I was invited to write a story for MSNBC.com about the coming new normal of casual sobriety, aka the end of Dry January.
I made a bunch of points about generational drinking habits, parallels to vegetarianism, and flaws and challenges of serving nonalcoholic spirits in bars.
Well here's something I never expected when I started experimenting with ice all those years ago: The Weather Network did a segment on directional freezing to make ice for cocktails.
I wish I was smart enough to have pitched them The Ice Book when it came out!
It was believed that the Gibson cocktail was created in San Francisco. In this 2008 blog post I cited what David Wondrich told us on a tour. The information is repeated in the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails:
But now new information has come to light. Martin Doudoroff shared information from a tweet on the Spirits and Cocktails bulletin board.
It is an article from the San Francisco Examiner from 1896, a new earliest first reference to the drink. From this story it seems that:
I always say (to myself): History is a moving target.
In clear ice cube trays, one cube (or a few) almost always pops up and starts growing upward after some time of freezing. I call this The Mystery Pillar. Others call it the Sacrificial Cube, because it is usually cloudy and must be discarded.
While it would be theoretically possible to build a deformable tray that avoids this, in general I think you just need to live with it. Pull the tray out of the freezer when it starts forming- if you let it go too long, you may end up with the pillar hitting the freezer ceiling and pinning your tray into the freezer. I say this from experience.
As water cools and turns into ice, it expands. In a rigid container, this exerts pressure on the system, and it seems that pressure pushes one or more cubes up from the hole in the bottom of the tray. It seems it's the last cube compartment to freeze that becomes the mystery pillar. A sciency video that explains the phenomenon in ice spikes is here.
I think that sometimes the water pushing up into the tray pushes the existing cube up – so that it's clear on top and cloudy down the cube shaft. And other times I think water squeezes up around the cube and onto the top surface so it grows that way – cloudy on the top.
I've been asked about the Mystery Pillar four times in the past week so going forward I'll point everybody to this post!
I am reading The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails in order with the Alcademics Book Club, which you may join on Facebook if you wish. (We're on the A's in early January.)
I've already learned so much new information and also old information I'm seeing in a new light.
One example of the latter is in the terminology of Aqua Vitae, the Latin term for distilled spirits ("water of life") vs arrack, the name of several different spirits.
Aqua Vitae as a terminology comes from the "alchemico-medical" background – the medical alchemists separating a pure essence of the universal life force (supposedly) from wine. The name refers to the method (distillates were called waters) and (supposed) healthy life-giving impacts to the person who drinks it. It first referred to wine-based spirits but came to mean distillates of all sorts (and is the base of the words for aquavit, eau de vie, and whiskey) but then words like whiskey, brandy, etc came to dominate as spirits differentiated. A thing to note here is that this terminology and technology was from Southern Italy and spread up north in Europe toward the UK and Scandinavia, and eastward into Germany, Poland, and Russia. The technology of distillation of aqua vitae followed the path of knowledge with travelling monks.
Arrack was the Arabic word for distilled spirit, and according to Oxford, "is the first widely accepted umbrella term used to differentiate spirits from fermented beverages." It was first referenced in the later 1200s and early 1300s (the same time, but in different places, as references to aqua vitae). It also referred to several different distillates – palm arrack from Goa, cane arrack from northeast India, rakia from grapes/raisins in the Ottoman Empire/Middle East, and Batavia arrack from Indonesia that was made from palm sap and sugar. Many of these spirits travelled with sailors on the spice trade routes and were made into punch. Though not stated explicitly in Oxford, it seems terms referred to distilled beverages.
"All of these spirits preceded the rise of brandy, genever, rum, and whisky, the European spirits" according to Oxford.
So arrack (in its various spellings) seems to be the blanket term for distilled beverages that came out of the Asian tradition and ingredient set that travelled along Asian-oriented sea and land trade routes, while aqua vitae was more the European term for distilled medicinal spirits from wine and grain that travelled along routes of monastic and medical-alchemical knowledge from Southern Europe north and northeast.
"In general the newer trade networks supplanted the older ones, and the various arracks fell back on their local markets." And the spirits born from the tradition of aqua vitae came to dominate the European markets and evolve into their more modern forms.
I watched a video by Philip Duff on the history of gin – is gin the British interpretation of Dutch genever? Or does it come from a more or less independent distilling tradition since British spirits were usually based on a neutral base distillate?
I watched a seminar by Jared Brown and Anistatia Miller that claims independence and wrote about that here.
Phil Duff adds some new information about the historical use of botanics in genever and on Dutch distilling styles.
Duff cites a couple key pieces of information:
And thus he concludes basically that gin was invented in England after column distillation comes on boaord in the early 1800s, but it's a direct line of invention from Dutch distilling/genever.
Click the link above for Jared/Anistatia's first video, then watch Phil's video below.
This year I read more than 40 books, mostly about drinks. My top five favorites are below. This list is not actually the best drink books of the year, but my favorites. (And my favorite technically came out in 2022.) I wrote the title for SEO!
What I want out of drink books is new information or information presented in a new way. I don't need cocktail recipes so recipe books only really appeal to me when they present new techniques.
And if I haven't chosen your book or your favorite here, just assume I haven't read it yet. You make great choices too!
Camper's Favorite Books of 2023
5. Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks–a Cool History of a Hot Commodity by Amy Brady [Amazon] [bookshop]
Amy Brady's book about the cultural history of ice was a perfect pairing to my how-to book on ice cubes, coming out just a month after my own. This has the history of "Ice King" Frederic Tudor, plus how ice fundamentally changed America in numerous ways from food and drink to sports and travel.
