Alcademics

Category: bitters

  • 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. 

    Coffee liqueurs by Camper English in the San Francisco Chronicle

    Mike Kepka / The Chronicle

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

     

  • Up in your Internet

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

    Tt.logo.image.1 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.

  • The Ultimate Test of your Liquor Cabinet

    Not only is the Laphroaig Project delicious and surprisingly tropical for its ingredients, it's a test of your liquor
    cabinet. If you have all of these ingredients at home you are a huuuuge cocktail geek.

    The Laphroaig Project was created by Owen Westman at Bourbon & Branch and it's
    also available at Rickhouse, both in San Francisco. It contains:

    • Green
      Chartreuse
    • Yellow Chartreuse
    • Laphroaig Islay Single Malt Whisky
    • Luxardo Maraschino liqueur
    • Peach bitters
    • Lemon juice

    What? Yes. The recipe is here.

    And if you can make it without shopping, I think you are cool. 

  • The Count of San Francisco

    Silly me, I didn't even notice that my story on Count Niccolo Branca of Fernet-Branca was in this month's San Francisco Magazine. Here it is.

    The count comes a-courting

    Bottle talk with the CEO behind San Francisco's favorite shot, Fernet-Branca.

    By Camper English, Photograph by Cody Pickens

    Branca

    San Franciscans consume around 35 percent of all the Fernet-Branca
    sold in the United States, thanks mostly to the local palate, which
    tends to skew toward bitter. Recently, the chairman and CEO of Branca
    International (and the great-great-grandson of Fernet’s creator), Count Niccolò Branca,
    paid a visit to San Francisco to meet with bartenders and visit
    high-selling accounts. We met him at Foreign Cinema, where he shared
    some company lore and addressed a few persistent rumors about the brand.

    Branca
    says he hasn’t been to town for about 25 years, though San Franciscans
    have repeatedly tried to visit his distillery in Milan, where all the
    Fernet-Branca imbibed in the States is made. “Sometimes they come on
    Saturday or Sunday, when the company is closed. Monday morning, we find
    on the door a paper—they write, ‘I want to visit. I see where is born
    the Fernet-Branca,’” the count reports. And now they can, since the
    distillery and its museum have finally opened for tours (by
    appointment).

    Branca insists that his bitter liqueur has never
    contained opiates, as some have alleged over the years. His evidence is
    circumstantial but still convincing: Opiate possession is currently
    prohibited in Italy, and he says the recipe for Fernet-Branca hasn’t
    changed in the 164 years it’s been produced. But he assured us that a
    couple of perceptions are true: one, that drinkers across the world ask
    for Fernet-Branca served “San Francisco–style,” meaning a shot
    accompanied by a ginger ale chaser; two, that Fernet-Branca remained
    legal during Prohibition because of its medicinal qualities.

    The count complimented San Franciscans on our pronunciation of his product’s name (fur-net), which he hears incorrectly all over the world. “Even in Italy, some people say fur-nay,” he explains. “But the important word is Branca!