I was fortunate to be chosen as the cover article of Mix Magazine this week. Thank you Kathleen Bauer for writing such a beautiful piece and Thomas Boyd for the gorgeous photography.

Mix Magazine piece

I had a funny epiphany the other night when it occurred to me that the $17 echinacea goldenseal and propolis throat spray I’d been using to ward off the latest in fashionable flu and cold viruses, was really a simple extract I could make for about fifty cents. Which got me to pulling out a bunch of old cocktail recipe books, botany books, and herbal medicine books that I enjoyed flipping through on my days off this Christmas. It got me thinking that I should spend more time with this part of cocktail history, as the transition from “medicine” to cocktail flavoring is absolutely fascinating. It’s also an interesting study as to our current obsession with prescription medicines and it makes you wonder what our grandchildren will be doing with them 100 years from now.

I pulled out two old recipes that looked interesting, Baker’s Bitters and Falernum Syrup. I’ve made Baker’s bitters before, many years ago – and I wish I still had the bottle, but like tiny bottles of murky liquid often do – it has disappeared. If I remember correctly, they are a really nice orange bitters (supposedly Gary Regan used this recipe as a base for his famous Regan’s Orange Bitters No 6). As I don’t know what happened to them, I started a new batch today, which should be done right around Valentine’s Day. I also pulled out the recipe for Falernum Syrup, which I hate to admit but I have never made it until today (well it’s almost made, I just have to add the simple syrup tomorrow). But so far, it smells really delicious. Both extracts have a Christmassy scent to them thanks to the cinnamon and cloves.

Bakers Bitters

Bakers Bitters are first found in Charles H. Baker, Jr.’s book, “The Gentleman’s Companion” which was a unique collection of recipes for its day: exotic recipes from around the world for unusual hors’ d’oeuvres, soups, fish, shellfish, poultry, game, meat, vegetables, fruits and desserts. Baker spent most of the 20s and 30s drinking and eating his way around the world – supposedly rubbing elbows with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Frank Buck, and Douglas Fairbanks.  When he was not traveling around the globe as the early 20th century’s Anthony Bourdain, he hung out down in Coconut Grove, Florida – when it was just a tiny little artist hamlet. He was at various times a writer for the old Town and Country and Esquire magazines and did some other freelance work, but nothing took hold like his little Gentleman’s Companions which now are few and far between. Today, you can easily find it selling for over $300 on ebay and amazon.

INGREDIENTS

1/8 teaspoon Cinchona bark
the peel from one orange
the peel from half of a lemon
10 crushed cardamom seeds
Two teaspoons of crushed Chamomile flowers
2 crushed cinnamon sticks
1/8 cup of Raisins
28 ounces of 151-grain alcohol

METHOD
Place ingredients together in an airtight container, shaking once per week – allowing to steep for six weeks. At the end of six weeks, strain through a cheesecloth two times. Now bottle and enjoy.

Basic Falernum

Falernum is a flavored syrup that originated in Barbados and is typically alcoholic – but not necessarily. It generally contains ginger, cloves, and lime, but could include any number of other ingredients for flavor. Most recipes include some sort of bitter almond flavor. It’s used in a lot of tiki drinks, but also can be mixed with a little seltzer water as a super sassy ginger ale.

INGREDIENTS
8 ounces of rum (it wouldn’t be falernum if you didn’t use rum!) I say use a 151 proof rum
The peels of two limes
4 Whole Cloves
3 Drops Almond Extract
28 ounces of simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, bring to a boil, immediately remove from heat, and let cool)

METHOD
1. In bottle place the Rum, Cloves, and Lime Peel.
2. Set aside overnight.
3. Strain cloves and lime peels from rum
4. Add 28 ounces of simple syrup to your extract
5. Add the drops of almond extract
Want to know more about tinctures and extracts? Click here.

To check out the Jerry Thomas Project (the re-making of all the cocktails from America’s first cocktail book)  click here.

More about the history of cinchona, quinine, and the effects it had on the global economy click here.

The video I made with Travel Oregon is done and up – so please check it out and while you are at it – please plan a vacation through Eastern Oregon (might I suggest a day at The Painted Hills of John Day and a hike to Strawberry Falls).

Link to the video.

