Category: projects

Building Better Mineral Water: Deconstructing Mineral Waters

In the Water Project here on Alcademics, I'm looking at what is in commercial brands of sparkling mineral waters and reconstructing them.

To do so, first I looked at how to get all the dissolved solids out of tap water. Then I measured properties of commercial mineral waters – pH and dissolved solids- and compared them with publicly available information.

The next step was to examine what each mineral in mineral water tasted like on its own.

Again referring to the information on Khymos.org, I could see that the primary minerals in mineral water are Calcium, Sodium, Magnesium, and Potassium. The website also allows you to look at bicarbonate, sulfate, chloride, and nitrate.

To taste each of these minerals/salts on its own, I looked up the mineral water with the greatest concentration of a particular mineral, then added the ingredient in the proper amount to mineral-free water to give me that water's amount of it. In other words, if Apolinaris water had the most Magnesium (it did), then I started with water with no minerals in it and added the magnesium-containing ingredients in its recipe (epsom salts and magnesium carbonate) without worrying about the other minerals in the recipe.

I measured the pH and total dissolved solids (TDS) of the new mineral water before carbonation, and the pH again afterward. This was mostly to make sure I wasn't adding anything that would put the mineral water outside of a safe range of pH for drinking.

Single-Mineral Mineral Water Chart

Mineral	Brand	Added	pH	TDS	pH after carbonation	Notes
Calcium	Contrex	Plaster of Paris	9.9	244	4.8	Cleared up after carbonation. Nice fizz. Taste: powdery/dry but not flavorful
Magnesium	Apolinaris	Epsom salts and Magnesium Carbonate	10	132	5.1	Cloudy until carbonate, creamy, mineraly, soft carbonation though
Sodium	Saint-Yorre	Baking soda and Table salt	8.2	2170	5.9	Clear before carbonation, great fizz, tastes very salty
Potassium	Saint-Yorre	Potassium Bicarbonate	8.4	158	4.8	Clear before carbonating, fizzes over with carbonation when charging, flavor is dryness; not much else
Sufate	Contrex	Epsom salt and Plaster of Paris	7.4	459	5.1	A little sweet. Really good carbonation. Nice texture.
Chloride	San Narciso	table salt	6.9	876	6.9	Good carbonation but just salty, blech

It was interesting to see how these salts affected carbonation; not just flavor of the water.

The next step was to taste these one-mineral-rich waters with alcohol to see what happened. I thought they might bring out different aspects of flavor in booze and I was right.

I made an equal-parts Vodka Soda with each of the soda waters above. My tasting notes were:

Mineral	Notes
Calcium	Bright and flavorful
Magnesium	Not a lot of character; a little salty
Sodium	Salty, way too salty
Potassium	Chalky but kinda good
Sulfate	Brighter and sweeter, but perhaps too much so
Chloride	Salty

After this, I made a mineral blend of what I thought might work, using a combination of baking soda, epsom salt, and plaster of paris. This blend did make the flavor in vodka (and whisky) pop, but was too salty tasting.

My next experiments will be to build other mineral blends to find one(s) that I like. There is much more work to be done!

—

The Water Project on Alcademics is research into water in spirits and in cocktails, from the streams that feed distilleries to the soda water that dilutes your highball. For all posts in the project, visit the project index page.

May 13, 2013

Making Mineral Water: Starting from Scratch
In the Water Project I'm studying water in spirits in cocktails, from the source water for fermentation through to the sparkling water we use to dilute drinks. As part of the latter research, I'm looking into deconstructing and reconstructing mineral water.

Much of the work on this has been done by other people and I'll just be reproducing it here. In short, the mineral content of mineral waters is publicly available, so you can add minerals to your own water to recreate your favorite brand.

You can either start with your tap water, taking into account its mineral content, and add more minerals to it (as done on the Khymos blog), or you can start with completely mineral-free water and add to that (as done in the Craft Cocktails at Home book).

What's in My Water?

