This week's The Moth podcast tells a whirlwind story of how L. Gabrielle Penebaz of The Saint Eve discovered absinthe through her lust for Donald Sutherland, and how her pursuit of just one taste of the real concoction led her to create a short-lived but enthusiastic community of partygoers who wanted the same thing. (Here's a direct link to just the story.)
The Moth holds regular readings around town and across the country, and their excellent podcast distills the best of the stories told at their theme nights. They're not all cocktail-related, but they are, every single one of them, varying degrees of fascinating.
On last night's episode of "The Colbert Report," Stephen brought on David Wondrich, curator of Esquire's Drinks database and the author of Imbibe!, to whip up a cocktail called "The Colbert Bump."
Considering some of the connotations of the word "bump," I'm glad this went as cleanly as it did, and that straining it through one's beard, no matter how impressive it may be, is optional:
There are perks to writing a cocktail blog. Not only do I occasionally get free bottles of booze sent to me (I have a big backlog of ingredients to write about), but there's also the odd party invitation now and then. One of the best, though, is getting to hang out with people like Dave Arnold and Nils Norén of the French Culinary Institute. (Remember Dave? He invented the Red Hot Poker.)
Besides teaching culinary technology and other things at the FCI, Arnold and Norén have a great blog about "tech 'n' stuff"; the "tech" part includes things like an exhaustive-but-fascinating primer on how to use a rotary evaporator to distill flavors, and the "stuff" part has all kinds of cool things, like The Skoal! Project, inspired by a badass 1967 photo of Max von Sydow shooting akvavit.
The upshot for the cocktailian reader? On June 12, Arnold and Norén are teaching a demonstration class on high-tech cocktails, and they were nice enough to give me a sneak preview. It began in typical mad-scientist freewheeling style, as Arnold told me that "everyone should have a carbonation rig." (I'd been looking at the Sodastream as an option, but Arnold waved that away and showed me his big CO2 tank he'd gotten from a welding-supply house.) First, Arnold and Norén -- wait a sec. You know, "Arnold and Norén" is good journalistic style, but this was a fun, goofy hour spent with a bunch of totally down-to-earth technical wizards. I'm gonna call 'em "Dave and Nils" instead. And that way I don't have to copy-and-paste that little accent over the E.
First Dave and Nils carbonated some water for me. Dave said "I don't drink flat water -- it's like bad seltzer." Fine, you say -- what's so impressive about fizzy water? Well, it was certainly fun to see made...the bottle is chilled and crushed (so there's minimal air inside), then attached to the CO2 line and the bottle inflates with a loud pop. Shake it a few times, and there's your seltzer. Dave then showed me water carbonated with nitrous oxide instead of CO2, which was interesting; the bubbles were smaller and less prickly-aggressive on the tongue, and the resulting seltzer was noticeably sweeter. Then, Dave and Nils carbonated some more water, mixing the gases (at about 75% CO2/25% N2O), giving me the FCI house blend of seltzer, which was very refreshing. This sold me: I'm totally gonna get me a carbonation setup...but Sangamon's Principle aside, I'll probably stick to the CO2.
Dave told me that he and Nils were interested in teaching the class June 12 because "it's a good way for us to show the stuff we're working on. We can't really do these things at the restaurant, so it's a good outlet for us." He then divided the techniques he and Nils would demonstrate into "reasonable", semi-reasonable" and "unreasonable" for the home cook, and said they'd show all three.
Dave, on using liquid nitrogen:
He uses it to chill glassware -- who has time to mess around with ice and water? You've got drinks to make!
Dave and Nils like to use pieces of pickled watermelon rind for garnishing cocktails...but they don't always have enough time to pickle them. So what do they do? They shave pieces of watermelon rind and "flash-pickle" them in a vacuum with lime juice and simple syrup -- the air is sucked out, and then when the vacuum seal is broken, the air forces the lime and simple into the watemelon rind, impregnating it with sweet-and-sour deliciousness.