So  Oregon Bounty’s fall campaign has launched, which I am honored to be a part of this year. It’s a really awesome way to promote the state of Oregon, as it takes the beauty of the landscape, the bounty of the land, and the creative talent from Oregonians and whips it all together to create what they call Wanderfest, which is an amazing way to see the state. (As who doesn’t want to see beautiful places and eat and drink amazing things?)

Anyhow, please check out their site. It is a really fun site to tool around – there is no doubt that you will learn about some new places to check out. Also please check out my cocktail that I made for Wanderfest, The Conestoga, made entirely out of ingredients that are either crafted or foraged from Eastern Oregon – except of course the whiskey, which I must thank House Spirits for.

Oregon Bounty website
Conestoga link

If you are interested in the story of going out to Eastern Oregon and foraging for ingredients and what I found – please click on this link.

What is this plant?

Lately, I often hear the debate between the difference between mixologist and bartender and I try to stay as far away from it as I can – as I find it to be a bit like politics or religion. You are never going to change the other person’s mind and you are just going to waste a lot of breath that could be better used for humming, yodeling, or just for plain ol’ breathing. But today, I really felt like a mixologist. Greg Robeson, from Oregon Bounty, asked me if I would like to go to Eastern Oregon along the Oregon Trail and find local ingredients to use in a cocktail that will be featured on their website. Today we spent the day driving across Eastern Oregon looking for places to shoot and ingredients.

Gorgeous bush that has a beautiful nose a bit like fresh tobacco.

Armed with three guidebooks about edible plants of the arid west, a camera, a four-wheel drive vehicle, and google we set out in hopes of finding the perfect ingredients in front of a picturesque setting. Let’s just say after today I know I made the right choice in profession, as botany doesn’t seem to be my strength. I spent most of the morning trying to figure out what plants we had seen to no avail – and quite honestly I recognized how few plant names I actually know.

Could this be Indian Paintbrush?

By early afternoon all Greg and I could think about is trying to find a berry and we soon found ourselves on marshy stream banks and in bramble bush only to find a berry – that if I did identify correctly is poisonous! So we carried on into the beginning of the Ochoco Forest and found some huckleberry bushes with no berries and some strawberry plants with no strawberries – still too early for fruit in the high country.

Could this be the poisonous bitter berry?

Nonetheless, I got plenty of flora and fauna to mess around with and I’m planning on making a bitters out of what I found (hopefully I won’t poison myself). Made me see into a tiny little piece of what life on the Oregon Trail was like as most people coming through this area at the turn of the century weren’t familiar with the plants around them. I’d like to think that they tasted the plants around them and tried to make tinctures and tonics out of them to see if they had any health benefits.

Here’s some photos of what we found – if you know what any of these plants are – please do tell!

This smells a little like dill – perhaps a relative.

There were a lot of these little flowers in the desert -
my guess is that they are meadowsweet.

No clue – but they smell like fresh cut grass with a hint of rose petal.

Gorgeous delicate pea pods.

No clue – but what a beautiful flower.

This flower was going to seed and it is the smelliest sample I got.  These were all over the painted hills and I have the sneaking suspicion they will all be gone by the time we go back to shoot in August.

First time to The Painted Hills (after almost six years in Oregon)  Just a little embarrassed I hadn’t been sooner.

Purple Thistle (can’t touch this thing
as it has so many spines, spikes, and pricks on it)

This is definitely sage and I will most likely use it in the drink.

Is it true that there is an Angostura bitters shortage?  Restock It is currently selling a 10 ounce bottle for $133.80!  I know that my local provider said that it could be weeks until they are back in stock – fortunately I have a back up bottle and about 30 other kinds of bitters (but there is something so reassuring about Angostura bitters).  Just think, once upon a time you could just buy Boker’s bitters.  Then there was a shortage – and now there isn’t any left in the entire world.  (Although a company in Great Britain supposedly is putting a Boker’s Bitters on the market).  Thank God that Angostura is still making bitters – it is supposedly just an issue with their bottle supplier.

Here’s some interesting links about the current shortage.

The Trinidad and Tobago Gaurdian

The Huffington Post

$133.80 Angostura Bitters

Two major obstacles will be tackled this week. Gum arabic is soaking in water as I write this so gomme syrup shall be ready this week and the boker’s bitters appear to be done.

More to come.

