Category: eco-booze

  • 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.

    Screenshot 2024-02-09 at 6.16.08 PM

     

    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.

  • All About EcoSpirits

    For AlcoholProfessor.com, I wrote up EcoSpirits, a company with a system for avoiding single-use glass bottles sold to bars. I've been following them for years and am psyched they've set up locations in the US now. 

    They fill from bulk shipping containers, put them into their custom-made and reusable "ecoTotes" and refill them as needed. 

    Read all about it at AlcoholProfessor.com. The full text of the post, which first appeared on Alcohol Professor, is below. 

     

    Screenshot 2023-05-20 at 11.49.47 AM

    A Big Step Toward Sustainable Sipping: ecoSPIRITS

    On one end, you have bartenders using paper straws, dehydrated citrus wheel garnishes, and recycled cardboard drink coasters in order to be more sustainable on premise. On the other end, some spirits distillers have been embracing lower-carbon practices such as using solar power, recycling heat, and reducing water use. But in between the distillery and the bar, producers ship fancy heavy designer glass bottles of their spirits all over the world. Those bottles are used a single time and then discarded or put into the recycling bin to be crushed up and reprocessed.

    The Problem With Glass Bottles

    Having a custom bottle is an important part of marketing for spirits brands, especially when those bottles are sold at retail. But at a busy nightclub where bartenders are slinging hundreds of Vodka Red Bulls every night, most customers never see the bottle, and all those bottles still end up in the bin at the end of the night. In other bars, cocktails are fully or partially batched to speed up service and again, the designer bottles are often not even visible to the customer.

    A Solution

    In the middle between the spirits producers and the bartenders, one company has found a very specific niche in which to make a big move in sustainability. ecoSPIRITS is a company that evolved out of a bar group in Singapore but has since gone global with a very good idea.

    Ecospirits receives spirits in bulk containers at their facilities (ecoPLANTs), fills them into their custom-made reusable totes (ecoTOTES) and then a distributor brings them to on-premise accounts. The distributor also picks up empties for refill back at the Ecoplant. (We’ll write these words with typical capitalization going forward to make it easier on your eyes.) There is no single use glass in the process and none in the bin at the end of the night.

    How It Works

    The way it works is quite interesting. Spirits are not bottled at their source, let’s say in France for example, but shipped in bulk plastic totes to one of Ecospirits’ Ecoplants, let’s say in Florida. In most countries in which the company operates, the Ecototes are 4.5 liters (6, 750ml bottles’ worth), but due to US legal bottle sizes, they are 1.75-liter totes here. Ecototes are refillable glass bottles (as manufacturers prefer) inside a protective casing that also makes them stackable.

    When those totes are empty, they are returned to the distributor and sent back to the Ecoplant to be thoroughly sterilized and refilled. The totes themselves are outfitted with monitors and tracking that helps both traceability, accountability, and with inventory. They also have automatic pour spouts that dispense in specific volumes- such as a few ounces or a 750ml bottle’s worth. They can be kept out of site in the stock room or made into conversation pieces with placement on the back bar.

    While a few specific wine and spirits producers have attempted bottle refill initiatives around the US, these all rely on consumers or bars individually returning those bottles to the production facilities for refill or exchange. Thus, these systems are pretty limited in their geographical range, as well as in the range of products that can be refilled into any particular bottle.

    Producers Using The System & Producers That Can’t (Yet)

    Instead, Ecospirits works with many different brands from ones owned by huge companies like Pernod-Ricard’s Beefeater Gin, Havana Club Rum, and Absolut Vodka to smaller brands like Avallen Calvados, Compass Box Whisky and Roots Marlborough Gin. To be available in a particular market, a brand’s owner must agree to make the product available for distribution in this system and ship their liquid in bulk to the Ecoplant. Ecospirits partners with a local distributor that takes orders and delivers totes to accounts, as well as picks up empties to go back to the plant.

    Not every type of spirit is a fit for this system at the moment. Single malt scotch whiskies and 100% agave tequilas, for example, must be bottled in their home countries, so they can’t be shipped in bulk and bottled on foreign ground.

    Geographical Limitations

    Another complexity is that the refill facilities are best located near shipping ports to receive the bulk liquids. Thus, most distribution of the Ecototes is limited to venues that are within driving range of the coastal refill plants, rather than throughout the entire country. In the United States, the first two Ecoplants are located in Los Angeles (and the distribution region includes all the way to Orange County and San Diego), and Miami. It might be a while before they get to Chicago, but it could happen. Ecospirits has plans to bring additional Ecoplants online in the United States in the second half of 2023.

