Tag: history
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Paloma History – Tracing the Facts and Fiction about this Tequila Cocktail’s History
Tracing the facts and fiction about the history and origin of the Paloma, a cocktail made with tequila, lime, grapefruit soda, and a pinch of salt.
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Happy 60th Birthday, Golden Cadillac Cocktail
Poor Red's BBQ in the California gold country is famous for the Golden Cadillac, a cocktail created in 1952. Next year will be the drink's 60th birthday. It's a combination of Galliano, creme de cacao, and cream, thrown into a blender. Poor Red's sells them by the thousands. (They don't look this fancy at Poor…
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Sugarcane and the Environment
For the most part rum is made from molasses, the byproduct of sugar production. So when we study the issue of the environmental impact of sugarcane production we need to keep in mind that molasses is the waste product of sugar production. Rum is recycling! That said, we're studying not just sugar but sugarcane production…
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The Sugar Spirit Project: Enter the Sugar Beet
In studying sugar and sugarcane (go here for the project index) we need to study the sugar beet; sugarcane's competitor. Here we'll look at the sugar beet's early history. Sugar beets were not economically important as a source of sucrose until the mid-1800s. In 1774 a German scientist discovered the sugar from beets was the…
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Sugar in Early American History
In studying sugarcane and sugar, we've looked at its biology, origins, spread to the West, association with forced labor, how it was processed in the olden days, and how the English developed a taste for it. (Go here for the project index.) Now we'll look at sugar in America. Again I have used these resources…
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Sugarcane and Slavery
Boy is this ever a topic I'd rather avoid! However there is no denying the historic link between sugarcane production. We were tracing the spread of sugarcane and the sugar industry from the Old World to the new. But slave labor used to harvest and process sugarcane began long before sugarcane was brought to the…
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The Spread of Sugarcane in the New World
When we last left off looking at sugarcane's spread from India/Indonesia to the rest of the world, the sugar industry had shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic islands of Spain and Portugal, including Madeira and the Canary islands. During this time, the powers in Europe were developing a taste for sugar. Sugar was only…
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The Spread of Sugarcane in the Old World
In the last post we looked at what sugarcane is. Now we'll see where it came from and how it traveled around the world. Sugarcane is a tall grass native to the region of the India and Southeast Asia. It was first domesticated in New Guinea, perhaps independently in Indonesia. In 325 BC Alexander…
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Sugar Spirit: What is Sugarcane?
In the Sugar Spirit project, we're going to look at sugar's history and production, but first we should establish what sugar and sugarcane are. Sugar and Sucrose When we talk about sugar, we mean table sugar, or sucrose. To chemists, sugar refers to a class of 'edible crystalline carbohydrates' that also includes fructose and lactose.…
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The History and Production of Angostura Bitters
In March I visited the Angostura distillery in Port of Spain, Trinidad. They make not only Angostura Bitters here but also the line of Angostura rums and rums for several other brands. In this post, I'll focus on the bitters. The History of Angostura Bitters Angostura Bitters were created in 1824 by Dr. Johann Siegert. They…