Oh Julie and Julia, taking the blogosphere to a whole new level. I was quite sure that you couldn’t turn a child’s action figure into a feature film but the colossal hit Transformers proved why I am still standing behind a bar and not working for a big studio in L.A. So I certainly could never have guessed that you could turn a blog about epicurean cooking into what is one of this summer’s most talked about movies. But it inspired me to make all of Jerry Thomas’s cocktails and put it on my blog. Jerry Thomas isn’t a name you hear often, even in the upper echelon mixology world. It’s too bad most of us don’t know more about him as he is considered the father of American mixology and published the first cocktail recipe book, Jerry Thomas’s Bartenders Guide. Not only was he a master at mixing drinks, he also had a show of flare with flashy clothing and some juggling tricks.

So for the next couple of months, I will make all of Jerry Thomas’s cocktails from the book Jerry Thomas’s Bartenders Guide that was published in 1887. These cocktail recipes are all pre-prohibition and were certainly created long before the spirits market started spiraling into what after spending two days at a liquor convention will convince you has gotten completely out of control. There were certainly no TY KU’s (which is a spirit distilled from sake and yuzu that comes in a glowing green bottle) or vodkas with caffeine and guarana. I have to wonder with the plethora of vodkas on the market, who is thinking that they can out-market Absolut or Grey Goose. The people not buying one of the five major labels who decide to buy a small batch spirit are unfortunately few and already there are hundreds of choices. Not that I want to discourage the small batch distilleries, but I feel a bit overwhelmed by one spirit after another that has very similar flavor profile and slightly more or less attractive packaging.

I’ve decided to make the drinks in order of the book. The first drink is a Brandy Cocktail. Obviously, Thomas didn’t have the menagerie of glassware we are accustomed to today either. He specifies either a large, medium, or bar glass. He also doesn’t use ounces, just the measurement of wine glass.

The first drink is a Brandy Cocktail which calls for a small bar glass. As he later specifies to shake and strain it into a cocktail glass (what many call a martini glass), that is the glass I went with. He calls for 3 to 4 dashes of gum syrup, which he doesn’t give a recipe for, but I used simple syrup which we make using equal parts sugar to water. He then calls for 2 dashes of bitters (Boker’s or Angostura) and as I don’t have Boker’s bitters – I used Angostura. I have desperately tried to make Boker’s bitters but unfortunately, I have not found anywhere that sells catechu or tincture of cochineal (although it sounds like this might have only been used for color and I don’t know if it affected the taste of the bitters or not but as the recipe calls for such a large quantity I do believe that it must affect the flavor),.

Thomas calls for a wine glass of brandy, which we use Riedel stemware at my bar (a 30 ounce glass) so I decided to not use an entire wine glass. I was a bit afraid to add the 1 or 2 dashes of Curacao, as I only have blue and I thought it might turn the drink some nasty color. But the few dashes did very little to the hue and actually added some depth to the amber color of the brandy.

The drink was a lot tastier than I thought it would be. I assumed that it would be a bit too sweet with the simple syrup and the Curacao, but it was more like a brandy Manhattan with nice vanilla undertones.

Nice job Mr. Thomas.

Here’s a recipe for Boker’s bitters. Send me a sample if you find all of the ingredients to make them. (you might want to decrease this recipe – or else you are going to have six lifetimes of Boker’s bitters)

4 liters of whiskey
3 ounces of quassia
3 ounces of catechu
3 ounces of calamus
2 ounces of cardamom
40 ounces of tincture of cochineal
5 ounces of burnt sugar
24 liters of water

After reading a recent article about smoked beers, I have no doubt that we need to carry one at the bar. Especially since our fare is New Ranch Cuisine, focused on cured and smoked meats as a centerfold to our menu. So the first sample came last week, Spezial Rauchbier Lager. Spezial Brewery is the oldest brewery in Bamberg (1536) which is located in Bavaria on the Regnitz River and is one of the few towns in Germany that was not devastated from bombing in World War II. Spezial does all of its own malting and smoking at its brewery in downtown Bamberg. In this beer they use 40% smoked malt and 60% Bavarian barley malt, which gives a slight smoky flavor to the beer but not as much as I was hoping for. Pours a nice deep amber color. The nose is fruity as in over-ripe apple with a touch of peaty smoke. It is sweet and malty on the palette with vanilla and very little smoke. The finish is not very long and the smoky flavor does not linger. Not quite what I was looking for, hoping that the next sample is smokier. This brewery also makes another Rauchbier that is 70% smoked malt and 30% barley malt, so maybe we can get a sample of that.

