Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center, New York City. Joined uh well, New Stan Studios. Joined as usual with uh John over there way over the other end of the booth today. How are you doing, John?
Doing great, thanks. Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. Are you yeah?
All's good? Really? Except for the weather lately, but yeah, other than that, it's fine. I mean, I don't know. You know what?
Nastasia, the hammer Lopez, who's in uh Stamper, she she hates people, they change their behavior based on the weather. I mean, unfortunately I can't change anything based on the on the weather. I still have to do what I have to do, but it doesn't make life fun. Yeah, but in other words, like people who only have fun when the weather is nice, she finds what, Stas? Uh weeks.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I guess what I'm getting at is working in the kitchen has been hot and very humid and very unpleasant. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's that's fair.
That's fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, uh yeah, like tomorrow I'm going to North Adams. I'm going to this like uh place that we the family goes called uh tourists, and it's kinda cool.
But they're like, oh, it's gonna be raining. I'm like, don't care. Don't care. Don't care. Uh in uh wait, where where is it?
Austin? You're in Austin right now or San Antonio, Mr. Molecules. Uh Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas.
Nice. And it's disgusting here. It's like a hundred and six every day. Humid and miserable. Is it is it bat season or not bat season?
I never I'm never there during bat season. You know, it it must be bat season. I heard them by the bridge. The hotel, the line hotel here is like I look right out to the South Conference bridge where all the tourists kind of line up to watch the bats at sunset. So you run, but I haven't.
You you heard the bats, but you're near like I'm not gonna bother looking out the window. No, no, I looked. I didn't see. I I heard them earlier in the day. Yeah.
They're very loud. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of a weird tourist thing. Bats.
I know, right? Yeah. Bats. I mean, I don't know. I don't get it.
Like, unless it's a lot of bats. Unless it's a horror show. If it's a horror show, I mean, I've seen flocks of birds, and I'm like, oh, that's pretty. I want to look at that, but I'm not gonna fly to see a flock of birds. Right.
All right. Yeah. Uh and uh oh I got you know who I didn't introduce yet behind me? Joe Hazen on the panels. How are you doing?
Hey, it's great. It's kind of weird to be behind you. Yeah, that's maybe that's how I didn't didn't see you there. Yeah, I know. I kind of need to set a mirror up or something.
Yeah. Yeah, like one of those uh pedestrian saver things. Yeah, those circular kind of like weird yeah. That would be strange. Uh and in the upper, upper, upper left, we got Quinn.
How you doing? Hey, I'm good. No, no. And back again, so but way before their book uh Tropical Standard came out, way before then, we had on uh good friend uh X uh X existing conditions, the no longer existing, the no longer extant conditions, Garrett Richard and his co-author Ben Schaefer of Tropical Standard. Uh also run so co-author of that, rum reader for Ben, uh you know, Garrett, I don't know.
Well, you can guys can say what you're up to, but now the book is out, and are you almost done? Hey guys. Hey. Yeah. What's up?
Glad to be back on uh cooking issues. So how long ago were you on? Were you on like like six, eight months ago? I was in November. How many months is that?
Like eight? It's like six or eight months ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And so now the book came out like a couple of months ago, and and Ben, you've been running this full ragged, like on like uh on a tour.
You want to t tell first of all, like for those who haven't heard the the that first episode where we talked uh you know in depth about the the book and everything, you want to just let 'em know what the book's about a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. Uh Ben, what's the elevator pitch for a tropical standard? Well, I like to think of it as combining it's like a third stream project, right? So it's combining the influence of the uh craft cocktail revival as exemplified by people like Dale DeGroff and the tropical drink revival, exemplified by people like Jeff Beech Bomberry.
But bringing those two things together that should never have been put asunder in the first place. And and doing so, tying it all together with the cutting edge culinary techniques developed by people such as, and this might come as a shock to you, Dave Arnold. That guy's a jerk and he does not know what he's talking about. Right. I noticed that.
Yeah. But we we you know, we give him kind of some slack in the book. Uh so it's really about using those kind of techniques to get to places where you can't get to without them and try trying to take tropical drinks kind of a little bit of a different direction with new flavors and textures that you know I think people are really excited about. Uh whenever we serve these drinks to people, they get it. Whenever people seem to read the book, they seem to get it.
Uh we're we're we're excited to, you know, we've been doing a tour, which we'll talk about in a minute, and it's been great to get in front of people and and and show them what's all about. I mean, when I first started it existing, I think you said to us when we were doing staff training, like a good way to create a drink is like find a problem and solve it. And at the same time as like working with you and and Don Lee, I yeah, I was doing my own pop-up of Tropical Drinks called Exotica at Rain's Law Room. And yeah, those drinks have a lot of problems. There's a lot of things to fix.
And that's really like that's where the ethos came out of the book, is is really just that simple thing of like what are some things the tropical drinks don't do well and how can we address them? And mostly that's through technique, which is what the book's focus is. Right. I mean I guess it's like uh a lot of the problems, right, of any kind of old spec like that is one and we and you you talk about this a lot. When you fetishize something that's from the past, and that's in also not only is that in the past, the ingredients are different, the time is different, the place is different.
So you can know the history, which of course you know you guys know much better than I do, because that's not my shtick, right? Uh but then you have to also have as part of your kind of obsessiveness making it taste good. Yeah. I think that's what that's where Garrett's genius lies, is that he's very good at going back and and interpreting what the intention was of the original author of some of these classic drinks from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, where as you say, we don't have the ingredients the same, even produce is different, everything is different. Spirit of the law, not letter of the law in that way.
Exactly. So even where the drinks don't have anything wrong with them, there's nothing to be fixed, you still have to reinterpret the drink in order to make it with today's stuff. I think that's some something some people overlook. They say, hey, you know, and m I like to make the 1944, you know, Vic's Mai Thai. It's like, well, we'd all like to do that, but you don't have the stuff.
Yeah. You should uh invent the time machine. By the way, time machine's never going to be possible. I hope you guys know this. Time machine's not one of those things ever gonna happen.
It's never gonna happen. We know. It's not possible. Yeah, that's why we have to write books on exactly. That was one of the premises of this book as well.
This is what I tell like, you know, I used to tell my kids this all the time, but like, but couldn't there be a time machine? I was like, if there was a time machine, you'd already know. They're like, what do you mean? I was like, because someone would have come to the case. Yeah, there was a time travelers convention.
Yeah. No one showed up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. I think the famous example, of course, is um Stephen Hawking held a party for Time Travelers.
He didn't announce until afterwards, and of course no one came. But that might just prove that they didn't want to come to his party. Yeah, because he was a renowned. He was a jerk, yeah. Yeah.
I met him actually. Really? And was he a dick? I mean, who can tell. You couldn't tell.
You couldn't really tell. Oh, well, he was only his uh his uh you you only spoke through uh his uh his his person. He had a person who was his who could yeah. Yeah. I mean I didn't chat with him, but I was you know, I I met him.
You didn't have coffee with him. I didn't have co it wasn't a one-on-one thing. Uh well I'm sure he was nice in uh talking to large groups of people. Right. But you know, you don't know if it's pre-pro he might somebody else could be saying it.
It's all coming off of his appreciated it did Futurama and and The Simpsons, you know. Yeah. Oh, he did? He's a fan of Futurama. Yeah, he did both.
