• Michael Dietsch of A Dash of Bitters continues on with his Five Essential Cocktails series by covering rum. While many of these drinks like the Daiquiri and Hurricane have had their name stolen for syrupy horrors, the originals as Michael presents them are exquisite drinks!
• Speaking of rum, A Mountain of Crushed Ice’s Tiare travels over to London for the UK Rumfest. She presents recipes from Beachbum Berry’s “Don’t fear the blender” seminar, the award recipients, and lots of great photos of the event.
• Camper English of Alcademics wishes a happy 60th birthday to the Galliano Alexander, otherwise known as the Golden Cadillac. He also covers the menu changes SF’s Jasper’s Corner Tap and the Starlight Room and Manresa and the drinks at the new Wo Hing General Store, Monterey’s 1833, and NY’s Le Bernardin. His reviews of some of these bars were published in Class Magazine.
• The Cocktail Virgin/Slut, Frederic Yarm, writes about a few drinks he had out including Misty Kalkofen’s mezcal-laden Beneficio de Cafe and Eastern Standard’s Bourbon Derby Flip. He also has a pair of Rogue Cocktails drinks, one in — the Racketeer, and one out — 2 Cups of Blood. Other drinks he had at home were Robert Hess’ Black Feather and Brian Block’s chocolate-infused Negroni variation, the Portolono.
• Matt Rowley of the Whiskey Forge offers up a hangover-helping recipe for bacon dumplings and pontificates over one of the more famous drunkard authors, Charles Bukowski.
• The RumDood, Matt Robold, reviews Novo Fogo Cachaça with aromas of “grassy… honey, citrus, and green apple” and makes a lighter style Caipirinha with it to let this spirit shine in the glass.
• Marleigh of Sloshed presents two Halloween-themed drinks in time for the season: the Devil’s Own, Jason Schiffer’s rum and Fernet concoction, and the Diamondback, a dual spirit plus Chartreuse wonder from Bottom’s Up.
• Cocktail Chronicles’ Paul Clarke offers up his Mixology Monday breakfast-themed drink, the Black Velvet. His theory is that if you are truly hungover, complex mixology and ice banging around in a shaker should be left to other people.
• Doug of the Pegu Blog shares a link to the gin flavor wheel that helps to provide flavor and aroma suggestions for tasting new gins.
• The stomp through the Savoy Cocktail Book continues as Erik Ellestad provides the diverse history and interpretation of the Whisky Daisy and to a lesser extent the Santa Cruz Rum Daisy. His beer of the week is Ovila Abbey Saison which contains some delicious earthy, spicy, and citrus flavors.

Driving along through this or that neighborhood, you spot something on the sidewalk.  A lemonade stand.  Manned by couple of kids.  Me, I always stop.

There’s not much that’s more refreshing than a nice, tall glass of lemonade on a hot summer day.  It’s easy peasy to make, too — water, sugar and lemons.

And what’s better than lemonade?  Grown-up lemonade with booze in it!  (We’ll get back to that in a bit.)

You know how to make lemonade, right?  I would imagine that you do, but let’s assume that your mom always made it for you, and that hers was so good and so perfect that you never really got around to making any for yourself.  It really couldn’t be easier, but as with most drinks it helps to have a method. Before you start squeezing, though, here are some tips to maximize your juice output.

1. Don’t use lemons right out of the fridge.  Cold lemons yield less juice.

2. Even better than using room temperature lemons is putting your lemons in a hot water bath for several minutes.

3. Roll your lemons under the palm of your hand on the cutting board before squeezing.  This helps to liberate the juice.

4. Oh, and don’t pay 79¢ each for your lemons at a major chain supermarket.  I see these prices and it makes me want to yell at someone.  If you can, find a small, local, mom-and-pop produce market or Latin or other ethnic supermarket, where the lemons will likely be a more reasonable 99¢ a pound.

Better yet, plant a lemon tree in your yard, and then they’ll be free. (My favorite price!)

