Tag: Campari

Campari Production Info: Extraction, ABV, Coloring, and Fining
At this year's Tales of the Cocktail, I went to a terrific seminar called Til The Bitter End, lead by Audrey Fort of The Rooster Factory brand development agency.

I also gave a seminar about bitterness at Tales, with an emphasis on understanding the flavor of different bittering agents. This seminar, on the other hand, was about bitterness in general and measuring the impact of bitterness in different spirits in particular. Though I researched the heck out of my own seminar, I also learned a ton in this one.

One of the panelists was Mike Capoferri, Italian Portfolio Ambassador for the Campari Group. I'd not met him before and his part of the presentation was great. While Campari, the liqueur, doesn't disclose any of the ingredients in the bottle that make its distinctive flavor, Capoferri was able to share some of the very complicated production processes that go into it. And they're so complicated that it wouldn't matter if they disclosed every ingredient.

So first, some technical terminology that I'd not seen in this way before, defining various extraction techniques depending on whether it's done in alcohol or water:

One thing he mentioned in the seminar is that bitter compounds are not soluble in high-ABV alcohol. And I learned in the preparation for my own seminar that bitter flavors do not generally distill. That's why most bitter ingredients are macerated in the spirit rather than redistilled like gin. (In the case of Cointreau, I learned when I visited the distillery a few years ago, they distil their bitter oranges that have been macerated with pith in order to remove bitterness from the infusion.)

Essential oils (like from the peels of those oranges in Cointreau) on the other hand do distill well, and are soluble in high-ABV alcohol.

Within the Campari portfolio, Averna is a simple extraction of botanicals in high proof spirit, so the result is a not-super-bitter amaro.

Braulio, in contrast, is macerated at a lower proof, to enhance the bitter flavors.

Anyway, those maceration techniques are used in the production of Campari:

I'm glad to see Campari isn't just Herbs -> Infusion -> Filtration -> bottling. I like it when things are interesting.

Three important observations (of mine) from this:
1. "1 of 8 Colorants": As I revealed on this blog post about how Campari is made differently around the world, insect-based natural cochineal coloring seems to have been replaced by artificial coloring in most parts of the world, but not all. The post identified some of the ways that the red coloring is labelled – and now we know there are eight variations (or at least there were at the time this slide was made)!
2. "1 of 5 ABV's": Also on the blog post we knew there were different ABVs. I'm surprised there are only 5. But on the other hand, 5 ABVs times 8 colorants means they could make up to 40 variations of Campari.
3. "Fining": On that same blog post, we saw from the bottle in Jamaica that Campari "contains eggs." I am pretty darn sure that is from the fining process (also used in beer and wine) that brings the liquid to clarity. The only thing to note here is that they use the term "fining" rather than "filtration" which helps build our case. To repeat from that blog post, even though in most countries Campari is no longer colored with insects, it is still almost assuredly not vegan.
So, that was awesome. Thanks to Audrey Fort and Mike Capoferri for the info.
August 16, 2018
Campari is Made Differently Around the World: Cochineal, Coloring, ABV, & Eggs
I was researching a few different topics and stumbled upon an interesting observation: Not only is Campari sold at a wide-ranging variation of alcohol percentage in different countries, the coloring used to make its signature red is different depending on the country.

As many people know, Campari was traditionally colored with cochineal, a scale insect native to South America that grows on the prickly pear cactus. (Cochineal is still used in many products today, as it is a natural coloring and doesn't need to be labelled as the unsightly 'artificial coloring'.)

In 2006 cochineal was discontinued – but as it turns out, not everywhere. In the United States and it seems most countries, Campari now uses artificial coloring. Depending on which country one is located in, that coloring must be declared in different ways, so what is merely "artificially colored" in the US is labelled as three specific coloring agents in one country, and none at all in others.

But in at least one country, cochineal is still used.

In the United States, Campari is sold at 24% ABV and the coloring is listed as "artificially colored."

In France, the ABV is 25% and the colorings are listed as E122, E102, and E133.

