Why the Hell Not?

The long anticipated, eagerly awaited Pimento Dram taste test!

Finally, after a month or so of aging the pimento dram, it's now time to taste it.

First:  the sensory impressions.

Color:  Dark brown, fairly viscous, slightly translucent liquid.

Odor:  Strongly smells of allspice, with undertones of alcohol.

Taste:  It starts off allspicey and very sweet, with a slightly harsh alcoholic finish. I wasn't expecting such an alcoholic bite to it;  it's definitely more than most liqueurs have.  I attribute this to the Cruzan 151 that I used;  I used about 20 oz of 151 across two 750 ml bottles, so that figures out to roughly 60 proof, I believe, which is right in the middle of the range of the liqueurs I posess (Kahlua, Galliano, Luxardo Maraschino, Luxardo Amaretto, Cointreau, etc...)  I'm supposing that the Cruzan is fairly rough stuff for 151- it's hard to tell by tasting it;  it's all harsh at that proof!

Our first application for the liqueur was hot chocolate.  Karen really wanted to try it in hot chocolate, so we made some hot chocolate using our Rechiutti drinking chocolate and about a 1/2 oz of the pimento dram.

It was good, although a bit weird to my palate.  Karen loved it though!  Personally, I'd have preferred milk chocolate- I didn't think the bitterness worked with the very obvious allspice flavor.  Still, the liqueur wasn't harsh or in any way a detraction from the drink at all.

Our next test was a real mixed drink.  After a little looking online and perusing of the bar shelves, we decided on a drink called the "None but the Brave". 

The drink goes as follows (from link to CocktailDB above): 

Shake in iced cocktail shaker & strain:

1 1/2 oz brandy (4.5 cl, 3/8 gills)

1/2 oz pimento dram (1.5 cl, 1/8 gills)

1/4 oz fresh lemon juice (6 dashes, 1/16 gills)

1/4 oz Jamaican rum (6 dashes, 1/16 gills)

1/4 tsp sugar (1 dash)

Serve in a cocktail glass (4.5 oz)

We really only diverged slightly on the rum and the glasses, and the rum's because my bottle of Jamaican rum is MIA after last weekend's dove hunting / poker / boy's weekend.  Instead of Coruba Jamaican rum, we ended up using Mt. Gay Sugar Cane Brandy (bottle says "rum" for legal reasons).

The finished drinks were distinctly amber colored, but smelled divine.

We diverged on the glasses because these Bodum double-walled tumblers are simply excellent for hot/cold beverages- they keep it colder longer than a regular glass will.

Results:

This drink kicks ass!  It's tart, sweet, and tastes kind of lemony and like allspice, with something that strangely reminds me of apples or some other fruit.  The pimento dram is very obvious, but again, not overpowering or harsh.  I think we've found a winner here.

Overall verdict:  A

This project resulted in a product that is versatile, safe and drinkable, which is more than I can say for some of my culinary adventures!  I suspect we'll be seeing more of the pimento dram in the future, especially in egg-nog and in some drinks we have yet to invent!

Pimento Dram

Remember this post?  Well, stay tuned as we'll post an "official" taste test later in the week. 

I also snuck a nip and can tell you that it's definitely some good (and potent) stuff.  It'll make rockstar Egg Nog come Christmastime!

Gin Taste-Off!

In the spirit of my last post, this is another taste-off between varieties of gin inspired by Tales of the Cocktail 2009.

It seemed like about 2/3 of the drinks we were served at Tales were gin drinks of one sort or another, and to her great surprise, Karen liked almost all of them.

We attended the Martin Miller's Gin tasting room, and ended up with a bunch of airplane bottles of their gin, and little cocktail shakers as well.   The drinks they served in there were fantastic, and made me really curious about their gin in a more standard drink.

So... just like the cachaca taste off, I drafted Andy (my brother) into helping me.  We decided that Gin and Tonics were the way to go, since we're both partial to them, and I'd brought my entire bottle of Plymouth Gin down anyway.

First, we smelled the gins.  Neither smelled particularly remarkable - they both smelled very junipery!

