Barrel aged gin

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Jas

After resting for 3 months in a Hudson Whiskey barrel (thanks Gable) the juice has transformed and is now featuring on the Bramble Bar menu

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The Bacardi Clear Mojito. At last!

Posted on July 21, 2011 by admin

After over a year of experimenting, several months of pussyfooting around the rotavap, several drinks meetings and four months worth of intensive distilling and experimenting, the new Bramble menu will have one of the most eagerly anticipated drinks within the bartending scene in Scotland.

Looking like the cleanest glass of semi-sparkling water, but with the intensity of citric sourness and fresh mint, the Bacardi Clear Mojito went onto Bramble’s new cocktail list just over a month ago. Consisting of two different distillations – one alcoholic and very minty, the other very limey and hydrosol-based – as well sugar syrup and soda water , the drink will be served with hand cracked ice in a tall, crystal cut glass with a big minty sprig

The idea of clarity within cocktails isn’t a new thing; over at The Aviary in Chicago, they’ve been playing about with the idea for a while, as have the boys behind the London-based Fluid movement (of the Purl and Worship Street Whistlening Shop fame), who have created twists like The Clear Martinez and The Clear Last Word, to name but a few.

Hell, even Tony C down at 69 Colbrooke Row got in on the Clear Mojito act; read this blog from the other week.

And despite the fact that he may have beat us to the punch, it doesn’t take away from the hard work and dedication of the Bramble team (both past and present) in the execution of this drink, and the fact that it’s going to be replicable and available to order on our new menu. So when you get chance, come down and say hey. And order one of these drinks. Please.

Slante!

The Bacardi Clear Mojito

  • 60ml Bacardi Mint Distillate
  • 25ml Lime Hydrosol
  • 12.5ml Sugar Syrup (or to taste)
  • Soda Water

Add the first three ingredients to a crystal glass with rough, hand-cracked ice. Stir briefly and top with soda water. Garnish with a straw, swizzle stick and a mint sprig and serve.

 

Photography courtesy of Dan Bartley.

 

 

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Clear Mojito; Take Two.

Posted on April 19, 2011 by admin

Lime Juice Distillate

After googling ‘clarifie lime juice’ into, well, google, the links that came up at the top of the page were definitely not few and far between. Most of them were links to the cooking issues website (where else?) – which are listed here and here – along with another link to an article printed back in 2007, which is here (the latter predates the former two, but is still interesting), and are pretty much all you need. While there has been no direct link to an article with regard to lime clarification via the rotavap, you wonder what use it would be, considering that the aforementioned chefs from the aforementioned website lean towards clarification techniques that are quicker, use no special machinery, easier to execute and with a higher and more consistent yield in terms of result.

Still, that meant very little, and I decided to carry out a batch distillation of lime juice to see what the results would be, even it if it was to confirm something not to do as opposed to something that would work.

As sure as eggs are eggs, the juice of a dozen limes were put into a flask and then submerged into a H2O bath under the following conditions;

Temprature at 25oC, no result before 50 millibar, with a rapid decrease in pressure.

Temprature increased to 40oC. Pressure was decreased to around 50 millibar, at which point distillation ensued. Pressure was reduced down to 13 millibar (!) with success. Distillate was quick the lower the pressure.

A large amount of distillate came off, crystal clear, with a very, very faint nose of lime. On the pallet, however, you’d be hard to tell the difference between the distillate and a glass of water. Clean, light, thin, and, flavourless. Almost pointless… if it wasn’t for the faint smell of lime. Using this as a tenuous link to keep using said product, malic and citric acid was added back to the lime distillate – a 2:1 ratio in favour of the citric acid – until it resembled a similar face-wrenching sourness that resembled lime juice. Even though there was a noticeable difference – you could tell something was lacking in the ‘clear’ juice – it’s effect in the drink (recipe listed below) was duly noted on the pallet.

