Cocktail historian David Wondrich’s latest book is the terrific Comic Book History of the Cocktail.
He’ll be in SF on Nov 12, in conversation with me at Omnivore Books on Food. Here are the details of the event. It’s free to attend.
If you haven’t picked up a copy of the book yet, order one from Omnivore, and join us either way.
I wrote a story for Offrange about whiskey stillage. It is about how a couple of large distilleries – Jim Beam and Jack Daniels – are letting little critters eat their stillage and burp out methane, which is then cleaned up and used as renewable natural gas.
The process of writing this one was a doozy – I spent so long researching it that I made less than California minimum wage on it. I started looking at the Buffalo Trace/Meridian announcement, but when I tried to get more information, both companies refused to tell me anything.
I then started looking at corn fuel ethanol plants and how they process their stillage. They mostly make DDGS it seems, but are increasingly harvesting some other higher-value products like high-protein animal feed and corn oil.
I learned that, due in part to regionality (where the distilleries are located) and part due to the value of corn ethanol vs bourbon, the fuel distilleries see stillage as a coproduct while the distilleries see it is a byproduct – and many distillers give it away for free to farmers to use for animal feed or to apply it as fertilizer.
Then I further learned that in Scotland, having a renewable natural gas plant next to distilleries is pretty common, so we’re just lagging behind.
I wrote a story for the SFStandard about elderflower liqueur making a huge comeback. It was so popular when the brand St. Germain first launched in 2007 that it was given the nickname “bartender’s ketchup.”
It’s so back, but now bartenders are using a wide range of products. Read the story here.
My latest piece for Food & Wine is "How a Bottled Water Goes Social Media Viral and the Real Differences Between Them"
My latest story for Food & Wine is "Why the Shape and Size of Ice in Your Drink Matters."
My latest story for the San Francisco Chronicle is about all the ways bartenders are liquifying olives in their Martinis – in the vermouth, gin, vodka, brine, leaf tinctures, oil-washing everything, and even an “olive turducken.”
Here’s a gift link so you can read it.
I wrote about oleo citrate and super juice for the San Francisco Chronicle.
These are techniques for increasing the yield from citrus fruits by eight times or so, using a touch of citric and malic acid powder in a specific way to bump up the flavor and texture of citrus to extend it over a large volume.
Bartenders in the Bay Area have begun experimenting with the technique, not because our locals love high-tech processing of natural ingredients (our locals very much do not) but because threatened tariffs on imports from Mexico would make limes more expensive- as well as tequila and agave nectar.
The story may be paywalled, but check it out here:
Tariffs could make Bay Area cocktails more expensive. This ‘super juice’ may be a solution
By Camper English
Unless bartenders figure out something soon, margaritas could soon cause sticker shock on cocktail menus across the Bay Area. The tequila, limes and agave syrup used in them may all come from Mexico, and imports on them will face tariffs if President Trump follows through with his threats.
Eric Ochoa, partner at the bar Dalva in San Francisco’s Mission District, has been weighing his options and not finding any great ones. He could increase the price of the drink, or take the “shrinkflation” route, reducing the quantity of tequila or mezcal from 2 ounces per drink to 1½. Or he could swap out fresh-squeezed lime juice for “super juice” to cut costs on one ingredient at least. A citrus juice preparation resulting in six to eight times the liquid of regular juice from the same amount of fruit, it’s a technique that bartenders around the region and the country are testing out to squeeze their fruit for all it’s worth.
My first story for Food & Wine just went live.
I took advice from 95 years of cocktail etiquette books, beginning in 1930 and ending with the publication of How to Be a Better Drinker last week [amazon] [bookshop].
I had fun going through my cocktail book collection to find other etiquette books, including The Official Preppy Handbook, to cite.
Anyway, check out the story here!
I visited Norway late last year to see an “ice farm.” I wrote it up for Vinepair.
The story I turned in was about twice as long (my bad) so I’ll also share some of the stuff that was cut out here over the next couple of days. For now, here is the story.
Frosty, cooling drinks like juleps and cobblers were trending in early 1800s America, their popularity driven by the recent year-round availability of ice. Blocks of it were cut from ponds and lakes in Massachusetts and Maine in the winters, then sold locally or exported abroad on ships specially insulated to keep as much of it solid as possible.
When the cold cocktail trend caught on in the United Kingdom, thanks in part to books like Charlie Paul’s “Recipes of American and other Iced Drinks,” London ice delivery men wore uniforms with eagle buttons to reinforce the product’s U.S. provenance. Initially, ice was a luxury product over there, and the Wenham Lake Ice Company (located just north of Salem, Mass.) was the leading provider in London, at least until counterfeit cubes flooded the market.
In 1873, The Food Journal reported that “the use of ice has gradually increased among our population in the last twenty years, at an ever-accelerating rate, although it is as yet by no means as necessary an article in our domestic economy as among our American cousins,” and also that most of the U.K.’s ice now came from Norway. The country had a long-established relationship selling ice (usually along with fish) to the U.K. and wanted in on the cool new action. In fact, one Norwegian company renamed one of its local lakes from Lake Oppegård to Wenham Lake so that it could sell its ice under the same name as the famous American company.