Next door in Spain, no special colors are labelled, but it's also sold at 25% ABV.

It appears it is the same in Argentina (with INS instead of E numbers), but the proof is 28.5%.

In Brazil it is the same, and labelled gluten-free.

In Toronto, it is sold at 25% and the color is merely misspelled (kidding!) as "colour."

In Australia, it is sold at 25% with no special color labelling.

In Malaysia it is the same – 25%, no color labelling.

In Japan, it appears to be sold at 25%. Anyone ready Japanese and can tell me if it says anything about coloring or eggs?

(One reader responds: "Red #102, Yellow #5, Blue #1. Don't see any mention of eggs.")

In Israel, it's sold at 25% ABV with E122, E102, and E133 listed as colorants.

In Iceland, it's sold at 21% ABV with no special color labelling.

Now here's where it gets really interesting.

I was wondering if the Swedish government website was merely out of date as it lists the coloring as E120 – that's cochineal(!), but a friend just picked up a bottle recently and cochineal is still in Campari in Sweden. Additionally, it is sold at 21% ABV.

Update: A twitterer sent me a pic of bottles from Mexico – they also have cochineal! See the E120:

And even more interesting is this bottle of Campari from Jamaica. Hold onto your butts:
1. "Blended and bottled in Jamaica… by J Wray & Nephew" [Campari now owns JW&N]
2. 28.5% ABV
3. "Contains Egg"
CONTAINS EGG. Folks, that is some interesting news right there. Typically when eggs are used in wine, beer, and spirits (that aren't egg-based liqueurs), the eggs have been used in the fining process that helps filter the products to clarity. I think it's fair to assume this is how eggs are used in Campari.

My guess would be that because Jamaica has a Rastafarian community, many of which are vegans, products fined with eggs are required to be labelled.

What this means though, is that even though they took out the cochineal insect coloring (except in Sweden and Mexico apparently), Campari, at least in Jamaica, is still not vegan.

The question remains what it is in the rest of the world – I would bet that Campari is still not vegan.

Keep in mind that much cane sugar is whitened using bone charcoal, so any liqueur or sweetened alcohol has an okay chance of being non-vegan.

Thank you to my Facebook and Twitter friends from around the world who shared their bottle images. If you live in another country not mentioned here, please send me your bottle image to add to this discussion. Thanks!
July 15, 2017
The Golden Gate 75 Cocktail

I created the Golden Gate 75 cocktail in tribute to the Golden Gate Bridge's 75th anniversary. They are doing a whole series of events around the anniversary with a big party on May 27th.

I had an idea: Golden Gate 75 is close to French 75. And if we swap out gin and lemon for Campari and orange juice, the color could match the famous "international orange" of the bridge!

It took a lot of experimenting to get the color right. I couldn't make it happen with regular orange juice (Campari wants to go pink) but luckily blood oranges had just come into season. It turns out that was the key. So then I talked to the Campari folks and they had it professionally photographed. I got the color pretty close I think.

Photo by Rich Niewiroski Jr

Golden Gate 75
By Camper English

2.5 ounces California Sparkling Wine
1 ounce Campari
1 ounce Blood Orange Juice (Or substitute regular orange juice)
.5 ounces Rich Simple Syrup*
1 dash Orange Bitters (Regan's Orange Bitters No. 6 recommended)
Orange peel for garnish

Directions: Blood orange juice helps turn this cocktail a color resembling the Golden Gate Bridge, celebrating its 75th birthday this year. Add Campari, orange juice, simple syrup, and bitters to an ice-filled shaker. Shake and fine strain (to remove any pulp) into a champagne flute or coupe. Top with sparkling wine. Zest the orange peel over the top of the drink and drop the peel in the drink or discard.

*Rich Simple Syrup: Heat 2 parts sugar to one part water and stir until dissolved. Store covered in the refrigerator between uses. Depending on the sweetness of sparkling wine used, you may use less simple syrup.