Free lemons from your backyard!

I also recommend straining the fresh-squeezed juice.  You don’t want seeds, of course, and lemon pulp tends to adhere to the glassware and makes it more difficult to clean.

I like to press some lemon zest (only the yellow zest, not the white pith) with a muddler to extract the lemon oils too, which gives an extra depth of flavor.  This is an optional step if, like me, you occasionally are afflicted with laziness. A sharp vegetable peeler is ideal for removing the zest.

SIMPLE, PERFECT LEMONADE

1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
3/4 to 1 cup rich (2:1) simple syrup, to taste
Zest of 1 lemon
3 cups water or sparkling water

Combine the juice and syrup in a pitcher.  Add the zest and press with your biggest muddler, getting as much oil out as you can.  Add the water (or a bit more) to taste, depending on how concentrated you like it.

See? Easy peasy. (But you knew that.)

Now let’s have a go at making a single serving of lemonade.  Get a nice tall glass.  Fill it with ice, preferably nice big cubes.  Add an ounce of lemon juice and 3/4 ounce of simple syrup (as above, a whole ounce if you like it sweeter).  Fill it with fizzy water and you have a lovely, summery fizzy lemonade, but … hmm.  This also sounds like … wait a minute, it’s missing something … oh yeah!  Two ounces of gin.  (London dry, Plymouth or Old Tom, like the drink’s namesake.)  Then that glass of fizzy lemonade becomes a Tom Collins.  Well, heck-ola.  Now it’s a cocktail!  (Hold that thought.)

Let’s start playing around with this basic lemonade.  I’ve been attending the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans for many years, and perhaps the single tastiest and most refreshing beverage on the entire Fair Grounds is Strawberry Lemonade.  The weather tends to be hot and humid, and this drink is bright, sweet, tart, fruity and oh-so-wonderful.  As you’ll notice, the technique is very similar to what I described above.   I never managed to get the exact recipe from the folks who make it at Jazzfest but again, it’s pretty easy stuff and yields spectacular results.   Here’s Emeril Lagasse’s recipe (the man knows New Orleans).

STRAWBERRY LEMONADE

2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon finely chopped lemon zest
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 pint strawberries, hulled and halved
2 cups cold water or sparkling water

Bring the water and sugar to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Add the zest and juice, stir the mixture and remove from heat.  Let cool, then strain into a pitcher.

Puree the strawberries in a blender then add to the pitcher with the lemon juice mixture.  Stir to combine and chill thoroughly.

To serve, add the water or sparkling water and stir well.  Pour over ice into tall glasses and garnish with a whole strawberry and a mint sprig.

Did I say that there’s not much that’s better than lemonade?  Well, one of those things would be strawberry lemonade.  Now … think about adding a shot of reposado tequila to that.  Limonada por mi Amante, anyone?  Use this as a launching point — you can use raspberries, blackberries or pretty much any fruit that tastes good with lemons (which would be almost all of them).  Also, that aforementioned Tom Collins?  Instead of building it in the Collins glass start it out in a mixing glass, throw in a few raspberries, muddle them with the gin, lemon juice and simple, then double-strain that into your ice-filled Collins glass and fill with soda.  Nice berry garnish.  Ta-daa!  Raspberry Collins.  Or any other Somethingberry Collins you care to make.  So simple, but believe me, your guests will rave about it.

Let’s take another direction — instead of adding fruit, let’s start experimenting with the syrup.  For another dimension of flavor, try making a lemongrass syrup instead of simple.  Take a cup of water and a cup of sugar (two if you want it rich), plus two sliced lemongrass stalks (center only), bruised slightly.  Bring to a simmer for 10 minutes, then let cool.  Strain and bottle — it’s helpful to add a splash of vodka as a preservative.  Make your lemonade with this as the sweetener, maybe muddling a few kaffir lime leaves or some Thai basil or cilantro, and you’ve got some nicely exotic southeast Asian flavors going too.  (The syrup also makes delicious iced tea sweetener, an idea I stole from Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, NC.)

