The Finer Things In Life

[FlaSoxxJim]

I just did a side-by-side tasting of my home-infused coconut rum with commercial Cruzan coconut rum, and it wasn't even close.

 

If you like the taste sensation of gulping down Coppertone suntan oil, then by all means buy the commercial stuff.

 

If, on the other hand, you want your coconut rum to taste like fresh coconuts and not chemicals pretending to be coconuts. . . then you should pony up some money and invest in the commercial production of Flaxx's Kick-Ass Coconut Rum.

 

You could be a very drunk millionaire in no time.

 

[bigruss]

Enjoying a Westmalle Trappist Dubbel, and it is veryyy good. I'll have to try the Tripel someday, that has 9.5% alc. The dubbel is 7%.

 

[G&T]

I've had the Westmalle Tripel and wasn't impressed. That dubbel looks great now though.

 

I am having a South Hampton Tripel and it is fantastic. Bubblegummy, berries, banana. Awesome.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I've had the Westmalle Tripel and wasn't impressed. That dubbel looks great now though.

 

I am having a South Hampton Tripel and it is fantastic. Bubblegummy, berries, banana. Awesome.

 

I wonder if the Westmalle Tripel you had wasn't manhandled somewhere along the way. It is a great beer. As much as I love Cinq Cents, I think Westmalle may have it edged out. Plus, it deserves props as the original Trappist tripel.

 

It is also one of the six or seven beers we will be serving at a charity Belgian beer tasting to benefit cancer research at my institute next Friday. I get to co-host the event and provide the commentary regarding Belgian brewing history and traditions while a beertender friend (a gal who knows her beers amazingly well) will provide profiles of the specific beers we're featuring. We were able to lock down five of the beers at a meeting today and we are duking it out over the last beer or two.

 

Meanwhile, on the spirits front. . . I have been obsessed with La Palomas for the last week and a half — going back and forth between using blanco versus reposado tequila, and hitting every Mexican grocery in a two-county radius to procure no less than three different Mexican grapefruit sodas (Jarritos, as well as Mexican sugarcane Squirt and Mexican sugarcane Fresca). This evening the Missus helped me set up a blind taste test comparing each of those three sodas as well as Jamaican Ting to see which one distinguished itself in a La Paloma. I think Jarritos has come out on top, with Ting being the least favorite — ironic since I adore Ting in rum drinks. More proof that endemic ingredients (e.g., Mexican grapefruit soda plus tequila versus Jamaican grapefruit soda plus rum) are often what takes a drink to the next level.

 

Tasted on their own, Ting far surpasses any of the others as far as intensity and actual real grapefruit flavor. All of the others are very light on their own, which is why they do nicely in the La Paloma by letting the tequila flavors come through.

[G&T]

It's possible it was destroyed, especially back in 2009 when my bottle shop wasn't moving belgians the way it does now. One day I will give it another shot.

 

Meanwhile, I had a Dieu Du Ciel Spice Route (it has a french name but this is the translation). There is little remarkable about this beer on its face. Rather basic rye ale, which some rich maltiness. Bit of chocolate and caramel, yadda yadda. Good, but nothing great. It is the after taste that contains the oddity. Peppercorns. Palate blasting peppercorns. The beer is brewed with them and the bottle says it causes a lingering pepper flavor but I didn't believe it. By the end of the bottle it felt like I ate a steak au poive. I give them credit for a very unique beer. Don't know that I would want another...usually that means I will crave it soon.

[Heads22]

Summer Shandy is now out. It's in can form, but this is like candy. I don't usually drink a lot of it (more of a warm weather beer, enjoyable and refreshing) but I'ma get drunk on it tonite.

[bigruss]

I love Duvel, the grocery store here had all Belgian beers on sale 25% off, I'll have to go back there later this week and stockpile up on some other brands that I havent tried yet, but I couldn't resist picking up a 6 pack of Duvel.

[G&T]

Why aren't stores here offering 25% off Belgians?!

 

I'm drinking Guiness. Ill tolerate it for tonight.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Guinness for me tonight as well, on the eve of our charity Belgian beer tasting.

 

I made $90 worth of framboise honey sorbet for the event today.

[bigruss]

Why aren't stores here offering 25% off Belgians?!

 

I'm drinking Guiness. Ill tolerate it for tonight.

Ha well with the exchange rate they are pretty much marked up 40% to begin with. If it was in dollars they would be pretty sweet deals, still I won't complain picking up Duvel 6 packs for 5 euro, or some specialty bottles for less than a euro each.