    Obviously, not every single spirit and liqueur from every part of the world is a good fit for this system. Spirits used most often at bars – the “well” spirits – make the most sense as they’re reached for the most often, and don’t sit on the back bar shelves as displays. Just think of how many Aviations you’d have to serve each week to make a 1.75 liter tote of creme de violette worthwhile!

    Deconstructing Cocktails

    But thinking about specific cocktails and their ingredients is a specialty of the company. For example, the Raffles in Singapore serves up to 1200 Singapore Slings to tourists each day, so Ecospirits worked to ensure that all of the alcoholic ingredients in the drink were available in Ecototes. These include Widges London Dry Gin, Luxardo Sangue Morlacco Cherry Liqueur, and Pierre Ferrand Dry Curaçao. Ecospirits says that in the first year in 2018, they were able to save tens of thousands of glass bottles just for this one drink at this one bar.

    They have their eyes on a few other famous drinks too. Zdenek Kastanek, Managing Director for Ecospirits USA, named the Irish Coffee at The Buena Vista in San Francisco and the Miami Vice at the Fontainebleau Miami as drinks on his future wish list.

    Spirits brands available with the system can vary by country, and Ecospirits frequently issues press releases about new brands signing up for their system. Diageo, Pernod-Ricard, and Remy Cointreau brands are available in different markets. For the United States, brands who’ve already signed up include Tried & True Vodka, Los Arcos Destilado de Agave, La Travesia Mezcal, Widges Gin, Mackintosh Whisky, and Candela Rum.

    Sustainability initiatives are needed at the bar and at spirits manufacturing plants, and Ecospirits has found an innovative sweet spot to make a further positive impact in between the two.

  • An Alcademics Study of Liquor Bottle Weights

    Since 2009 I have been weighing liquor bottles before recycling them. I was up to 1226 bottles weighed and decided it was about time for me to analyze the data.  

    At the bottom of the post I'll include a link to my spreadsheets. Note that I dated when I weighed the bottles because bottles often change. In my final analysis I took only the more recent bottle weights if I had them, but it's likely that some of the data in my spreadsheet represents older bottles that have since been changed. 

    This data obviously doesn't include every bottle on the market, and there may be some mistakes in it, such as a typo when I was putting in weights or I didn't weigh the box/tube that a scotch whiskey came in, etc. So take it with a grain of salt. 

     

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 11.55.41 AM

    Some things I learned: 

    I did weigh duplicates of the same bottle. The variance in bottle weights was about 10 grams. This is probably mostly due to me leaving a touch of liquid in the bottom of the bottle before weighing. Some varied by up to 15 grams but this was rare. So we can round our data to within 10 grams. 

    Here are some duplicates so you can see:

     

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.03.37 PM

    The larger the bottle, the less weight per volume of liquid. Some times by a lot! Some times by not so much.

    This is fairly obvious but nice to show. If you want to be better for the environment you should buy your booze in bulk. 

     

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.05.53 PM

    Brands change their bottles, and often not for the lighter. In recent years some brands have started moving to lighter bottles, but the common wisdom is that heavier bottles reflect a more premium (and expensive) product. That's the more typical direction. 

    Some changes include:

    • When Aviation gin moved from a wine-style bottle to a custom one, the weight jumped up by 100 grams. 
    • When Don Julio changed the bottles in 2011, the blanco may have become lighter but the repo and anejo gained weight. Now Don Julio bottles are weighted in order, getting heavier from blanco, repo, anejo, to 70. 
    • Highland Park jumped up by 70 grams
    • Junipero gin increased by OVER 300 grams
    • There were a few other changes that were within 30g that I don't think are worth mentioning. 

     

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.09.25 PM

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.11.29 PM

    13329518_is__63772.1573251260A weighed a few of the more egregious bottle caps. The Padre Azul skull comes in at over 300 grams.

    Somehow I only ever weighed St. Germain one time and not the bottle cap separately. The bottle is not as heavy as it feels though coming in at 800 grams. 

     

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.19.45 PM

     

    I then reduced the data down to avoid repeats, and to only include 750ML bottles so I was comparing apples to apples (or rather, applejack to applejack).

    My "final" clean data represents a total of 798 bottles.

