Category: sweeteners

  • Distilling Honey Into Vodka: An Interview with Caledonia Spirits Owner/Distiller Ryan Christiansen

    Years ago when I first heard of – and tried- Barr Hill Gin, it was a revelation. The gin is neutral spirits with added juniper and honey- that's it. The honey brings with it other aromatics from the flora the bees feed on. 

    The gin is made by Caledonia Spirits in Vermont. A recent press release stated: 

    Caledonia Spirits is known best for its flagship gins, but the distillery's Barr Hill Vodka is a truly unique offering within the vodka category. Made entirely from raw northern honey and nothing else (~3000 lbs per batch), it’s distilled only twice – a stark contrast from many of the popular vodkas that get distilled 3-5 (or more) times and filtered to oblivion. Vodka was traditionally thought of as a spirit that became better the more times it was filtered, but doing so leaves a spirit that is completely odorless and tasteless.

    Knowing just how beautiful of an ingredient the raw northern honey is, Caledonia Spirits wanted to flip tradition on its head and create a vodka that retains some of the flavor and aroma from its sugar source. Distilling and filtering it too many times would totally lose the honey flavor, but thanks to Caledonia Spirits’ unique process, the resulting vodka is fragrant and flavorful…yet not sweet at all. The honey tasting notes are very subtle, but they’re present enough to tell you that you’re not having the same neutral-tasting vodka that is so often served. Every year, Caledonia Spirits purchases 60,000-80,000 pounds of raw honey from beekeepers within a 250-mile radius of the distillery.

    Sine then, the brand has released a vodka and a barrel-aged gin.  I hadn't tried the vodka before. It is absolutely waxy almost to the point of greasy, with notes of Honey Nuts Cheerios, and I think I love it. 

     

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    I was given the opportunity to interview Caledonia Spirits Owner/Distiller Ryan Christiansen, so that's just what I did! 

    Is the base of Barr Hill Gin purchased grain neutral spirits (plus honey and juniper)? Or is there distilled honey spirit in it also?

    The base of Barr Hill Gin is grain neutral. It is then distilled in one of our two custom-built botanical extraction stills with Juniper. The spirit is proofed down with raw honey and our water.

     

    Is Barr Hill Vodka 100% distilled from honey or is it a blend of GNS and distilled honey? If a blend can you give an approximate ratio? 

    Barr Hill Vodka is distilled entirely from raw northern honey.

     

    I see several stills in the image on the website – the big pot and a small and tall finishing column. Which set-up do you use to make the gin vs the vodka?  

    Our gin is distilled in Irene and Ramona, two custom-built botanical extraction stills. Our vodka is distilled twice, once through a pot stripping run, then through the column still to 190 proof.

     

    88347072_3058134717532525_8511479553980366848_oImages stolen from Barr Hill.

     

    Is the honey sold by the pound? Is there a standard conversion for pounds of honey to liquid volume? Do you know the liquid volume of honey for the "60,000-80,000 pounds" you buy annually? 

    We purchase our honey by the 55 gallon drum, which holds about 650lbs of honey. In the last year we’ve used over 67,000 lbs to make our spirits. Each bottle of vodka requires 3-4 pounds of raw honey to make. Where we fall in that range from 3-4 depends on the batch size. 

    We do also sell our honey by the pound for use by bartenders and chefs.

     

    For fermenting/distilling honey, do you dilute to a certain standardized sugar level (and do you measure this in BRIX) before fermentation? Can you say what that level is? 

    We pitch yeast at 24 brix, and ferment to dry.

     

    How long does fermentation take? I imagine it's super fast. 

    Honey fermentations are much slower than grain fermentations, usually about 2-3 weeks to dry.

     

    Do you temperature control the fermentation? Do you let it go longer into a malolactic fermentation? If not, is there a reason, such as it becomes disgusting? 

    We control fermentation temperatures with a water jacket on the fermenter. Honey fermentations don’t need much cooling. Our grain fermentations for whiskey production require much more heat extraction. We do not let our fermentations go to malolactic.

     

    What's the ABV you get after fermentation? 

    Approx 12%.

     

    You say you never heat the honey prior to fermentation, would heating it make it lose flavor/blow off volatile aromatics? (If I'm making a honey simple syrup should I not heat the water?) 

    This is a hard question to answer without a deep conversation. In short, it really depends on the honey. The botanical influence of the bees foraging varies significantly between honeys. As a general rule, keep the honey raw (below 110 degrees) when possible.