He didn't know. There is a there is a Stephen Hawking joke in our book as well, so it's relevant. Yeah, uh I don't remember. Uh yeah. Huge book, Blockbuster at the time.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So uh before we go too deep into Tropical Standard, which I'm sure you guys can pitch this this way if you want, which I know you will. But uh any you guys have anything interesting happened in the past uh week or so?
Culinary, cocktail. By the way, I apologize to people who don't like cocktails because it's gonna be a very cocktail heavy episode. Yes. Why would you apologize for people like that? They have only themselves to blame.
No, it's true. Fair enough. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah.
But it's well we approach it from a culinary point of view. Yeah. If you want to call in and you're on the Patreon, dial in to 917410 1507. That's 917 410 1507. And if you don't know what a Patreon is, uh John, what should they do?
Go to Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh you can find out uh all about the different memberships we've got, all the different perks that come with it, including uh what's relevant to today's episode, discount with Kitchen Arts and Letters. Um on Tropical Standard. Uh yeah, you get l certain levels of live access to the video feed, you get the recording before everyone else, you get prioritized answers, uh questions answered. So yeah, check it out.
We have the Edwards Age Meat Discount going now. Oh, that's right. The Edward Age Meat discount going now too, which is really delicious. Good meat, great meat. Good meat.
Um patreon.com slash cooking issues. Yeah. All right, Jack. Anything in tech? What are you eating only breakfast burritos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
You should not have a breakfast burrito for dinner. I'm having breakfast burritos for lunch. Um I would never have a breakfast burrito for dinner. But what about breakfast for dinner? And I don't I don't like that.
You never tuck into a pancake at dinner time. No. Is that a lot in 106 degree weather? Like I feel like burrito that's breakfast for breakfast. Quite a bit.
I mean, you have to. That's what they do. Like what else are you gonna do? Yeah. That's true.
You know. There's also that theory that the hotter it is, the hotter the food should be, both in spiciness and in heat temperature. Sweat it all out. And then when you walk out, you're like, oh, that's somehow a relief. Unless you're John, you'd have to be in the kitchen making.
Yeah. Yeah. No well. No. No.
Uh what about what about you, Quinn? You always have some uh some sort of uh culinary wackiness that you're working on. Yeah, I mean uh I uh redid my pistachio gelato. That was really good. Well, what kind of pistachios you're using?
Uh whatever was at the grocery store. Yeah. The problem with pistachios, even like high-end pistachios like bazini, so Basini is the biggest nut purveyor here in New York City, or at least I guess the one that's most well known. And apparently, uh it used to be Italians that ran the nut business in uh New York City in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Uh as I read his whole article about uh firehouses used to have weird pets, not just dogs, so they would have like monkeys and like all sorts of weird mascots, and this one monkey in the in uh in Little Italy, you know, down like on Lafayette Street, used to go uh steal from Italian nut vendors and then like you know, rip and then like they fooled him and gave him hot nuts once to kind of burn his hands, and he freaked out and started clawing the peanut vendor apart.
And this is all like in this old book, Firefighters and Their Pets. Uh yeah, Jocko Jocko the monkey. Yeah. Anyway, point being uh that Basini, even though they are a long and storied history of nuts, if you dump their pistachios onto a sheet tray and look at them, some of them suck, and just a couple of crappy pistachios in a batch will ruin uh a sorb not ruin, but make worse a sorbet or an orjat, and I've tested this many times. Yeah, you give Jocko bad nuts, he's gonna rip your face.
I think like history has shown that uh if you get some form of monkey or chimp and you keep it in like one air, it will eventually rip your face off, right, Nastasia. Yes. That's your favorite story. Yeah. So Nastasia grew up next to Mo, the chimp, right?
Right, Sas? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And can you Yeah, he he lived with this guy and his wife, and he would sit outside on the on the grass, and we would go.
My parents would drive past and we'd honk the hornet. Everyone would hawk the hoard and say hello to Mo. Um and then one day Mo lost it and ripped and did what, Dave? He he ripped someone's nose. Well, it was so we we determined we looked at it.
Here's what happened, right? So first of all, Mo would be my age now, right? If Mo was still alive, he'd be like between Nastasi and my age. What happened was is that he went a little bit crazy, and so he got taken away from like the Mo handler. So Mo handler and Mo handler, the the the couple who had Mo, right?
They couldn't have a kid, so they got a freaking chimp. Bad move. So they raised this chimp, and then eventually someone's like, no. And so the chimp got taken and put into a chimp sanctuary. They go to visit Mo for Moe's birthday.
Two other chimps escape, rip the dude's nose off. Rip the dude's nose off. That's rough. Yeah. What?
No, they ripped his nuts off, Dave. Oh, yeah, yeah. They ripped his nuts off. Go back to Jo Jocko the Mo. Yeah, it's full circle.
Anyway, so they rip his they rip his they rip off his cojones. Right. Right, right, right. And then Mo escapes, never to be seen again. So Nastasia believes Moe is still alive in Southern California somewhere.
And I believe he's dead. Wanted dead or alive, yeah. I believe he's dead. Yeah, probably. Yeah.
Alright. Two quick things for me, and then we're gonna get into it because Ben is gonna jump out of his seat and stab me with his with his water bottle. Last time was honey baked ham. Now it's money. Honey baked, why are you starting with honey bake ham?
It's delicious. You just brought it up. Anyway, I I withdraw the question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two things.
One, Nastasi, do you remember when we went to uh the Park Hyatt Hotel and we were working there? Do you remember the bartender Isagai? So Isagai San gave Dax Dax, my son, younger son just graduated from high school. So I'm I'm done with uh that whole section of my life, right? So over grad high school graduation yesterday.
So is so Dax comes to uh when he was like what eight? How old? He was really young, right, Stas, when we when we were there, like it was like 10 years ago, yeah. And this guy, Isagai, who's a bartender, we were working with the Park Hyatt, takes a liking to Dax, takes a silver chain off of his neck and puts it around Dax's neck and gives it to him. So we call it the Isigai chain, and he wore it to his graduation.
And I was like, I wish I could find out if Isagai was still a bartender in Tokyo or not, but I don't have his last name and I can't look it up. That's awesome, though. Yeah, I gotta find, I gotta somehow we gotta find Isagai. Those guys were first of all call in if you know Isagai. Yeah, the entire team at the park hyatt at the time was just freaking stellar.
You know how when you go to an event, like I'm sure you guys are doing a crap ton of events now? Yeah. And and you have weird requirements because you you're not just like shaking lime with sugar and like whatever spirit. Yeah. By the way, I apologize.
No one has given us jewelry though at any point. Well, you gotta bring a kid with you. But like I apologize, yeah. Anyone who is you anyone out there who's choosing what to do with their life, choose something simple. Like, because when you're gonna go do events and your stuff's non-standard, exactly zero people understand what you actually require when you hit the ground there.
And they never have the right stuff. They don't they mean well, but they never have the right products, they never have the right kind of equipment, and they say they do, but it's not their fault because they don't work the way you do, right? Except those guys at the park hyatt. They crushed it. Remember, Styles?
We showed up all nervous and like they crushed everything. I loved them. They were amazing. They were freaking amazing. They were good.
Anyway, uh, so there's that, the graduation and the Isigai chain. And secondly, I went to see a Broadway show last week. Broadway, and uh for the first time in a long time. And on the way home, uh that the you know how the trains here, they f up, and so they they just switched the train to a different line without staying because the loudspeakers were broken. So all of a sudden now I had a half hour walk home after I hadn't eaten because we don't do the early bird things.