I suspect you see where we’re going with this.  By taking a basic lemonade recipe, varying it by adding booze and/or fruit and/or flavored sugar syrups, you have a range of cocktail before you that’s limited only by your imagination, and what’s in season.

Here’s one I really like — sophisticated, herbal, floral, yummy.

LAVENDER LEMONADE

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth gin.
1 ounce lavender syrup (see below).
1 to 1-1/2 ounces lemon juice (to taste, as to your tartness preference).
Sparkling water.

In a tall Collins glass filled with ice cubes, build first three ingredients, add fizzy water and stir.  Garnish with a sprig of fresh lavender if you have it, a lemon slice if you don’t.

To make the lavender syrup bring 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar and the zest of one lemon to a boil, then lower to a simmer and stir to dissolve sugar.  Remove from heat, then add 1/2 cup lavender blossoms.  Let steep overnight, then strain and bottle.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that this is basically a Tom Collins, but with a flavored syrup instead of muddled fruit.  Try a syrup with basil, lemon verbena, thyme … go to the herb section of your local farmer’s market and go nuts.

Now let’s do something unusual with the basic lemonade recipe.  I came across this a while back and although I don’t make it as often as I’d like (due to my aforementioned lazy bastardness), it is filled with deliciousness and in its way reminds me of the beloved sno-balls I grew up with in New Orleans, thanks to a Secret Ingredient.

In Brazil they take a different approach toward making lemonade, whizzing together not only juice but skin and even pith.  (Plus, there’s that Secret Ingredient.)  Brazilian lemons are also quite a lot like limes, so for this recipe we’ll be using the largest limes we can find.  I usually have an easy time finding them in local Latin or other ethnic markets or supermarkets; otherwise use one-and-a-half to two smaller limes for one big one.

BRAZILIAN LEMONADE

4 large or 6-8 small limes
1 cup simple syrup
5 cups cold water
3 ounces sweetened condensed milk (i.e., The Secret Ingredient)

Unless you have a really huge blender, you’ll need do this first step in two batches as described.

Wash the limes well.  Trim the ends off the limes, then cut into eighths.

Place half of the limes, simple syrup and water into the blender and give it five one-second pulses. Pour into a large fine-mesh strainer over a pitcher and strain the mixture, stirring and pressing with a wooden spoon to squeeze all the liquid out of the resulting pulp.  (Discard the pulp.)  Repeat wtih the other half.

Add the sweetened condensed milk, and serve in tall glasses over ice.

Now … add a jigger of good cachaça or white rum to that.  Oba!

You can also make your lemonades into more complex cocktails by adding more ingredients, such as liqueurs or bitters.  Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, who is a not-so-mild-mannered graphic designer for movies when he’s not in his not-so-secret identity as our planet’s pre-eminent cocktail archaeologist, has created a number of superb cocktails in his day.  One of these was in honor of the author Daniel Handler, specifically in his guise as Lemony Snicket, creator of the series of children’s books A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Doc was the graphic designer on the film version of the first couple of books, and created the Lemony Snicket Cocktail using gin, lemon juice, limoncello and yellow Chartreuse.  While cogitating over my lemonade article, I thought this powerful but tasty cocktail might make a nice lemonade-based tall drink too.

THE FIZZY SNICKET, or THE SNICKETY FIZZ
(unfortunately adapted by Chuck from Ted’s original)

1-1/2 ounces Beefeater gin.
1 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1/2 ounce limoncello.
1/2 ounce yellow Chartreuse.
1/4 ounce simple syrup (optional, if you like it sweeter).
Sparkling water.

Build in a Collins glass over ice, adding the soda last.  Give it a brief stir and garnish with a shrunken head, or a lemon slice if the former is not handy.

(By the way, to make Ted’s original Lemony Snicket cocktail, up the gin to 2-1/2 ounces, lower the lemon juice to 1/2 ounce and omit the simple and fizzy water.  Garnish with a curly lemon twist.)