    Obviously, our distillation process cooks our honey, but that occurs after fermentation. We’ve found it crucial to keep the honey raw during fermentation to develop and accentuate flavors that will stay intact through distillation.

     

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    And if you don't heat it and you do add water, is it very hard to mix? What do you use to mix it? Do you need specialized equipment for handling honey? It all seems incredibly sticky. 

    In our early days, it was a food grade shovel, bucket, electric drill, and a paint paddle with many trips up the ladder to the top of the fermenter. It was sticky and backbreaking, but it worked. We’ve added some fancy honey pumps and circulation lines in our fermenters that have made our lives a little easier. The honey is a sugar so with enough movement, it’ll dissolve. Keeping it raw certainly adds some challenges, but it’s essential for the finished spirit.  

     

    When purchasing huge volumes of honey as you do, how does that honey come? In what sort of container? 

    Beautiful reused and dented metal drums. Beekeepers never throw them away, they just keep traveling around the world. Even local honey is often delivered with old stickers and labels from all over the world.

     

    Clearly as a vodka, you distill the fermented honey up to 95% to be a member of the category. I remember researching a while back to find that there wasn't a standardized terminology for what you'd call a lower-ABV honey distillate (other than "honey spirit") – some brands were calling their products "honey rum" for example. I'm wondering if you've heard any sort of consensus on this or your opinion on what to call honey spirit that isn't distilled to the vodka ABV?

    I’ve heard a handful of terms. My favorite is Somel. This is an initiative led by a handful of distillers working with honey. https://somel.org/

     

    Thanks to Caledonia Spirits for answering my questions!

     

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  • Once Always Almond, Orgeat Has Gone Nutty!

    In my new story for SevenFifty Daily, I wrote about how orgeat, the French almond syrup famously in the Mai Tai, is now being made with a range of nuts, seeds, and other ingredients. 

    The story cites examples from around the country and we come up with a new working definition for orgeat. 

    Check it out!

     

    Orgeat

  • Potential Dangers of Homemade Tonic Water

    UntitledCoronavirus update March 28, 2020: Many people are coming to this page seeking advice on using cinchona bark to make their own medicine. 

    You are not qualified to make your own medicine. The bark available for purchase online is not labelled as to its potency. And if you read the article below or this one, you'll also find that an overdose of cinchona bark can be dangerous or fatal. 

    DO NOT ATTEMPT TO MAKE YOUR OWN MEDICINE USING CINCHONA BARK. RESPECT SCIENCE, LISTEN TO DOCTORS.

    More information about the safety of cinchona bark/homemade tonic can be found here at CocktailSafe.org.

     

    A few weeks ago, Avery and Janet Glasser drank some homemade tonic syrup in a Gin and Tonic at a bar and came down with the symptons of cinchonism, a condition caused by a buildup of quinine.

    Tonic water contains quinine as its active, bittering ingredient. Quinine comes from cinchona tree bark. Homemade tonic waters begin with this tree bark either in chunk or powdered form. The powdered form is particularly hard to strain out of the final beverage, and this could lead to an accidental overdose.

    The symptons of cinchonism (from wikipedia):

    Symptoms of mild cinchonism (which may occur from standard therapeutic doses of quinine) include flushed and sweaty skin, ringing of the ears (tinnitus), blurred vision, impaired hearing, confusion, reversible high-frequency hearing loss, headache, abdominal pain, rashes, drug-induced lichenoid reaction (lichenoid photosensitivity),[1] vertigo, dizziness, dysphoria, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

    A scientific paper published in 2007 reported a case of a patient self-medicating for leg cramps with quinine and it turns out he gave himself cinchonism. His systems were intermittent fevers, chills, and tremors for approximately 12 days; general malaise that would begin with a bitter taste in his mouth that wouldn't go away. (On PubMed the article is at  PMID: 18004031)

    BS1-300x150Glasser wrote about his incident on his Facebook page, and I asked if I could reprint it. The Glassers are the founders of Bittermens, makers of bitters, spirits, liqueurs, and other products. Thus they are very familiar with quinine. He wrote:

    How did it happen? Well, we work with cinchona all of the time, which means that our bodies already have a small buildup of quinine. During Tales of the Cocktail, we had a gin and tonic at a restaurant where they made their own tonic syrup. By the amount of the suspended cinchona dust floating in the drink and the distinctive earthy tannins that mark incomplete filtration, we should have stopped drinking it at the first sip. But we didn't, and spent the next two days dealing with the very uncomfortable symptoms of cinchonism. 