I'm r I'm so hangry, right? And I'm even more hangry because my wife at a certain point does like loses her hunger. She's like, I'm not hungry anymore. I don't even know how that works. You don't know people like this?
They're like, I'm not eating, I'm not eating, I'm noting, I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm not even hungry anymore. Doesn't work for me. I don't work like that. She opted out of hunger. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I can't do that. Anyway, so I'm trying to get home, and down one of the main things, you know, one of the main streets, Allen Street, there's a freaking flash bike mob, right? So they're running through the light. Like they're they're like like they're a funeral procession. They're running through the freaking light.
And there's and so like it was one whole light and I'm steaming, and then the there's another light and it turns and there's still more people. So I walk out in front of them. I'm like, yo, keep up with the pack, crap on you. Just because you're slow doesn't mean I'm gonna wait another freaking light. And Jen's livid with me because I'm like storming home.
Then I finally make it into my neighborhood, which is Dimes Square now, it's full of hipsters, like crawling with hipsters all the time now, which is kind of whatever, it's fine, it's good for the business. But this guy on a skateboard, I'm trying to cross the street, guy on the skateboard, starts coming towards me, thinks I'm gonna stop. Oh yeah, 52-year-old guy been to Broadway with a suit jacket and I was gonna stop. I just put up my hand to go boom! I strong arm the guy, he goes off of his skateboard, right?
I don't even look at him, I keep walking. He didn't even get mad at me because I didn't even yell at him. I just was like, No. You know, Dave, the statute of limitations hasn't run out on that, yeah. I was like, you shall go no further on your way.
You don't get to run into me because you're on a dimwit on a skateboard. Anyway, that's it. All right, let's talk about some uh and I went home and ate. And that was fine. Yeah, he was in your way.
He wasn't in my way. He was coming towards me thinking I was gonna yield to him because he was on skateboard. I don't know if you know this. Pedestrians have the right of freaking way. Anyway, all right, food.
Food and drinks. Food and drinks. All right. So you want to answer some questions and then go into like tour and what's going on? What do you want to do?
Let's talk about what we've been doing. All right, right. We've had some collaborative moments. So the book came out about a month ago. Yeah.
Very exciting. We did an amazing event at Sunken Harbor Club here in New York where Jared is the head bartender. You were there for for a moment. Yeah, it was double the people we expected. Yeah.
It was not. It was it was slammed the entire time from people were there. I got there at the event started at six. I got there at 4 30. There were already people queuing up to get in.
Oh god help. And uh yeah, it was surprisingly popular. Uh but then we've been touring pretty exhaustively. We spent a week in San Francisco, which was really amazing. Which I have never really gone out in San Francisco ever.
So this was this is my first time getting to hang out in the city. Yeah, I grew up in LA, but uh you know, and I would go there as a kid, like for a weekend or something, but I never really got to experience SF. Is it because you were from LA that you never you're like crap on them? What the hell? No, I just I never I just never put the time in to, you know, when I f would fly out over there, I would just, you know, it'd be all family time.
So I would never like spend two days to go up there. But we had such a good time hanging out with uh a friend of the book, uh Julio Bermejo, which we we That was really the highlight. Yeah. Uh so we we had the opportunity to do a uh panel discussion at Trader Vicks in Emeryville in East Bay, and uh you know, in the way we talk about it in the book is there's two kind of titans of cocktails from the Bay Area. Obviously, Trader Vic himself caused to be created many, many, many important drinks.
But in a way, maybe even more influential, uh, is the Tommy's margarita, which was created by Julio Bermejo at Tommy's Mexican restaurant, and which is right now, you know, being served, you know, all over the world. In Cambodia, someone's being served as Tommy's margarita right now. 211. Right. And the agave nectar back in the day was bricks adjusted down to 50.
So it's one of the first cocktails that was. What era is uh what era nineteen eighties. Well, when was agave syrup available? Like it was he he talked about that quite at last. Yeah, he talked about that on stage.
It's really kind of the beginning of agave syrup being available. And it's not still to this day standardized. I just did about fifteen, twenty hours of reading on agave, and it's freaking complicated. P.S. people.
Don't trust anything you read, even in scientific literature about how sweet something is, because they never tell you the right units. Are they talking about sweetness by volume? Are they talking about sweetness by weight? Are they talking about sweetness at light years of difference? Yeah.
Absolutely. Luckily, I mean the cool thing hearing Julio on stage at Trader Vicks was him talking about like him procuring the agave nectar, but even more so, he did like the soliloquy on limes, like talking about how, you know, he used to go at like one in the morning to his produce purveyor and pick a case of limes out of four cases based on like the right, you know. Sort of like your pistachio. And just and what to look for, how to cut them, freshness of juice. I mean, it was and you know, to this the to the audience that was there, you know, half of them at the probably the beginning of the talk were like, you know, I can juice once a week, right?
And you know, he's like converting the damned, you know, and doing a good job at it. As a uh as a New Yorker, when it comes to limes, my rule is you get what you get and you don't get upset. Yeah. Just order twice as many. Oh, it's the limes have less juice right now?
Guess what I'm gonna do? Order twice as many. Yeah. That's because we have no choice here. No choice, no problem.
Yeah. It was I mean, that was that was a pretty incredible event. I I feel like we we got to do some like nice old school San Francisco things. We got to do House of Prime Rib, which was great. Um what's nice?
The newer bars in San Francisco, how much room do they have behind those bars? Because they're all like built accessibly, so you're not bumping butts when you're working behind one of those newer California bars. They're great. And also every bar in San Francisco we saw was really friendly towards flash blending. Like most bars had a little Hamilton Beach in the corner, and even the older ones would have one, you know, from like the early 50s.
But Garrett, uh I think Garrett's missing out an important part of his resume. Because we were hanging out with Julio all week, we got the opportunity to do a little event at Tommy's. And Garrett got behind the bar and made El Diablos, which I think makes him a very small uh elite of people who've made their own drink at Tommy's rather than Tommy's margarita. Right. So for those of you that don't know, if you go to Sunken Harbor Club, right?
Many of you won't know. But if you come to New York, you should go to Sunken Harbor Club. But uh you order, you're you're like, you know, you're from wherever, I don't know where you're from, Keyacookuk, Iowa. I don't know where you're from. You come in and you're like, uh Diablo.
And then they go off, and then when they make the drink, they go, Diablo, and then the entire bar goes, Diablo. So you hear it. That's a call in response. We didn't garnish it. No, I wouldn't do it at the time.
You didn't do it? Why not? Uh I didn't feel like people would have been in on the joke. Like Do you know? It would have been, yeah, it would have I yeah.
You don't need to be in on it. Who cares? It was about being there. Garrett was only making El Diablo, so it would have been insane. Yeah, it would have been it would have been a lot.
So like at the end, the stats sounded like Diablo. Yeah. Diablo. Then it just becomes work. All right.
So you gotta we we you can't just say words, you gotta tell them the spec. What is a Diablo? Oh yeah, okay. So it's an old. But remember, this is a radio show.
The El Diablo is an old Trader Vic drink. In in tropical standard, we actually uh show its roots are much deeper. It has some connection to the original tequila sunrise, not the orange Eagles version, but an older version that was uh served at a racetrack in the 30s. But um Wait, the Eagles gave a spec? Well, the Eagles have that orange grenadine nonsense that they talk about.