    There are repeats of bottles, for example a flavored vodka versus the unflavored, and different ages of some whiskies, but I kept those in on purpose.

     

    The lightest bottles overall:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.27.07 PM

    400 grams or lighter is about the lightest we seem to get with glass bottles. It's a lot of the American value bourbons and blended scotch whiskies as the lightest bottles.

    Here are the next batch:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.29.04 PM

     

    Heaviest Bottles:

    And now for the heaviest, ordered from heaviest down. In some cases like Double Cross Vodka that may include the box. I had intended to mark when I included boxes or not but didn't do a great job at it. 

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.30.55 PM


    The next batch:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.33.26 PM
    Now let's look at it by category! 

    Amaro, lightest to heaviest: 

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.36.37 PM

    Brandy: Note that Laird's has since moved to a new (assumedly heavier) bottle. 

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.38.47 PM

    Lightest gins:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.40.54 PM

    Heaviest gins (heaviest on bottom):

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.42.00 PM

     

    Lightest  Liqueurs:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.43.16 PM

    Heaviest Liqueurs:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.44.25 PM

    Lightest Rums:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.45.37 PM

    Heaviest Rums:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.46.39 PM

    Lightest Tequilas:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.47.56 PM

    Heaviest Tequilas:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.49.01 PM

    Lightest Vodkas:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.49.41 PM

    Heaviest Vodkas:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.50.16 PM

    Lightest Whiskeys:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.50.59 PM

    Heaviest Whiskeys:

    Screen Shot 2022-05-07 at 12.51.36 PM

    I hope you enjoyed this analysis. Do you want to look at the data and maybe even subcategorize it into things like bourbon vs scotch rather than just whisky? 

    You can find a copy of the sheet here. I have it set so that you should have to copy it in order to make your own changes. Let me know if you further analyze it!

    There are certainly duplicates and other errors in my data, no need to point out anything minor. 

     

     

  • The 2021 Best Drink Books Round-Up

    Makephotogallery.net_1637959840342For the past bunch of years, I've done a round-up of all the drink books (mostly cocktails and spirits) that have come out during the year, in consideration for gifting. I'm not doing that this year, as there are too many cocktail books, and if you want to see them all, you can visit these posts:

    But I decided to do a Best-Of list. Importantly, I must note that I haven't read all of these. I have looked through most, and it's fair to say that I have confidence in these selections. There were some other books that sure sound good but I don't know enough about the book or its author to commit. 

     

     

     

    Do Some Reading

    • 6a00e553b3da2088340282e1130225200b.jpgSomething and Tonic: A History of the World's Most Iconic Mixer by Nick Kokonas [amazon] [somethingandtonic.com]
    • Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland [amazon][bookshop]
    • A Good Drink: In Pursuit of Sustainable Spirits by Shanna Farrell [amazon][bookshop]

    • A Woman's Place Is in the Brewhouse: A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs  by Tara Nurin [amazon][bookshop]
    • Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol by Mallory O'Meara  [amazon][bookshop
    • Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition by Mark Lawrence Schrad [amazon][bookshop]
    • The Thinking Drinkers Almanac: Drinks For Every Day Of The Year by Ben McFarland, Tom Sandham [amazon][bookshop
    • The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails by David Wondrich, Noah Rothbaum [amazon][bookshop]

     

    Non-Alcoholic Cocktail Books

    • Zero Proof: 90 Non-Alcoholic Recipes for Mindful Drinking by Elva Ramirez [amazon] [bookshop]
    • Gazoz: The Art of Making Magical, Seasonal Sparkling Drinks by Benny Briga, Adeena Sussman [amazon][bookshop]

     

    6a00e553b3da208834026bdeec4e06200c.jpgTopic-Specific Cocktail Books

    • Mezcal and Tequila Cocktails: Mixed Drinks for the Golden Age of Agave by Robert Simonson [amazon][bookshop]
    • The Japanese Art of the Cocktail by Masahiro Urushido and Michael Anstendig [amazon][bookshop]
    • The Way of the Cocktail: Japanese Traditions, Techniques, and Recipes by Julia Momosé and Emma Janzen  [amazon][bookshop

     

    Base Spirits

    • The Big Book of Amaro  by Matteo Zed [amazon][bookshop]

    • The Atlas of Bourbon and American Whiskey: A Journey Through the Spirit of America by Eric Zandona [amazon][bookshop]