4. How to Taste: A Guide to Discovering Flavor and Savoring Life by Mandy Naglich [amazon] [bookshop]
It's mostly about tasting beer, wine, and spirits but it's a book about tasting everything from cheese to chocolate to honey, and approaching it like a professional taster. There are tips of developing your palate and tons of interviews with professionals in many different specialties. It makes me want to host tasting parties for everything.
3. Tropical Standard: Cocktail Techniques & Reinvented Recipes by Ben Schaffer and Garret Richard [amazon] [bookshop]
This is the only recipe book on my list, because it introduces new techniques to old drinks. Tropical Standard will probably be known as a book of tiki cocktail recipes made with modern techniques like clarification and isolated acids from Liquid Intelligence, but many of the drinks include no such razzle dazzle: It is really a book on raising the standard of tropical cocktails, optimizing them with everything we've learned in the decades since they were first invented.
2. A Field Guide to Tequila: What It Is, Where It’s From, and How to Taste It by Clayton J. Szczech [amazon] [bookshop]
The title and cover copy really undersell it: This is the tequila book the world needs. About half the book is about the production of tequila and the historical circumstances and sometimes-ridiculous regulations that lead to it being made that way. Tequila is a moving target in many ways, but Szczech has done a great job at nailing the parameters that make it what it is, along with highlighting some of the largest and most traditional players in the category. This is now the first book I recommend about the category.
1. Modern Caribbean Rum by Matt Pietrek and Carrie Smith [buy]
This came out at the end of 2022 but I read it – all 850 pages of it – this year. And it seems like it was written just for me. I am a production nerd and want to know all the ingredients, equipment, and regulations that go into making something and how those things impact how something tastes. Here we get the information on the specific stills- down to the manufacturer- used at every distillery, plus that level of detail about everything from every producer in the covered region. It's a lot, and I like it. So it is all of that wrapped up in a huge heavy package with terrific photos and design – a pleasure to flip through too.
Super Bonus!
The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts by Camper English [amazon] [bookshop]
Okay I lied again. Those weren't my top five favorite books of 2023. They're the top 5 books of 2023 that I didn't write. My favorite book of 2023 is The Ice Book, by me!
Learn to make very good ice and shape it into all sorts of amazing cubes, spheres, blinged-out diamonds, and more. I hope you'll pick up a copy if you haven't already.
Materials:
In a nice coincidence, right after reading Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice that I reviewed here, [amazon][bookshop] my other book club chose High on the Hog [amazon] [bookshop] as their pick for the month.
I just finished up the book (haven't seen the Netflix series yet but will watch next month- having only heard the title, I thought both were cookbooks/cooking shows instead of history book/show) and it's super interesting.
One thing I noticed in Juke Joints was how often the author mentioned caterers and their recipes for food and drink. In reading lots of cocktail history I hadn't come across caterers that I can recall. So I made a mental note of it.
In High on the Hog, the author explains a little better why caterers were often Black businesses- coming off of domestic work skills and training but lacking the capital to open restaurants.
It was nice to have a question and then get it answered in the next book.
Here are a couple of pages from High on the Hog in which I got my answers. It's worth reading High on the Hog in full though – it looks like the overlapping history of food and Black history in America.
First there was nonalcoholic alcoholic seltzer.
To help drinkers in their sober curious exploration, White Claw is introducing a new way of drinking. Introducing White Claw 0% Alcohol – a new, non-alcoholic premium seltzer boasting the complex taste and feel of a real drink. Made from ultra-refined seltzer and blended with iconic flavors and hydrating electrolytes, White Claw 0% Alcohol is a new way to drink.
And now have nonalcoholic alcoholic sparkling iced tea!
Today, Loverboy announced their first-ever non-alcoholic take on the brand’s top-rated sparkling hard teas: Non-Alcoholic White Tea Peach and Non-Alcoholic Lemon Iced Tea.
Perfect for dry January, mocktail, and healthier resolutions stories, Loverboy is bringing the taste without the buzz to redefine how you imbibe – boasting full flavor, zero sugar, and only 10 calories per can.
Now, my math is a little rusty, but I think it goes something like:
This is a video about "ice spikes" that form in the freezer, and as explained it does so due to the expansion of water when it freezes.
He is talking about ice forming in a standard ice cube tray but those of us who make clear ice cubes in trays know this phenomenon as the "mystery pillar" – one cube (or sometimes two) pops up and starts forming upward out of a tray suspended atop an insulated cooler.
Interestingly in this video the host cites three factors that help ice spikes to form: distilled water, warm freezing temperatures, and a fan blowing on the surface. Well in the case of directional freezing, the water freezes out impurities so that the ice near the surface is basically frozen distilled water; the cooler impacts the rate of freezing; and fans are usually in the way.
In the case of the directional freezing system, rather than spikes forming above the surface, we usually get whole cubes popping up. My theory is that the "ice spike" phenomenon is happening not on the surface of the ice, but through the bottom hole in the tray – pushing the entire cube up from the bottom. Often the new ice forming does up around the sides, so you get something like looks like a cupcake topping on your cube. (Other times it seems the new ice forms below and pushes the whole cube up.)
In any case, I think the "mystery pillar" is the same thing as "ice spikes" as it just makes sense.
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