They don't give a speck. No, they don't use a speck, but they like that version. Well who's saying which one of the Eagle singers sang that stuff? Which one of the is that a fry situation? I don't know.
That's a good question. Yeah, good. But any, but anyways, uh El Diablo, it's an odd it's it's a cool drink in that it's a classic tequila drink that's not a margarita, that's also like really highlights the agave really well. So it's usually Blanco Tequila, l uh lime, ginger beer, float of cassis. The way we do it in the book is Page 81, if everyone wants to refer to their coffee of Tropical Standard.
The way we do it in the book is instead of ginger beer, we do a combination of ginger syrup, raspberry syrup, and uh we still keep the cassis, and then we do lemon instead of lime, because I feel like the lemon works better with the cassis. And then we use a little bit of cardamom because the cardamom kind of gives it that brewed ginger beer kind of flavor to it. Uh yeah. Yeah, toasted green in a tincture. Which I feel like is like an I a thing we we talk about at a tropical standard a lot.
I use it more and more now at Sunken Harbor, is like isolating flavors with no sweetness and just doing tinctures of them. Yeah, you know, it's a little bit different though. In other words, yeah, it's a good way to be like precise, but you do get different flavors when things are infused in a syrup versus not. Alcohol extracts different flavors. So well, alcohol, water with sugar as opposed to just water and glycerin all extract different different flavors.
Glycerin is also a good extractive, but different. Um wait, what were we just talking about? Diablo. We were talking about the El Diablo. I got to make it at Tommy's, which was awesome.
And we I got I shook in the blender pitcher, which was really cool. Like they actually brought you. Yeah, they brought me on a normal shaker, and I was like, no, I'm here at Tommy's, I'm gonna do the actual real Tommy's shake. So if people don't know, at Tommy's, they don't use normal cocktail shakers. They shake in a large blender pitcher, and their thinking is is that no one ever orders one Tommy's margarita, so they basically use it as a giant shaker.
What brand of shake or pitcher were they using? It's a it's probably like an Austin. I it wasn't like a fancy like fighting. It was probably wearing. Yeah, because it's glass.
Yeah. And the wearing the the issue with uh blender pitchers is some of them they they don't seal so good. No, you got it, you gotta hold it and like you gotta be very careful. But then you know, you you also use it as the strainer. It was it was a blast.
Those stunts those stunt shakers that like you know, Plymouth used to give out the giant ones. Yeah, the giant Simon Ford party shakers like a mother. Yeah, he still makes them for Ford's. Yeah. We had the Ford's one at existing.
Yeah, you know what they need. And I think I was the only person that would pick them up. They need some form of sealing situation. You have to be very careful with a giant shaker. I have a tin set at home that won't seal either.
I should just throw it away. It's so irritating to have crap flying back, you know, especially because I do a lot of colored drinks. Yeah. Anyway. Uh okay, so you brought it up, ginger.
Let's go into some ginger. So I've talked a lot about this thing you've been doing with magnesium carbonate. I've been doing a lot of experimenting with uh ginger, like a lot. Like a lot. So uh very quickly.
So ginger, the ginger has two main components in it when it's fresh. It's uh ginger barine and ginger all, six gingerol, right? Now, the one that's just kind of ginger flavor is the ginger barine, but it's not the pungency. And so this is I'm telling you this because this is something that you and I are concerned with. The ginger all is the super spicy crap that's up front.
The problem is that's where the oils are are. Well, the oil most of the oil gingerol. Well, most of the oil is that gingerberine stuff, right? Which isn't what makes it hyper spicy, but gives it that kind of ginger candy flavor. Yeah.
It's the ginger all that's super spicy. However, it changes over time relatively quickly into two different things. Uh Zingerone, which is not that pungent, right? And shogel or show shogale, I don't know how you pronounce it, which is freaking really spicy. So what you gotta do is, and I've been researching this, I've been doing a bunch of testing of pressure cooking ginger.
So you juice the ginger and then you pressure cook it right away to try to maintain super spiciness. Also, you know how people a lot of times will put acid directly into their ginger juice to stabilize it? I think that also that stabilizes the spiciness as well. But not very well. So in a couple of weeks, I should have very I should know all about the stability of ginger juice.
I'll get back to you. Yeah, for for people listening, basically at existing conditions, the white whale was clear ginger juice, which we didn't know how to do we because the normal methods we were using, like pectin X and Kesasol and Chitasan, did not work on because there was no pectin in the ginger juice to latch on to. It just wouldn't spin well. There is, but it's not knock out the starch. It wouldn't be a good one.
Yeah, it would knock the starch out. And um something I've been messing around with a lot at Sunken Harbor is doing um some of the methods from Darcy O'Neill's YouTube channel and his book Fix the Pumps. And I've been making a lot of soda fountain stuff, mostly for non-alks, but now it's been bleeding into our normal alcoholic drinks. And um one day, actually, this was for the launch of Tropical Standard. I was like, you know what?
I want to do the bourbon special from Tropical Standard, and I want the ginger to be clear. And I just tried like seven methods on a bunch of ginger juice, and one of them was the magnesium carbonate, and then the one that was the most clear was magnesium, and I think I only had chitasan in my fridge, and that was the one that break broke, and that was the one that I sent you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then from there, Dave has been really just you know going forward with it.
Hammering this thing down. I got what I want is stable, because the problem is that it loses its pungency like in a day or a day and a half. Uh and and I looked at all the curves on the internet. It's it's uh, but guess that get this. So I used to use almost exclusively champion juicers, right?
For things like ginger. I was always a champion guy. I used champion for apples. I've moved away from that too. The slow, the slow ones are way better.
I just got uh the Koovings Revo 830. Oh crap. So I stayed away from things like the Green Star, which is the gear juicer that like a lot of people used to get. And uh, but these new what they call cold press, which are basically vertical auger machines. So get this.
So which what which one do you use? I think it's the green. Yeah, because uh oh my god. My my prep my prep one of my prep original prep uh persons, uh she's she's now like on the floor and uh and with the bar team at Asia. She brought us one and then I just started using that.
All right. The yield on the green stars, Sam Mason used to tell me weren't uh th those gear-based ones, but like so this this Revo 830, and I think it's kind of pricey, but get this. 806 grams of ginger did this yesterday, right? And all you do is break them into chunks like you know, a couple and throw them into the hopper uh and it juices them for you. It it grinds them and pushes them to get the juice out.
I got six hundred and forty-eight mils of juice out of that. That's eighty percent easier. Yeah, it's way better than the champion the the champion is great for some things and then other things. It it's anyway. So, you know, I think I'm totally so far I'm totally sold on this freaking and the pulp came out so dry.
I have a four-ton press. You know how my the only old press that we have? Yeah, the w the the waffle bourbon press. Yeah. So I built one at home, a small one, and I I don't think I'm gonna be able to get any more juice out of the press and I would have.
Pretty pretty damn efficient. Yeah. So I might have to change my change my. Do we have a ginger question from Tropic? Or no, we were just rapping about ginger.
Yeah, we're rapping. Someone was talking about, and I'm gonna be doing a lot of work on it. I'm going to Tales of the Cocktail while we're doing another seminar. We just did a seminar BC. We just did acid.
Acid adjusting and bricks adjusting. And the fun thing was a week before I was doing a seminar at the hookie Lao in Fort Lauderdale just on acid. So when we did it together, it was like way easier to bounce off of three people and also just, you know, talk about multiple topics rather than just one for 40 minutes. You like the succinic acid, by the way? Yeah.
