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Fine Cocktails in Fine Cooking Magazine

I have a story in the new March/April issue of Fine Cooking magazine. It's about the variety of ways to sweeten cocktails with raw sugars, maple syrup, agave, honey, etc.

Pick up a copy to find a Mamie Taylor variation with evaporated organic cane sugar by Thad Vogler of Bar Agricole in San Francisco, an agave-sweetened refresher from Ted Kilgore of Taste by Niche in St. Louis, and a honey champagne bittered mojito variation from yours truly.

I hope to blog some more information on various types of raw sugars I learned about while researching the story, as it might be useful. I was on the phone to sugar scientists conducting interviews for a couple hours and it turns out it's pretty hard to describe exact differences in any meaningful way. But I'll try when I get the chance.

In the meantime, run screaming to your local newsstand to pick up the new copy of Fine Cooking!

March 11, 2010
Better Cocktails Creep Into the Castro

My first story written for 7×7 Magazine is now online.

Castro's Last Stand

Long a bastion of bad drinks and a good time, the city’s biggest party neighborhood is slowly but surely learning how to wield a muddler.

by Camper English

While the Tenderloin, Mission and Haight are reveling in white whiskeys and raw sugars, in the Castro, bartenders are still called bartenders, and the drink of choice is more likely to be an appletini than something made with absinthe. From Martuni’s to Moby Dick, drinks in the gay sector are still mixed with vanilla vodka, Long Island Iced Teas make up the happy-hour specials, and mojitos come in more than one flavor. Popular venues, like Toad Hall and Badlands, skip the cocktail menu altogether.

As of late, however, there have been a few glimmers of change.

Read the rest on the 7X7 website.

March 5, 2010
A Trip to Guatemala for Zacapa Rum

The other week I went to Guatemala to learn about Zacapa rum at the source. It was great.

The sugar cane for Zacapa is sourced from the western part of Guatemala, near the Pacific coast where it is hot and humid. Here they cleaned up the cane field for the demonstration of cutting. In reality they burn the fields first to get rid of all the low leaves and any critters that might be hiding. This is pretty common practice where sugar cane is cut by hand, as it is for Zacapa.

Then the cut sugar cane is trucked to the distillery not far away.

At the distillery, the cane is crushed with giant roller mills to extract the juice.

For most rum production, this juice is then processed to make sugar. The sugar is sold separately and the leftovers from the production, molasses, are used to make rum. (There is still enough sugar left in molasses to ferment and be distilled.)

But at Zacapa, like on Martinique (rhum agricole) and in Brazil (cachaca) they don't bother making sugar out of it but turn all the juice into rum and aguardiente. For rhum agricole and cachaca they directly ferment and distill the sugar cane juice. Here at Zacapa, they instead condense the juice into a syrup by filtering and heating the juice to boil off the water. This condensed sugar syrup (they call it 'virgin sugar cane honey') can be stored for up to a year so that they can harvest the sugar cane during its season but distill year-round.

The 'honey' is fermented and distilled here at the distillery near the sugar cane fields. But the newly-distilled rum is barrel aged elsewhere.

All the premium rums made at the distillery (Zacapa and Botran) are trucked up a mountain where the weather is cooler and temperatures are more consistent year-round. This allows for slower aging of the rum.

Rather than truck up the windy roads, we rode in helicopters over the mountainous terrain. I found this terrifying.

It was so cloudy when we arrived we couldn't land at the tiny airport, and had to land in a soccer field a short distance away. This was a *big deal* in the village, and probably a hundred people came out to see us land and slowly get up close, take photos and touch the helicopters. People were super curious and we all felt like rock stars for the attention.

At the aging facility, it was much cooler than at the sugar cane fields.

There the rums are aged and blended according to Zacapa's unique process. I'll address this in tomorrow's post, because it's kinda complicated.

