How to Smoke Liquor

Some of you know that I have been interested in smoking liquor for some time. Originally, I was cold smoking cachaca, with very good results, but too much evaporation occured for it to be economically feasible to do in a bar. Finally, my friend Bradley Dawson rigged this up, which is essentially a smoke injector. The copper colored tube basically acts as a pump (you fill it 1/2 way with water to keep a seal), and the metal portion has some slits Dremeled into the top to allow one to apply flame from a butane torch to wood chips contained within the base of the metal tube. Essentially, this works like a smoke injector, you put one of the tubes into a bottle filled to about .7 of full. Cap the bottle, shake vigorously and let settle overnight for maximum flavor. This is exactly how we make our .38 Special of smoked whiskey and coke at 50 Plates. I'm not one to keep techniques a secret, so I thought I'd share this one with the world. I think there are quite a few applications for smoked liquors available to add some depth and complexity to cocktails for professional bartenders. Hope this helps our community.

Mixology Monday- The Screen Door Cocktail

I know that I've been MIA for the last couple of MixMo's. My schedule has been completely crazy recently, with my consulting for a restaurant that just opened, helping to open another one due mid-July, my day job, etc etc. I could make excuses all day, but when I saw that the fine gentlemen at Scofflaw’s Den had chosen to host Mix Mo with a Bourbon theme, well, count me in. I'm probably missing some other deadlines somewhere, but I had to be a part of this.
Recently, I've been experimenting with a lot of Jerry Thomas' old drink recipes, especially a number of the ones featured in David Wondrich's great book, "Imbibe! From the Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash..". I've been interested in incorporating modern ingredients or styles into classic recipes. If you look past the unusual preparations on some of these ingredients, you'll see that this is simply a Fancy Whiskey Cocktail, nothing more, nothing less.
I also need to add a caveat to this cocktail. I'm using a bacon bourbon for this cocktail, and, while I would like to take credit for bacon bourbon, I actually saw Jim Meehan and Don Lee do this at the Grand Marnier Mixology Summit in Vail this year. I had been experimenting with fat washing before, and I am bacon obsessed, so when I tasted their bacon bourbon, I knew I had to attempt some of my own. For this batch, I used Bulleit bourbon as I felt both the flavor profile and the price point lent themselves to fat washing, and I'm very happy with the result.
In order to make your own Bacon Bourbon, the process is really pretty simple. Get some good bacon (I bought a pound of bacon at Whole Foods), cook it off, reserving the bacon fat, let the fat cool (but do not let it solidify), add to a fifth of bourbon, cover and keep in a cool dry place for 2 weeks. After 2 weeks, place the container of fat/bourbon in the fridge overnight, then strain the bacon fat out from the bourbon using a coffee filter lined chinois. Voila! You've got bacon bourbon, and thats the basic idea behind any fat washed liquor.
I was inspired to create this cocktail after a visit to the Screen Door, a wonderful restaurant here in Portland that makes a praline bacon with brown sugar and pecans that is to die for. Its one of the greatest bacons that I've ever eaten, and I wanted to take some of the qualities from this bacon (sweet, smoky, pecan) and translate this into a drink.I already had the bacon bourbon, so I had to find a way to get some smokiness into the cocktail. While a classic Fancy Whiskey Cocktail uses plain gum syrup, I decided to smoke some brown sugar, turn it into a simple syrup (1-1) and cold infuse it with toasted pecans to try to achieve the flavors that I want to create. Hot smoking the brown sugar isn't the easiest thing to do, but after 3 hours of hickory smoke, I had a large, rock hard cake of brown sugar with a heady barbecue aroma of hickory smoke. I shaved the cake of sugar back down into granules and made a 1 to 1 simple syrup to which I added some toasted pecans, and then did a 2 week cold infusion in my refriegerator in order to extract as much flavor as possible from the pecans. I will add one caveat to anyone attempting to recreate this simple syrup. However many pecans you decide to toast, double it. You'll thank me, as the cold infusion takes a lot of toasted pecans (I used 1 c pecans to 1 1/2 c simple) for the flavor to pull through.
Lets get to the recipe shall we?

The Screen Door Cocktail
2 oz Bacon infused Bulleit Bourbon
2 dashes Angostura Bitters
1/2 tsp Citronege
1 tsp Hickory Smoked Pecan Simple Syrup

garnish with a lemon peel over the top of this cocktail

I felt like this cocktail achieved what I was setting out to do. I didn't end up with a cocktail that was sickly sweet, instead, its a balanced cocktail with depth from the smoke and pecans. The lemon oil really seems to brighten some of the background flavors. Overall, I'm really happy with this one. I drink this and imagine myself sitting outside on the porch, somewhere on a humid, August night in Mississippi (I lived there once), watching fireflies dance in the air and listening to the symphony of cicadas as the sun slowly sets. Some drinks are just evocative of a time or a place, and for me, the Screen Door Cocktail has done just that.