I decided to look at San Francisco tap water to see what it contains. From the annual Water Quality Report we can see the standard minerals that we look at in bottled water including calcium, magnesium, and sodium. My local water also contains metals like copper, lead, and aluminum. Then it has added chloramine and fluoride for disinfectant and dental health.

I know my water tastes good even without filtering it, but is it appropriate for use to make mineral water? Most of the numbers in the water report are given in ranges, and some of those ranges are pretty wide. They also give average levels of minerals and contaminants. Some averages from the report are:

Calcium 49 ppm (parts per million)
Magnesium 4.9 ppm
Sodium 13.5 ppm

The average amount of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) in my water 132 ppm. The TDS is an important number as we use it to measure mineral waters. Water sold as mineral water in the US has to have TDS of 250 at minimum.

Intrigued by the fact that my water seems to be halfway to mineral water, I decided to test the TDS of my tap water.

Testing Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)

TDS is super easy and cheap to test – a TDS meter costs about $15 on Amazon.com, or you can get one for free when you buy a Zero Water pitcher for $33. The pitcher is designed to get reduce the TDS in tap water to zero, so I bought one.
Using the enclosed TDS meter, I found that my tap water has super low TDS in the first place – only 32 ppm, compared with the San Francisco average of 132! I then compared it with filtered water:

San Francisco Tap Water, Average = 132 ppm
Camper's Tap Water = 32 ppm
Camper's Tap Water, after filtering with Mavea water pitcher = 28 ppm
Camper's Tap Water, after filtering with Zero Water pitcher = 0 ppm
Distilled Water (purchased), no minerals added = 0 ppm

I also tested Carbonated water, just to see how it reads, as most mineral waters that I'll be looking at later will be sparkling. It turns out that this is harder to read – the meter jumps around quite a bit and then settles around a number range. When I carbonated TDS 0 water it settled to 17 – 22 ppm. Interesting.

But what about the rest of the stuff in the water?

So even if I get the solids down to zero, what about the chloramine and fluoride? Are they still there and can you taste them? It turns out that the Zero Water pitcher gets rid of fluoride and some chloramine. From the FAQ:

Q. Does the ZeroWater filter remove Fluoride?
A. ZeroWater filters are not certified for the reduction of fluoride however fluoride is an inorganic compound. The TDS meter is designed to detect inorganic compounds. Fluoride levels in water are usually around 2 to 4 ppm, which will show up on the meter as 002 to 004. So when filtered water reads 000 it is not likely that fluoride is present in water.

Q. Does the filter remove Chloramine?
A. We have done internal lab testing that shows our filters can reduce chloramine. However, the presence of chloramine can reduce the expected life of the filter, so if you have chloramine in your water, you may need to change your filter more often than normal.

I then looked about getting rid of chloramine on the SF Water website:

Chloramine is not a persistent disinfectant and decomposes easily from a chemistry point of view but for water supply purposes chloramine is stable and it takes days to dissipate in the absence of substances exerting chloramine demand. Therefore, it is not practical to remove chloramine by letting an open container of water stand because it may take days for chloramine to dissipate.

However, chloramine is very easily and almost instantaneously removed by preparing a cup of tea or coffee, preparing food (e.g., making a soup with a chicken stock). Adding fruit to a water pitcher (e.g., slicing peeled orange into a 1-gal water pitcher) will neutralize chloramine within 30 minutes. If desired, chloramine and ammonia can be completely removed from the water by boiling; however, it will take 20 minutes of gentle boil to do that. Just a short boil of water to prepare tea or coffee removed about 30% of chloramine.

If desired, both chlorine and chloramine can be removed for drinking water purposes by an activated carbon filter point of use device that can be installed on a kitchen faucet.

Can you taste chloramine in drinking water? Several sites say that chloramine tastes better than chlorine in drinking water, but can you taste it at all?

"Chloramines do not give off any taste or smell and are relatively safe." [link]

The Water Quality Association, says [pdf]: "While chloramines are not a drinking water health concern to humans generally, their removal improves the taste and odor of drinking water. " They do not mention boiling but activated carbon filtration.

(Extra: A note about chlorine and chloramine removal in home brewing.)

So maybe you can taste chloramine, and better safe than sorry.