Now, this drink is delicious, but it's not rocket science. There are several recipes I found online for the combination of Campari, sparkling wine, and orange juice, this is just a small adjustment with bitters and simple syrup, and of course using blood orange to make it match the bridge.

When I made this at home, I used aspic cutters to make a "75" out of orange peels. But they were pretty big so they kind of sank.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the drink!

April 13, 2012

Which Liqueurs Crystallize When Dehydrated?

In the Solid Liquids Project I've experimented with various methods to dehydrate liqueurs into solids. I've found that not every liqueur does crystallize through conventional heating methods to boil off the alcohol and water. Ones that do not crystallize usually leave a thick, sticky, gummy glob at the bottom of their container.

I have not figured out why some liqueurs don't crystallize, though I've had some theories.

Here is my list of liqueurs I've tried to crystallize (most of them in silicone cupcake cups in the oven) and whether or not it worked.

Liqueur Crystallization

Liqueur	Crystallizes?	Notes
Campari	Yes
Midori	Yes
Amaretto	Yes
Luxardo Maraschino	Yes
Green Chartreuse	Yes
Rhum Clement Creole Shrub	Yes
Emmett's Irish Cream	Yes	Dairy
Aperol	Yes
Tuaca	Yes
Hiram Walker Triple Sec	Yes
Licor 43	Yes
Creme de Violette	Yes
DeKuyper Peppermint Schnapps	Yes
Pallini Limoncello	Yes	Beet sugar
Disaronno	Yes
Luxardo Bitter	Yes
Cointreau	Yes	Beet Sugar
Mandarin Napoleon	Yes
The King's Ginger	Yes
Wild Turkey American Honey	No	Honey
X-Rated Fusion Liqueur	No	Fruit Juice
Hypnotiq	No	Fruit Juice
Irish Mist	No	Honey
Courvoisier Rose	No	Fruit Juice
Velvet Falernum	No- Squishy, thick
Hiram Walker Gingerbread Liqueur	No- Mostly Solid
Combier Roi Rene Rouge	No- Mostly Solid	Cherry Juice?
Firelit	No- Hard puck
Potters Creme de Cacao	No-Thick, Squishy
Hiram Walker Blueberry Schnapps	No- Soft Squishy
Patron Citronge	No-Soft, squishy
Barenjager	No- Crusty top gel beneath	Honey
Drambuie	No- Crusty top gel beneath	Honey
St.Germain	No- Crusty top gel beneath
Cynar	No- Crusty top gel beneath
Solerno	No- Gel
J. Witty Chamomile	No- Crusty top thick gel beneath	Agave?
Benedictine	No- Crusty top gel beneath	Honey
Cherry Heering	No- Dense Gel
Root	No- Solid Puck
Kahlua	No- Full volume gel
Domaine de Canton	No- Gel
VEEV	No- Crisp, glassy puck
Ancho Reyes	No- Crisp, glassy puck
Creme Yvette	No- soft gel puck
Bols Yogurt	No- brown, crisp
Allspice Dram	No- thick gel
Rothman & Winter Apricot	brittle clump
Drambuie 15	No- Crisp, sticky clear candy
Pimm's	No- glassy shattering candy

It is possible that your results may differ for some of these, or that you have tried other liqueurs with successes and failures to share. If so, please let me know in the comments.

The Solid Liquids Project index is at this link.

October 18, 2011

Solid Liquids: Campari Fruit Roll-Ups

In the Solid Liquids Project (project index here) we are experimenting with the best methods to dehydrate liqueurs, and then putting the dehydrated liqueur to good use.

This is one of those uses.

I've been using a food dehydrator as one method of dehydrating liqueurs. It works well enough, though other methods are faster. In order to use it, I insert plastic trays into the dehydrator shelves so that the liquid won't pour through the holes.

These trays are actually designed to make fruit leathers. The instructions on how to do so come with the tray, so I knew as soon as I got enough liqueur sugar I'd be using it for this.