     

    6a00e553b3da2088340282e13042ad200b.jpgGeneral Cocktail Recipe Books

    • The Cocktail Seminars by Brian D. Hoefling [amazon][bookshop]
    • HOME BAR BASICS (AND NOT-SO-BASICS) by Dave Stolte [website]
    • The Curious Bartender: Cocktails At Home: More than 75 recipes for classic and iconic drinks by Tristan Stephenson  [amazon][bookshop]
    • Mixology for Beginners: Innovative Craft Cocktails for the Home Bartender by Prairie Rose [amazon][bookshop]
    • Death & Co Welcome Home by Alex Day, Nick Fauchald, Dave Kaplan [amazon][bookshop
    • The Cocktail Workshop: An Essential Guide to Classic Drinks and How to Make Them Your Own by Steven Grasse, Adam Erace [amazon][bookshop]
    • Can I Mix You a Drink? by T-PAIN, Maxwell Britten [amazon][bookshop]

    Beer

    • The Beer Bible: Second Edition  by Jeff Alworth [amazon][bookshop]

    • World Atlas of Beer: The Essential Guide to the Beers of the World by Tim Webb, Stephen Beaumont [amazon][bookshop]

     

    Cocktails and Spirits Books from Previous Years

     

  • Using Burrata Water in Place of Egg Whites in Cocktails

    Last week I received a pitch about the cocktails at Oxalis in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. One drink ingredient stood out to me: 

    Breakfast Martini, inspired by the classic cocktail and exclusively offered during brunch, this frothy cocktail features burrata water instead of egg white and gomme syrup instead of orange marmalade, in addition to bergamot, gin and citrus.

    Burrata Water!

    Oxalis - Breakfast Martini - Heidi's Bridge

    Lately bartenders' attentions are turning to egg white alternatives for cocktails, from aquafaba (chick pea water) to quillaja soap bark foamer to high-tech products with thickeners and emulsifiers. Burrata water would be another second-use ingredient

    Oxalis' Beverage Director Piper Kristensen previously worked at Booker & Dax and Bearded Lady before joining Oxalis, which originally launched as a pop-up dinner series in 2016. I sent Kristensen some questions. 

     

    Was the burrata water an original idea or did you see it elsewhere first? I hadn't heard of this previously.
    • We have been using whey to boost texture for a while. I don't know of anyone using burrata water now, but I think it's statistically impossible for me to have been the first to think of it. 
    What is the quantity of burrata water needed to replace egg white? So I guess what's one drink's portion? 

    • We add 1 oz per drink. I tried 3/4oz- wasn't enough.
    Where do you get the burrata water? Is it housemade at the restaurant or is the burrata purchased? (I'm wondering if it matters how fresh the water is or if people can use store-bought stuff.)

    • We have a duck purveyor named John Fazio who makes the absolute best burrata we've ever had. I've never tried making the drink with grocery store burrata. I assume it would work. The burrata has to be in the water long enough to equilibrate, and the burrata at my local has been in there for a while.
    Is burrata water about the same amount of frothy as using egg white? 

    • For sure. We goofed around with an eggless ramos and got decent stove-pipe. What I like most about it is that it doesn't break down where the surface of the drink meets the foam, like an egg white. There's a clinical line. 
    Does it have a flavor? 

    • We introduced it to make a dirty martini because it's got great salinity and a pleasant hint of milk, but the high alcohol system denatured the proteins like egg drop soup. That flavor marries nicely with citrus in a sour. It's not a strong flavor, but it's distinct. 

     

    Cool idea! I may give it a try myself. 

     

  • Nothing Shaken, Nothing Stirred: The Perennial’s Strained Relationship with Ice

    San Francisco restaurant The Perennial has a cocktail program in which none of the drinks on the menu are either shaken or stirred. What's up with that?

    The program, lead by Jennifer Colliau (also of The Interval and Small Hand Foods) focusses on reducing waste with a big emphasis on water waste.

    DSCF2781

    Ice frozen into bottom of glasses. Photo by Jason Rowan.

     

    Ice Machine Waste

    According to Colliau, both Kold Draft and Hoshizaki ice machines (which produce the large clear cubes in most better bars in the US) waste 50% of the water that goes into them. The way these machines make their ice is that water runs over or is sprayed over a cold plate; and apparently the run-off is simply sent down the drain.