My guess is that if I boil water for 20 minutes to remove chloramine, then cool and filter it in the Zero Water filter, I could get pretty good quality water, with which to begin mineral water experiments.

Or, you know, just buy distilled water by the gallon at the store.

—

The Water Project on Alcademics is research into water in spirits and in cocktails, from the streams that feed distilleries to the soda water that dilutes your highball. For all posts in the project, visit the project index page.

Related articles

Announcing the Water Project on Alcademics

Transform Tap Water into Magical Alpine Fairy-Water (Book Excerpt)

The Geology of Scotland and the book Scotch on the Rocks

Come See Camper Speak at Tales of the Cocktail
April 11, 2013
When Did Grenadine Become an Artificial Ingredient?
We all know that grenadine is supposed to be a syrup made of pomegranate juice and sugar, often with orange flower water added in. But most commercial grenadines are little more than red food coloring and sweetener.

We might think that artificially-flavored cocktail ingredients like grenadine all came to be in the post-war 1940s and 50s, or in the disco-drink 1970s, but it turns out that grenadine has been an artificially flavored syrup for over 100 years.

As we read in a previous post, pomegranates were brought to California by the Spanish in the late 1700s, and grown commercially before 1917. We've also seen how grenadine became a trendy cocktail ingredient in the 1910s, first showing up in drinks in the 1890s. But was the grenadine used from 1890s through the 1920s real grenadine?

Coincidentally I recently finished the book Drinking Boston: A History of the City and Its Spirits (2012), in which which author Stephanie Schorow does some deep research on the most famous classic cocktail to come out of the city (and that contains grenadine): the Ward Eight.

In trying to find a more specific date of creation of the Ward Eight, Schorow looks into grenadine availability in Boston. She notes that pomegranates were available in Boston in the 1890s, according to a market report in the Boston Globe.

But how about grenadine?

Grenadine Goes Bad

Did bartenders ever use real pomegranate grenadine in their cocktails? In the US, maybe, maybe not.

There was a New York State Supreme Court case in 1872 involving apparently one of the first persons to produce grenadine syrup (at least there in New York) from real pomegranates. He called his "grenadine" or "grenade syrup", then someone else started calling his syrup 'grenade syrup' and there was a suit over using the same words.

"THE plaintiff was engaged in the business of manufacturing from the juice of the pomegranate a syrup which he named Grenadine and Grenade Syrup and sold under those names. Subsequently the defendant commenced making a syrup which he sold under the name of Grenade Syrup. The plaintiff obtained an injunction order restraining the sale of any article under the name which he had thus previously appropriated. The defendant alleging that Grenade was a French word signifying pomegranate and that Grenade Syrup was sold in France by that name and denying that the plaintiff could acquire an exclusive right to use a foreign name by being the first to introduce it into this country moved to vacate the injunction order."

So it appears real grenadine from pomegranates was being made and sold in New York in 1872.

But it wasn't long before fake grenadine was on the market. I'm not sure when it was first manufactured without pomegranate, but it was quite early on.

In a book called The Standard Manual of Soda and Other Beverages: A Treatise Especially Adapted to the Requirements of Druggists and Confectioners (from 1906) the recipe for grenadine extract lists as ingredients clove oil, orange peel oil, ginger tincture, vanilla extract, diluted phosphoric acid, maraschino liqueur, cochineal (which we know is a red coloring made from bugs), water, and alcohol. Note the absence of pomegranate.

In 1912 there was a ruling in a case called U.S. v. Thirty Cases Purporting to be Grenadine Syrup. (This is covered in the book Drinking Boston.) The government seized the shipment because there was no pomegranate in this grenadine – it was made from sugar, citric and tartaric acids, and 'certain fruits.'

Interestingly though, the court ruled that because grenadine wasn't as familiar to Americans as lemon and oranges (and that it was only an article of commerce in the US in the last 10-15 years), there was no reason for consumers to expect to get pomegranates in their grenadine. (You can read the court case and decision here.)

A later court decision ruled that grenadine is not even a fruit syrup, as it's not made with fruit but with citric acid.