I gave each glass a lime quarter squeezed out, 1.5 oz of gin (airplane bottle dose), and 2 oz of tonic per glass.  I stirred that up, and added ice. 

Andy started with the Martin Miller glass and instantly exclaimed "Uuhgh." and proclaimed it "funky, and not in a good way."  My Plymouth G&T tasted fine - I happen to like Plymouth.

We switched the glasses, and he said he liked the Plymouth much better, even having never had Plymouth.  I tasted the Martin Miller's G&T, and it had a distinct taste of cucumber or something like that.  The Plymouth by comparison, tasted almost citrusy, and its taste worked with the tonic water and lime, unlike the Martin Miller's, which clashed and tasted, well... odd.

Clear winner for gins and tonics:  Plymouth

Stay tuned for more taste-offs and some upcoming cooking entries!

-M

Cachaca Taste-off!

A couple of weeks ago, at Tales of the Cocktail 2009, Karen and I showed up Thursday morning at the Hotel Monteleone for our first seminars.  We were greeted by a pair of women in "tropical" attire (for lack of a better word), who had signs that said "Free Cachaca!", and who were giving out some promotional stuff for Leblon brand cachaca.  We wandered over to the rooms at the side, and checked out the Leblon tasting room, because Karen didn't know what cachaca was, and I was curious about what "Free Cachaca!" meant.

For those of you who aren't aware of how the tasting rooms worked, here's a quick synopsis.  Each producer had a room for a fixed amount of time.  They were likely required to produce at least two different types of drinks with their products for the attendees to sample.  Most producers had some sort of free gear and/or a presentation about their products as well.

On to the Leblon tasting room!  In Leblon's tasting room, I talked with Gilles Merlet, the French master cognac distiller who works for Leblon, about their process, and about cachaca in general.  Cachaca is a Brazilian sugarcane liquor that's wildly popular down there - something on the order of a billion liters of the stuff is made annually in Brazil.

The main thing that separates cachaca from rum is that cachaca is produced from sugarcane juice, much like a Caribbean rhum agricole.  That's why the US government requires it to be labeled as rum, instead of as its own cachaca category. Hence the "Free Cachaca!" campaign - they don't want to be lumped in with rum.  There must be something else that's different about the way cachaca's made, because cachaca and rum don't really taste or smell much alike, even when we're talking about rhum agricole.  Cachaca has its own odd flavor- kind of harsh on its own, and very different.  It's still somewhat sweet, and obviously comes from sugarcane though.

In the tasting room, we had our first Caipirinhas, which are a Brazilian drink composed of muddled lime eighths (4 of them, or half a lime worth), sugar syrup - about 3/4 oz, and 2 oz cachaca.  To make one, take your lime eighths, muddle them to death in the bottom of the shaker, add the cachaca, the sugar syrup and a reasonable amount of ice.  Shake it well, then dump it into a glass, ice and all.  It's one of the very few cocktails that actually retain the ice used in preparation.

We both felt that the cachaca went surprisingly well with the citrus and sugar, despite the funky odor and taste of the straight stuff.

Later during Tales, we attended a seminar where we got little airplane bottles of Cabana cachaca, which is a competing brand to Leblon, and is aged in native jequitiba rosa wood, instead of the cognac casks that Leblon uses.

The following weekend, I enlisted my brother Andy's help in a taste-off between Leblon and Cabana;  he's always up for something strange and drink related.

Our procedure for the taste off was as follows:

First, we sampled the straight spirits.  Based on that test, we both preferred the Leblon to the Cabana, due to the slightly sweeter taste.  Both were equally funky, which must have something to do with the production process.

Next, we made a pair of Caipirinhas using the same liquor.  I cut up 2 limes, and made sure to get an even mix of eighths from each lime into each drink.  I then added exactly 3/4 oz of brown sugar syrup to each glass, followed by 1 1/2 oz of cachaca.  (I did 1 1/2 oz because the airplane bottle only held that much). 

