Tag: dehydration

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The Aviation cocktail was originally made with gin, maraschino liqueur, lemon juice, and creme de violette liqueur, but at some point in one cocktail book copying from another, they left off that last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