Thanks for reading.

Cocktail Du Jour- The Friedensreich Hundertwasser Cocktail

Well, where to start this post? Should I thank the wonderful cocktail blogger and great personal friend, Jeff Morgenthaler for asking me to design a cocktail for a German publication? Or maybe I should actually explain who Friedensreich Hundertwasser is (a hint- he was a visionary, and some say crazy designer and architect whom I admire). Hundertwasser once said, "A straight line is ungodly". In the case of creating this cocktail, I took anything but a straight line in designing this, and yet I couldn't be happier with the results. This is a great summertime cocktail, distinctive, unique and flavorful.

I was asked to design something around the theme of "tropical liqueurs" and my first thought was Damiana. I wanted to avoid using, say Alize, to design something too sweet or out of character for me. A quick conversation with Jeff though, led to some brainstorming and an agreement to instead use John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum, a tropical liqueur made on the island of Barbados. Velvet Falernum has hints of lime, almonds and cloves which makes it particularly well suited to tiki style drinks, and as a liqueur, it contains a high percentage of sugar, so I find most drinks which have Velvet Falernum as an ingredient do not need a sweetening agent (i.e. simple syrup). I didn't want to go down the usual tiki-drinkish path with Falernum though, I wanted to create a cocktail with depth and complexity and a balance between sweetness and acidity.

Naturally, rum seemed to be a natural fit with falernum, but what kind of rum to use? I have Indian rum, rhum agricole, Bacardi, Gosling's Black Seal and more in my liquor cabinet. I tasted all of them, and each one eliminated itself for the exact flavor profile that I was looking for. I then tried cachaca, but it still wasn't quite right. Bardenay rum, however, was exactly what I was seeking. Distilled in Boise, Idaho, Bardenay may be the best kept secret in the distilling world right now. In addition to their rum, I have a bottle of their gin and one of the few vodkas that I actually care for. Bardenay's rum is distilled from 100% cane sugar, and has just enough age on it to give it the lightest amber coloring. This is a really well made rum, and a perfect match with the Falernum.

Now, I know Falernum and a good rum isn't the most unusual pairing in a cocktail, they are used together quite frequently, and specifically chose these two flavor profiles because I wanted to work with a new ingredient. Smoked Peach Vinegar. I'd smoked vinegar over hickory wood for 3 hours (at 180 degrees) this past weekend, and I was itching to use it, This was just the occasion, the smoke and sweetness of the peach are a perfect match for the complex flavors in the falernum and the smoothness of the rum.

I topped off the cocktail with some tonic water and added one dash of Fee Brothers Peach Bitters for added complexity. The Smoked Peach Vinegar is bold, painting with wide stripes and bold colors,, while the Peach Bitters add detail and more background notes, not discernible but providing subtle support to the main flavors.

The Friedensreich Hundertwasser Cocktail
1 oz John D. Taylor's Velvet Falernum
1 oz Bardenay Rum
1/2 tsp Smoked Peach Vinegar
1 dash Fee Bros Peach Bitters
Tonic
1 fresh slice peach (garnish)
1 fresh mint sprig, spanked (garnish)

1) Combine first 4 ingredients in a double rocks glass, stir to mix the flavors
2) Add ice to glass
3) Top with tonic
4) garnish with peach slice and mint sprig


I'll leave with two things. First, I'd like to thank Jeff Morgenthaler for inspiring me to make this cocktail. Jeff doesn't know how often I come away from conversations with him energized and full of great ideas because of him. Thanks Jeff.

Second, I'll share on more Hundertwasser quote with you, and this one is my favorite. "When we dream alone it is only a dream, but when many dream together it is the beginning of a new reality." Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000)

Project updates

The above picture is bacon fat left over from the bacon bourbon that I finally finished today. I'm looking forward to mixing this with a couple of different things tomorrow.

I smoked about 2 cups of light brown sugar, the smoking took all the moisture out of the sugar and it caked up. I ended up taking the smoked sugar and doing a 2-1 simple syrup. Its currently getting a pecan infusion and I'll strain that off tomorrow. I'm looking at this as an ingredient for my homage to the Screen Door's Praline Bacon.

The smoked maple syrup is amazing. I don't want to say too much about this yet, as I have some cool plans in store for it.

The peach vinegar really reduced, its a dark syrup now. I'm thinking of adding it to some aquavit and tonic to see how it does.