Clear Mojtio Recipe 2

  • 50ml Bacardi Mint Distillate
  • 25ml Clarified/Modified lime juice (acid added to taste)
  • 10ml Sugar Syrup (this is to taste, and subject to the amounts of acids added back to the lime juice)
  • Sparkling Water

Add all ingredients to a glass with a huge rock of ice. Top up with soda water. Serve.

With regards to the drink and its taste, it goes without saying that the perception of what is tasted is heavily distorted by what we think we are about to taste, heightened in conjunction with the visuals of the drink. Suffice to say, however, that the drink, even if strong and noticeably alcoholic, is bright, fresh and intense. Even though the flavours are closely related to the mojito – sweet, sour, fresh, minty – the drink still has an identity of its own, especially in terms of how well the freshness of the flavours are captured by the alcohol and distillate.

However, there are still a few issues to be address with regards to the flavour profile and aroma of the drink:

  • It has not yet been tested with a garnish; I propose two drops of peppermint oil in two cups of water, which is then sprayed/’atomized’ over the drink to help circulate the essence of mint.
  • A slight aroma of stewed mint is still present. Even though this doesn’t translate into the flavour of the mint distillate itself, (and, in all fairness, is detected by those with a seasoned pallet), the temperature and pressure within the process of batch distillation still needs to be looked.

The next steps in terms of the drink are as follows;

  • Get some scales!
  • Juice some limes and distil the lime juice. Measure the distillate (preferably in grams for consistency from batch to batch), and compare the distillate to normal lime juice, adding acids back to the distillate until the acidity has been replicated as closely as possible, measuring in grams what has been added (this can then lead to some kind of ratio in terms of acids and to lime juice).
  • Remember to bring the atomizer from home and to see if the ‘garnish’ will enhance the flavour and aroma of the drink.
  • Look at possible serving methods.
  • Create a batch of the mint distillate, and reduce – with distilled/de-mineralized water – to 40%ABv. This will give us a greater degree of control over the whole drink, instead of making the drink ad hoc and modifying the final mixed drink. Furthermore, with the mint distillate, look at increasing the amount of mint and salt used, so the flavour isn’t lost when watered down.
  • Try the final drink with sparkling water and soda water. Look at pre-batching the drink and adding it to a soda siphon, with the potential of carbonating the drink and preserving the flavours, as well as easing any potential serving difficulties.

That’s all folks.

A picture of a lime.

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Clear Mojito: Take One

Posted on April 17, 2011 by admin

 

The idea of creating a clear mojito is proving to be a little tricker than first thought. Apart from the actual distillates themselves and the way in which we think they should turn out in terms of flavour profile and alcoholic strength/ABV, subjects such as glassware – or, more to the point, ‘The Serve’ – also have to be taken into account. As well as this, we have to look at the potential mixology (yup, I went there) side of it in terms of the ratio of ingredients. Therefore, this particular entry will highlight some questions in terms of the general execution of the drink, what we think it should taste like in accordance with the distillates, and how to apply it in terms of it’s successful function in a busy bar environmental.

The distillates & the drink

After looking at the different aspects of the mojito as a drink – its temperature in accordance with ice, its taste (sour, sweet), how the garnish works with the mint in the drink – the conundrums that came to the front were the application of the acidic parts to replicate the sour taste that comes from the lime. To simplify this, it meant looking at the mojito in terms of ingredients and looking at what parts make up the drink. So…

Mojito

50 ml Rum

25ml Lime Juice

10ml Sugar Syrup

10ml Demerara syrup

Mint Leaves

Altogether, the above makes 95ml of liquid before dilution, and without the addition of soda. Also bearing in mind that the lime juice acts more of a sour component as opposed to giving the drink a lime-flavour, coupled with an almost-equal amount of sugar to balance or the acidity to create a refreshing and balanced drink. The rum is the biggest component (obviously), with mint acting as a general flavour enhancer. To try and keep the drink consistent, as well as taking into account the volume of the drink, an execution which is easy to follow and remember, and still keep the overall drink clear without compromising the principle flavours, the following theory was constructed in terms of a potential recipe for the mojito.