The Fake Grenadine Backlash

Did the first US bartenders to use grenadine ever use the real deal? I haven't found incidences in my books of bartenders specifying the word "pomegranate" when talking about grenadine, so perhaps they were always using commercialized artificial grenadine.

In later books, authors clearly spelled out their displeasure with the fake stuff, particularly the fake stuff from America.

In the fabulous book The Gentleman's Companion (aka Jigger, Beaker, and Flask) from 1939, Charles H. Baker, Jr. acknowledges the decline in grenadine quality. He says, "Don't be deceived by inferior American imitations of the real thing. Be sure and get the imported."

David Embury also warned against grenadine. In The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948), he defines grenadine as, "A very sweet, reddish, non-alcoholic syrup mildly flavored with pomegranates. Used primarily for color rather than flavor."

In 1972, Kingsley Amis said grenadine was, "A non-alcoholic, sweetened sort of pomegranate juice, nice to look at, odd in flavour- I am never sure whether I like it or not. But quite a few recipes include it."

Modern Grenadine

Rose's grenadine, the most popular brand, is made from "High Fructose Corn Syrup, Water, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Sodium Benzoate (Preservative), Red 40, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Blue 1." Yum!

Some brands of grenadine that do use real pomegranates are Small Hand Foods, Sitrrings, and Employees Only. PAMA pomegranate liqueur is also made with pomegranate juice, plus vodka and tequila.

In Eric Felten's book How's Your Drink? from 2009, he says, "You can no more make a Bacardi Cocktail with red-dyed corn syrup than you can make a chicken salad sandwich with turkey."

But perhaps they'd been making Bacardi cocktails with turkey all along.

For the month of December I'll be looking at the pomegranate and its use in cocktails, including in grenadine and in PAMA pomegranate liqueur, the sponsor of the project. Check out the information developed just for bartenders at PamaPros.com.

Other posts in this series:
- Intro to Pomegranate
- How to Remove Pomegranate Seeds and Make Grenadine the Easy Way
- The History of Grenadine Use in Cocktails: Literature Review
- The History of Grenadine Use in Cocktails: Theories and Conclusions
December 20, 2012
The History of Grenadine Use in Cocktails: Literature Review
When was grenadine first used in cocktails? I thought this would be a simple question to answer, but not so much. Along the way to figuring this out, I've had to split up this one blog post into several.

First we'll look at the cocktail books from 1862 – 1930 and see where grenadine is called for in recipes. Then we'll try to draw some conclusions from that. And then we'll look into what the grenadine that bartenders were using really was: made from fresh pomegranate or artificially-flavored?

So let's get busy.

From Nowhere to Everywhere

In Jerry Thomas' How to Mix Drinks, the first bartenders' guide from 1862, he calls for raspberry and strawberry syrups throughout, plus shrubs made from cherries and white currants, but I don't see any pomegranate.

Fifty years later in Savoy Cocktail Book from 1930, I counted about 100 drinks that call for grenadine. Many of those say "raspberry syrup or grenadine" so it seems one had replaced the other. Let's see what happened in between.

A Review of Grenadine in Cocktail Books 1862 – 1930

In Harry Johnson's Bartender's Manual from 1882, his list of required syrups at the bar do not include grenadine but white gum, raspberry, pineapple, lemon, strawberry, orange, orchard, rock candy, and orgeat syrups.

The Modern Bartenders' Guide by O.H. Byron from 1884 lists recipes for cordials and syrups, concentrated fruit syrups, and fruit brandies: none of them list pomegranate or grenadine.

In The Flowing Bowl (1891) by The "Only" William, I don't see any grenadine or pomegranate recipes, but several have raspberry syrup, including the Violet Fizz, the Knickerbocker, and the Pineapple Julep.

So far, the first grenadine recipe I see in a cocktail book comes from Cocktail Boothby's American Bar-Tender, from 1891. In the body of the text, it is only mentioned once, and not even in a cocktail, but in "Turkish Harem Sherbet." However, stay tuned for more information that comes from a later edition.
In Modern American Drinks by George Kappler (1895), The Bosom Caresser is made with raspberry syrup, egg, brandy, and milk. In later books, the ingredient changes.