Yeah. That was good. Uh well, anyway, so while we're talking about juicing, so we don't have to talk about it again. Alex Goody said, uh, I love drinking vegetable juice. It's not about health.
I'm just a low-quality individual. I'm looking for guidance on improving it. Uh preservation quality yield. I like beets, celery, leafy greens, and carrots, maybe some ginger and lemon, no apples. For quality, you think nitrile muddling would be worthwhile?
No. No. You don't mind you you only nitromuddle things that are like thin that shatter easily, like thick things like lettuce are hard because they're physically hard. So I would not do that. No.
Uh can you nitromutle with dry ice? No. Uh well what about freezing the greens? I don't know why you freeze it to juice it. Everyone says soak greens before you juice them to get maximum extraction.
To get the water into the cells, like in so that they puff up with water and then you get higher extraction. Freezing the greens, or maybe more like carrots and stuff. It might concentrate the sugars, because in the book, we do talk about you know, freezing things like bananas and or not bananas, but like strawberries and things like that, and like frozen drinks. It does seem to remove some of the water content. Well, they breaks the stuff more, especially if you're not gonna use an effective way to do it.
Like the strawberry daiquiri in the book, it it's it's better, even if you get fresh strawberries, to freeze those strawberries for doing it. Okay, wait, get this. Like uh, you know, uh uh Boiron, puree people. I saw them at BCB. They sell that like that like freight of Marae, the the really good strawberry puree.
I kinda wanna buy that's gonna be so expensive though. Yeah, I mean, some of their other stuff is is you know, we uh when we were writing the book, you know, we had to rely a lot on the passion fruit and um the guava to a lesser extent. But you know, it's way more available now. Like it's it's they sell through Amazon now. They you know it it used to be you had to like really you had to like go through a restaurant if you were not a restaurant person be like, can you get me some passion fruit puree?
You know, now it's it's a lot more accessible. Yeah. Oh, and for Alex on the way out, uh if you want to preserve and what I presume you mean by preserving is uh stop them from oxidizing. I wouldn't use citric, I'd use ascorbic, and you can add it by taste because it's gonna get less less acidity. Um freezing, freezing is a good idea.
Freezing's a good idea on the juice. If it ferments quickly, you can use potassium sorbate, but you have to know what you're doing. Clarification is gonna change the flavor and also won't work on things that don't have any acid in them. You need some acid for the pect next to work. All right.
Um, here's you want you ready for this? Ian wants to know why do you why why do y'all why do y'all mix Imperial and metric units in your book? Ian, well, I mean, there's a good reason and a not so good reason. The good reason is at least we used a bit of metric. I mean, I think the idea was for the for the ingredients that you have to make yourself metric is the precision of metric was necessary.
Yeah, there's no there's no guesswork. Um what do you use imperial units on? We so we we have to. Well the the cocktail we use traditional units for the cocktails. An ounce isn't really an ounce, it's 30 mils.
Yeah, but it I mean, I wanted I think it's really parts. I I think there's an intent. I mean, you don't in in liquid. I say right up front that when I say ounces, that means 30 milliliters. Okay.
Yeah. And that and that you might as well just think about it as parts. Right. Yeah. I I think I think that's probably a good way to approach it.
The other thing is I just I wanted to present the recipes as they were made behind either sunken or exotica or even existing, which was those were the specs. But you can use a 30 mil ounce there. Yeah, on an old like 28-5 ounce. Yeah, no, I I felt like for cocktails I wanted the regular, you know, the regular one ounce. One teaspoon.
And then for the syrups, I really wanted there to be no wiggle room or no guesswork, which is why metric works so well on those. Yeah, but milliliters are not actually a very good cocktail unit because this like depending on where you are, right? If you're doing so, if you scale everything down to a 20 mil ounce, then things start working because like quarters and eighths start being relatively even numbers, but everything has weird decimals in it. 22.5 milliliters. Right.
Yeah. I wanted accessibility too. I wanted I I feel like it's actually easier and more accessible to have the the syrups in grams because and then because you're still weighing stuff anyways, right? Once you weigh stuff grams. And and then with with the cocktails, it most people have a two-one jigger, they have a three-quarter half jigger.
I wanted I wanted these cocktails to be able to be made at home, which we've seen a really good influx on Instagram of people making stuff from the book. I mean what Ben, what what do you think so far? What have the front runners been for at home? I mean, I've seen that we've seen the navy grog. Nobody grog is big.
Um Bird of Paradise has become big. Yeah, with Bird of Paradise has the cream syrup. Cream syrup. Do you have a pump? So hard to figure that out.
I have some pumps at home, yeah. Yeah. Um we've seen the Bird of Paradise. We've seen the strawberry daiquiries gotten a lot of traction, which has been fun. Basically the fur and excited about the Xanthan gum.
Oh yeah, I had a question about that. Yeah. Uh somewhere. Should we get should we get into the uh yeah? I gotta find the question because we have uh I have a bunch of people that asked asked about it.
But we can give the background on it. The Xanthan gum trick is a Oh, here you are. Matt's loving the book so far. The Xanthan gum and frozen drinks has been a game changer. Uh headed down the shore this summer.
Any suggestion for pre-batching tiki and tropical drinks that would be uh good for potentially days later. Well, use adjusts. Don't use lime, right? Yeah. Uh and don't put the xanthan gum in.
Yeah, a couple of a couple of things. Because what I just did a bunch of the frozen strawberry at Clover Club during BCB. Um what you can do is if you're gonna make a bunch of them throughout the day, is melt the the sugar into the lime or whatever citrus you have, do that first, then add the spirit and make a batch of what would be like your mix, and then and then you all you have to do is pour that mix with your I your crushed ice and if you have any fruit and xanthan gum and blend. But why not just put the xanthan the proper amount into the mix and wait for it to actually hydrate? I did uh maybe I did it wrong, you can tell me, but I did a live event in 2019 where I did that and it was I I it it clumped up unevenly.
Well, Xanthan is very, very touchy, right? Yeah. So with Xanthan, any hydrocolloid, you want to hydrate it in as close to pure water as is humanly possible. Well, that's probably why that's right. Right.
So what you what you want to do is put the Xanthan directly. If you're gonna do if you're if you're gonna do whether it's simple syrup, whether it's lime juice, whatever, you want to put the the Xanthan directly into that, then add the sugar. Then so h completely hydrate it, then add the sugar. And then you want to drastically reduce the amount of Xanthan that you're using. Because what's happening is at the lower temperature and with alcohol and with all that other stuff, you're gonna get much less hydration of the Xanthan than you would.
So you you in essence you're not you're using much higher than the actual percentage of thickening that you're getting. And Xanthan has very sharp like all of a sudden it's like, oh, it's getting thicker, it's holding its structure, right? Which is what you're using it for holding a structure. Yeah, structure and texture. And then it'll go snot.
Yeah. Or like, you know, so why we only use a quarter teaspoon. Right, but I mean I wouldn't I mean but what I would do is I would just uh figure out what the actual ideal final concentration is and then actually hydrate it beforehand. And then you could use it in batch, because Ben you're saying it's hard to do in a batch thing because it's gonna snot up on you. Well, you know, it if you just prehydrate it, figure out what the actual final concentration maybe we'll you know what we're doing enough events that that's gonna be.