Clear Mojito; Recipe No.1

40ml Bacardi Mint Distillate

20ml Bacardi Lime Distillate (with Citric and Malic Acid added to taste at a 2:1 ratio; this acts as both a flavouring agent and a souring agent)

10-15ml Sugar Syrup (or added to taste)

Crème de Menthe/Peppermint essence (dispensed from an atomizer).

Soda

The above recipe does not take into account a vessel in which it is to be served. The idea is to replicate a similar formulae in the way the current mojito is made in accordance with its flavour profile.

For the above recipe, the following distillates were made.

Bacardi Lime Distillate

25ml Lime Juice

125ml Bacardi

Zest of 31/2 limes (microplaned)

1/3 cup of salt

Add all ingredients to the flask, and lowered into the H20 bath. The temperature started at 30oC, with a rotation at 6. This increased to 35oC and a rotation of 8 when the pressure was reduced to 90 millibar, at which point nothing had yet distilled off.

With increments of five, the distillate started to come off pretty rapidly at 85, and was reduced slowly down to 50. The lower the pressure, the slower the increments, at which point were reduced to 2/3.

The resulting distillate was fresh and bright with a good lime flavour. Even though the ABV was not measured, general consensus is that the distillate is around 60 – 65% mark.

The idea behind this particular batch is a direct influence from the cooking issues blog, where they make a ‘bottle strength’ gin and tonic shot, with 750ml of gin and 1 cup of lime juice batch distilled in the rotovap. This equates roughly to a 5:1 ratio of booze to lime juice, with acids added back to replicate the sour notes within lime juice. The idea here was to do this with the Bacardi lime distillate, and then turn it into both a flavour and souring component within the drink. The zest was added to emphasise the lime flavour.

Bacardi Mint Distillate

500ml Bacardi

150 grams Mint (this was the total weight including stalks; stalks were discarded, so probably slightly less)

1 ‘highball’ of salt

Add all ingredients to the flask. Submerge in the H20 bath at a temperature of 35oC, with rotation on 9. Increments of 10 down to 110, at which point the distillate started to come off. Increments of 2/3 – 5 ensued, down to about 35.

The distillate was awesome. Even though the nose gave the impression of potentially stewed flavours, the batch was bright, minty, fresh and easily detectable. When mixed with the lime distillate at a ratio of 2:1, the flavours were very apparent, if not strong with an alcoholic burn. The acids and sugar syrup were added slowly, before soda was added at the end. This last action caused the drink to louche. The flavour was closer to a normal mojito, though with a more intense flavour, probably due to the fact of the high ABV. Everything apart from the appearance, however, was more than satisfactory.

The theory behind the louche is the potential oils within the lime zest. While it also could be the reaction of the acids, alcohol and sugar syrup, it was the action of adding (carbonated) water that changed the appearance of the drink. This is problematic in more ways than one, simply because of the potential dilution that will need to take place in terms of serving the final design of the drink.

However, assuming it is just the oils in the lime zest, then the following actions could eliminate this;

  • Clarify the lime juice, either through a muslin cloth or through the rotovap, and add the appropriate acids back to the solution to reinstate the desired acidity.
  • Use only the mint distillate within the drink, in terms of alcohol and flavour.

On top of this, there seems to be an agreement that in terms of carbonation of the drink, which could give a more authentic feel and flavour to the final product, this could be achieved by adding water to the final drink in its completed form to the desired ABV, before adding it to a soda siphon and adding a nitrogen oxide canister to carbonate the whole solution. This could then be dispensed as is, without the need for mixing. The only problem here is that if the soda siphon is left on the bar for easy access, for example, the room temperature canister could affect the flavour of the drink. Alternatively, the drink could be mixed and then charged in the canister, before being dispensed in to bottles that would then be stored in the fridge. However, there’s a possibility that the drink could loose a degree of its carbonation over time. Still, the idea of serving a crystal-clear mojito from a bottle with a glass with ice in it also increases the attractiveness in terms of a general serving method.

 

For the next session, the clarification of lime juice is essential, as this will determine whether the louche is due to other factors within the drink (such as the adding of acids and sweeteners), or if the drink louches at all.