This book shows grenadine beginning to creep into cocktails. Specifically:
- Grenadine Cocktail: "Use grenadine in place of gum-syrup in any kind of cocktail."
- Grenadine Lemonade: "Make a plain lemonade rather tart, and add a pony of grenadine before shaking. Trim with fruit, serve with straws."
- Pousse Cafe (French Style): Grenadine, maraschino, orange curacoa, green Chartresue, cognac. Note that there is also an American Style pousse cafe that includes everything but the grenadine, and a New Orleans Style pousse cafe that uses raspberry syrup instead of grenadine, plus you light this drink on fire.
- Schickler (brandy, grenadine, soda)
Meanwhile, in France, grenadine was all the rage in Louis Fouquet's Bariana from 1896. His recipes include:
- Bosom Caresser – grenadine, maraschino, cognac, sherry
- Corpse Reviver – This is a 13-layer Pousse Cafe, not the version we know today.
- Pick Me Up – lemon juice, grenadine, kirsch, champagne, orange slice
- Chicago -creme de noyaux (the signature ingredient of this book),grenadine, cognac, Amer Besset, seltzer water, lemon slice
- Mother's Milk – Curacao, noyaux, grenadine, egg yolk, cognac, milk, nutmeg (gross!)
- Ranson Cooler – Noyaux, curacao, grenadine, kirsch, bitter, and seltzer water, lemon slice (looks just like the Chicago)
I also don't see any grenadine in Mixicologist by C.F. Lawlor (1895).

Stuart's Fancy Drink and How to Mix Them (1902) also lists many recipes for syrups and liqueurs, but no grenadine.

A brief look through Recipes of American and Other Iced Drinks by Charlie Paul (1902) didn't reveal any grenadine either.

Back to Cocktail Bill Boothby's American Bar-Tender. In an addendum of the 1908 edition of the book are several typed pages with new cocktails (apparently collected from contact with other bartenders), and here we find some grenadine.
- Jack Rose Cocktail (credited to R.H. Towner of Wm. St. N.Y.) with grenadine, applejack, and lime juice
- Marguerite Cocktail ("conceived by the famous Otto as served in Henry's Hotel 11 Rue Volney, Paris, France and the La Salle Hotel, Chicago) with lime, grenadine, Plymouth gin, dash of absinthe, white of an egg
- Opalescent Cocktail (a la Bingham American Congress Bar, City of Mexico) with lemon, grenadine, mint leaf, egg white, Plymouth gin). You'll recognize that last drink as the better-known Clover Leaf or Clover Club.
After this point, grenadine really takes off.