    Safe Amounts of Quinine in Tonic Water

    The below information all comes from Avery Glasser. 

    There's a federal standard for the use of quinine in carbonated beverages, specifically that it cannot exceed 83 parts per million in the final tonic water (21 CFR 172.575). Now, if you're working with commercial quinine sulphate or quinine hydrochloride, it's easy to calculate. Basically, that ends up being 2.48 mg of commercial quinine per ounce of tonic water.

    So, let's expand this out: a typical gin and tonic is 1.5 oz of gin and 4.5 oz of tonic, 6 ounces total. That means we can expect 11.16mg of quinine in that beverage.

    However, most producers of tonic syrups don't use quinine hydrochloride/quinine sulphate… and there's the rub.

    Cinchona bark is approximately 5% quinine.

    The Most Popular Tonic Water Syrup Recipe Has Too Much Quinine

    Let's take one of the most popular tonic syrup recipes, published by Jeffrey Morgenthaler: Basically, it's 6 cups of liquid to 1/4 cup of powdered cinchona bark, which is about 35 grams of cinchona. Extrapolate from that and we're talking about 35 grams of cinchona per 1.4 liters of end syrup, which is 25 grams per liter, and if it extracts fully, contributes 1.25 grams of quinine per liter, which equates to 1251 parts per million. That's 15 times the CFR standard.

    If you use 3/4 of an ounce of that syrup in a Gin and Tonic, you're adding in 27.5 mg of quinine – more than double the amount of quinine in a commercial gin and tonic. 

    Note: Does a syrup extract quinine fully from the cinchona? No – but it extracts faster from powdered cinchona versus cinchona chips or quills.

    Note: Does a syrup that is sieved through a french press or a coffee filter have a high percentage of solids still in suspension? Yes – and any of the solids you swallow contribute the full amount of the quinine as your body digests the powder. 

    Quinine in Bittermens Bitters and Liqueurs

    Glaslser says, "We work with small amounts of cinchona in many of our bitters. At our concentration, there's only about 1.1 grams of cinchona per liter in the maceration, and all of the solids are removed down to 5 microns, which means there's barely any cinchona left in the mix. If we say that we get a full extraction of quinine from the cinchona before we filter it out, then we're talking about contributing about 57 mg of quinine per liter of bitters, or assuming a half ml of bitters per cocktail, we add no more than 0.0283 mg of quinine to a cocktail, or raise the total amount of quinine by 0.19 parts per million. Again, that's assuming that we left all of the cinchona bark in the final product, which we do not as we don't use powdered cinchona (we use larger pieces of bark). Most likely, we're contributing less than a tenth of that amount.

    "Just for full disclosure, our liqueur division (Bittermens Spirits) makes a tonic liqueur – but we had that tested before releasing it to ensure that our liqueur was below 83 ppm, meaning that any beverage use would still be well below the federal limits."
     

    Avery Glasser's Conclusion

    All I'm saying this this: be careful. Bitters and tonic syrups can be fun to make, but they can be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. I'm not saying that you need to be a food scientist or a compounding pharmacist to do things safely, but you have to understand that you're working with potentially harmful substances! Indian Calamus root, Virginia Snakeroot or tobacco – even in small amounts can have horrible and irreversible effects. Just last week, I was told about a bar that was soaking stone fruit pits in neutral grain and had no idea about cyanide toxicity.

    For us, it's now five days later and the symptoms are basically gone, but it also means we have to be careful about having cinchona for another week or so.  

    That's it. No rant. Just a plea for my health and the health of all of our friends and customers: think carefully before making your own tinctures, extracts, bitters and syrups.

     

     Thanks to Avery Glasser for sharing his story – and the math – with us. 

     

  • Why Add Sugar to Rum When it’s Made from Sugar in the First Place?

    As mentioned in yesterday's post, rum is distilled from any sugar cane derivative like fermented fresh cane juice or molasses. But some producers add sugar to their finished rum after distillation.

    Sugar1

    Adding sugar to any spirit can soften it and hide some flaws, but if you look at the (allegedly) sweetened rums in this post on RefinedVices.com, you'll notice two general patterns among the rum bottlings that allegedly have sugar added:

    1. They come from big companies that shouldn't need to add sugar to cover a bad distillate. They know how to distill.
    2. They're aged rums, rather than white rums. 

     Well it turns out that adding sugar to spirits also gives them the guise of age.

