the best aquafaba by Hannes Schmitt from Electric Eel on yesterday's post, I decided I wanted to try some experiments myself to see what makes the best, frothiest, least expensive, least smelly chick pea/garbanzo bean water frother.

Schmitt's method is to hydrate the chickpeas (discarding the water), then cook them (saving the water), then soak them again (keeping the water). You combine the water from the cooking and the soaking together. After my experiments, that looks to be a very good method.

In the first round of experiments I prepared 6 types of chick pea water and made the same drink with all of them:
1. Chickpea Soaking Water: The water used to hydrate dried chickpeas. This was light in color.
2. Cooking Water: The water used to boil chickpeas (about 90 minutes, probably too long). The resulting water the next day was super gloppy, nearly gelatinous. In the future I would boil the beans for less time.
3. Second Cook Water: After cooking the beans, I boiled half of them for an additional 30 minutes and kept this water. This water was also gelatinous the next morning.
4. Post-Cook Soak Water: The other half of the beans after cooking I left to soak with water overnight. This water was lighter in color, with more of a fresh bean aroma than cooked.
5. Canned Chickpea Water (unsalted! make sure to buy unsalted): Traditional aquafaba from the can. Note that I had opened the can previously and transferred the water to another container. It seems to have lost most of the initial farty smell and smelled more like the flour.
6. Boiled Chickpea Flour Water: I have some chickpea flour, which makes great froth if you add a small scoop in a cocktail, but all the solids settle out. By boiling the chickpea flour I was trying to isolate whatever it is in chickpeas that makes good foam. After boiling for about half an hour or so, I placed the water in a tall jug then the next morning poured off the top portion with less solids evident. It had a touch of bean smell but nothing dramatic.
I then made drinks with all these waters: 1 ounce vodka, 1/2 oz simple syrup, 1/2 ounce lemon juice, 1 ounce water (to mimic ice), and 1/2 ounce aquafaba.

In the first picture below, you can tell the relative colors of the bean waters. The cooking water was darkest, while the flour water was milky.

After shaking in a cocktail. (Number 5 had been freshly reshaken as I spilled some so it's a little more dramatic than in real life.) Note that the flour water #6 on the right has a greyish tint.

Results:
- #5 Canned Chickpea Water was the best, densest foam, by a lot. Note that in other experiments I determined the way to minimize the funky bean smell is to use as little of this as possible. I found that 1/2 teaspoon/barspoon is enough.
- #6 Boiled Chickpea Flour Water was second best. It had the airiest foam.
- #2 Cooking Water. This one had some smell but not too intense.
- Then #3 Second cook water, #4 Post-Cook Rinse water
- Then #1 the Soaking Water didn't do much at all.
It seems that Schmitt's method of adding #2 to #4 (cooking water to post-cook soaking water) would combine some very thick water with a lighter one that still has some foaming action to minimize color and aroma.

The second boil water did produce nice foam, though the beans were probably ruined for anything but hummus after that point. But it did make me think about boiling beans for a super long time with more water to see if that would effectively give us more bang for the buck.

This inspired another round of experiments for the next day (and next blog post): Comparing boiled flour vs unboiled, and seeing if I could boil a small amount of rehydrated chickpeas for a long time to get a good aquafaba.

Next Up: Aquafaba Experiments Round 2

and then Aquafaba Experiments Round 3
July 9, 2019
Rainbow Mini Ice Balls

I purchased a couple of ice cube trays online and made rainbow ice for Pride.

I bought the trays on Amazon. The Hutzler 324 Ball Ice Tray makes 1-inch sized ice balls. It seems pretty good so far though I'm not certain of its longevity.

The Mydio 40 Tray makes small marble-sized ice balls of about half an inch in diameter. It's made of high-quality silicone and seems super sturdy.

Neither make clear ice (that's my jam, as you know), but the size of ice they make is very fun.

To make the colored ice balls I used either commercial food coloring or natural colorings like turmeric and hibiscus.

Then I just stacked them up in a glass in rainbow order. Silly, fun.

June 27, 2019
Using Burrata Water in Place of Egg Whites in Cocktails
Last week I received a pitch about the cocktails at Oxalis in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. One drink ingredient stood out to me:

Breakfast Martini, inspired by the classic cocktail and exclusively offered during brunch, this frothy cocktail features burrata water instead of egg white and gomme syrup instead of orange marmalade, in addition to bergamot, gin and citrus.

