Category: camper_clips

  • From Salad in a Glass to Centrifuge: A Cocktail Evolution

    This story was originally published on AlcoholProfessor.com


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    From Salad in a Glass to Centrifuge: A Cocktail Evolution

    Recently I was thinking about the early years of the craft cocktail renaissance, and how many of the drinks were quite… chunky. And I realized that we can track a lot of the progression in bartending via the various techniques for pulverizing, liquifying, and clarifying ingredients.

    Bartenders in California (more than on the East Coast, at first) embraced farmers market produce and seasonality, but in the early 2000s there were only a few techniques they knew for getting those fresh solid ingredients into drinks. One was infusing things like citrus peels or porous fruit into vodka or other spirits directly. This worked well for some ingredients, and the late 1990s was full of pepper-infused vodka in Bloody Marys and strawberry-infused rum in Mojitos, for example.

    Muddling

    The other main tool for getting solid fruits, citrus, and other produce into liquid form was by using a big stick: the muddler. Ingredients like tomatoes, kiwi, and every form of herb (those Mojitos were everywhere) were pummeled with muddlers, shaken with ice, then dumped into glasses. The resulting cocktails were often a quarter solid, with mashed up produce in the bottom of the cup.

    This style of cocktail with everything muddled together took on the nickname of “salad in a glass,” for every drink came with a full serving of fruits or veggies in the mix. They were sometimes challenging to consume, for all those solids often blocked the hole in drinking straws. One bar even manufactured a “stork” – a straw with a fork on the end- so that people could pick out the chunks and eat them after they were done drinking.

    Semi-Solids and shrubs

    Obviously, solids are hard to drink, and it didn’t take too long for top mixologists to start experimenting with other methods for transforming these ingredients into longer-lasting liquids. Crafty bartenders learned skills known to cooks and homemakers for millennia – the art of preserving seasonal produce. (While this may sound obvious today, keep in mind that in the 1990s nearly all drink ingredients came in shelf-stable bottled form; a lime wedge was as fresh as it got even in the “good” bars of the day.) Bartenders learned to cook fruit and spices into syrups; they canned jams and jellies; they pickled produce and preserved cherries in brandy.

    At one point, bartenders relearned the lost art of making shrubs – vinegar-based fruit syrups. Shrubs were a form of preserved liquids that could flavor nonalcoholic cocktails as well as boozy ones, and for a while the best virgin drinks came with a dose of vinegar. Read how to tart up your cocktails using vinegar.

    Old and New Methods

    Other old-school techniques used in the early 2000s included the freeze-thaw method used to extract tomato water from tomatoes (for clear Bloody Mary variations), candying with sugar, and making oleo-saccharum from citrus peels. Some bartenders used dehydrators to concentrate the flavors of solid ingredients to use for subsequent infusions, long before the current trend of dehydrating citrus wheels for garnishes to reduce waste. Yet others took on fermentation as a form of preservation and flavor creation.

    One technique that bartenders started experimenting with in the early 2010s (that continues to be popular today) is milk clarification. This technique for using milk to clarify and preserve cocktails dates to the 1700s, but was further explored and explained by people like Dave Arnold in his 2014 book Liquid Intelligence.

    Clarified milk punches can last at refrigerator/cellar temperature for months or longer. This makes them suitable for batching, which speeds up service at the bar compared with all that á la minute muddling of the previous decade.

    Clarified cocktails have very few solid particulates in the liquid, as those solids oxidize and spoil, and clog up tap lines if kegged. Knowing this encouraged bartenders to experiment with other methods of removing solids from even faintly cloudy liquids. Also in Liquid Intelligence, Arnold revealed several methods for clarification. One method was gelatin or agar agar clarification, which is similar to the milk punch method but using a different medium for filtration. Another method borrowed from winemaking is using fining agents that help particulates settle in a liquid.

    The Future… Is the Past?

    In recent years, the tools and technology have grown more sophisticated. Many bartenders now use a centrifuge to clarify cocktails and cocktail ingredients, often in combination with fining agents mentioned above. Sous vide equipment is often used to speed up flavor integration as well as promote consistency of the resulting syrups and infusions. In countries where it is legal, low-temperature distillation in rotovaps also allows for better flavor integration than cold or warm infusions. And bartenders are reaching for isolated acids (citric, malic, tartaric, phosphoric, etc) to replicate the flavor, and enhance, or extend the volume of citrus juices.

    The increasing sophistication of processing methods may or may not have reached a high point, and in many ways we’re now reinventing the wheel. In the 1990s and earlier one could purchase powdered drink mixes made of flavors, sugar, and acids, or bottled “juices” that were essential oils with citrus acids. Rather than serving a guest a Zima or wine cooler, today’s bartender may pump out a clarified low-ABV cocktail from the soda gun or pop open a bottled or canned carbonated drink they assembled the previous month.

    Whereas once you’d find bar menus bragging about house syrups and infusions, now those homemade ingredients look a lot like commercially-available bottled lime cordial and sour mix. And while the dedication to lowering waste by using these techniques at the bar is admirable, often it comes at the cost of fresh flavor. Some bars’ drinks now taste like beverage versions of Sweet Tarts or sour Nerds candy as all the ingredients have been isolated and reconfigured into nearly shelf-stable forms.

    At some point we’ll need to ask ourselves if our increasingly sophisticated techniques and technology for improving cocktails are making them taste worse than they were in the 1990s. I, for one, would prefer that fresh-from-the-farmer’s-market flavor of 2006-era cocktails. But on the other hand, I don’t miss the chunks at all.

  • The Ice Book Wins Best Cocktail or Bartending Book at the Spirited Awards!