    Ian Burrell, global rum expert and founder of Rum Experience, commented on the original Facebook post of the sugar values with some really interesting information. He wrote: 

    I recently did a private tasting for 50 consumers with two rums both finished in sherry casks. One was notably sweeter than the other. When I asked the guests to let me know which they felt was the oldest, 80% said the sweeter one. When I asked which they prefer 60% said the sweeter one.

    I then gave them a 3rd rum, which they were unaware was actually Rum no.1 (the dryer rum) with a touch of sugar added to it. All agreed that this was the best rum of the three.

    I then pointed out that Rum number 3 (which was in fact the OLDEST RUM) was the Rum no 1 with sugar added, and that they had perceived the added sweetness as extra aging and smoothness.

    These rums with high levels of sugar added to them are what I call "Dessert Rums" but they still and will always have a place on our bars, restaurant and spirit cabinet because consumers will buy rums (& other spirits) according to how they taste and not how they are made. But WE must educate them, when feasible, that part of the taste that they are appreciating is the added sugar, wine, vermouth, spice, etc.

    What was really interesting about my exercise with the 50 tasters was the ones that preferred the dryer rum also liked whisky. While the “sweeter loving” rum drinkers like cognac.

    That last dig on cognac drinkers? It's because cognac also has a dirty secret: much cognac has sugar added to it too. 

     

  • How Much Sugar is Added to your Rum?

    It's a funny thing about rum: It all is distilled from a fermented sugar cane derivative (fresh cane juice, molasses, or something in between), but sugar doesn't pass through the distillation process, so some producers add sugar back into the distilled rum to sweeten it up.

    Recently on Facebook, people have posted lists of sugar levels in commercial brands of rum. One reportedly comes from the Finnish government and another from the Swedish government. I won't post them directly here but the lists are here on RefinedVices.com.

    You should really take a look. They show commercial brands of rums with anything from 0 grams/liter of sugar added up to 46 grams per liter.

    **Note – You should verify the content against the originals. The Swedish government's site is: https://www.systembolaget.se (thanks Magnus!) and the sugar content is listed for some individual products. I don't know about the other list so I can't verify its authenticity nor how current either of the lists/measurements are. Furthermore, I do not know if the rums we get in the US are the same as in other countries, even if the labels match.  In other words, do not treat those lists as absolute truth. 

    But how much sugar is that really?

    Allegedly, specific bottlings of rum by brands including Plantation, Bacardi, Zacapa, and Angostura contain between 17-22 grams of sugar per liter. This looks to be the average amount of sugar added by those brands that add sugar. Other brands are either much higher (40 g/l) or quite low (5-9 g/l). 

    So I wanted to know how much sugar is 20 grams and how sweet that makes a liter of liquid taste. So I measured it. My scale isn't the most accurate thing in the world, but here's how 20 grams came out:

    Sugar1

    Sugar2

     Which comes out to a heaping half ounce, or probably a little under 3/4 ounces. 

    Sugar3

    Heck, it's not uncommon for there to be that much sugar added to a single cocktail. And keep in mind that's the quantity for a full liter of rum, not 750 ml bottle.

    I then added the sugar to 1 liter of water to see how sweet it was. In water, it was certainly noticeably sweet, but not soda-sweet. 

    For example, the driest soda I can think of is Q Tonic's grapefruit, orange, and lemon sodas. They have 13g sugar per 8 ounces, which by my calculation means 55 grams of sugar per liter; more than twice as much as is these rums. 

    I'm not saying that you want your rum as sweet as Coke, nor you necessarily want any sugar added to your rum at all. But for these rums having what sounds like a lot of sugar added to them, it's not really a ton. 

     

  • Syrups are the New Bitters on Details.com

    Have you looked through your December magazines yet? In just about every one that I get (and I get a lot of them), there is a recommendation for a specialty cocktail syrup of one flavor or another as a suggestion for gifting. 

    By the time I noticed this, I'd already written my latest story for Details.com, which we ended up calling Syrups are the New Bitters. It's not to say that you no longer need bitters now that there are more syrups on the market, but rather where once there was a lack of variety of bitters on the market and bartenders turned into entrepreneurs to develop their own brands, now syrups are at that same place. 

    Screen Shot 2013-12-13 at 10.43.37 AM

    I mentioned many brands specializing in syrups dedicated to particular cocktails, seasonal syrups, and a whole section on tonic syrups. 

    Check it out on Details.com

     

  • A Sampling of Sugars from Asia

    Last year at Tales of the Cocktail I gave a talk along, with David Cid of Bacardi, about sugar, syrups, and rum. A detailed write-up of that talk is on the blog Commercial Free Cocktail.