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Instant barrel ageing; a discussion

Posted on April 5, 2011 by admin

When I first started to use the rotavap at the beginning of the year, the only point of reference I had was the Cooking Issues blog, a website affiliated with the very prestigious and reputable French Culinary Institute. The website has numerous contributors, including Nils Noren and David Arnold, both of whom work with the French Culinary Institute, and who are both world-renowned chefs.

Of the different subjects that the guys cover with the rotavap, both in terms of how to work the different aspects – though most importantly the vacuum pump in accordance with the water bath and it’s temperature – and the potential of different flavour combinations within spirits, one of the most remarkable actions I read about was when an aged spirit can be separated from it’s oak-flavour through a simple rotavap technique.

After putting an aged spirit into a conical flask, the flask is then lowered into the water bath. With the temperature at 40 degrees, the atmosphere needs to be reduced down to 20 millibar (I didn’t use these exact numbers when doing my first batch, though it is highly recommended that you don’t increase the temperature of the water bath beyond this, simply because of the stewed flavours that could result from it. Other possibilities also stray into the realms of the very unsafe). The spirit will then start distil off, with a white clear distillate coming through in the collection flask, and a darker, ever-decreasing volume of liquid present in the original flask.

The great thing about this is that you still have two different products that could be used. For example, with a 10 year-old Laphroiag that’s been de-oaked, a ‘post-rotavapped’ Laphroiag will result in a batch of ‘white’ Laphroaig in one flask, with a very small amount of 10 year-old barrel essence left over. Not only can the ‘white whisky’ be used in drinks, but also the essence can be used to instantly age a spirit.

However, even though this throws up an infinite amount of ways in which spirits can interact with different ‘barrel-flavours’ and potential age statements, how philosophically justified are they? Can we pass off a spirit with a specific barrel-age essence as the equivalent of a 10 year-old aging process, or does some of the barrel essence retain some of the flavour of the spirit in the same way the spirit retains flavour from being rested in a barrel in the first place?

The theory is in conjunction with an experiment I intend to take up tonight. After successfully separating Black Bottle, a blended whisky from Islay made mainly with Bruichladdich, what was left from an original 150ml was about 130ml of ‘white’ black bottle, and no more than 20ml of very viscous and dense barrel essence. A few drops of the latter were added to 12.5ml gin and 12.5ml of vodka in two separate of brandy balloons. Nothing was really detected on the nose at first, though the taste opened up in an interesting way. With the gin, there was a soft woody note that mingled well with some dry floral and juniper notes, in a way that you almost expect from an aged gin. With the vodka, the nose was the same (barely detectable), with a soft and earth aroma dominating on the pallet.

The spirits were left to rest, albeit apart from the odd swirling, which helped integrate the ‘age’ molecules into the flavour molecules of the spirit. This deepend the complexity of the spirits respectively, and further hinted at the possibility that such a mad concept may actually work.

With the rest of the essence, however, 12.5ml of Bacardi was added. After this had been left to sit and settle down, there was one dinstinctive note that me and Jas noticed; intense wood. The idea of adding such a little amount of spirit to such a potent essence was to highlight the possibility of too much barrel-essence being added to a spirit; in the same way that a whisky (or rum, or cognac, or American whisky…) doesn’t always benefit from being aged for long periods of time, so too does the idea of a particular barrel essence and it’s interaction with a particular spirit.

The thing is, the concept throws up a number of conundrums that are hard to clarify, especially without proper laboratory tests;

 

  • If 10 year-old whisky is de-oaked, will some of the flavour molecules within the whisky be left within the barrel essence?

 

  • If the 10 year-old barrel essence is then added to gin, for example, will that spirit be akin to a spirit aged for 10 years in the barrel that was used to hold the liquid previously to the whisky, or will it be akin to the whisky rinsed in the barrel, removed, and then the gin added?

 

  • If only half the essence is added, does this mean that the spirit is equal to half the age statement?