[G&T]

Ha well with the exchange rate they are pretty much marked up 40% to begin with. If it was in dollars they would be pretty sweet deals, still I won't complain picking up Duvel 6 packs for 5 euro, or some specialty bottles for less than a euro each.

 

Well that makes me feel better.

 

What made me feel worse was the Guiness. One damn Guiness and I woke up with a pounding headache.

[BigSqwert]

Interesting read on the way to work this morning:

 

Phosphate With a Twist

 

 

The term cherry phosphate has a lovely, faded, elegiac ring to it. It brings to mind an ornate soda fountain, a white-jacketed soda jerk, and a precocious child clambering up a stool to a marble countertop, squawking, “Hey, mister, gimme a phosphate!” And is that the tinkly sound of a player piano? A cherry phosphate has always seemed wonderfully Capra-esque to me, even though I had no idea what was in it.

 

Neither, it turns out, did Darcy O’Neil, a chemist and bartender with an interest in historic drink. Someone asked him a few years ago what he knew about antique soft drinks. Not much, he realized. So he started digging through old texts and handbooks. In the process, he discovered the surprisingly complex ecosystem of the early soda fountain—which involved some curious ingredients (strychnine, tincture of oats, Leroy’s Vomito-Purgative Elixir) and wasn’t always imbued with a cherry-on-top innocence (Los Angeles Times, 1902: “They Thirst for Cocaine: Soda Fountain Fiends Multiplying. Slaves to the ‘Coca Cola’ Habit”).

 

O’Neil recently published his research and a slew of drink recipes in an intriguing little book called Fix the Pumps. Among the more fascinating long-forgotten fountain ingredients he examines is acid phosphate, a souring agent both cheaper and less perishable than lemon or lime juice. It consists of neutralized phosphoric acid and mineral salts, O’Neil told me. That may not sound like much of a marketing slogan, but it’s a great improvement over 19th-century advertisements for best-selling Horsford’s Acid Phosphate, which boasted: “It is not nauseous, but agreeable to the taste.”

 

Mixed with sweet syrup and carbonated water, acid phosphate created “a most delicious beverage,” as a Boston newspaper put it in 1888. The phosphate persisted as a sort of feral class of fountain drink into the 1950s, but fell out of favor amid the rise of bottled soft drinks and the decline of the fountains. O’Neil thought its disappearance a shame, so he founded the forthrightly named Extinct Chemical Company, and now sells acid phosphate to adventurous bars, including Clive’s Classic Lounge in Victoria, British Columbia, and Anvil Bar and Refuge in Houston.

 

Acid phosphate does two bewitching things to a drink: The acid gives it sourness without making it taste like anything in particular. And the salts enhance existing flavors, much as they do with food. The various elements of the drink (sweet, sour, bitter, sharp) are each discernible, but none is overwhelming. Adding a teaspoon or so of acid phosphate makes a cocktail seem slightly off center, and makes your tongue tingle.

 

“You can’t name another single cocktail ingredient that functions like this,” said Bobby Heugel, a partner and bartender at Anvil. “The actual phosphate you can’t taste, but the impact on the cocktail is enormous.” Last summer, Heugel put on his cocktail list a sarsaparilla phosphate made with aged rum—basically a grown-up version of a fountain classic. “It’s very subtle,” he said. “It allows you to taste all these flavors that otherwise you’d miss because you’d have to balance it out with more citrus juice. When you add lemon juice to something, it tastes like lemon. Phosphate just adds acidity, balance, and texture to a cocktail without screaming, Hey!

 

O’Neil sent me a bottle of acid phosphate, and I’ve been playing home chemist ever since. Heugel’s Uncle Morris cocktail—made with gin, honey, celery bitters, lime juice, tonic, and a dollop of acid phosphate—is refreshingly light and nicely tongue-tingly. But my favorite so far is one O’Neil created, which he calls the Wet Grave (after a nickname for New Orleans). It combines acid phosphate with bourbon, dry vermouth, and claret syrup. It has a deep red-ocher color, and a rich, beguiling flavor—somehow tasting both soft and hard at the same time.

 

And that made me wonder: How about a nice cherry phosphate? I got some concentrated cherry juice, then added sugar, acid phosphate, seltzer water, and—why not?—a little bourbon. Sipping the mixture (which still needs work), I felt as if I were embarking on a small adventure, with a player-piano sound track, into a familiar landscape where the horizon had tilted a few degrees from level. In an era of big tastes and artificially flavored everything, I’m not sure acid phosphate is bold enough to captivate a nation once again. But wouldn’t it be wonderful, someday, to lean on a marble counter and say, “Hey, mister, gimme a cherry-bourbon phosphate”?