    The Ice Book is the winner of the Best New Cocktail or Bartending Book at the 2024 Tales of the Cocktail Spirited Awards!

    This is the highest award within the global bar community. I am delighted!

     

    The Ice Book_ Cool Cubes  Clear Spheres  and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts by Camper English

     

    The Ice Book’s photographer Allison Webber was there to accept the award for us both.


    The Ice Book_ Cool Cubes  Clear Spheres  and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts by Camper English

    photo: @jbrasted

     

    Allison accepting award

    photo: Jackson Cannon

     

    The official Spirited Awards press release is here.

    Buy The Ice Book from AmazonBookshop, or from your local neighborhood indie bookseller. 

    The ice book cover

    Ice book totc 2024 winner

  • Aspirational Water – A Story in The Guardian that Cites The Ice Book

    The reporter for this story in The Guardian and I talked a long time about clear ice, iceberg water, and bottled water. 

     

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    Not much made it into the final story from me (so it goes) but I did get mentioned in the lead paragraphs!

     

    Towards the end of 2009, Camper English achieved a major breakthrough in his kitchen in San Francisco. After months of experimentation, English, a drinks industry consultant, created the perfect piece of clear ice: a cube with minimal fissures and microbubbles, as transparent as air.

    His method for making clear ice – freezing water in an insulated container, which forces tiny bubbles towards the edge and leaves the rest of the block clear – is now widely copied in bars. English has also written The Ice Book: Cool Cubes, Clear Spheres, and Other Chill Cocktail Crafts, and has found his algorithmic niche as Instagram’s top “ice cube reporter”. He regularly shares pictures of bevelled spheres, ridged gems and crystalline pebbles on his account @alcademics, all tagged with #IceBling.

     

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    The story has some good points – the most important one being that bottled water does not compete with tap water. 

     

    But anyway, if you want to geek out about water with me, I have an upcoming water class in April 2024 you can join!

    Raindrop logo flyer april 4

     

     

     

  • Has Luxury Clear Cocktail Ice Gone Too Far?

    I am quoted in this story about luxury ice (from Greenland, sold in Dubai) in which I manage to become an advocate for importing glacier ice for cocktails, lol.

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    Most of what I talked about in the interview was that we all choose our battles when it comes to where and how we support environmentalism, based on personal values. The more problematic environmental issue of Martha Stewart sipping on iceberg ice on a cruise was the cruise itself. Ever had fresh Japanese sushi in NYC or Las Vegas? It was probably flown in on a plane… packed in ice.

    Anyway, I hope you'll join me in a freshly-clubbed baby seal fat-washed arctic mezcal mai tai served over a Death Valley ice sphere sometime in the future.

    Anyway, read the story here.

  • The Moist Future for MSNBC

    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.

    Read the story here.   

     

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  • Monks can’t make enough of this famous spirit. Can an alternative from S.F. replace it?

    For the San Francisco Chronicle, I wrote about the Chartreuse shortage and how some bartenders are looking locally to Brucato Chaparral as a stand-in. 

     

     

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  • The Cobbler is Hot in Cold San Francisco

    I wrote a story for the San Francisco Chronicle about cobblers, mostly Sherry Cobblers. Read it here.  

     

    While hot weather bears down on much of the country, summer in San Francisco is more of a state of mind than a change in the weather. And many bartenders around the city are addressing the abstract concept of hot temperatures by placing cooling, ice-filled cobblers on their seasonal drink lists. 

    At new downtown venues the Dawn Club and Heartwood, the drink appeared on their opening menus; at Pacific Cocktail Haven, also downtown, and Canteen, in Menlo Park, the cobbler joined the list for the season; and bartenders at the Treasury in the Financial District are swapping out their spring sipper for a new summer variation. 

    The cobbler, a century-old low-ABV classic, most likely takes its name from the cobblestone-shaped pebble ice used in the drink. Along with the julep, the cobbler helped popularize American-style iced cocktails around the world, as well as the use of the drinking straw.

     

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  • How to Make Big Clear Ice for Your Distillery Bar – Distiller Magazine

    I wrote a story for Distiller Magazine about the various ways to implement a big ice program. It was written with distilleries (that have sampling bars) in mind – they often have a lot of floor space, but even those with distillery bars don't often have a ton of freezer space. 

    I tried to be cognizant of the specific needs of distilleries, the possibility for take-out ice sales, and the notion that maybe if it's easy you could just buy it. 

    Check it out here

     

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  • Camper English Named As One of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the Bar World

    Drinks International has released their 2023 Bar World 100 list, a list of the 100 most influential people in the bar world internationally.

    I am happy to say that I have once again made the list. The list has been released for the last four years and I have been on it three times, missing 2022. This year I reentered the list at number 46, though I don't think the  order of rankings are very important.

     

    Camper English Bar World 100 2023

     

    The voters hail from 60 different cities and include "the media, brand representatives, event organizers, educators and consultants making up the majority of the panel, but of course we have a good share of bartenders too." 

    Each voter was asked to name who they considered to be the top 10 most influential bar world figures. More specifically:

    » Those who have innovated and pushed the industry forward, setting the standard globally and inspiring others around them.

    » Those who have addressed injustices in the bar industry, using their influence to effect positive change.

    I thank the voters for selecting me for this accolade. You can view the entire list as a digital magazine at this link.

     

     

    Bar world 100

     

  • A Mention of The Ice Book in Scientific American

    My fellow ice book author Amy Brady wrote an article for Scientific American on the use of ice and its impacts in cocktail programs. 

    I consider it a success that not only did she include The Ice Book in the story, I was able to get the expression "dirty dump" in Scientific American! 

    Read: Climate-Friendly Cocktail Recipes Go Light on Ice 

     

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