 

  • How long does it take for the molecules and particles to integrate properly with one another until the liquor is ‘ready’?

 

  • How can we tell that all the alcohol has been separated from the ‘barrel’ essence?

 

  • Is it philosophically correct to play ‘god’ with such aging techniques?

A couple of days ago, I de-oaked 100ml of Lagavulin 16 year-old. With the white whisky put to one side, Wray & Nephew was then added barrel-age-essence within the original flask to collect most of the residue, lowered into the bath left to rotate to help pick up the residue on the inside of the flask. The result was a very soft, ‘mutant’ 16 year-old Wray & Nephew, still with that banana hit on the nose, though with undertones of toffee, coffee and soft wood. The spirit was then used for a Wray and Nephew competition to make an Old Fashioned-style drink.

 

Kanaloa Cocktail

50ml ‘Mutant’ 16 year-old Wray and Nephew

10ml Passion Fruit Syrup

3 dashes of orange bitters

Stir ingredients over coconut ice*. Strain into a glass with a single coconut ice cube. Express the peel of a lemon over the drink, drop in and serve.

Coconut Ice*

Add fill an ice tray with coconut water, and put in the freezer until frozen. Use as normal ice.

 

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Falernum Test

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Jas

This is the recipe for the first batch of Falernum, though don’t take it too seriously; I doubt I’ll be doing it with the rotovap again (for this product)

25 whole cloves
1/4 cup of crushed almonds
12 thumb slices of ginger, diced and crushed
2 Star anise, crushed.
10 Pimento Berries (allspice), crushed
1 Cinnamon stick, crushed
1 Whole nutmeg, smashed/crushed
Zest of 6 Limes
80ml (ish) of ‘Rotovap Bacardi’*
200 ml of Bacardi Blanca

*Rotovap Bacardi
100 ml Bacardi
5 whole cloves
Zest of 6 six limes
10 thumbs of ginger
1/2 chopped almonds.

Grind up spices, heat up, and let cool. Add to a cream canister, along with 200ml of Bacardi and ‘Rotovap Bacardi’. Infuse with Nitrous Oxide, swirl for 30 seconds, and let sit for one minute. Strain contents through a coffee filter or jam bag, and store.

The above recipe came out OK, but with a pretty high ABV. Not really a Falernum concentrate, more of a high ABV flavoured rum.. But when added with the above ingredients, it gave an added kick, and reinforced the flavours. But a simpler recipe could be replicated in house, and probably made within the space of an hour.

Notes; Not very limy, bitter almond dominate. Dry spice on the back palate. This was the Falernum concentrate mixed with sugar syrup, both equal parts (the sugar syrup was from Bramble, which I assume is a 1:1 ratio).

Also, we need to consider either how we add it to sugar syrup, i.e. one part falernum to one part sugar syrup, as well as the sugary syrup itself (1:1 ratio? 2:1 ratio in favour of the sugar?)

Any thoughts?

Tom

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Crystal Mojito Glassware ideas

Posted on March 4, 2011 by admin

Hi… Some initial thoughts.

I know I keep banging on about the fact that it is not ALL about the liquid but if you are going to be able to charge a premium for the drink it needs to look freakin’ amazin’

I like this... 'B' monogram is pure chance!

IF it is going to be served ‘up’ then I guess it needs to be in a stemmed glass to avoid contact with the sides if possible.

More of a crystal sour glass this one... in size and shape certainly

Or is the clarity masked by the glass being cut???

Simple and elegant?!

Any thoughts??

Cheers

Ian

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Under Pressure…

Posted on March 4, 2011 by admin

Sorry I’ve not been around this week… has anything been occurring in the world of Cellar4?

Dropping this into the Saint later…  on loan!

Like all innovations in the world of drinks, there is a lot of cooking stuff to sift through to make the connections required to find it useful but the primer about what the machines can do and the results is instructive in it’s own right.  There are some cool ideas too…

Cheers

Ian

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New toy to come to terms with #2

Posted on February 24, 2011 by admin

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New toy to come to terms with #1

Posted on February 24, 2011 by admin

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