In Drinks by Jacques Straub (1914) we find a ton of grenadine drinks:
- Aviation Cocktail (applejack, lime, absinthe, grenadine)
- Bacardi Cocktail (grenadine, Bacardi, lime)
- Beauty Spot Cocktail (orange juice, sweet and dry vermouth, gin, grenadine)
- Booby Cocktail (gin, grenadine, lime)
- Chantecler Cocktail ("Bronx with 4 dashes of grenadine syrup. Shake.)
- C.O.D. Cocktail (grenadine, gin, slice of grapefruit)
- Isabelle Cocktail (grenadine, creme de cassis)
- Italian Cocktail (Italian vermouthg, grenadine, Fernet Branca)
- Jack Rose
- Japanese Cocktail (not the standard one – this contains grenadine, rye, Italian vermouth, and curacao)
- Marqueray Cocktail (lime, absinthe, grenadine, egg white, gin)
- Millionaire Cocktail (orange bitters, cuacao, rye, grenadine, egg white)
- Rose Cocktail (orange juice, grenadine, gin)
- Royal Smile Cocktail (lime, grenadine, dry vermouth, apple brandy, egg white)
- Ruby Cocktail (grenadine, apple jack, gin)
- Ruby Royal Cocktail (gin, dry vermouth, raspberry, frappe')
- Society Cocktail (dry gin, dry vermouth, grenadine)
- Sunshine Cocktail (lime, dry vermouth, Old Tom gin, grenadine, egg white)
- Country Club Cooler (grenadine, dry vermouth, soda)
- Sea Side Cooler (lime, grenadine, soda)
- Cider Cup (lots of fruit and grenadine)
- Grape Juice (same)
- Ginger Ale (same with ginger ale added)
- Star Daisy (lime, gin, applejack, grenadine)
- Amer Picon Pouffle Fizz (Amer Picon, grenadine, egg white)
- Elsie Ferguson Fizz (lemon, strawberries, gin, grenadine, cream, soda)
- Grenadine Gin Fizz (grenadine, Old Tom gin,lemon, soda)
- King Cole Fizz ("gin fizz with grenadine syrup")
- Bemus Fizz (lemon, grenadine, lime, sugar, gin, cream, soda)
- Ruebli Fizz (lemon, orange, grenadine, Rhine wine, soda)
- Whiskey Grenadine Fizz (lemon, grenadine, rye or bourbon)
- Amer Picon High Ball (Amer Picon, grenadine, soda)
- Irish Rose High Ball (Irish whiskey, grenadine, soda)
- Queen's High Ball (Amer Picon, grenadine, soda)
- French Flag (grenadine, maraschino, creme Yvette)
- Polly ("Gin Fizz made with grenadine syrup instead of using sugar.")
- Pousse Cafe No. 2 (grenadine, anisette, creme Yvette, Green Chartreuse, cognac)
- Millionaire Punch (lime, sugar, whiskey, grenadine, creme de menthe)
- Amer Picon Sour (Amer Picon, lemon, lime, sugar, grenadine)
- Canadian Whisky Sour (lemon, lime, sugar, Canadian whiskey, grenadine)
- Grenadine Sour (lemon, grenadine, dry gin)
- Grenadine Gin Sour (same with whiskey)
- Millionaire Sour (lime, lemon, grenadine, rye, curacao)
The book lists raspberry syrup in other drinks separately. The Knickerbocker lists the drink with raspberry syrup.

In Hugo R. Ensslin's Recipes for Mixed Drinks (1916-1917) we also have a ton of grenadine drinks. Clearly grenadine was well-established at this point. Drinks that include grenadine in the book are: Beauty Spot, Clover Leaf Cocktail, Daiguiri [sic] Cocktail, Hugo Bracer, "Have a Heart" Cocktail, Jack Rose Cocktail, Littlest Rebel Cocktail, Millionaire Cocktail I, New York Cocktail, Oppenheim Cocktail, President Cocktail, Pollyanna Cocktail, Pinky Cocktail, Royal Smile Cocktail, Santiago Cocktail (same as the 'Daiguiri"), September Morn, Saxon Cocktail, Twin Six Cocktail, Wallick's Special, Apricot Cooler, Lone Tree Cooler, Picon Highball, California Lemonade, American Rum Punch, Bacardi Rum Punch, Pineapple Punch, Hugo Rickey, Applejack Sour, Fireman's Sour, Knickerbein, Pousse Cafe, Wild Eye Rose.