I think by now you’ve got a good idea where you can go with this, which is almost anywhere.  Before we finish I’ll toss out one more lemonade (actually, technically a limeade) that I came up with a few years ago, with two slightly different versions.

SCHMILSSON

2 ounces white rum or cachaça.
1 ounce fresh lime juice.
3/4 ounce rich Demerara syrup.
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters.
3 ounces coconut water.

Build in a Collins glass over ice and stir.

Or, if you don’t have coconut water handy …

NILSSON FIZZ

2 ounces white rum or cachaça.
1 ounce fresh lime juice.
1 ounce coconut syrup.
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters.
Sparkling water.

Build first four ingredients in a Collins glass over ice, top with fizzy water and stir.

If only they made sparkling coconut water.  I’m tempted by put some into my soda siphon and charge it up and see how that works, using the first recipe, and then we’d have just one Nilsson Fizz.  Both of these drinks are named for that great singer and songwriter who put de lime in de coconut and drank ‘em both up.  (It relieve de bellyache.)

Enjoy!  And have a bitchin’ summer!

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RHUM AGRICOLE AND CACHACA?

I´ve read so many articles and seen so much confuison when it comes to what exactly is the difference between rhum agricole and cachaca. And then there`s rhum Barbancourt, is it or is it not a rhum agricole?

So i got the bright (?) idea to write a blog post and try to see if i can sort out what the differences are. I might not have it all clear either. To a large part i have Ed Hamilton and all the fellow members of the Ministry of Rum to thank for what i today know about rums. If i have missed anything or have something wrong here, or if there´s more to it, please feel free to comment.

Cachaça is distilled from fermented sugar cane juice while most ( but not all ) rum is a distillate of fermented molasses.

Cachaça is typically distilled to between 38 and 48% abv while rhum agricole in the French islands is distilled to about 72% abv. Then of course, Cachaca must be made in Brazil while rhum agricole if made in Martinique must carry the AOC mark. Some people says cachaca should be called rum and others says rum should be called cachaca..I myself call rum for rum and cachaca is cachaca and rhum agricole is, well..rhum agricole. And sensorial – they taste completely different.

RHUM AGRICOLE

Rhum agricole is made from pure sugar cane juice which has been fermented and fermentation begins within hours of the cane being harvested.

Martinique is the only geographic area in the sugar cane spirits industry, with an Appelation and rhum agricole made in Martinique carries the AOC or Appelation d’origine Controlée mark. Rum from molasses is also produced and its called ‘rhum industriel’ or ‘rhum traditionnel’. Rhum agricole is distilled to about 72% abv.

The rhum agricole that is made in the other french islands such as Guadeloupe, la Reunion etc would probably not meet the AOC requirements since one of the requirements is the type of cane and then geographic areas, drainage, soil type, etc

Rhum agricole is also made in French Guyana and two of the most known brands is La Belle Cabresse and La Cayennaise. These rhum agricoles has a slight different flavor than the agricoles made in Martinique.

La Belle Cabresse for instance is less refined with a spicy floral note and a lot of flavor. I have only tried La Belle Cabresse, but La Cayennaise is said to be sweeter and rounder and a bit less herbal but with a distictive agricole flavor. Very interesting rums.

On the whole, rhum agricoles are very diverse even within the same island. As for the “terroir”, its not just the soil and type of cane that is used, its also the tradition of the spirit which includes the fermentation, distillation, and blending and its not limited to that.

The rhums from Martinique are lighter and more refined than the rhums from Guadeloupe for example, which are heavier and in my own opinion much more “grassy”.

THE AOC

The AOC or Appelation d’Origine Contrôlée mark was adopted by the Martinique distillers in 1996 and it is unique to the rhum of Martinique.

Rhum agricole can be bottled in Martinique or France but i`ve heard they may tighten the regulations so that the AOC mark can only be carried by rhum agricole bottled in Martinique. The Martinique AOC regulations were adopted to improve the quality and value of their products.