Burrata Water!

Lately bartenders' attentions are turning to egg white alternatives for cocktails, from aquafaba (chick pea water) to quillaja soap bark foamer to high-tech products with thickeners and emulsifiers. Burrata water would be another second-use ingredient

Oxalis' Beverage Director Piper Kristensen previously worked at Booker & Dax and Bearded Lady before joining Oxalis, which originally launched as a pop-up dinner series in 2016. I sent Kristensen some questions.

Was the burrata water an original idea or did you see it elsewhere first? I hadn't heard of this previously.
- We have been using whey to boost texture for a while. I don't know of anyone using burrata water now, but I think it's statistically impossible for me to have been the first to think of it.
What is the quantity of burrata water needed to replace egg white? So I guess what's one drink's portion?
- We add 1 oz per drink. I tried 3/4oz- wasn't enough.
Where do you get the burrata water? Is it housemade at the restaurant or is the burrata purchased? (I'm wondering if it matters how fresh the water is or if people can use store-bought stuff.)
- We have a duck purveyor named John Fazio who makes the absolute best burrata we've ever had. I've never tried making the drink with grocery store burrata. I assume it would work. The burrata has to be in the water long enough to equilibrate, and the burrata at my local has been in there for a while.
Is burrata water about the same amount of frothy as using egg white?
- For sure. We goofed around with an eggless ramos and got decent stove-pipe. What I like most about it is that it doesn't break down where the surface of the drink meets the foam, like an egg white. There's a clinical line.
Does it have a flavor?
- We introduced it to make a dirty martini because it's got great salinity and a pleasant hint of milk, but the high alcohol system denatured the proteins like egg drop soup. That flavor marries nicely with citrus in a sour. It's not a strong flavor, but it's distinct.
Cool idea! I may give it a try myself.
June 25, 2019
Sour Mashing as Industrial Waste Recycling

Another exciting bit of information to come out of my visit to the George Dickel distillery was learning more about the sour mashing process.

To review (from a recent post about souring at Jack Daniel's):

"Souring" is not like sourdough starter in that the process' job is to remain consistency between batches. "Souring" means lowering the pH, making it more sour/acidic. "Sour mash"ing is adding backset (stillage) from the previous distillation run to the next one. The stillage contains lots of dead yeast that is food for the new yeast, but also it is acidic and lowers the pH.

At Jack Daniel's they use 30% backset/sour mash. That seems like a lot, so I was wondering: If the purpose of it is to simply lower the pH and provide nutrients, wouldn't a far simpler way to do that be to add some dried nutrients and acid like citric or hydrochloric acid?

Dickel's distiller Nicole Austin set me straight: the sour mash process is smart industrial waste reuse. Yes, the yeast get nutrients from the sour mash (dead yeast; they're cannibals like that). But the distillery also gets recycled water and heat out of it.

The sour mash is the hot liquid that comes off the still, separated from the grain solids but still containing dead yeast and other small particles. It has just been boiled during distillation, so obviously it's hot.

That stillage is added to the cooking as well as the fermentation process at Dickel. In preparing grains for distillation, they are ground up, cooked with hot water to break down carbohydrates into fermentable sugars, and then fermented in the next step. The cooking requires lots of super hot water, and a free source of hot water is the stillage!

At Dickel they also add some stillage/sour mash to the fermentation process as well as in cooking.

Austin says that in the ideal situation, you'd use all stillage water for cooking and fermentation – that would save fresh water. But the dead yeast solids are a limiting factor – too many of them and they stress the live yeast that needs to ferment the cooked grains. So the stillage water needs to be watered down, essentially. Additionally solids retain a lot of heat so it doesn't cool down as fast and this limits how much they can use.

I asked Austin if the sour mashing process then actually has much impact on the flavor of the finished whiskey. She said that it's basically "setting yourself up for success" with a good fermentation.

In conclusion, in addition to acidifying and providing dead yeast as nutrients for a healthy fermentation, the sour mash process is industrial recycling, using stillage both for water and for heat.

Hooray for new-to-me information!

June 21, 2019
Thinking Thoughts About Bottled in Bond

Though I know the rules for bottled in bond whiskey and other spirits, in my head the whole thing operated differently than it does in reality. This came to light for me on a visit to the Cascade Hollow Distilling Co., home of George Dickel. The trip I took was to celebrate their bottled in bond (BIB) release.