First Try

On my first attempt, I followed the instructions a little too closely. Basically you use apple sauce to form the base layer of the fruit leather, then add other fruit to it to flavor it. The example recipe given is to use:

2 cups unsweetened apple sauce
2 pints strawberries, de-stemmed and with bruises cut off

To this I added 1/3 cup dehydrated Campari sugar and mixed it up in the blender.

I spread this out over two of the circular trays and let it dry for 14 hours, which was a little bit too long as the fruit leather was cracky in some parts and they didn't roll up.

They were delicious, but unfortunately you could barely taste the Campari; only a little bitterness.

Second Try

On my second attempt I left out the strawberries as a flavoring agent, and I did much better. My recipe was simply:

Campari Fruit Roll-Ups

2 cups unsweetened apple sauce
1/2 cup Campari sugar (in the future I'd use 3/4 cup)

Add ingredients to a blender and blend until blended. Spread out over one tray in fruit dehydrator and dehydrate for about 12 hours, until there are no sticky spots. For thinner roll-ups, spread out over two trays.

These were done to the perfect amount, and rolled up quite easily.

They were also delicious. The Campari flavor kicked in as you chewed the roll-up and in the after-taste. They were amazing but as I say in the recipe, could use more Campari!

Campari Straw Attempt

For both recipes, I attempted to roll up the roll-ups into a straw, because a Campari straw would be fabulous.

On one attempt I rolled a roll-up around a chopstick then waited to see if it would stick. It did not so I then weighed it down and put it in the oven to see if the ends would melt together. They did not, so I put it in the microwave to see if I would accomplish it that way, but it just came apart.

Alas. I'll keep working on this.

The Solid Liquids Project index is at this link.

September 21, 2011
Dehydrating Liqueurs: Stovetop Crystallization Method

So far in the Solid Liquids project, I experimented with using the food dehydrator, oven, and microwave to dehydrate liqueurs into flavored sugars. The project index is here.

Well, thanks to a Facebook friend, I now have a much more efficient way than all the others I've tried. Lauren Mote, co-owner of Kale & Nori Culinary Arts, wrote me to tell me the way she's made liqueur sugars. She wrote:

So I have found the easiest way to do this is actually culinary and through "almost" candy making.

If you cook down the spirit, and remove the water molecules, the liquids eventually crystallize…. the trick is "agitation". When you're trying NOT to crystallize, which is making candy, brushing the edges of a pot with water constantly prevents crystals from forming in the sugar. However, when you agitate the liquid and sugar, the crystals form. Continue to agitate, on low heat past the candy making stage, do not burn it. You will concentrate all of the flavour, without a microwave. Once the crystallization starts, it's really really really fast! Remove from the heat, keep mixing until the mixture turns light and powdery. Let cool on a SilPat non-stick baking sheet. Once cool, blitz in a food processor and sift through a tea strainer. What you're left with is completely concentrated, amazing powdered spirit. I did this with Cointreau and it was really amazing.

I wasn't sure I was doing it right but I tried it out with Campari, and it works! In short, add the liqueur to a metal pot,

Heat it so that the alcohol burns off, then it starts going into the candy phases as the water burns off.

First it boils, then it gets thicker, then it starts to froth. Eventually the frothiness gets really big, like it's going to overboil.

Stir it with a metal spoon (perhaps you have a barspoon around). Not long after this point the frothiness dies down a little. You'll notice sugar crystals on the bottom of the pan as you stir it and the volume of the liquid seems to shrink a lot. Though it still looks quite liquid, it's ready.

Pull it out and as fast as you can, scrape it onto a silicone Silpat or other non-stick pan. You'll see that it is sugary and full of crystals. This dries really quickly.

Then you can stick it into a spice grinder and get your powdered liqueur.

The process takes less than two hours, and it seems to work with larger quantities of liqueur just as fast. Sweet.

In future posts, we'll finally start dehydrating liqueurs other than Campari.

The Solid Liquids Project index is at this link.