[bigruss]

Well that makes me feel better.

 

What made me feel worse was the Guiness. One damn Guiness and I woke up with a pounding headache.

I am so happy Im young and hangovers tend to stay away from me, of course there are the special occasions where I mix a bottle of wine, beer, and shots in one night which usually makes me feel like doing nothing the next day. The worst is the jungle juice with everclear in it, that always gives me the worst headaches, or my infamous tequila nights where I black out by midnight and almost always have something important in the morning, I never remember those nights but my friends always do...

[G&T]

I am so happy Im young and hangovers tend to stay away from me, of course there are the special occasions where I mix a bottle of wine, beer, and shots in one night which usually makes me feel like doing nothing the next day. The worst is the jungle juice with everclear in it, that always gives me the worst headaches, or my infamous tequila nights where I black out by midnight and almost always have something important in the morning, I never remember those nights but my friends always do...

 

My hangover are usually tied to the quality of beverage. I can drink a lot of cocktails without hangovers (plenty of drunk), or good beer. Of course, I might not be as fair as I should be as I may have been a bit dehydrated last night anyway.

[G&T]

Interesting read on the way to work this morning:

 

Phosphate With a Twist

 

That's really cool. Thanks for posting. I might have to buy some phosphate...

[G&T]

I just discovered that my liquor store has Busnel Calvados for $27. It didn't say what exactly it was and it was in the liqueur section rather than brandy so I decided to look it up first. There were only 2 bottles, so I better grab it tomorrow.

[FlaSoxxJim]

What made me feel worse was the Guiness. One damn Guiness and I woke up with a pounding headache.

 

That is the Guinness Gods punishing you for only having one.

 

[FlaSoxxJim]

Interesting read on the way to work this morning:

 

Phosphate With a Twist

 

Darcy is great, always a wealth of information. As soon as I get through Dave Wondrich's outstanding Punch book and my recently purchased reprint copy of Stan Arthur's 1930s New Orleans cocktail book, Darcy's soda book will be the next alcohol-fueled educational venture for me.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I just discovered that my liquor store has Busnel Calvados for $27. It didn't say what exactly it was and it was in the liqueur section rather than brandy so I decided to look it up first. There were only 2 bottles, so I better grab it tomorrow.

 

That's a good price for the VSOP and it would be a steal if it was the 12 year.

 

Have you picked up Ted Haigh's Forgotten Cocktails book yet? here are several very good drinks in there that put calvados to good use.

[flippedoutpunk]

I love Templeton Rye. Two glasses of it put me to sleep like a baby for some reason.

[FlaSoxxJim]

So here's the beer lineup we presented at the cancer research Belgian Beer benefit event I co-hosted yesterday:

 

• Palm Ale (a "gateway" beer for those new to Belgians)

• Blanche de Bruxxelles witbier

• Westmale Tripel — the original Trappist pale tripel

• Chimay Red — we did Cinq Cents last time around and wanted something not as big as the Blue

• Malheur 10º — An AWESOME beer I had never had before last night

• Brooklyn Local 2 — wanted to showcase one American interpretation

 

We complemented the beers wit cheese and meat plates and Lindman's framboise sorbet I made that went over very well.

 

We knew we would challenge some tastebuds of some of the more pedestrian beer drinkers but I think we actually tickled a lot of tongues with such an array of offerings.

 

What do y'all think?

[FlaSoxxJim]

I love Templeton Rye. Two glasses of it put me to sleep like a baby for some reason.

 

Awesome! I adore rye, and have never even heard of this one. Only available in Iowa, Illinois, New York, and California for now, but I see Binny's stocks it. Putting that one on my list of spirits to try.

[flippedoutpunk]

Awesome! I adore rye, and have never even heard of this one. Only available in Iowa, Illinois, New York, and California for now, but I see Binny's stocks it. Putting that one on my list of spirits to try.

 

Gotta love prohibition era whiskey History never tasted so delicious

Edited March 19, 2011 by flippedoutpunk

[Heads22]

Awesome! I adore rye, and have never even heard of this one. Only available in Iowa, Illinois, New York, and California for now, but I see Binny's stocks it. Putting that one on my list of spirits to try.

 

I've never had it. It's always under lock and key here, and there's always a rush to get it. It's a big deal in Iowa.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Gotta love prohibition era whiskey History never tasted so delicious

 

Are you a fan of Bulleit? A very good rye-heavy "frontier bourbon" that subs well for rye in just about everything.