Well, we can work on it because you know I'm I'm doing this this other stuff and uh But for everyone who's listening, basically the the quick the the quick thing of where this came from is I was getting a little frustrated doing these sort of old school blender recipes and not getting the right texture and not getting the texture as good as a frozen machine at you know, some places like Mother's Ruin and all the places in New York that have these giant machines because those are frozen uniformly, and obviously Blender, it's very violent. You're doing it, uh, you're not freezing uniformly. And um, just doing some research, I was like, who makes the best and most consistent frozen drinks on the planet? And it's Starbucks. Starbucks sells the most frozen drinks in the world, probably.
They're better than a Dunkin' Donuts frozen drink? Well, I don't know. But but um in going through like weird little like Starbucks Reddits of like people who work there and all that stuff, um, I found, and then you can see on their website, because you know, they have nutrition facts, that all their like frap mixes and all that stuff all had Xanthan in it. So then it was a matter of, and I was at Zizi's at the time of I was testing just different levels of it. And what I found is that adding a little bit to a frozen drink, it prevents the ice from separating and it gives you that same texture that you get from a slushing machine, even though you're not freezing uniformly.
Right. You need to add enough for the crystals not to want to float. Yeah. And you also don't want to add too much because yes, it can get gross. So yeah, I'm sure that I'm sure that the quarter teaspoon bothers you because it would be better if there was a weight measurement.
Well, not only that, but like like not all Xanthans are the same density, like Skyfar. But like, but if your plan is I'm just gonna over Xanthan it and it's not gonna hydrate anyway, but if we're gonna do a batch, we should figure out what the actual point we should figure out what the actual concentration is it's it's fairly bulletproof because I did this nine, I did it nine times at Rain's Law Room. I've done it several times at live events, and that's I mean, that's the nice thing about a lot of these specs is you know, sometimes you put a spec out into the world and you're like, oh, I didn't test it enough and like I forgot about this, this, and that. There's a lot of stuff in Tropical Standard that is worked in multiple bars. It's worked in existing, it's worked it, it rains, it's worked it, it sunk in.
So it's had like a lot of layers of other people testing those specs out. You know what? Another thing you could do, you can make a 1% Xanthan solution, which is fundamentally hair gel, and then just go and just put like a little bit of sort of like a knock. I'm gonna try that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like the idea of hair gel. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's got very bad great. Color it, color it red, color it green. Exactly.
Uh so on a similar subject. Uh Michael picked up a used El Meco uh uh frozen drink machine. I've used El Meco, they're good. Uh from eBay last week. Any recommendations on cocktail recipes for a slushing machine?
How would you amend the slush recipes designed for a blender in liquid intelligence or tropical standard for a slushing machine? I've done a lot of work recently on this. What do you what's your what's your go to numbers like uh alcohol bricks? You like uh 15. 15 what?
15 bricks is the the That's high though for me. Well, it depends on your machine because Frosty Factory, the range that they recommend is between like twelve and like even higher, like eighteen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm like right in the middle. So for me, I did here I ran a bunch of tests on a machine where I could so by the way, just FYI.
Machines like El Meco don't actually control the temperature, they control the texture, right? Like less expensive machines, like consumer machines have a like a thermometer in it and it's measuring the temperature, so you're shooting for a temperature, right? Yeah. So it's totally different. So my just my quick specs were testing, right?
That if you do a six if you do a six percent alcohol drink at twelve bricks, it is a firm, stiff drink at minus six degrees, six point five degrees Celsius, and it'll hold between fifteen and eighteen minutes before it totally breaks without Xanthan. Yeah, no, I wouldn't put Xanthan in a frozen machine. Well, I don't know but maybe you should. Because then uh you firm and stiff at 9.4% alcohol by volume, and nine bricks, which is what I shoot for, is about 11 to 15 minutes and has a higher alcohol and lower sugar, which I like. And you get a s you want a really soft slush, minus uh 12%, 12.5% ABV and 12 bricks goes all the way to minus 13 Celsius, so real cold, like brain freeze, only lasts eleven minutes and gets real watery.
Uh but a sweet spot if you need a high alcohol 14 ABV and 8.5 bricks holds, but it's thinner. So I I would shoot for me, like right now, what I'm going for is that like between nine and ten alcohol and between nine and ten bricks. And it's holding pretty well. Yeah, I think it depends on the drink too, because like I did um I did in the book there's we have a frozen version of the Derby Daiquiry, which is essentially a frozen orange daiquiri. And um I did it at 13 at an event, and then I did it at 15 at the launch, and I felt like just the texture was better of what?
Of the Derby Dackery, like at the launch, it was 15 bricks, and then I at a event before I was sort of testing it and it was 13. But you know it's funny. In a blender? No, no, no, in a frozen drink. In a frozen machine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But it's funny, I mean, doing all these events, like Ben was like the frozen drink wrangler. Like we had a fine machines in all these cities. It's really hard to get which is machines.
I'll get you hooked in with the Elmeco people. But they're good. But the the issue is is that you can't just adjust bricks. It's bricks and alcohol together need to be adjusted. Oh, no, absolutely, yeah, absolutely.
So, like, you know, what pr what what ABV are you going at? Well, uh uh, okay, the way the way I've been doing this is been doing a single drink, measuring the non-alk ingredients in the refractometer with the you know lime, the lime, the sugar, water, what have you, and then estimating with the inclusion of alcohol how that would hit 15 or 13. But making a single one and then freezing that single one in a freezer just to see if like how it free. Freezer's way too cold though. Well, what you do is you freeze it for a you know, like a couple hours, you break it up with a fork, which is sort of like the churning of the machine, put it back in.
And we actually we have a method in uh tropical standard, the f uh the frosty. Because it all my all my freezer drinks are much higher alcohol because you can go much colder. It's much colder. You know what I mean? Right, you know what we used to do.
Yeah, but um here's how I do it. I take I I always go huge. I don't ever think about an individual drink. I go huge. I'm like, I want to make like a liter, let's say.
I want to make a liter. So I got a thousand units. What do I want the ABV to be? And then I add however many units of whatever liquor till the ABV is what it is, and it's almost always doesn't have enough sugar in it. Then I'm like, how many sugar units do I have left to make a thousand milliliters the sugar level I want?
I add those sugars, then I'm like, how much acid do I want that's not already there? I add that amount of acid, and then if the I am lucky, which I almost always am, there is room for water. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I think the that the doing the individual thing is kind of interesting for like home bartenders. It's sort of like what we did at existing. It's it's it's you know, freezing a very small amount, um, which we have the frosty buck in the trop in tropical standard, and then breaking it up and then freezing freezing it again, and then you can kind of just do a small pulse blend on it or something. And that gives you that gives you sort of an estimation of what it is, and then you can just scale up from there. The real the the kind of pitfall I ran into when I was first writing liquid intelligence is I was doing everything either in blenders or freezers without a machine, and I wasn't thinking about melt time as much.
You know what I mean? And so it's like I think a lot of people We were lucky when we were R Ding, yeah, I'm sure you remember this, Ben, that when we were RDing a lot of the frozens, it was super hot out. Like, and you know, it was in my kitchen that wasn't air conditioned. So I felt like it it forced us to think about like I I feel like if we had done the strawberry in the winter, we wouldn't have been as critical of it. But because we were in super super hot weather, we were we we had more of a I mean you're you remember the that session, right, Ben?
Of course. It's like summer twenty-one. Yeah. Um so Dave, you're you're looking for you look are you looking for things that hold the texture longer? Is that is that the concept?