Some interesting things about this book:
- The Bacardi Cocktail doesn't mention grenadine, and yet the "Daiguiri" does.
- The Knickerbein isn't made with grenadine in many recipes but here it is.
- The Daisies are all made with grenadine, not raspberry syrup. This seems a big switch from previous books.
In Cocktails: How To Mix Them by Robert Vermeire (1922), which was published in London, we see grenadine drinks such as the Chinese Cocktail, Club Cocktail, Daiquiri (the same Bacardi Cocktail-Daiquiri reversal is present here), Dempsey Cocktail, Depth Bomb, Gloom Raiser, Luigi Cocktail, Millionaire, Monkey Gland, R.A.C. Cocktail, Monkey Gland Cocktail, "75" Cocktail, Tipperary, Trocadero, Ward Eight Cocktail, and Whiz-Bang. That's just the cocktails- there are also coolers, juleps, sangarees, etc.
- In the Clover Club Cocktail recipe, raspberry syrup is listed in the ingredients, but in the description it says, "Grenadine is often substituted for raspberry syrup."
- The Jack Rose Cocktail lists "A little raspberry syrup or grenadine" in the ingredients.
In Barflies and Cocktails by Harry and Wynn (published in Paris in 1927), we again see lots of grenadine in the recipes. Below are some notes.
- The Bacardi Cocktail has grenadine and so does the "Dacqueri"
- The Clover Club Cocktail is again listed with raspberry but a note says "In London for some time it has been the custom to serve Grenadine instead of Raspberry."
- The Clover Leaf Cocktail (a Clover Club with a mint leaf on top), however, specifies grenadine.
- The Daisies use grenadine.
- Under "Various Continental Beverages" (the continent would be Europe), we see some interesting combinations such as Kirsch and Grenadine and Picon Grenadine, both of which are the two mixed with soda.
And that brings us to the Savoy Cocktail Book from London in 1930. Some notes:
- The Bacardi Cocktail Special is made with grenadine, Beefeater Gin, Bacardi Rum, and lime juice.
- The Clover Club is made with grenadine, and the Clover Leaf is listed as "The same as Clover Club with a sprig of fresh mint on top."
- There are a few Daisy cocktails, but only the Gin Daisy is sweetened with grenadine. Other daisies call for different liqueurs.
- The Jack Rose is made with grenadine and "applejack or calvados" (as I'm sure the latter would be easier to come by in London).
- The Bosom Caresser is made with grenadine
- The Monkey Gland is made with grenadine
In the next post in this series, we'll look at some conclusions from this literature review.

For the month of December I'll be looking at the pomegranate and its use in cocktails, including in grenadine and in PAMA pomegranate liqueur, the sponsor of the project. Check out the information developed just for bartenders at PamaPros.com.
December 18, 2012
Dehydrated Liqueur Flavor Pills and Champagne Cocktails

As an ongoing part of my Solid Liquids Project, I have dehydrated various liqueurs into flavored powders and am now experimenting with new ways to use them.

In yesterday's post I described how I bought a pill press to make tablets out of the liqueurs.

I started with Angostura bitters, but then made additional "flavor pills" out of Campari, Midori, and Aperol.

I was thinking that these would be fun flavor enhancers for drinks, especially champagne drinks.

A cool presentation might be to give a guest a glass of champagne and a variety of flavor enhancers from which to choose. To make it extra fun, I put some in a pill box.

Then you pick your pill and add it to the sparkling wine. It fizzes up nicely.

And eventually it breaks down and colors and flavors the drink.

It does take several minutes for the flavor to become noticeable in the champagne. I tried to speed up the process by experimenting with adding baking powder to the mix, but this affected the flavor of the drink.

Thus this works best with the most strongly flavored liqueurs, and using rather large sized flavor pill tablets. It could also be a fun addition to hot tea.

Sometime soon I'll do some experimenting (I've run out of sparkling wine for now) to see which flavors work best in this format.

I hope this inspires some fun experimenting!

April 18, 2012
The Bitter Pill: Dehydrated Angostura Bitters Tablets

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I wanted to find some more uses for the dehydrated liqueurs I spent a few months developing. The index to that experimentation is here.

Yesterday I tried putting dehydrated liqueurs into pill capsules, but these did not readily dissolve in any of the drinks I put them in.

So I went online and bought a pill press. You'll find them online often called a "pollen press" to make some sort of pollen pills (and I get the impression that they're also used in vaporizers with marijuana). Anyway, the one I bought was this simple split pipe and sleeve on Ebay. I bought the half-inch size.

You simply put some powder in the sleeve and the metal pipes into either end, then bang them together using a rubber or wooden hammer. It produces a tablet of sorts that you can make in any thickness.

So now they're ready to use. One of the first ones I made was not the Campari or other typical liqueurs, but Angostura bitters. (I mixed Angostura and sugar and dehydrated them together in the oven.)

That way, this "bitter pill" of Angostura and sugar can be added to bourbon to make an instant Old Fashioned cocktail.

It can also be added to champagne to make a Champagne Cocktail.