    As part of that talk, I passed around a ton of samples of sugars to taste. Most of these sugars were purchased in Singapore by Michael Callahan, bar manager of 28 HongKong Street. He carried a full suitcase of them for me, so he is awesome. Many of the sugars were taken home by seminar attendees (I encouraged it), or were no longer transportable, but seven of them made it back home with me.

    For those of you not there to taste them in person, I wanted to write them up. It just took me five months to do it. Here are a few notes on the sugars.

    Sugar1

    Japanese Wasanbon Sugar

    This is the famous Japanese wasanbon sugar. I picked up this packet in Japantown in San Francisco. It is labelled as "Baikodo Wasanbo". Here is some information about wasanbon sugar.

    Wasanbon sugar is widely used in the world of Japanese sweets.
    Wasanbon is a domestically produced light yellow sugar that is
    made through a traditional Japanese manufacturing process
    and a particular specialty in the Shikoku region. As wasanbon
    sugar is made entirely by hand and the process is quite
    detailed, mass production is impossible. Due to this and other
    reasons, the price is higher than for ordinary sugar. The raw
    material is chikuto, a kind of sugarcane with a thin stem, and
    the manufacturing process is as follows :
    -Squeeze the liquid out of the chikuto using a squeezer and
    make shiroshita by boiling the liquid down.
    -Put the shiroshita into a big "boat" the size of a tatami (rush-
    mat), and knead it while adding water.
    -Put the kneaded shiroshita into a bag made of hemp on the
    outside and cotton on the inside and wring it.
    -Place the entire bag into a "pressing boat" made of wood,
    hang weights down from the tops of the cabers and apply
    pressure via the principle of leverage.
    -When pressure is applied, molasses is generated from the
    shiroshita. Place the shiroshita remaining in the bag, not
    the squeezed molasses, into the "boat" again and repeat the
    same process three to five times. The shiroshita remains in
    the bag, and is sifted through a sieve after being dried.

    Wasanbon sugar crystals are fine, smooth and soft and melt
    in the mouth while generating an elegant sweetness. In the
    world of Japanese sweets, the taste of sugar is the life of the
    sweet and is a treasured part of all Japanese sweets.

    That information comes from this PDF document, which sugar nerds should definitely read. 

    Tasting Notes: This stuff is delicious. It is soft and powdery and instantly melts on the tongue with a burst of beautiful pure sweetness and a slight afternote of molasses that you want more of (and I kinda hate molasses). Harmonious.

    Sugar2
    Taikoo brand Okinawa Style Natural Black Sugar

    From the back of the package:

    Taikoo Okinawa Style Natural Black Sugar is made from renowned Japanese sugarcane adopting the traditional Okinawa style of production. It is rich in the aroma of sugarcane and suitable for people from all age groups to take as a snack during leisure time. 

    Okinawa Style Natural Black Sugar is ideal for preparing traditional Chinese recipes such as ginger soup, black bean wine, vinegar stew, lycii fructus with longanae arillus soup. It is also a perfect match for making Chinese style dessert such as chilled myotonin and red dates congee. 

    Another website says:

    Okinawan brown sugar is made from sugarcane grown in fields blessed with strong southern-island sunlight and minerals delivered by the ocean spray. Unlike other brown sugar, Okinawan brown sugar has a deep, rich flavor.

    Not only used as a condiment, Okinawan brown sugar pieces are consumed as a sweet accompaniment to tea for relief of fatigue. Brown sugar is especially popular among women for its high iron and calcium content and is used as part of a remedy for anemia. It is also popular as a wholesome food. Use this great product regularly as part of your everyday diet.

    And another website puts it more plainly:

    Many Western women like to eat chocolate for comfort during their period, but Japanese women like to eat black sugar. For Taiwanese women, eating black sugar during their period is also a very common custom, probably because Taiwan is a former colony of Japan. They really eat pieces of sugar like it's candy.

    Actually, the minerals like iron and calcium do help ease the tension and discomfort of a woman's period. Of course the calories of the black sugar do produce a lot of energy for this difficult time too.

    Compare it to a cup of hot chocolate on a winter's day. Ginger and black sugar tea is a popular drink in almost every part of China. Apart from warming up the body, ginger tea also helps to cure colds.

    Tasting Notes: Opening this packet I would swear I was smelling old Swedish licorice candy! It has a thick, raisiny aroma that reminds me of the Swedish licorice pipes. The taste isn't as dramatic as the aroma; a soft and gentle licorice that I can totally see enjoying as candy rather than sweetener. 

