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Latin, Packing, Pisco: A Few Articles I’ve Written Lately

I've had several stories come out recently, so I thought I'd share them here. This blog is also my resume, after all.

Friday I wrote about my recent piece in the daily email Tasting Table San Francisco. This one is about Encanto Pisco, brought to us by a bartender, a sommelier, and a distiller.

Attention people attending Tales of the Cocktail in New Orleans this July: My story about what to pack for the week (for media, speakers, bartenders, PR, and brand reps) in the June issue of Tasting Panel Magazine is now online.

In the July issue of Executive Travel Magazine I have a story on the Latin libations that are hot and the ones that soon will be.

I have recently become a regular contributor to SilverKris, the in-flight magazine for Singapore Airlines. Unfortunately the magazine is not online. Recent stories have focused on new classic cocktails, the return of absinthe, and where to drink in Wellington, New Zealand.

June 27, 2010
More Fun With Distillery Waste

I am a big fan of distillery waste. Not bathing in it, but learning about it.

In most cases where a grain is distilled into whiskey or vodka, the spent grain (after all the sugar has been removed to be fermented) is sold off as animal feed. In Cognac (at Hennessy anyway) the spent lees (grape parts) are taken to an industrial distiller to get more alcohol out of them, and the "heavy sediments" of the grape juice go for cattle feed and for use in pharmaceutical products. In tequila production, the spent fibers from the agave pinas are sometimes put back on the fields as fertilizer, sometimes mixed with the heads and tails of distillation.

(There is a lot of leftover vegetation in tequila production.)

Many sugar cane distillers (either at the sugar factory for rum or at the distillery for rhum agricole) burn the spent sugar cane stalks to heat the steam engine that powers the distillery.

(Spent sugar cane to be burned at Rhum Clement distillery on Martinique.)

(Huge steam-powered gears at Rhum Clement distillery on Martinique.)

The heads and tails are the waste products of distillation, made up of alcohol, water, and undesirable flavor compounds that distillers don't want in their final products. These are also recycled. In scotch whisky, these are put back into the still for the next batch of distillation. (Somehow they never build up and overwhelm the spirit- weird.) Many companies sell the heads and tails to industrial distillers who make pure spirit, cosmetics, and other products. Some use this alcohol as fuel to heat their distilleries in winter.

(The condenser at Fettercairn.)

Speaking of heat, many (if not most) distilleries are mainly powered by hot water; heated either by an oil burner or by burning waste materials like the sugar cane stalks mentioned above. The hot water heats the stills to convert the liquids into steam. Cold water is also needed in the condensers of the still to convert the alcohol in steam form back into liquid form. Typically this cool water comes from a nearby stream or river. After it is used in the condenser it is now hot water, which isn't usually suitable for dumping back into the water stream from whence it came until it is cool. In some distilleries such as the one for Blue Ice Vodka, this hot water is used to lightly heat a warehouse in the winters.

What About the Water in the Still?

On my recent trip to the Isle of Jura, The Dalmore, and Fettercairn distilleries I learned about more industrial waste. This made me very happy.

For some reason nobody talks about the leftover water from distillation. Distillation is really just separating alcohol from water in order to concentrate the alcohol. Concentrate alcohol in beer and you get (unaged) whisky or vodka. Concentrate it in wine and you get brandy. The heads and tails contain alcohol and this is valuable so it gets recycled, but there is still the water left in the still.

(Stills at Fettercairn.)

At Fettercairn, Jura's master distiller Willie Tait explained it: After the first distillation, the leftover water also contains yeast bodies from fermentation. This water/yeast mix is called "pot ale," and it can be boiled down into a high-protein syrup used as cattle feed or as fertilizer.

After the second distillation the leftovers are mostly water with a high copper content with some congeners. Tait said this mixture is called the "spent lees," which is confusing because in cognac this means something different. I also failed to write down how this water is recycled if it is at all, so I have more fun facts about distillery waste to learn!

June 23, 2010
Fettercairn Distillery Visit- Single Malt Scotch Whisky Distillery Tour

Last week I visited the Isle
of Jura, The Dalmore, and Fettercairn distilleries in Scotland. These
brands are all owned by White &
Mackay. This post is about visiting the Fettercairn distillery.