September 15, 2011
Solid Liquids: Bulk Liqueur Dehydration in the Oven

This is just a quick post in the Solid Liquids Project (project index here) to note that you can dehydrate liqueurs in the oven in containers other than the silicone cupcake holders that I've been using.

Many people have SilPat non-stick baking mats. These are great but have the problem of being flat so liquids run off them.

However you can also get other silicone containers. I bought a breadpan-sized silicone pan from Amazon. It works just fine for dehydrating larger quantities of liqueurs.

As you dehydrate a liqueur in the oven, a surface crust will form trapping some still-liquid liqueur beneath it, so it's important to break it up as it gets near the end of baking. I just squeeze the silicone pan to crunch the innards.

The Solid Liquids Project index is at this link.

September 14, 2011
Solid Liquids: Dehydrating Liqueurs in the Microwave

In the process of making powdered liqueurs for future use, I've been trying to figure out the best method to get liquids into solids. I'll be comparing the microwave to the oven to the food dehydrator, using Campari as my first liqueur in all of them.

In today's post we'll look at using the microwave. As I learned the hard way, what you don't want to do is stick a liqueur in the microwave and turn it on high. It fizzes, splatters, and burns.

So I attempted to dehydrate liqueur using a low-power setting. In the process I learned something about microwaves, or at least the microwave that I own: Lowering the power doesn't actually lower the strength of the microwave energy, it only changes the length of time it blasts that energy into your food.

So at the lowest power setting (10 on my microwave), it blasts the liqueur with microwave energy for 10 percent of the time, or for 3 or 4 out of every 30 seconds. The rest of the time it's just turning on the plate. The "defrost" setting is level 30, which should tell you how low the setting is.

The One-Shot Method

Because I don't want to stand around the microwave pressing stop and start, I tried to find the setting that would allow me to cook down a liqueur to a solid.

After several tries and lots of hot boiled Campari I determined that I couldn't microwave on any power setting higher than the lowest setting of 10. After just a few seconds the liqueur would start to boil rapidly, then it settles down in the remaining 27 seconds. However, after it cooks down nearer to the end (all the alcohol should be boiled off, but the water is still trapped in the syrup) it seems to boil faster, and overflows and splatters after only the 3-4 second heat interval.

Thus it seems that my microwave is too powerful to effectively reduce the last part of the liquid liqueur to a solid.

The closest I've come (so far) to making this effective is cooking it on the lowest power setting for 60 minutes (which reduces the volume by half, close to the final volume of syrup) then finishing the drying in the oven at 170 degrees Fahrenheit as this is low enough that the syrup doesn't boil over.

However, at least in initial experiments, it takes a very long time to bake off the final water – more than 5 hours. And in this case, I may as well just stick it in the oven at 170 degrees Fahreinheit over night.

The Babysitter Method

As the 'set it and forget it' method of programming the microwave proved ineffective, I thought I'd try the hard way. I put the same 2 ounces of Campari in the microwave and heated it for short bursts until it boiled. Then I'd stop, wait for it to settle, and hit it again. The point was to prevent overboiling and burning.

Don Lee reported success with this method, using short bursts at the beginning and end of cooking, and longer cooking in the middle.

I begun with 20 minutes cooking time on the clock, then kept pausing the heating as the boil became violent. Initially I'd do it standing there babysitting the thing, but then as it was taking forever I'd send emails and such in between heating bursts, allowing it to cool more.

Unfortunately, this method allowed me no long bursts of cooking – it kept boiling over at 10 seconds maximum. More than 85 short bursts over several hours later, it finally chrystalized, though there wasn't all that much of it left.

In conclusion, with my microwave and using Campari anyway, this method is a pain in the butt and not worth the effort compared with setting the oven on a low temperature and letting it cook down overnight.

The Solid Liquids Project index is at this link.

August 24, 2011
Solid Liquids: Dehydrating Liqueurs in the Oven

In the process of making powdered liqueurs for future use, I've been trying to figure out the best method to get liquids into solids. I'll be comparing the microwave to the oven to the food dehydrator, using Campari as my first liqueur in all of them.