    The Scotsman pellet ice machine, on the other hand, she says is 95% efficient. Thus the desire was to not use the water-wasteful machines in the program. They use only the Scotsman machine, but they don't use it for everything. 

    A second point of water waste: The average shaken or stirred cocktail is assembled in a mixing glass or cocktail shaker, shaken or stirred, and then strained and poured onto new ice in the serving glass –  and the shaking/stirring glass ice is dumped out (using nearly twice the amount of water). Then the cocktail shaker/mixing glass must also be washed/rinsed out. Colliau sought to eliminate this waste. 

    Reducing Ice Use

    For stirred cocktails on the menu at The Perennial, the drinks a batched in advance and are served in glasses in which a specific amount of water has been frozen to the bottom (glasses are kept in the freezer obviously). Stirred drinks on the menu are also pre-diluted so they don't need to be stirred but rather just poured. The liquids are kept refrigerated until service, then simply poured into the ice-containing glasses. I asked Colliau how she developed the system. She said:

    I originally stirred these drinks to various temperatures, depending on their alcohol content, until they tasted the best. I measured the drink going in to the beaker then out to see how much dilution resulted from the ice melt. Then, because all of our freezers are the same, I took that dilution proportion and held the resulting drink in the freezer to make sure it tasted great even at that colder temperature.

    Served in rocks glasses with ice frozen into them, approximately every 5 minutes the drink gets about 5 degrees warmer until it hits around 35F. It's important that the drink taste delicious over time.

    Ideally we would White Lyan-style this execution and have different freezer temps for different drinks, but we use these freezers to chill glassware and keep sherbet and large ice in them, so we hold them all cold and manipulate the dilutions to work for each drink.

    For shaken cocktails, things are even more complicated – the act of shaking is to roughly mix and emulsify ingredients together. To accomplish this, they use 1/3 cup of Scotsman ice, and run the cocktail through a blender in a small mason jar until there is no ice left. Thus the drink is "shaken" and no ice is dumped out at the end. Colliau says she'd definitely prefer a less noisy option, but it's the best they can do so far. 

     

    IMG_2650

    Mason jar mouths fit blender blades. "Shaken" cocktails are blended until the ice is all gone.

     

    For off-menu cocktails, they have cubes from 2" Tovolo ice cube trays that they can use for rocks or cracked for stirring.  

    Stirring to Temperature

    For off-menu drinks that are not pre-diluted, they stir drinks to temperature; as temperature directly relates to dilution. 

    The idea is that because ice kept in the well is basically at 32 degrees (F), all dilution of the drink will result in known temperature reductions (and vice versa). Thus to serve a drink the bartender can put in some cracked ice in the glass, stir a bit, prepare other more complicated drinks while it is diluting/melting, then check the temperature and stir more/add more ice if needed, until it reaches the desired final temperature. Any extra ice will be dumped.

    Colliau notes, "Cobbled ice has so much surface area that it over-dilutes too quickly to stop when the drink is ready to go."

    DSCF2743

    Tall drink served on pellet ice with straw straw and dehydrated citrus wheel. Photo by Jason Rowan.

    Temperature of Stirring

    For low-alcohol drinks and those served on glasses with ice frozen into the bottom, they stir to 35 degrees. For regular stirred drinks like a Manhattan or Martini, they stir to 32 degrees as there will be no additional dilution from ice in the glass. And for the Gimlet at The Interval, they stir down to 25 degrees because the drink uses high-proof gin and additional dilution is needed.

    Colliau says, "These are temps that I like for certain drinks, and they are guidelines rather than hard rules. Above all the drinks should be delicious! Using temps makes consistent execution across staff much, much easier."
     