(Fettercairn marked with red pin. Map made with Google Maps)

From The Dalmore distillery we went on yet another gorgeous drive over two mountain ranges to reach Fettercairn, a distillery named after the town where it is located. As you can see on the map below, after you come down from the mountains where much of the vegetation is heather (brown at this time of year) like low scrub bushes, you hit the eastern farmlands with rich soils and plenty of water coming off the hills.

The Fettercairn distillery is about a five-minute walk from the center of Fettercairn with its one pub and stone arch commemorating a pit stop from Queen Victoria. It is surrounded by fields and there are cattle grazing across from the distillery.

The distillery is full of much original equipment from 1824 with a few technological improvements. They no longer do floor maltings (I think only five or six distilleries still do) but otherwise things look pretty old-fashioned here.

(Fettercairn Distillery. Cows in foreground.)

The mash tun is an old copper-topped one with mechanically-driven (see below) stirrers inside. The drainage at the bottom of these older mash tuns is different from newer models, so to compensate the barley must be ground to a courser level.

(Above: Copper-topped mash tun. Below: Inside the mash tun.)

The distillery also has wooden washbacks where fermentation happens. Most wooden washbacks I've seen are made from Doug Fir pine from Oregon.

(Wooden washback)

Unlike at The Dalmore distillery that uses the brown-colored peat-rich river water, Fettercairn uses water from an underground spring for mashing, fermentation, and reducing to barrel proof. It is crystal clear and rich with minerals- you can taste a sort of metallic-granite flavor and it is very drying in the mouth, almost a tannic feeling.

(Stills at Fettercairn)

Fettercairn has two pairs of stills and the still for the second distillation (the "spirit still") has a pretty unique feature.

On yesterday's post about The Dalmore I noted that the still has a reflux box (don't know the technical name for it) in which cold water runs around the top of the neck of the still to encourage only the heavy flavor molecules to cross over.

At Fettercairn they do this in a different way: during the part of the distillation when they're getting the heart of the spirit (the part that will actually be put in barrels rather than recycled), cold water runs down the outside of the neck of the still. I've never seen anything like this on a still before.

It's hard to capture in pictures, so I took this short video. I think this is supercool, but I'm a nerd.

After the whisky is distilled and put into barrels it is stored in traditional dunnage warehouses- old, earthen floor warehouses in which barrels are stacked no more than three-high. There are thick walls and in this case a slate roof. The walls are super moldy and reminded me a lot of the aging warehouses in Cognac.

In these dunnage warehouses (about 12 of them for Fettercairn, all local), there is not a great deal of temperature difference between the top and bottom row. This is quite different from a racked warehouse (think of the tall bourbon warehouses), in which casks are stacked several stories high and temperature, evaporation, and rate of aging vary greatly in different parts of the warehouse.

Now for the bad news: Fettercairn is not available in the US. Even in Scotland its pretty rare to find it as a single-malt. They released a new bottling called Fior that's really tasty and they can't keep it on the shelves. They also sell some 30-year-old and 40-year-old expressions but who can afford such things?

We tasted several barrel samples and they were really wild- a 2004 ex-bourbon had a salty finish and a bourbon grain taste. A 1997 sherry refill cask sample tasted fruity-savory with flavors of sundried tomato and cranberry. The 1974 and 1973 ex-American oak hogsheads were insane floral explosions of lilac, jasmine, rose, and other candied flower flavors.

I assume that most all Fettercairn goes into blends, as most whisky goes toward blends even if it is from a notable single-malt. I do wish they sold this single-malt in the states because:

1. It tastes good.

2. Unicorns!

June 17, 2010
The Dalmore Distillery Visit- A Single Malt Scotch Whisky Distillery Tour

Last week I visited the Isle of Jura, The Dalmore, and Fettercairn distilleries in Scotland. These brands are all owned by White & Mackay. This post is about visiting The Dalmore distillery.

(The Dalmore distillery indicated by red dot. Map from Google Maps.)

From Jura, we took a boat to the mainland and then drove diagonally northeast to reach The Dalmore. It was a long and gorgeous drive into the Highlands that took the better part of a day.

(The Dalmore distillery)

There are many things that make up the final flavor profile of a single-malt scotch, including the variety of barley, the peating levels of it, the water used in the mashing and fermentation, the size and shape of the stills, the size and type of barrels used to age it, where the barrels are aged, and of course the length of aging of the whisky.

The water for The Dalmore comes from Loch Morie, and inland lake. The water then runs through a river to the distillery that is located on another body of water, the Cromarty Firth. As the water travels through a whole lot of peat on the way, by the time it reaches the distillery it is brown in color. This water, not filtered, is used in the mashing and fermentation, and to dilute the whisky to barrel proof for aging.