You can do this with a vacuum pump, but the "semi-reasonable" solution for the home mixologist involves a large syringe, which can pull a vacuum enough to pickle the rind:
Dave and Nils also made me a refreshing "Gin & Juice" -- gin with clarified grapefruit juice (they add 1/2 % gelatin to grapefruit juice, freeze everything, then thaw it while straining through cheesecloth), then carbonate the whole thing. ("Gin loves bubbles", Dave told me. They also make their own tonic water with the carbonation rig.) The clarified grapefruit juice was interesting, with a very deep flavor but no pulp or traces of bitter pith.
I also sampled a solid Martini -- gin and vermouth mixed with liquid nitrogen to cool it, plus a dash of simple syrup and a pinch of salt. Pour the whole thing over a cucumber slice, then flash-pickle it in the vacuum pump, and you have a Martini-infused cucumber!
Nils then made me a "Swedish Chef", another intense, oddly refreshing drink with an unusual flavor combination. What, you want the recipe? Here you go: caraway-infused vodka (which smells exactly like good rye bread, confusing my nose), clarified apple juice (if it's not sour enough, they just add a dash of malic acid), a splash of St. Germain, a splash of Dolin dry vermouth, and a splash of cucumber juice. Garnish the whole thing with a slice of cucumber that's been flash-pickled with Plymouth Navy Strength gin.
He's invented a "Red Hot Poker" that's electrically heated to over 1700°F, which he then plunges into drinks, caramelizing the sugars and adding a toasty note to their flavors. Arnold told me in a recent interview that he's simply updating "the oldest boiling technology", pointing out that people originally boiled liquids in hollowed-out wood or clay pots by dropping heated rocks into them. (You see vestiges of this method in the superheated stone or iron pots used for Korean dolsot bibimbap.)
Arnold said that in the late 17th- and early 18th-centuries, a popular drink in what would become the US was a "flip" (no relation to the slightly-more-common "flip" style of cocktail with eggs, a sort of a creamless eggnog.) A flip consisted of ale, rum or brandy and sugar or molasses. The bartender would heat a "loggerhead" -- a tool consisting of a long pole with a ball on one end and a handle on the other, originally used to melt pitch -- in the fire and use it to heat the drinks. These flips were popular roughly until the Civil War.
After reading John Hull Brown's "Early American Beverages", Arnold became interested in flips and loggerheads, and decided to experiment with them. He first picked up some soldering coppers -- solid copper rods used in welding and soldering -- and heated them on the stove. Those infused a slight copper taste and "left little black flecks of metal in the drink", so they were unacceptable. He then built a small insulated box with a bendable heating coil inside, to warm a loggerhead-like poker...but that box got too hot: "We put a chicken heart in there, and it basically exploded." Vaporized poultry hearts aside, the iron poker also left a noticeable taste in the drinks. Next, he tried a high-temperature stainless-steel alloy, but that wasn't a terribly good conductor of heat, and it didn't heat the drinks with quite enough oomph.
So finally, he settled on an internally heated rod made from an esoteric nickel-based alloy, and he hooked it up to bendable heating coils and all kinds of thermocouples and other gear to control and monitor the temperature. When he demonstrated it to me, though, the equipment was recalcitrant, and he fought with it: first having to find a way to run it without blowing a circuit breaker, then discovering a short circuit and re-soldering it in front of me. The fixed version didn't have a working thermocouple on it, so the digital temperature display wouldn't be reliable. The indefatigable Arnold would have to gauge the temperature by eye. And monitoring the temperature is important: the Red Hot Ale cocktail he created ignites at 1700°F, the Red Hot Manhattan he also serves ignites at 1750°F...and the heating element burns out at 1800°F. Delicacy and a keen eye were going to be absolutely necessary.