April 17, 2012
A Brilliant Idea That Didn’t Quite Work

You'll remember I spent a few months figuring out the best way to dehydrate liqueurs into flavored sugars.

Now I'm finding new ways to use those liqueur-flavored sugars.

Typically bartenders who use these dehydrated liqueurs sprinkle some on top of an egg white foam or use them as a rimming sugar on a cocktail glass. But I had the idea to use them as an optional flavor enhancer to cocktails – give the customer a drink and some powdered liqueur and let them add it if desired. (Some bars do this with bitters and tinctures.)

So I bought some vegetarian capsules and filled them with dehydrated liqueurs.

They look awesome, right?

But unfortunately, they didn't perform as expected. When adding them to a cocktail the capsules didn't dissolve. I tried a boozy cocktail, a fizzy cocktail, and an acidic cocktail in the hopes that these would help speed up the process. I even tried a hot cocktail to see if that worked.

In all forms, the capsules dissolved eventually, but if you want to wait 20+ minutes for that to happen you're a more patient drinker than I.

Ah well, it was a cool idea that didn't work out.

But in tomorrow's post, I'll talk about a technique that actually worked…

Read more about the Solid Liquids Project and how to deyhydrate liqueurs here.

April 16, 2012
Solid Liquids: The Missing Link Aviation

I haven't created cocktails yet with the dehydrated liqueurs I've been making for the Solid Liquids project, mostly because I figure y'all are don't lack imagination and will find good uses for them.

But here's a drink I've been hankering to create since the beginning.

The Aviation cocktail was originally made with gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, and creme de violette liqueur, but at some point in one cocktail book copying from another, they left off that last ingredient.

For something like 60 years, the recipe was written incorrectly as the first three ingredients only, even through the beginning of the current classic cocktail revival. Then someone figured out they were missing the creme de violette that turned the drink sky blue and gave the cocktail its name.

I wrote about that here.

I decided a fun drink would be to create the drink that is the missing link between the wrong and correct recipes, leaving the drinker the option to have it either way. The cocktail has dehydrated creme de violette sugar around the rim, and what's in the glass is the other three ingredients.

Missing Link Aviation
By Camper English

2 oz. Gin
.75 oz. Maraschino Liqueur
.75 oz. Lemon Juice

Shake and strain all ingredients into a glass rimmed with Dehydrated Creme de Violette.

It tastes delicious.

Learn how to dehydrate liqueurs here.

The Solid Liquids Project index is at this link.

November 8, 2011
Solid Liquids: The Deconstructed Midori Sour

Just for fun in the Solid Liquids Project I put some dehydrated Midori to good use.

I made a Deconstructed Midori Sour.

You dip the lemon in dehydrated Midori, bite into the Midori-coated lemon, and then do the shot of vodka.

With people who do the lime-salt-tequila shot, they use the lime to and salt to hide the taste of bad tequila. In this case, the lemons were so tart that the sugar in the Midori wasn't enough to balance it out, so you need to vodka to chase the lemon rather than the other way around.

Anyway, this is all in good fun.

The Solid Liquids Project index is at this link.

October 26, 2011
A Note About Dehydrating Honey-Based Liqueurs

In the Solid Liquids Project I found that liqueurs sweetened with honey do not crystallize. (At least the honey-sweetened liqueurs that I tried.) I theorized on why and how we might over come this in this post.

However, in reading an unrelated book, I think I found the real reason these liqueurs are not crystallizing.

I was reading Bi-Rite Market's Eat Good Food: A Grocer's Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food and found the following in the section on honey:

Honey is a super-saturated solution, which means it has a tendency to crystallize (come out of solution) and turn solid over time. Because of this, most producers filter and pasteurize their honey to prevent crystallization and create a more uniform product.

Eureka! If it's one thing alcohol producers want, it is products that are consistent and don't spoil or separate in the bottle. My guess is liqueur producers who use honey use pasteurized honey, and that this is why liqueurs sweetened with honey have not crystallized in my experiments.

The Solid Liquids Project index is at this link.

October 18, 2011