You can see how it might add to the flavor of the whisky.

(Peat-filled brown water flowing into The Dalmore distillery.)

In the previous post I talked about Jura's tall stills that produce a light and fruity spirit full of high esther notes like pear. At The Dalmore the stills are quite differently shaped and this impacts the spirit.

Photography wasn't allowed in the still room so you'll have to make due with my artistic renderings below.

The stills for the first distillation almost look decapitated- they just stop with a flat top and the lynne arm is not a gentle curve from the top, but a tube sticking out from a foot or two below it.

(Artistic rendering of stills at The Dalmore. Not to scale.)

The still for the second distillation isn't quite as ugly, but it's even more interesting. I think this is the first time I've seen a water-filled reflux section on a still in Scotland. On the tubular pipe near the top of the still is a section that is rinsed with cool water inside.

This makes it difficult for light elements to reach the top of the still, leaving the more robust heavy molecules to cross over to the condenser. You get a spirit that's a lot less light and esthery, very much unlike Jura we'd visited the day before.

Thus The Dalmore comes off the still as a big bold heavy liquid before it goes into wood. It is then the job of the Master Blender, Richard Patterson in this case, to tame the spirit as it ages and shape it into the final product.

I thought that the role of the Master Blender was simply to take what was given to him- a bunch of scotch in barrels- and mix it together, but it is much more than that, at least at The Dalmore.

Patterson chooses the types of barrels (going to Jerez to pick out the sherry ones personally) in which the spirit will be aged, decides on the flavor profile he's seeking for a particular bottling, manages the aging process and checks up on the spirit to see how it is doing as it develops, and puts the blends together. It is product development, wood management, and blending.

Keep in mind that this is still just for a single-malt scotch whisky, a blend of whiskies from the same distillery. A vatted malt or a blend would involve whiskies from other distilleries and grain (column distilled) whisky also. Patterson does this for the Whyte & Mackay blended scotch whisky that is not available in the US.

On this trip I learned a great deal about the different roles of the master distiller and the master blender, and how some spirits need gentle nudging as they age to get them to the right final flavor profile, and others need an aggressive and more hands-on approach to bring them into line. Funny enough, the lighter, softer spirit is made on an island and the full-bodied bruiser comes from the Highlands.

June 16, 2010
Jura Distillery Visit- A Single Malt Scotch Whisky Distillery Tour

Last week I visited my 50th distillery/blending house at the Isle of Jura. What made it extra special is that we hit it at 1:30 in the morning.

Though the Isle of Jura is closer to mainland Scotland than Islay, to reach it you take either a plane or ferry to Islay then another quick ferry to Jura. (Jura is the red dot on the map below. Islay is the island to its left.)

(Map produced using Google Maps.)

Jura has far fewer inhabitants than Islay- I think around 200 compared with Islay's 3500- and just one distillery compared with Islay's eight. We arrived on the island after a drive and boat trip, then had time for dinner and a visit to the pub.

It was after we left the pub (they kicked us out at 1:15AM) that we noticed the lights were on in the distillery. "Do you want to see it now?" asked Willie Tait, Jura's Master Distiller, to the last two journalists standing.

"Um, yeah!" we said, and in we went.

(Late night in the distillery.)

The next morning we gathered up everybody for the real tour. Tait calls Jura "A Highland whisky made on an island," which is short for "unpeated." Islay/island whiskies are known for their smoky flavor, which comes from drying sprouted barley with peat smoke.

In the olden days when the first Jura distillery was built back in 1810, the whisky would have been heavily peated as the barley would have been dried locally.

Jura had no distillery for a long time- the current one opened in 1963- and by then everything had changed. Most barley is dried in large commercial facilities then shipped to distilleries. Each distillery can specify the level of peatiness of their malted barley (in phenolic content), and Jura for the most part specifies none at all.

(Malted barley ready for use at Jura.)

The barley is brought to the distillery, milled to break it up, then washed with hot water to release sugars, fermented, and distilled.

The stills on Jura are quite tall- 28 feet- and this produces a spirit that is very light in body, emphasizing the high esther notes ("pear drops") in the whisky.

(Tall stills at Jura.)