March 2, 2010
Chartreuse Goes Through The Roof

First, they came for our bitters. Then they outlawed our egg whites and our infusions. What more could go wrong for bartenders this year?

I'll tell you what: Chartreuse now costs $11 more per bottle.

The wonderfully complex liqueur made by monks has been a favorite of bartenders who mix it into cocktails like the Chartreuse Swizzle and Laphroaig Project at work and consume chilled shots of the stuff when not on the clock. Now those fancy cocktails are going to cost a little bit more.

I spoke with Antoinnette Cattani of Cattani Imports, the Chartreuse broker for the California market. She said that the unannounced increase is national and will affect prices both at retail outlets and in bars. The VEP (high-end versions) are also increasing. The VEP Green will now cost $119 and the VEP Yellow $118, says Cattani.

But here's the good news: It doesn't look like all retailers have figured this out. While Beverages & More is now selling the Green Chartreuse for $62.99, a Google Shopping search revealed several online retailers still offering 750ml bottles of it for $40-$45.

So if your bottles are running a little low or you just want to stock up, it might be time to do some online shopping.

*Breaking News Feb 23 1:51PM – It appears prices are being readjusted again. Still an increase, but perhaps a few dollars less than it was. I have also learned that because of retail mark-ups, the cost increase on retail bottles is likely to be even higher than it is to bars. Either way if you can still get it for cheap it's best to do it now.

*Update Feb 23 3:44PM – I've learned that the price increase has been reduced from the approximately $11 increase per bottle on Green Chartreuse to about $7 as of today. Retail increases will likely be a little more. Look for the sky-high prices to drop a bit soon.

February 23, 2010
Curing Olives at Home, Part II

This post is a continuation of this one on how to brine olives at home.

My olives went from this:

To this:

To see the process, keep reading by selecting the link below.

(more…)

January 28, 2010
Bars Inside Other Bars

In my latest story for San Francisco Magazine, I talk about bars opening inside other bars.

Photograph by Chris Brennan

Make it a double

These bars within bars offer patrons a choice of drinking styles.
By Camper English

The hottest haute cocktails require a range of syrups, bitters, fresh herbs, several types of gin, a lot of storage space, and extra time to make every drink. One way in which bar owners are handling the demand is by dividing and conquering, opening two bars in a single venue—one to promote quick service, the other for slow sipping.

Until recently, the back room at Dalva was a barren spot more suited for storage than for socializing, and it was often used by customers sneaking illegal indoor cigarettes. But with a fresh coat of paint and a bit of remodeling, including a custom-made bar and wrought-iron accents, this area has been rebranded as a boutique interior cocktail lounge called the Hideout.

Continue reading the story at the San Francisco Magazine website.

January 27, 2010
The Great Debate Continues

You may recall a few weeks ago I wrote a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle about bartenders being less snobby that proved a bit controversial. Now a few others have taken up the conversation.

My initial story had the following quote from Erick Castro of Rickhouse that touched a few nerves:

"Three years ago it was OK to be rude. It used to be 'I'm not making a cosmo and you're a horrible person.' Now we say, 'I'm not making a cosmo, but I'm making you something better than a cosmo.' And if they like (the drink) they trust you for the whole night."

So then I wrote a blog post called, "Why Can't I Get a McDonald's Hamburger at Chez Panisse?" and that gave birth to more discussion.

The Paul Clarke picked up the topic at Serious Eats in a post called "Serious Cocktails: Is the Customer Always Right?" In it he asks:

Just as it'd be ridiculous to enter a dive bar and ask for a Last Word, isn't there something at least slightly wrong with going to a bar with a spectacular selection of spirits—an ambitious and balanced cocktail menu and a carefully developed mixological aesthetic—and asking for the bibulous equivalent of a baloney sandwich?

This story picked up another 67 comments so far.

Then Lauren Clark picked up the topic on DrinkBoston.com in a post called "We've Seen This Before" and adds a very good point- that this whole debate is nothing new and has been seen in food, beer, and wine.