    Sugar6
    Thai Gula Merah Jaggery Powder

    From the package, "Star Brand Jaggery Powder is a natural sweetening substance made by concentrating sugar cane juice without any preservatives and colorings. It can be used in brewing coffee, tea, and chocolate drinks and in preparing cakes, kuih, syrups, and desserts."

    Tasting Notes: It doesn't have a strong aroma, smelling like dusty dirt for the most part. In the mouth it tastes of soft molasses mixed with super high sugar notes. Kind of disjointed; as if they just mixed one good light sugar with a too-sweet one.

    Sugar7
    China Rock Honey Sugar

    First off: Best.Name.Evar. 

    The package doesn't have much information in English. It says only, "Ingredients: chrysanthemum, sugar, honey, water," so it appears it's some sort of a mix. 

    It's definitely processed and shaped into these rectangular pieces that look a lot like Rice Kripies Treats. 

    Tasting Notes: It doesn't smell like much of anything, and the flavor is mild as well. It's crunchy like some sort of sugar candy with only a light molasses taste. I am not tasting any honey flavor. Oh well, at least the name is great. 

    Sugar3
    Small Lump Sugar

    The only English words on the package are the ingredients (sugar and water), and "Product of China".

    The lumps are in the size of giant crystals, the average size being about that of Chiclet gum. 

    Tasting Notes: It smells only slightly of molasses but mostly just like rock candy. The lumps don't taste like anything at all until you bite into them, and then it's just like plain sugar, but a lot less sweet than typical white sugar.

    Sugar8
    Ueno brand Kurosato sugar.

    Ingredients: black sugar.

    This one I also found in San Francisco, and it sounds a lot like the other Japanese black sugar mentioned above.

    Tasting Notes: It smells just like the other sugar too – Swedish licorice, but a little darker and more heavily baked. These chunks are much larger than in the other package, and their flavor far more white-sugar-sweet. Less interesting than the other brand of the same. 

    Sugar4
    Gula Melaka Coconut Candy

    The ingredients of this package are coconut and sugar. Inside the package are four cylindrical, molasses-colored pieces of the candy.

    Tasting notes: The smell is delicious, like a combination of maple sugar candy and molasses. The taste is also a bit like maple sugar candies, but more in texture than in flavor. Generally it's more brown sugary than anything else. I don't detect any coconut flavor.

    Sugar5
    Orange Sugar

    This sugar I think Michael Callahan just bought in bulk in Singapore. I asked him for some more information about it. He says:

    This is the famous "Orange Sugar". It is sold as you see it (in baggies) in all the Wet-Markets throughout Singapore. The base is a granulated Gula Merah (Palm Sugar). The coloring comes from additives. I have not found out what the original coloring agents were, nowadays they use modern food dyes. The color is to brighten up a local sweet dish called "Putu Mayam", an Indian dish variation adopted by the Malay people. The dish is all white and the "orange sugar" brought color and also allowed you to see how much you had added. It is wildly inconsistent and I am certain some of them must be carcinogenic. I love playing with it for making syrups as It brings a nice hue and tone to the drink with its touch of pink. 

    Tasting Notes:  It doesn't smell like anything. Though it looks powdery, it's actually really small granules. The flavor is just of sugar, but it is pleasantly mild in sweetness. Nothing earth-shaking, but pretty nonetheless.

     

    Sugar spiritFor more information on sugar from around the world, check the Sugar Spirit Project index at this link. 

  • 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? 

    Drinking  bostonCoincidentally 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.

     
    Cut pomegrates1_tn

    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.

    Jigger beaker flaskIn 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! 

    Hows your drinkSome 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.  

     


    PomegranateProjectSquareLogoFor 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:

  • 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. 

    Cut pomegranates2_tn

    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. 

    Modern bartenders guideThe 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.

    Modern american drinksIn 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. 

    Drinks by jacques straubIn 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.

    SavoyAnd 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. 

     


    PomegranateProjectSquareLogoFor 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.

     

  • Dehydrated Liqueur Flavor Pills and Champagne Cocktails

    SolidLiquidsProjectSquareLogoAs 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. 

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

    Pellets with flute1M
    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.

    Pill box2M
    Pill box3nobackground
    Then you pick your pill and add it to the sparkling wine. It fizzes up nicely.

    Campari champage2M
    And eventually it breaks down and colors and flavors the drink.

    Campari champage4M
    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!