We just got in the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier for summer and by accident our rep sent us the Weihenstephaner Kristall Weissbier. Pretty much any beer drinker knows that Weihenstephaner is the oldest running brewery in the world (although a neighboring abbey Weltenburg says that this claim to fame belongs to them). Regardless, Weihenstephaner is well known for their wheat beers and it is their dunkelweiss that turned me on to drinking beer, as I had absolutely no palate for beer before this experience and thought it all to be quite boring as it all just tasted like beer. The Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier is a beautiful wheat beer that is perfect for summer. It pours a beautiful golden color with just a hint of cloudiness. The nose is banana, citrus, and a hint of clove. Flavor wise there is a smidgen of citrus with a gorgeous creamy finish. It is by far the best Hefeweizen I have ever had.

The Kristall Weissbier was very light in style and if I had blind tasted it, I would have never guessed it was a wheat beer, but rather a lager. The color of it is a crisp clear yellow. There is still a hint of banana but minus the clove of the other Hefeweizen, it is also lacking the creamy finish of the Hefe but still had a refreshing finish with some nice hints of lemon zest. It was interesting but too light for most people’s expectations of a Hefeweissbier. I’m glad the regular Hefeweizen came on this last order.

We also got a new IPA two weeks ago, Lompoc’s C Note. It is an Imperial Ale which means that the brewer altered the style of the beer to make it bitterer. In the beer world there is actually a bitterness scale (IBU International Bitterness Unit) which is used to determine how bitter a beer is. Typically heavier beers have a higher IBU because the beer needs more bitterness to be balanced, but they might not taste as bitter because they used more malt to balance the flavor. There is no way to measure a beer over 100 IBU’s and the Lompoc C Note claims that they have over 100 IBU’s. To put things in perspective, most American lagers (Budweiser, Coors, Miller) have and IBU of 5. Porters tend to have between 25 to 40. Stouts tend to have between 25 to 60. And IPA’s tend to have over 40.
Lompoc named this beer the C Note because they are using all the C hops, Centennial, Crystal, Cluster, Chinook, Cascade, and Columbus. It is brewed in Portland, although I’ve been surprised that there is not a lot of name recognition. I’m sure time will change that. It pours a hazy amber color. The nose is very floral with a little bit of lavender and lemon. Has a very dry mouthfeel with lemon and pine and a long bitter finish. I personally like something a little more rounded with more grapefruit (i.e. Pliny the Elder) but this is a fairly-well balanced IPA and the bitterness is smooth and long, not abrupt as in the West Coast IPA.
It was also the week of bitters as my long awaited Angostura Orange bitters came in. I’ve wanted them for a long time and was hoping the liquor store would stock them, but that never came to fruition so I ordered them online. I also got a bottle of Regan’s orange bitters and Peychaud’s bitters (embarrassed we didn’t always have them). This in addition to the bitters I made last month, which all turned out quite well (although the cardamom in the Bitters IV is a bit too strong – will tool around with that in the near future) has made for very little space on the bar top (need a shelf just for the bitters). I cannot tell you how I love the Angostura Orange bitters, they got excellent reviews and they are the best orange bitters I have ever had. They have a much deeper complex flavor that the Fee Brothers (which taste like Fanta Orange) or Regan’s. There is cardamom, lemon zest, and cinnamon which add an intricacy that you don’t find in other orange bitters. The flavor is long and involved with the flavor of orange essential oils bursting through at the end.

I just ordered some bottles that I am quite excited about, so when they come I’ll keep you posted: Franca Menta, Strega Strega, and Aalborg Akvavit.