I knew that BIB is a guarantee of certain standards – the spirit must be distilled in one season by one distiller at one distillery, be a minimum of 4 years old and bottled at 50% ABV – but I thought it went further than that. In my head the government had an active role in overseeing the bonded warehouse and maybe observing the actual bottling, and that was the point of the whole thing. How naive!

As George Dickel distiller Nicole Austin pointed out, all pre-taxed liquor warehouses are bonded warehouses. So any non-blended whiskey over 4 years old bottled at 50% can be stuck in a bottle and labelled as BIB; there's no special extra process to it. Most single barrel bottlings would meet that if they were bottled at 50% (not that there is any real definition of single barrel). BIB is just a weirdly specific set of rules.

Some Specifics

Speaking of rules, there are some neat things in the wording of bottled in bond spirits on the government's website that I don't usually see spelled out.

Stored for at least four years in wooden containers wherein the spirits have been in contact with the wood surface except for gin and vodka which must be stored for at least four years in wooden containers coated or lined with paraffin or other substance which will preclude contact of the spirits with the wood surface;

So gin and vodka can be bottled in bond if they're stored in non-reactive wood containers. No wonder we don't see any of those on the market.

Unaltered from their original condition or character by the addition or subtraction of any substance other than by filtration, chill proofing, or other physical treatments (which do not involve the addition of any substance which will remain incorporated in the finished product or result in a change in class or type);

They can't have any additives. I assumed this, but never see it spelled out when reading about BIB products. I guess because mostly BIB products are straight bourbon and can't have additives anyway.

Putting Bottled in Bond in Context

We frequently hear the BIB Act of 1897 as the first first consumer protection law, predating the Pure Food and Drug Act by nearly a decade. In an era when many whiskeys were blended and adulterated, this was a guarantee to the consumer of certain minimums.

But also the BIB Act seems to have changed the way whiskey was stored: pre-tax rather than post-tax, in bonded warehouses.

As Wikipedia states, "The practice was also connected to tax law, which provided the primary incentive for distilleries to participate. Distilleries were allowed to delay payment of the excise tax on the stored whiskey until the aging of the whiskey was completed, and the supervision of the warehouse ensured proper accounting and the eventual collection of the tax."

That's a huge deal, tax-wise. If you're aging spirits, imagine having to pay tax on every gallon of whiskey distilled four-plus years before you've sold it. That's a huge burden and this act would have been a huge relief.

[Note that I haven't researched if there was a way to defer tax payment previous to the BIB act, it's possible that this wasn't the first act to defer taxes but it could be.]

So for me, understanding the tax part puts it all together. In 1897 the BIB law guaranteed an unadulterated product to the consumer, and incentivized it to the producer via the tax deferment. I needed to understand both parts of this.

Today most mass market bourbon is 4+ years old and additive-free anyway, the only difference between regular and BIB bottlings is that most brands are blends of various ages and bottled at various proofs. I wouldn't consider bottled in bond products to be a higher statement of quality these days; just a quirky set of standards.

June 20, 2019
A Daylong Visit to the George Dickel Distillery

I first visited the Cascade Hollow Distillery aka George Dickel in 2012, and rereading my previous post it seems a lot has changed since then!

This May (2019) I had the opportunity to revisit the distillery in advance of their release of the new Dickel Bottled in Bond Tennessee Whiskey. For the trip they had us "intern" with various members of the production staff. We didn't really have to do anything (so don't worry I didn't screw up the whiskey); we just got to spend time with team members and were able to ask lots of questions.

At Dickel they distill 6 days per week, on two shifts per day. They shut down distillation every night, unlike larger distilleries that run 24/7. Dickel is expanding but it will take a lot of work to expand to 24/7 production; it didn't sound like that was going to happen in the next couple of years anyway.

They run two staff shifts, roughly 6AM-2PM and 2PM to 10PM.

Grinding and Cooking

The Dickel Tennessee whiskey mashbill is 84% corn and 8% each rye and malted barley. Their rye is made at MGP so for the most part they're just making the same thing every day. Distiller Nicole Austin said that though you'd think she'd be in the distillery actively tasting and blending and such, all the work you'd assume she does daily only takes a few weeks per year. The rest of the time seems to be administration, marketing, research and other tasks related to running the brand.