    Other Eco Savings

    • For straw tasting of cocktails, not only do they not use plastic straws (actual ones made of straw are give to customers), they use a system of a spoon and metal straw – you dip the straw into the drink then empty it into a spoon that you use to taste. Thus you don't need to wash the equipment each time. 
    • Water un-drank from water pitchers on tables is collected, combined, and used to water the rooftop garden.
    • They don't "burn" the ice wells at the end of each night: Ice in the wells is used the next day as the ice for chilling syrup and juice bottles. At the end of the week (they are closed on Sundays) they drain clean the ice wells. 
    • To cut down on waste of citrus, they used preserved whole limes in one drink and make whole-grapefruit marmalade for another.
    • For fresh juice, they will use leftovers for one day, and then make sherbet for any leftovers at the end of the week. She notes, "Closed on Sundays, juice on Mondays, use 1-day-old juice on Tuesdays in the service well and squeeze fresh to par, keep rotating like that so ideally we use all of the day-old juice the next day, then on Saturday night we mix the lemon, lime and orange juices with milk and pineapple gum syrup and turn it into sherbet. (No grapefruit for medical contraindications.)" 
    • For purchasing decisions, they look at the carbon footprint of not only the actual product, but its bottling and transportation. High-proof spirits mean less water is shipped in bottles; heavier bottles mean more carbon as well. Shipping is a far less carbon-intensive mode of transport than trucking, so Colliau notes that trucking bourbon across the country from Kentucky might ultimately have a higher carbon footprint than shipping it to California from Japan, even though the distances are vastly different. 

    I'm sure there are tons more environment-saving considerations and processes in place – and this is just on the drink side of the program. This is definitely a more thoughtful process than pretty much every other bar attempting to reduce waste. Really, really impressive.

     

    412HieI+crLHomework: Colliau says she got a lot of information about carbon footprint of transporting bottles and other ingredients from the book How Bad Are Bananas? I'm planning to read it one of these days. 

     

     

     

     

  • DonQ Rum Visit to Puerto Rico

    This summer I visited the Destileria Serralles Puerto Rico, the home of DonQ Rum.

    Map Ponce

    DonQ is distilled in the southern part of Puerto Rico, in Ponce. The distillery has been on the same site since 1865. As with most rum distilleries, it was once the site of a sugar refinery and the distillery was a small part of the overall operation. Puerto Rico stopped producing sugar in the 1980s and the distillery became the important business.

    As with distilleries in the United States, during Prohibition Destileria Serralles was closed. After Prohibition ended, they rebuilt the distillery, this time with column stills to replace the previous pot stills. One of those distillation columns from 1934 is still in use today.

    Making Rum

    The molasses for DonQ is purchased on the open market; the low-sugar stuff from the Dominican Republic or thereabouts, and the high-test sugar-rich stuff from Gautemala. (I learned only recently that with improving technology and higher prices for sugar, they are stripping more sugar out of molasses so they need to suplement lower-quality molasses with special high-sugar stuff so that there is enough sugar in the liquid to ferment.)

    The molasses is shipped into the port of Ponce and then transported to the distillery, where it is pasteurized to prevent any spontaneous fermentation.

    It is then fermented in stainless steel fermenters with their own strain of yeast until it reaches 8-10 percent alcohol by volume. They distill two rums that are later blended; a "light" and "heavy" version. The lighter version ferments for a lesser time than the heavy.

    The heavy rum is distilled in the original beer column (the first column of a multi-column still) from 1934. It looks just as old as it is. 

    Column still 1934 DonQ Serralles Distillery Tour3_tn

    Column still 1934 DonQ Serralles Distillery Tour2_tn

    The light rum is distilled in the newer, multi-column stills.

    Column stills DonQ Serralles Distillery Tour_tn
    After distillation, the rum is aged. The barrels used at DonQ are used twice before they buy them: the first time by the bourbon industry (as with most rums, tequilas, and scotch because barrels can only be used ounce for bourbon by law), but also another time for "light whiskey" which I take to mean blended whiskey like Seagram's.

    Thus there should be less wood influence from these barrels than on other products. Furthermore, they reuse them about 20 times and never rechar them.

    Outdoor barrels DonQ Serralles Distillery Tour_tn

    The rums are aged at a few different proofs, aged separately as light or heavy-style rums, and some is aged as a "medium" rum; a blend of the two. There are also some solera-aged rums in ex-sherry barrels, which are added to some of the blends.

    Sustainability Practices

    Roberto Serralles is a sixth-gernation Serralles family member who holds a PhD in environmental sciences. He is responsible for making this distillery more eco-friendly with the goal of making it waste-free. If given the chance to see him speak, I highly recommend it because he is engaging, authentic, enthusiastic, and making a real difference. Some of the innovations he has helped develop are already being copied by other distilleries. 

    The DonQ website has a great overview of the sustainability practices in place, though from what we learned on-site many of these are evolving from how they are described there.

    Website eco paste

    The carbon dioxide released during the fermentation process used to be captured and sold to use to carbonate sodas, but a change in legal regulations has made this undoable in the short term.