In today's post we'll look at using the oven. Following the suggestion of Don Lee on this eGullet thread, I purchased silicone cupcake cups to experiment with. They can be used in the microwave or oven and are easy to clean.

In all of my oven experiments, the procedure was the same. I filled the cupcake cup with 2 ounces of Campari, put it on a cookie sheet, and put it in the oven. Most of the time I cooked the liquid for 12-24 hours.

Dehydrating Campari at 140F and 170F (in separate trials), the liqueur would dehydrate and get clumpy. I'd then squeeze the cupcake cup a bit to break up the clumps and expose any wet spots so that it would dry completely. In the end I had a combination of powder and pebble-sized clumps of dehydrated Campari.

At 200F I had clearly reach some sort of candying state with the sugar. It looked like it was still watery with liquid, but on further inspection it was closer to a melted lollipop- very brilliant liquid sugar. On removal from the oven it formed a hard puck shaped like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

At 250F the sugar burns a bit, becoming brown in color and smelling more like molasses. It also stays liquid and forms a hard puck in the bottom of the cupcake cup.

On tasting after grinding these with a mortar and pestle, I found that the 250F Campari tasted like brown sugar or molasses with a bitter Campari twinge to it. It wasn't nearly as bad as I expected but I am not sure how I'd use it. Campari gingerbread cookies, perhaps?

(Campari cooked at 200F vs 250F)

The 200F powdered Campari had a distinctly sharp bitterness to it. The 170F Campari powder had the best and most Campari-esque flavor of all, with that great Campari brightness still present and a balance of sweetness from sugar with the heavy bitterness there too. The 140F powder was also very good, but I prefer the 170 at least on this first experiment.

Another reason to use the lower-temperature Campari powder is that the others were harder to crush up (like crushing a lollipop instead of granola). They also seem to want to stick together. After crushing, they get clumpy. (I tried reheating at a lower temperature to see if it would stop clumping, but it just formed back into a blog and I had to re-crush it again!) Clumpy clusters are probably be fine for baking purposes, but not practical for rimming cocktail glasses.

Long story short: Oven at 170F worked best for me.

In the next post, we'll look at using the microwave to dehydrate liqueur.

The Solid Liquids Project index is at this link.

August 18, 2011
Solid Liquids: Dehydrating Liqueurs in a Food Dehydrator

In the process of making powdered liqueurs for future use, I've been trying to figure out the best method to get liquids into solids. I'll be comparing the microwave to the oven to the food dehydrator, using Campari as my first liqueur in all of them.

For now let's talk about the food dehydrator. I have a Nesco food dehydrator, which has a heating element and a fan in the lid. The racks in it are perforated for drying solid material, so I purchased additional solid-bottom racks made for making fruit rolls.

I poured 8 oz of Campari in one rack and turned it on. After 24 hours it was still a bit sticky. Towards 36 hours I noticed some parts that were clumpy so I broke those up to expose still-liquid parts beneath. (It turns out this helps no matter which dehydration method you use.) It might not take 36 hours to dry next time.

You can see it formed some interesting crystal patterns as it dried.

I scraped off the Campari initially with my fingers, then found a flat plastic serving spoon turned upside down made a good scraper.

I then put everything into a mortar and pestle and ground it up.

From 8 ounces of liquid I got about 3 ounces of Campari sugar. (A little less than 50% of the liquid volume has proved consistent using other methods.) That means that Campari has a ton of sugar in it. So much for my all-Campari weight loss program!

The Campari that I couldn't scrape off the plastic sheet washed off surprisingly easily with hot water, so the mess isn't bad.

All told, this method was easy to execute but can take quite a while. The dehydrator doesn't generate a ton of external heat (a concern in the summer when its hot enough already) but enough to be noticeable. Also noticeable is the sound of the fan running.

In the next post, we'll look at using the oven to dehydrate liqueur.

The Solid Liquids Project index is at this link.

August 17, 2011