RHUM BARBANCOURT

Rhum Barbancourt isn`t considered a rhum agricole even though its made from sugar cane juice. It seems to be in a class of its own. It has been suggested that sometimes the sugar cane juice is mixed with concentrated sugar cane syrup, but i dont know if there´s any evidence for it. There isn`t much information on how this rum is made. It certainly is a very fine and good rum.

There is two versions of the 15 year old Reserve du Domaine. Its the first version that has a serial number on the back and a newer version that is labeled Estate Reserve and that do not have any serial number.

The old Reserve du Domaine is said to be darker, richer and smoother while the new version is a bit sweeter, lighter and a bit less smooth. i haven`t been able to compare them myself.

The difference between them is most likely to be because of the chill filtration on the rums that are for export to non-tropical countries. The chill filtration technique is used to avoid the deposits or haze which could temporarily occur when the bottles are subject to colder temperatures. Its also a commercial process to standardise the product, its even written on Barbancourts home page that they use chill filtration.

Unfortunately the chill filtration removes esters and aldehydes, as well as some of the rums natural oils, which leads to a altering of the flavor profile and general mouthfeel of the rum.

CACHACA

According to Brazilian law cachaça must be distilled to 38 to 48% alcohol by volume. Cachaça can be made from fresh sugar cane juice or melado which is sugar cane juice which has been reduced but without removing any crystalline sugar out of the juice. The harvested sugarcane is washed and pressed through large metal rollers to extract the juice and its this first pressing that makes cachaca. The juice is then filtered to extract any cane fragments etc before the process of fermenting. Cachaca is fermented in wooden or copper vats and then boiled down three times and the result is a sticky concentrate.

The aging process yields a cachaça with a smoother taste and most often a yellow or caramel color. Premium cachacas are distilled in such a way that the sugarcane flavor isnt lost. To be labeled “aged” a cachaca must be aged at least one year according to Brazilian law.

Most often the cachaca producers uses a leavening agent in the production of their cachaca, meaning that during the stage of fermentation they will add corn meal, corn flour or rice bran, to the sugar cane must. And that these grain additions will add distinctive flavors and aromas to the cachaca besides producing the alcohol.

This is a fermentation starter mash that is made from cane juice and toasted corn meal which is generally and tradtionally practised. Traditionally cachaça is fermented using indigenous yeast strains that are naturally occurring in the cane. Artisanal cachaça is typically made in batch potstills, while industrial cachaça is made with continuous column stills.

So these are the main things that differentiates cachaca from rhum agricole as far as i know. Then when it comes to rum, apart from rhum agricole, its made from molasses, a totally different way to produce this sugar cane spirit.

To round this up i made a ti punch with palmsugar and a ginger caipirinha.

DIRTY VIEUX PALM SUGAR TI POOONCH

1 oz rhum agricole blanc

1 oz rhum agricole vieux

A slice off the side of a lime or as much as you prefer

0.5 oz palm sugar syrup

Start squeezing the lime and drop into the glass. Add the palm sugar syrup and the rhums and stir to mix. Add a cracked ice cube if you like.

FRESH GINGER CAIPIRINHA

2 oz cachaca

0.5-1 oz simple syrup or 1 heaped tblsp raw sugar.

I use raw sugar even though its not dissolving as easily as the traditionally used superfine sugar because i like the flavor of the specific raw sugar i have (Billingtons golden natural unrefined cane sugar) better.

1/2 to 1 lime depending on size. Cut the ends off, then the pith and cut it in pieces.

2 cm piece of fresh ginger,sliced.

Muddle lime, sugar and ginger in a rocks glass, add crushed ice and cachaca, stir well. Fill up with more crushed ice if needed. Garnish with a lime wedge.

Is there anything aside from distillation abv, terroir, AOC and the use of leavening agents that is distictly different about the production of rhum agricole and cachaca?