When both drinks were prepared, we each took a sip.  The surprise was that the Leblon wasn't the winner in that trial - its higher sweetness made the drink almost cloying, while the drier Cabana made for a really good Caipirinha.  I think that in the future, I'll make my Leblon Caipirinhas with less sugar syrup than the recipe calls for, just in case!

Final result:  Andy was convinced that Cabana was the way to go.  I think you can't go wrong with either - just adjust your recipe accordingly.

-M

Pimento Liqueur!

You're probably thinking how nasty a liqueur made from the pimentos found in pimento cheese would be, right?

Luckily, that's not the sort of pimento I'm talking about.  I'm talking about something more properly called "Pimento Dram" instead of "Pimento Liqueur", and in this case, pimento means allspice.  So Pimento Dram is really an allspice liqueur.  Why they call it pimentos in the West Indies, I don't know.  Allspice got its name from the British, who thought it combined the flavors of cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg in one berry.

Why would I want allspice liqueur?  Because it makes some really good drinks, I can't find it in Dallas, and I like to make my own.  Plus, Karen and I had an absolutely divine Allspice Sour at Tales of the Cocktail's happy hour at the Presbytere on Thursday night, and I can't wait to try to reproduce it.

I did some looking, and the odds-on favorite in web recipes is Chuck Taggart's Jamaican Pimento Dram #3.  I had to do a little bit of substitution, in that I couldn't find the 151 Demerara rum around here, so I got Cruzan 151 instead.  I also plan to switch it up a little and use the Mexican piloncillo sugar instead of regular brown sugar, in the interest of a richer flavor to hopefully gain a little flavor that we may have lost without the Demerara rum.

As you can see, I've ground the berries and am steeping them in the rum.

This stage is supposed to last at least a week, and it's been in since Tuesday (7/14/09) night.

More to come later, after the steeping's finished!

-M

Tales of the Cocktail - Continued

This is the second part of a series of posts on the 2009 Tales of the Cocktail Convention in NOLA.  If you have never been and are into cocktails at all, it's certainly worth going next year.  We had an incredible time! 

Tales of the Cocktail is a five day celebration of the history and craft of making cocktails.   This year was the seventh year for the convention.  It always takes place in the birthplace of the cocktail - the French Quarter.  The French Quarter is only six by twelve blocks, but is home to tons of history, an amazing amount of great food, and of course, fantastic cocktails. 

Want to know something funny?  The cocktail was invented just across the street from what is now the courthouse for the Louisiana Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals.  Funny, no?  Lawyers and liquor so often go together.  The cocktail, though, was actually invented by a pharmacist.  More on that later.  But now, on to a picture!

Can you guess what this is?  I'll give you a hint, we took this picture during a Pernod tasting. 

The funny looking spoons hold sugar cubes that dissolve as the ice water (in the neato antique-looking glass container) drop onto the spoon.  The now sugared water drops through the holes of the spoon into the absinthe below.  Absinthe was actually illegal in the U.S. until recently.  Now it is sold here, but only when it is made without Wormwood.  Absinthe is also rumored to cause hallucinations.  I don't know if you can see them, but there are little green fairies flying around the girl in the picture...

Made you look!

Tales of the Cocktail, New Orleans, LA July 2009

...This is the beginning of a series of posts about our experiences at the Tales of the Cocktail Convention in New Orleans...Enjoy!

Ah...starting the day out right...with a Bloody Mary.  We started our second day at the Tales of the Cocktail convention in New Orleans off right...with a well made drink.  Throughout the convention, we received many delicious and delightful drinks in glasses just like this.  Although the glasses seemed little, they tended to hold close the amount a regular cocktail glass holds so you can imagine how much fun we had!

Got to love the delivery man!  Actually, I think he's a famous (and likely quite talented) bartender/mixologist.  Unfortunately, we failed to catch his name. So, whomever you are, (in the words of the famous beer commercial) we salute you!

And yes, we did have a celebrity sighting.  Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman joined us for our Tastes of Italy class.  Danny gave us some of his Limoncello to try and it was fantastic!  I've tasted many different kinds and have never liked to drink them unmixed with other beverages until I tried Danny's.  His is delicious alone!  Danny also recommended combining his Limoncello with mint tea.  Yum!