(Before he got around to fitting the poker with a temperature display, Arnold had to learn what, say, 1700°F looks like. "The one reference we had", he said, "was 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'")
So he set to measuring out Ommegang Abbey ale, Courvoisier Cognac, a bit of simple syrup (since the poker's caramelizing effect takes some of the sweetness out, he mixes the cocktails a bit sweeter than usual), lemon juice, and some Regans' Orange Bitters, stirred them, and set them alight with the poker. The beer foamed wildly as he agitated the poker, and when it was done he set the finished drink in front of me. It was yeasty, toasty, and slightly sweet -- and it was wonderful and like nothing I'd ever tasted before.
Next up was the Red Hot Manhattan, which he made with Sazerac rye, Dolin vermouth, and Angostura bitters. This time the flames shot even higher, and the resulting toddy-like drink was very good -- still recognizably a Manhattan, with noticeable sweet-vermouth notes, but with the feel of warm whiskey.
After wowing me with the Red Hot Poker, Arnold then showed me another toy -- his rotary evaporator, or "roto-vap." Arnold uses it as a vacuum distiller, and infuses neutral spirits (el-cheapo vodka, filtered multiple times through charcoal) or other liquors with whatever he can think up. (Unlike the Red Hot Poker drinks, he can't sell the results at the French Culinary Institute's restaurants.) The low-temperature distilling infuses the flavors into the spirit with a great deal of presence; I sampled a caraway aquavit with a very forward rye-bread flavor, a peanut-infused Scotch that was fantastically fascinating, and even vodka and Scotch infused with hops. ("Hops-Scotch", of course.) The roto-vap removed the hops' extreme bitterness but left their characteristic flavor. I wish this stuff were more readily available...hmmm...perhaps I'll have to start trolling eBay for a roto-vap of my own.
Arnold is working on opening a bar with pastry-chef pal Johnny Iuzinni of Jean-Georges, but until then, you can taste the Red Hot Ale and Red Hot Manhattan at L'Ecole, the French Culinary Institute's restaurant.
Well, second time was the charm. After a tropical monsoon wiped out their first attempt at a promotional cruise, Cape North Vodka managed to shoehorn in a twilight jaunt around the bottom half of Manhattan for them and a couple dozen of their friends and fans. And me. It was chilly in New York Harbor, and most of the guests wound up in the TV room, but there was some sightseeing to be done for those who were into such things, and while drinking to stay warm is not really the same as drinking to enjoy the spirit, I didn't see anybody complaining too hard.
I've already discussed the vodka itself at reasonable length, but their follow-through and hospitality were greatly appreciated.
Because of alleged storm activity last night (people are sure sensitive about a little tropical storm action these days, eh? I wonder why), a scheduled cruise to promote Cape North vodka was moved to the less picturesque but more structurally sound confines of a west village club, where the revelry continued through the ensuing wetness, such as it was. Popa Chubby's Blues Band played, there was hot & cold running seafood, the crowd were fairly knowledgeable drinkers, it was cool.
The North American vodka market is a crowded one already, and with the domestic brands required by law to have no flavor, it falls to the imported brands to try variations on the theme. Usually that results in abominations like the Absolut fruit series or similar Hawaiian-Punchy setups that are most appropriate in drinks that ultimately glow in the dark (good for finding your way home after your friends have wandered off, if nothing else), but there are players in the market who are making an actual attempt to try something a little more upscale without getting wacky. That line is a lot finer with vodka than with pretty much any other spirit.
Enter Cape North. Their pitch involves mixing Swedish spring water and French grains, and the end result is sharp on the attack and decays into nothing, without leaving any residue in the mouth. There are tastes of vanilla, nut and lemon rind in it, but it's just a whiff. Once you mix it with anything (I tried it both neat & with tonic, as well as in a couple of many-ingrediented drinks that frankly weren't great), those notes go away.
It was perfectly fine on its own, and it didn't have to be freezing cold to be palatable, which puts it close to the front of the class as far as vodkas go. I'm not sure where the price point is, but if you have a feel for what constitutes top-shelf vodka, you might want to give this one a shot.
(If you can't find it soon, hang on. Anheuser-Busch is distributing it, so it should wind up in an establishment near you shortly.)