They receive two truckloads of grain per day. The grains are measured for moisture content to ensure it's less than 15%. They said they've only had one bad load of grains in 15 years, and that was due to someone at the grain producer accidentally mixing in wheat.

The corn they mill (grind up) in advance of using. The corn, malt, and rye are each milled separately then combined by weight into the cooker at different times. The guy in charge of this "drops" grains into the cookers located on the floor below.

They go in order : pre-malt, corn, then rye then the rest of the malt. I missed what the pre-malt is for. But the order is because the corn needs a hard boil to cook it properly. After cooking, the liquid cools a bit before rye is added ("We don't want to cook the crap out of it" because it's there for flavor, says Austin.). Then most of the malted barley is added- they don't want it too hot because that would kill the enzymes in the malt. Each of these stages begins or ends when the mash reaches certain temperatures.

They also add liquid enzymes to the mash – it looked to be about 4 cups worth of liquid to each cooker.

The mashing/cooking process takes 3-4 hours.

Some of the sour mash, the yeasty water from the previous distillation, goes into the cookers along with fresh water, and some goes into the fermenters directly. They say splitting it in these two stages is just because of volume, not for any flavor reason. I have another post just about the sour mash process going up later this week.

Fermentation

Grains and water come out of the cooker at 150 (Fahrenheit, I think) and are cooled to 72 as they go into the fermenter so that the hot water doesn't kill the yeast. They use a custom made dry yeast that's propagated elsewhere.

They have 3 sets (distilling 3 vats daily) of 3 vats. Because of the 6 day workweek, they have "3 day beers" and "4 day beers" for the fermentation that needs to go an extra day. They said the only difference between them is the fermentation temperature is slightly different to allow for the extra time.

The fermentation expert also takes samples of the uncooked, cooked mash and the backset (sour mash) and measures/makes notes of their pH, total acid, and brix. After fermentation the beer is 10% ABV.

Distillation

It takes 4.5 hours to distill 1 fermenter.

The distillation column has 19 plates. The mash goes in at the 17th plate near the top and drips down the column as it removes alcohol from the mixture. The alcohol passes up through the column and comes off the top above the 19th plate.

The alcohol comes off the still at 135 proof, then it is redistilled in the double up to 150 proof.

After the spirit comes off the still, it is run through a copper reactor filled with copper "Raschig rings" before it goes into the doubler. Though I'm not positive, I think in other distilleries the top of the still above where solids enter is filled with these copper rings, rather than being in a separate container as at Dickel.

Because they shut down the plant each night, the heads and tails at the beginning and end of each day are simply redistilled in the next run.

The byproducts of distillation are the wet grains and the yeasty liquids. Some of the liquids go into the sour mash. The wet grains are sold as animal feed. (At some distilleries like MGP the drains are dried first. Here they are not.)

Charcoal Filtration

Because this is Tennessee Whiskey, it is filtered through charcoal before aging, like at Jack Daniel's. But unlike at JD, they chill the whiskey to 42 (Fahrenheit, I think) before running it through the charcoal. The chilling increases flocculation.

The sugar maple charcoal is prepared on site – burned and then extinguished at a certain point.

It takes about 24 hours to filter one day's worth of distillate. The distillate comes off the still at 150 proof, is reduced to 126.5 before charcoal filtration, and comes out at 125 proof.

Virgin wool blankets line the bottom of the filtration tubs to collect the charcoal dust. In my last visit to Dickel, I noted that they fill the charcoal vats up with liquid then let it drip out rather than having it drip into and out of the vats continually. I'm not sure that's the case anymore, though I could be mistaken.

Austin gave more detail on the charcoal filtration process. She said that the liquid comes off the still very oily, buttery, and fruity smelling with popcorn notes due to their distilling with low reflux. Filtration through charcoal is a selective filtration that takes out the heavy oily notes while leaving the fruity ones in the spirit. So according to Austin they can distill in a way that builds lots of character because the charcoal filtration takes out notes that they don't want in the final spirit.

Aging and Warehouses

Barrels are filled at the distillery and then are delivered to the warehouses. We took a hay ride up the road behind the distillery to where several warehouses are located – and where many more are being built.

Most of the time this distillery produces their Tennessee whiskey, just making the same mashbill daily. But distiller Austin has been doing some experiments. She said they're "exploring" making their own rye "to see if there is a reason to do it" themselves, rather than continuing to use MGP's rye in their bottling. They've also tried some other mashbills recently, but I don't know if any new products are in the pipeline.