I think people want it. Yeah, so like the drinks that I enjoy drinking the most are relatively frozen style, are relatively higher alcohol than is practicable because they turn liquid very quickly. So like, you know, I would be making drinks that were similar to our B BDX margarita, which is just barely a slush when it comes out. Yeah, it was on sh and it was on shaved ice. Yeah, it's basically liquid.
But I shoot for those kind of numbers which were higher originally. But the problem with them is, and even like my old, my old blender, my old frozen daiquiries, which you know you do in Ziploc, or like, you know, I would take something like, you know, uh Dolan Blanc and add vodka to it, you know, to jack the alcohol level to get the alcohol, and it forms a slush, but if you don't drink it pretty quickly, it waters out. So, you know, um I've been doing a lot more work now on dropping the ABV, you know, increasing the sugar slightly, but trying to hit that sweet spot of how long is it you know, how can I make it not so sweet, but also make it not melt so quickly? And then what temperature, what temperature is it really best served at? You know what I mean?
Yeah, we we experimented with the banana daiquiri um because you know the tough part about that drink is like you don't necessarily want the bananas to be frozen. You know, you can freeze them and then unfreeze them to get like some better sugars and stuff. But um with that one, we actually froze the spirit before doing it, which which dropped the temperature a lot more. Right, but it's it's helpful depending on what you're gonna add. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Um uh asks uh about drink mixers and spindle blenders. Hamilton Beach has a couple of sub 100 dollars. Are they good enough for occasional home use?
Oh, absolutely. Sure. Yeah. We we also just did a shift at the Berkshire Room in Chicago where those were the only ones I used and it was fine. Yeah.
And in a similar uh thing, Paul Gersman writes in with what would your preferred alternative method for flash blending a drink geared towards home enthusiasts without counter space for a drink mixer? I've seen a couple of folks recommend an immersion blender, but it seems likely to overmix the drink. Uh no, use the immersion, but just be be wary that there is a blade on the end of it, and to you like basically like three pulses and you're good. Hey, you want me to make you an attachment for a stick blender that's a that's a yes, because it's totally doable. Yeah, yes.
Like a very minor cage, like a very minor cage. How fast do those guys go? The spindle blenders. Uh I'll I'll show I mean the the old Hamilton's were pretty strong. Well, I mean, like, but are they the same speed as a blender or does it need to be geared?
No, it's basically the same speed. So you just need a disc attachment for uh a stick blender. Yeah. That's no problem. What you do is you buy a BAMEX.
BAMEX might already make actually have you ever tried the cream discs on a Bamix? No, I don't know what a cream disc is. Oh, so BAMEX, who I don't actually like their uh uh their stick blenders because they're they got a little bit of flex, even though they look kind of robo and they don't pop off, they screw off, right? But they sell uh one of their things is like it looks like a disc on the end. They have interchangeable heads, right?
I've never tried it, but I would like to hear what you have to say. And in fact, I might have one somewhere. Anyway, so you and it comes with it, package, right? And you put the disc on and you're meant to whip cream with it. Oh, okay.
So I wonder whether it would perform the same thing and it doesn't have a blade, so you might be able to take that thing on a check uh on a carry-on. Yeah, that's the thing. I I brought an immersion blender to who get well I I checked it. Oh but but uh I needed a flash blend a hundred drinks. So instead of bringing the big blender down, I just brought the you know, and I just pulsed it.
I mean, if you do it, if you kind of cut your time to like three seconds, and you know, if you don't have crushed ice, it actually works even better because if you have like crappy deli ice, you can actually break the i the ice up a little bit. Try the Bamics because I in my mind also it has uh it doesn't have a full cage, so like it does not a bell, it's more of a cage, so you can actually get more like a spindle blender kind of uh action on it. Yeah, just check it out. Let me know. And we'll let these let these folks know.
Um that was Paul Gersman on blending, and we have one other blending thing. Someone wants I've been playing with vacuum blending. So uh Andrew Cummings wants to know, uh I recently looked at Void Blender System, Void Systems Blender. What do you think of the blender compared to Vitamix for non-vacuu? Well, just quickly, their their blender, the problem with the void blender is it's loud as all get out.
The actual blender is so loud. And also the slow speed on the void is uh like 17,000 RPM. Super aggro. Yeah. Yeah.
It goes between 17,000 and 30, whereas like a Vitamix goes between 1700 and 30. You know what I mean? Yeah, which sometimes you need the slow setting. Right. If you're gonna do frozen drinks, sometimes like the in the book we talk about dry blending, like you need to like melt the sugar into the juice, and like if it's going to 70,000, that's not gonna happen.
Yeah, bounce. Yeah, so it's but the pitcher is very good. I had actually initial really good luck with uh with vacuum. Have you played with vacuum blending at all? No.
Yeah. So I had some I had some initial good luck because you know, I'm trying to figure out ways that people don't need to get LN to get good results. And like all my side-by-sides between liquid nitrogen and blending, liquid nitrogen always wins by a little bit. So my initial tests with the vacuum blender were with mint, and I was able to va vacuum blend mint drinks and have them be good, which is you know, crazy. I did say I did like a s like a nitro south side and it was like really good.
Uh well, not nitro, you know, blender model. But then I had people over and I did Thai basils, which is a little more sturdy of an herb with regular not vacuum and vacuum, same blender pitcher, just with and without a vacuum. And I thought I could tell the difference, but I serve it to a bunch of people and they couldn't tell the difference. Nice. So I need to I need to like figure out, I need to run some more tests.
I still haven't made you the Thai basil drink in the book. No, well next time next time I come over, next time I come over. All right. So that I think we uh covered in some other blending. Billy Thunder wants to know uh how do you harvest a citrus peel for oleos in the book?
You say use a knife and not a peeler, and quoting you cut the citrus peels with a knife to retain the oils and the peels, uh while faster appealer expresses oils from the peel when cutting to the fruit, and we want the oils to stay where they are, so knife is preferred. Why not just use more peel then? How you actually measured it, have you done the taste difference? Uh no, the I have. Yeah, there's the taste difference, it's not so much, it's just more extraction.
So yeah, you're right. You could you could use more of peeled, but it's also if you're just Well, Billy wants to know do you just uh do you just juice a fruit and cut the flesh out and leave on a lot of pit, uh pith? No, you always take the peel first anyway. Peel first. Or do you iron chef style just uh the citrus with a knife and retain a little bit?
In other words, do you flip it over and take the white off? No, we always peel first and then juice. Yeah, I just I would just add a couple extra freaking peels, man. Use the PP peelers so fast. Yeah.
Peelers so fast. Well, if you have a really good uh the reason we wrote that is because most people don't have like really good thick peelers. They have like the, you know, I'm not gonna name a brand, but you know which ones. Where and and then all the oil just spills out of those and you get like very little extraction. So you just wasted your time.
Yeah. Garrett's like, if you have a really good prep person, then a knife's not a problem. Hey, most most oleos for years, I was doing all of that for every single event. Oh no, me. No one's calling you lazy.
All right, JPM. Can you share a bit about forced carbonation stations and existing conditions? I know it's been talked about in the show briefly, but haven't found any information on what's involved, and for Garrett, we'll talk about that later, JPM, because we don't have a lot of time unless Garrett wants to talk about it. Also for Garrett, I know you mentioned forced carbonation in a bar when talking about the Kingston Zing, but opt for adding carbonation in the form of soda water to make it more accessible. Yeah.