    The distilled molasses "beer" is only 8-10 percent alcohol, then is distilled up to 75 – 90 percent. That leaves a lot of excess water with organic material leftover – during the height of their production 350,000 gallons of wastewater per day. 

    The goal is to separate out the organic matter from the water so that you can reuse the water. First they use anaerobic digesters, in which bacteria eat the organic matter and release biogass. (I want to write a book about distillery waste and call it "Everybody Farts".) This biogass is burned to produce heat at the distillery and reduces the distillery's oil consumption by about 50 percent.

    The next stage is aerobic decomposition, which further reduces the organic matter and produces brownish water. They used water this for irrigation, but as I understand it the water isn't ideal, so they are replacing this system with a new membrane filtration system that Roberto Serralles was pretty proud of.

    That and other systems are in development, but some of the development has been delayed due to a significant business change. You'll learn why in tomorrow's post.

  • Sugarcane and the Environment

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    For the most part rum is made from molasses, the byproduct of sugar production. So when we study the issue of the environmental impact of sugarcane production we need to keep in mind that molasses is the waste product of sugar production. Rum is recycling!

    That said, we're studying not just sugar but sugarcane production so let's look at its impact. Most of this information comes from Sugar: A Bittersweet History by Elizabeth Abbott (2008). See the references page for more information.

    In Cuba where they couldn’t purchase pesticides and fertilizers due to economic issues, they made their own version of organic sugar farming. 

    Sugar beets are a rotational crop so they don’t need much fertilizer or pesticide. It doesn’t cause much erosion or contamination. 

    The sugar industry ruined the Everglades. It was protected by President Harry Truman, but sugar planters drained it and plantations' phosphorous runoff hurt much of the topsoil. 

    Abbott writes about sugar's impact: “The World Wildlife Fun reports, cane has likely ‘caused a greater loss of biodiversity on the planet than any other single crop, due to its destruction of habitat to make way for plantations, its intensive use of water for irrigation, its heavy use of agricultural chemicals, and the polluted waste-water than is routinely discharged in the sugar production process.’”

     On the other hand, “Although Brazilian cane production is notoriously destructive to the environment, cane-derived fuel is precisely the opposite. It is much cleaner than fossil fuels and contains no contaminants such as sulfur dioxide. It emits much less carbon dioxide and protects the climate by vastly reducing carbon emissions, hence reducing pollution. It is sustainable. It yield 8.3 ties as much energy as as that expended to make it and, as new cane varieties are developed, will yield even more. Even its by-products are valuable, and Brazilian mills process them into electricity for their own use and to sell to the national grid…. Cane-based ethanol is the Twenty-First Century’s miracle-in-waiting.”

     

    The Sugar Spirit Project is sponsored by Bacardi Rum. Content created and owned by Camper English for Alcademics. For the project index, click on the logo above or follow this link

  • Bartenders Hitting Their Hoes

    For some reason, the San Francisco Chronicle didn't choose the above title for my story that comes out Sunday August 30th. I can't think of why.

    More bars growing own cocktail ingredients

    Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

    Friday, August 28, 2009

     Victoria D'Amato-Moran grows tomatoes, Asian pears, Fuji apples, blackberries, roses and many herbs in her South San Francisco garden. Sooner or later, everything in it winds up in her cocktails.

    "Except the zucchinis," she says. "I haven't figured out how to use those yet."

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    The Bay Area has long been home to the farm-forward cocktail movement – initially personified by Scott Beattie, then of Cyrus restaurant, who sourced produce from neighbors' fruit trees for his bar. Lately, more bartenders are doing the gardening work themselves, for the same reason that backyard gardeners seem to have appeared everywhere.

    The extra effort may not save money, and the drinks may not taste noticeably fresher to the customer, but you can bet they do to the proud garden tender who grew part of your gimlet from seed.

    Read the rest of my story in this Sunday's Chronicle about bartenders who also tend to gardens, including Duggan McDonnell, H. Joseph Ehrmann, Daniel Hyatt, Scott Stewart, Thad Vogler, and Lane Ford, and the bars Fairway Cocktail Lounge, Cyrus, Elixir, Alembic, Cantina, Fifth Floor, Bar Agricole, Starbelly, Sprcue, Brix, and Etoile. Gosh I'm thorough.

    Also: there's a recipe for Jacques Bezuidenhout's Sagerac, a version of the Sazerac made with fresh picked sage, and Scott Stewart's Lonsdale No. 3 made with fresh basil.

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