The warehouses are all single-storey warehouses 6 barrels high. There is only about 5 degree temperature variation between the bottom and top of these warehouses, unlike the 6 storey warehouses many bourbon producers use. The newer warehouses are palatized, meaning the barrels stand on their flat ends rather than on their sides. This is more space efficient than rickhouses.

The angel's share takes about 50% of the liquid in each barrel after 7 years. And because they don't combine and refill barrels, the angel's share is even more as the barrels get emptier. They told me that each 9 year old barrel makes between 10 and 16 12-packs of whiskey. Not a lot!

Thanks to George Dickel for a great visit!

Stay tuned for a couple more posts related to my visit.

June 19, 2019
Nice Rats, But How Were the Drinks?

THIS WAS FUN: I was paid to go to a pop-up live rat bar and review it for Eater.com.

I had a good time with it, of course. In describing the drink, I wrote

On my visit the cocktail was pre-poured at least a few minutes earlier, with ice melting on top of the drink, adding a watery welcome layer to the sickly sweet entry-level cocktail dying in the cup below. The drink’s garnish is perhaps the most exciting component, featuring the root-end of a beet intended to mimic a decapitated rat’s tail (so, de-butt-itated?), which to be fair, is awesome.

Please give it a read. More pictures from the Rat Bar are below.

June 13, 2019
Moving on from the World’s 50 Best Bars

Since 2011 I have been a polling coordinator- a person who chooses the judges- for the World's 50 Best Bars. I have just received notice that they'll be using a new polling coordinator in the US/Canada going forward, so I'll just be a voter myself (if they'll have me).

I was first asked to help build out the voting panel globally by Lucy Britner, then an editor at Drinks International Magazine that was the creator and owner of the awards. I met Britner the previous year at a cocktail competition where she saw I had a large network of international bartenders. It was a good fit as they wanted to grow the list into what it eventually became.

Drinks International started the World's 50 Best Bars list two years earlier in 2009, and they had conducted their polling via telephone! The 2010 World's Best Bars list supplement in PDF is here. At the time the top bars were Milk & Honey London, PDT, Harry's Bar Venice, Milk & Honey NYC, Buddha Bar Paris, Pegu Club, Death & Co, Employees Only, Harry's New York Bar Paris, and The Academy (formerly LAB).

At first I was a global polling coordinator, reaching out to bartenders, brand ambassadors, cocktail journalists, and other cocktailian world travelers I knew in every country. To toot my own horn a bit, my selection of global contacts (in part, I was not the sole coordinator) helped grow the reputation of the W50BB list into the most respected list of its kind over the next few years. Not only was my reputation as an honest and thorough journalist good for the credibility of the list, the judges I chose brought the same qualities to the voting panel.

I still think that you can argue with the selection of bars that win, the voting procedures of one list versus another, and with ranking bars in lists like this in general, but it's impossible to deny that the voting panel is solid. (Actually it might be possible to deny it now – the list of voters used to be public but no longer is, in order to prevent any potential bribery. But I'm telling you as of 2018 the voters were the best of the industry.)

Later I was assigned the role as polling coordinator just of the US and Canada, which was still a ton of work to ensure we had voters from every region of the countries and not just 100 voters from New York. In my last year of the gig, I achieved just under 40% female voters (not perfect, but pretty good). The European poling coordinator was and still is Hamish Smith of Drinks International, and we both worked incredibly hard on the back end to ensure the list was always fairly executed. We had many wonky conversations about things like "can you vote for a bar inside another bar, or is that considered the same bar?"

The World's 50 Best Bars was purchased by William Reed Media, owners of the World's 50 Best Restaurants list, in 2017. The restaurant list works a bit differently, with unpaid regional polling coordinators. It seemed clear with the new management that they wanted to work differently, bringing the bar list more inline with the restaurant one, and that my time as US/Canada polling coordinator would eventually come to an end. It did, and the 2019 list will be handled by a new polling coordinator. I will leave it to that person to announce their involvement, as I'm not sure how they intend to move forward with choosing voters but the contact page is here if you have questions.

So for all my past voters, thank you for honesty and for meeting your voting deadlines, even if it took a few reminders for most of you 🙂

June 7, 2019