Is this how you would serve it? Uh or the Pims Tropic uh Pins Tropical at the Sunken Harbor, too. That's good. Your PIM's strong. It's good.
Yeah. I sent an I sent an English I sent an English lady with it. Ben and I met at Norton's 100 year anniversary. Oh, to have it. And she was like, I I don't like PIMs.
I was like, You're wrong. Why don't you go to Sunken Harbor? You're not wrong. You can't say you don't like it until you've had the one from Sunken Carbon. It's not on the menu anymore.
Ben is not right or wrong. You can't say you don't like the drink if you've only had the iterations. She was closed-minded to the idea. Yeah. But I think that's a mistake.
I think it is. Yeah. Well, Ben has been really good at some of these events of like, you know, people are like, I don't like passion fruit, and he's like, Yeah, but Garrett knows how to use it properly, and then like wins those people over. JPM wants to always be closing. Jim.
Always. Oh, ABC always be closing. You gotta get you get the Alex Baldwin like brass balls behind you. To answer the question, coffee is for closed loose. Yeah.
Um cocktails are in the book, yeah. We talk about sort of a way around not setting up a carbo rig. Um at Sunken, I have a carbo rib rig. So the Kingston Zing and those types of drinks aren't are fully forced carbonated at Sunken. But in the book, there's a method of getting around that if you don't want to build that whole thing.
So Henry Batts wants to know uh what your favorite non-rum tiki drinks are. I mean, there's a whole book full of them. The Saturn is one of the few that come to mind. Yeah, but Henry wants to be a big thing. Part of the idea of this book is you know to show the tropical drinks are a big tent.
It's not just about you know, rum for the bigger. I actually really love um I like scotch a lot and tropical drinks. Uh there's there's an old Trader Vic drink in the in the book called the London Sour, um, that I think is very refreshing. Like almond and almond and certain scotches is great together. Nutty, nutty scotch.
Scott scotch. We I used to do a distillation of blended scotch and peanuts. Yeah, so there you go. Yeah. Yeah.
Doers and nuts. Yeah. Uh Nils Nils Norn and I used to do that because he he actually is a famous grouse man. I think maybe Famous Grouse is more popular as an inexpensive blended scotch. Yeah, I feel like I don't see it as often anymore.
I like I like the grouse. Yeah, yeah. It's famous. The grouse. Yeah, yeah.
Uh John the Hutt. Uh so uh he had an issue. See if you've ever had this happen. He had this uh Anis drink, Anis del Mono, which I've never tried. Oh, from Spain?
Yeah, the red label, not the green. Had it in his freezer at minus 20 Celsius. Since I don't have ice, I mixed it with water from the tap, which is about 20 again Celsius. Instead of loosing, it's separated into bizarre crystals and formed a layer at the top of the glass. I do not recommend eating those crystals.
What happened? I've never heard of this happening. You ever heard of this happening? No, I I mean there's not enough ABV for it to survive the freezer. So what?
No, but I mean the Annas I've never like why would it form crystals? There's gotta be something weird in there. John the Hutt, there's gotta be something like sugar? I mean I don't know. No, but sugar wouldn't crystallize out like that.
I don't know what the hell's happening. I gotta be, I don't know what's going on. Uh Alexander Talgard writes in Oh, that's not how he pronounced it. Wait, wait, wait. I got one more question.
All right, what do you got? What do you got? Uh Rojo S. Um regarding salt and drinks, I'm interested in reducing the number of bottle touches during service. If I have a syrup or other ingredient used in one specific cocktail, is there any reason I shouldn't just do bits with the appropriate level of salt?
That's what I do at events. Uh okay. So do if you had to do it, do it after the syrup is 100% complete. Because if you do it before that, it's gonna screw up the bricks, right? Well, so for low percentages, like for low percentages, salt adds about one bricks level per percent salt.
It happens to be about the same, right? So you're not gonna affect it drastically. Same with acids. Acids don't affect it as much as I thought. I did a bunch of I've been having to reread a bunch of this crap.
Yeah. Um, but yeah, I would add to the problem with adding it to syrup in general is then if you have a low syrup drink that uses a lot of a modifier, right? Then your ratios aren't gonna be the same. I think at a bar, like if you're gonna be doing a bunch of drinks with salt, then a couple of droppers looks good. But if you really need to minimize touches, yeah, syrup.
Also, just like what if you want to reduce the sweetener for an individual guest, then it's gonna it's you're you're you're combining two things that aren't don't necessarily like relate to each other. Right. Uh okay. So uh do you you want to talk about uh orjah or you want me to save or jah? You have a big sorja question.
Well he wants to make uh Alexander wants to make an orjah from plum kernels and wants to talk a lot about cyanide and whether it's save that question. All right. Uh we're not taking legal questions. Yeah, all right. So uh so in the one minute and twenty four seconds that is left to us, what do you want to talk about about what you've been doing and what you haven't been doing?
We didn't get to. We'll all be at Tails. Yeah. You guys are doing uh a talk. We've got book signings a couple times.
We're doing an event on Thursday afternoon at Palm and Pine where you can come and have some of Garrett's drinks if you're gonna be at Tales of the Cocktail this July. Oh, wait, wait, but they're coming, but they most people won't hear it until after because it goes live for people who aren't Patreon. But if you're in the Patreon, you're gonna be able to do it. Listen going live this week? Goes live front.
Well, you said it's this Thursday or next Thursday? No, no, no. Oh, uh, oh, oh, oh. Yeah. Yeah.
Our talk at Tales of the Cocktail is about uh the daiquary. Dackery deep dive. Yeah. And then yeah, Ben and I were gonna do uh book signing and a bar takeover. I've been cheating.
I've been doing the testing. Good, you should. Yeah. Be prepared. Well, so what we're testing is sugar versus simple syrup versus rich simple.
Or I don't even know how many of them we're doing. That's the one of the main tests. And can I tell you a spoiler because I've been doing a lot of work? Yeah. Okay.
So most people, it was very marginal. Most people preferred the rich. Interesting. They didn't tell that much of a difference between rich and sugar. And when you look at the numbers, uh 88.
So like if you add if you add one milliliter of one milliliter of rich simple, two to one, is uh eight, eighty-eight is.88 grams of sugar. All right. That's the preview for the for the seminar, but only 0.4 of water. So now I don't have to come to the seminar. That's it.
You're done. Okay, good. Uh but I actually preferred the uh one-to-one because I like my drinks a little less alcohol, like I like a little more diluted. But there's a little bit of a of a weird McGill because like when you shift uh dilutions, you also want to shift sugar. So Shannon, who's one of our talkers, has very low sugar on her sugar things.
Yeah. And because there's less dilution, it can probably tolerate less sugar and higher acid. So it's kind of an interesting little interplay. A lot for us to talk about at Tales of the Cocktail. Yeah.
All right. Yeah, I'm I'm excited. All right. Well, thanks for coming on. Tropical standard.
Go buy the book, buy it at Kitchen Arts and Letters, or buy it at you know, McNally Jackson, buy it. But you know, if you have to buy it off of Amazon, buy it off of Amazon. Whatever. Whatever, man. Just buy it.
Yeah. Yeah. Just buy the book. Have fun and go to Sunken Harbor. Thanks, guys.
Yeah, thank you, Dave. Thanks, Dave. Cooking issues.
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