Jura is aged in a few kinds of wood. Much of it is what Tait called "American oak." These casks are ex-bourbon barrels that also were used to age scotch and have been rebuilt into hogshead sized barrels that are a little bigger than the bourbon ones. Unlike "ex-bourbon" barrels that are also used on Jura, the American oak barrels aren't still soaking with bourbon and don't add as much character to the spirit- they just let it age slowly without flavoring it so dramatically. Jura also uses ex-sherry butts in smaller amounts.

Tait emphasized that with Jura the point is to get the distillation just where you want it, then not mess around with the spirit too much in the barrel. (You'll see how this is the opposite of what happens at The Dalmore in another post.) Most Jura starts off in American oak then can be finished in other casks to nudge it a little in one direction or the other.

The main Jura bottlings are the 10 and 16 year-olds. The 10 is full of pear flavor and Tait says he would even recommend it served on the rocks as a pre-dinner aperitif. The 16 is more full-flavored and rich, striking a nice balance between friendly flavors and the depth that comes with aging.

Jura does use some peated barley in its production. The Superstition bottling uses 13% malted barley peated to 40ppm phenol, with the rest un-peated barley. Tait calls it a gentle introduction to peated whiskies. I call it tasty.

The last bottling, which is new to the US market, is the Prophecy. It was distilled in 1999 from all peated barley, and aged in some Limousin oak and Oloroso sherry along with the usual American oak and ex-bourbon casks. It's bottled at 46% and non-chill-filtered. So I guess that one is an island whisky made on an island.

Much more to come from my trip in later posts…

June 15, 2010
That Ice Story is Online

The short piece on making crystal clear ice at home I wrote for Wired Magazine is now online. Check it out!

June 9, 2010
The Perudriver: A Cocktail with Pisco, Orange Juice, and Orange Liqueur

I was trying to create a cocktail for my seminar at Tales of the Cocktail using an orange liqueur, a sponsor of my session. After attempts at an Orange Negroni and Orange Absinthe Frappe that both failed, I came up with this way-too-simple and drinkable-as-heck cocktail, perfect for summer days and morning cocktailing. I really don't like the screwdriver as a cocktail, but I *love* this.

The Perudriver
by Camper English

3.5 ounces fresh orange juice
1 ounce pisco
1/2 ounce orange liqueur (cognac-based)

Add all ingredients to an ice-filled glass and stir.

May 30, 2010
Coffee liqueurs make a splash in cocktails

Here's my new story in the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday, June 30.

Coffee liqueurs make a splash in cocktails

by Camper English

The craze for organic, shade-grown, micro-roasted slow-drip coffee has percolated into the cocktail world. Bartenders are improving classic coffee drinks, finding ways to harness the beans' bitter, aromatic qualities rather than just the caffeine kick.

Most cold coffee cocktails served in the past 20 or so years have been variations of the vodka espresso (better known as the espresso martini) credited to British bartender Dick Bradsell and made with vodka, espresso and Kahlua and Tia Maria coffee liqueurs. Nopa bar manager Neyah White updated this drink about three years ago, creating the Blue Bottle martini with Blue Bottle espresso, vodka and Araku coffee liqueur. It was, and is, "a ridiculously big seller," White says.

Coffee liqueur got a good bit more serious with the April release of Firelit Spirits Coffee Liqueur, made with coffee from Oakland's Blue Bottle coffee roasters and brandy from distiller Dave Smith of St. George Spirits in Alameda.

Continue reading the story here.

Mike Kepka / The Chronicle

Reza Esmaili at Smuggler's Cove makes a Rear Admiral's Swizzle with Firelit coffee liqueur.

May 28, 2010
Another Ice Banner Attempt

You may think all I do is futz around with ice all day, and you'd be mostly correct (for proof, see the index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics here). I attempted to make another site banner today using a clear piece of ice stamped with ALCADEMICS, but I think I like the orange peel one (too big as it is) better.

Click it to see it bigger if you're interested.

May 27, 2010
An Icy Weekend in Monterey

This past weekend I spent about 12 hours cutting ice and it was awesome! As part of a bartender catering gig with Rye on the Road I worked a wedding and rehearsal dinner in Monterey. With a trusty ice saw and my new ice pick from Cocktail Kingdom I went to town on those blocks of ice, chopping out fat cubes, attempting to carve spheres, and even making a heart to show the ice how much I love it.

Despite how it looks in this picture I didn't have my hand replaced with an ice saw, but now I'm thinking about it.

An index of all of the ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.

May 25, 2010