With the reemergence of the speakeasy and the emphasis on perfecting many of the classic cocktail recipes, many mixologists are branching out with what they can do with bitters and fiddling around with making their own. Bitters are a highly flavorful aromatic potion created by blending one or more of the main bitter principles (angostura bark, cascarilla, quassia, gentian, orange, or quinine) with other herbs and botanicals. Bitters were first created in the 16th century and were drank alone as medicine, but as they were slightly caustic it became more and more popular to mix them with wine to make them more palatable. People soon enjoyed the flavors of these new concoctions and the tainted wines soon became popular aperitifs. By the 18th Century, distilleries in Italy began studying how to distill numerous herbs and spices and such favorites as Campari, Fernet Branca, and Cynar were born. France too was taking an interest in the aperitif market and soon France and Italy had a “bitter” rivalry as to the quality of production and the quantity of consumption.

Any cocktail historian will tell you that the Sazarac is the first cocktail created in America. The original recipe was an easy-to-make concoction of cognac and Peychaud bitters. Peychaud invented his bitters in Santo Domingo and brought his recipe to New Orleans in the 1830’s. He opened a drugstore where he sold cocktails that he served in an egg cup, which in French is called a coquetier. The English speakers around him mispronounced the word leading to one of the greatest words in the American bar scene, cocktail.

Every bartender knows the magic of Angostura Bitters, it makes manhattans sparkle, cures stomach aches, and dispels the hiccups. But none of them know its secret recipe as it is highly guarded; rumor has it that only five people in the world know its secret. Named Angostura for the Venezuelan town they were developed in, they also contain the bark from the Angostura tree, which is highly astringent. They were developed in 1824 by a German doctor who was the Surgeon General under Simon Bolivar’s military in Venezuela. Most likely, he stole the medicinal secrets of the Amerindians and began producing his bitters on a local level. Everyone who tried them loved them and encouraged him to travel the world to sell his bitters. By 1850 he had resigned his military post and was selling his bitters on an international level.

Making bitters is not difficult, but rather just time consuming. To begin with, many of the ingredients are obscure and difficult to come by. Furthermore, most herbs must be left sitting for weeks to allow for the alcohol to slowly take on their flavor. As it is difficult to know how different flavors will impart in alcohol, it is best to steep the ingredients separately as each spice will relinquish its flavor in the alcohol at its own pace. These separate tinctures can then be mixed together to achieve the desired flavor.

Bitters are one of the great establishments of mixology. They give a depth and complexity to cocktails that can’t be achieved any other way. They also make you feel good, as there are hundreds of years of herbal medical beliefs in every drop. Next time you mix your favorite cocktail, drop a drip or two of bitters in it to make it something new, exciting, and invigorating.

Here are some of the more interesting items that have come to my attention this week.

Pliny the Elder Double IPA

I am not a beer drinker, but this is one of the best beers I have ever had. It begins with a beautiful tangerine and grapefruit bouquet. It is bitter but not astringent. Perfectly balanced, as the bitterness is slow on the palette with light malt. Nice crisp bubble structure with medium mouth feel make this one sensational beer. Do try do try! I like it better on tap than in a bottle – maybe because it opens up a little more.

Hard to find bitter ingredients

Ah bitters! I have been trying to make some of the classic bitters such as Boker’s bitters and Boudreau Bitters No.2 to find that the ingredients are almost impossible to find. I went online to find quassia, catechu, and calamus with not much luck. I found catechu but I had to order a pound of it (only need three ounces). Looks like a lot of these items are used in acupuncture, so perhaps I can get them that way. I’ve also contacted a girl from where I used to live who is an herbalist, so perhaps she can be of help to me. For the meantime, I’ll experiment with some different ingredients.

The tic tac craze.

I had not heard of this drink a month ago and now it is the new hot item amongst the late night crowd. I guess as long as you get to drop something into red bull – it’s good?!?!?!? I’ve always joked that people will buy anything that comes out of the fryer and better yet if you put it on a stick. The same rings true with anything with red bull in it and then anything where you get to put a little glass inside of a big glass.

My HOT drink right now is El Scorcho, easy to make.

EL SCORCHO

1 ounce ginger syrup
1.5 ounces fresh-squeezed lime
1 ounce pineapple
2.5 ounces habeñero infused vodka

Ginger syrup

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup water
1 cup peeled and cut fresh ginger

Bring to a boil, let sit for two hours. Do not let sit overnight as the ginger will instill a bitter heat into the syrup.

Habeñero infused vodka

Cut one habeñero pepper in half. Put into a fifth of vodka and let sit overnight. Obviously the longer you let the pepper stay in the vodka the hotter it will get. But after one day, most of the heat is released into the alcohol.