I experienced this kind of change first-hand during my brief stint in the craft brewing industry in the late ’90s. Even though craft beer had been proliferating for over a decade at that point, people would still walk into a brewpub and order a Miller Lite. The bartender would explain that there was no Miller Lite on tap, that the establishment sold only beer that was made on the premises, and he would suggest a golden ale — milder than the pub’s other beers but still way more flavorful than mass-produced light lager. The customer would either leave or try the golden ale. If he tried it and liked it enough, he might get adventuresome later on and order an IPA or a porter. It was a process, and it didn’t happen overnight.

This is fun. I hope this discussion continues on and offline.

January 26, 2010
How to Make Clear Ice, The Hard Way
Darcy over at ArtofDrink.com has taken up pursuit of clear ice. In his first post, he noted something that I did not consider and that could be very helpful.

As the ice increases in thickness it begins to corral all of the impurities into the center of the block. Dissolved air and unfiltered water will cause a cloudy core, but impurities are not the main reason why ice cubes are rarely crystal clear.

This expansion pressure is what makes ice cloudy in the center, not minerals and other debris. The visual flaws are caused by fractures in the ice when the last remaining liquid water in the center of the cube freezes and exerts a massive amount of force on the surrounding ice. The cube is basically cracked from the inside out.

This is in line with what I discovered when I tried all sorts of ways to get the air and impurities out of the ice- in the end it just didn't matter that much.

So in his second experiment, Darcy set about making ice freeze from the bottom up, so that the last part to freeze would be the top. Thus there would be no pressure cracking of the ice. His equipment list was:
- 6 ft of copper pipe
- my wife's cookie sheet
- tin-snips
- a bag of nails
- a garbage bag
- an aquarium pump (powerhead)
- a square garbage can
- a coat hanger
- two Canadian winter days and nights at roughly -10°C
As he noted,

The process works, but it isn’t very efficient nor is it practical.

Anyway, there is still more work to be done. Icesperiments will continue!

An index of ice experiments on Alcademics can be found here.
January 14, 2010
Up in your Internet

Oh hai. I've been writing a lot of stuff lately on this new fangled thing called the internet.

I did a few things for Tasting Table, like this piece on bartenders swapping out whisky in drinks for mezcal and this other one on where to get a good cocktail during the day in San Francisco.

For the national edition of Tasting Table I wrote about where you can buy a whole barrel of booze. There are a whole lot more places to buy a whole barrel listed at this Liquor.com article that came out a few days earlier. I didn't write that one (great minds drink alike), but I did write this other one on bitters for the same site a while back.

For CitySearch I wrote about single-spirit specialty bars, which is supposed to also include this review of Smuggler's Cove but doesn't, because the internet is full of bugs.

January 14, 2010
The Science of Sweet in the San Francisco Chronicle

Here is my latest story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

(A Gin-to-the-fire cocktail was photographed in the SF Chronicle studio on Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2009 in San Francisco, Calf. Photo: Mike Kepka / The Chronicle)

Sweetening drinks can be a science

Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, January 8, 2010

Gin that bruises, 500-year-old secret recipes and miracle hangover cures. The world of cocktails is rife with myths and misinformation. As we slowly move out of the Dark Ages and into the cocktail Enlightenment, bartenders are starting to use scientific methodology to disprove hearsay and improve drinks.

Some of that science will be explained Jan. 20 at the Exploratorium. A one-night event (sold out, though the Web site promises to share details for home experiments) will include exhibits on the science behind layering a pousse-café, why absinthe turns white when water is added and how cocktails are affected by the shape of ice.

Having experimented with ice in recent years, many bartenders have moved on to studying sugar. Simple syrup is used to balance acid in many cocktails, so several curious bar types have purchased refractometers and pH meters to measure exact levels of each.

Read the whole story on the science of sweetening drinks here.

January 9, 2010