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 State, joined as usual with John behind me. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Yeah?
Yeah. Really? Yeah. All right. Got uh Joe Hazenrocking the panels.
What's up? Uh a little technical issues, but we're all solved now. Yeah. Hey, when we were waiting before the uh show is starting. Do you ever watch that Rachel Ray thing where they're waiting before the interview?
It was like a viral thing like 15 years ago, and she's like completely ignoring her guests. And it's the most uncomfortable video you've ever seen. It's amazing. Go watch it. It's awesome.
I was thinking about it. Yeah. Uh upper upper left, Quinn, how you doing? Everything good? I'm good.
Good, good. Down in uh Los Angeles, I believe they're both in Los Angeles, Jackie Molecules and Nastasia Hamber Lopez. How are you two doing? Good. Yeah?
Yeah? All right. And uh today, also from Los Angeles, but in New York, so it's strange. We brought Los Angeles to New York. Uh today's very special guest, uh, Mike Capo Ferry, which I believe means head of the iron.
Head of iron. Like Chief Iron Man. Yeah, stubborn family. Iron Man, right? Ironheads.
Iron, yeah, sweet. Ironheads, yeah. Right. And uh you are the uh force behind Thunderbolt LA bar, awesome bar where uh Nastasia and I did a uh like uh an event and slash pop-up and Harold McGee was there. Apple head dolls.
Apple head dolls. Yeah. Everyone came out. It was great fun. That was great.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. Well, thanks for coming. So uh since we're shooting the thing at the beginning of the show, we're shooting the breeze about uh what happened uh either right now or in the past uh week or so. What what's what brings you to uh our fine city?
We are uh sort of starting the year of pop-up travel. Uh we did a sort of class on carbonation and on methyl cellulose at Bar Calico yesterday in the freehand hotel, and then a little pop-up, and then tonight another pop-up, Jackson Bond, five till twelve-ish, five, eleven, twelve, something like that. Yeah, yeah. So uh if you're listening on Patreon, uh yeah, between but remember, they have cocktails until they don't need more. So you might want to show up really a lot.
I I would come early. Uh the plan is to sell out by like 9:30 or 10 because I'm tired. Right. Now we made a lot. And if you're looking up uh and you do you did a pop-up also yesterday or just a class yesterday?
We did a it was like it was a pop-up. It was uh about an hour class and then two hour happy hour. We just did two drinks. Like the two drinks we did in the class, we served for a happy hour for about 40 people. Yeah.
Tonight's like four cocktails full on pop-up takeover. So speaking of methylcellulose before we get onto the rest of the week's stuff, I was talking to someone who first of all, people, if you're gonna get methyl cellulose for cocktail work, there's only one. Don't just buy methyl cellulose. You need F like Frank, 50. It drives me crazy how many times I get DMs saying this recipe doesn't work.
I'm like, well, what'd you buy? And they're like, uh, yeah. Don't buy the one like, for instance, specifically the one that uh uh El the bully, El Bully, the fa Ferran Adria one is the one that's meant for hot gel, right? So the classic old school like knucklehead, like uh modern chef technique is to use the other kinds of methyl cell to take things that turn to gels when you heat them. So like Wiley used to do the thing where he would squeeze like uh like a a liquid out of a squeeze bottle into hot soup and it would turn into a noodle in the bowl, or like all of the hot ice cream stuff from you know back in the day.
F-50 is the one that was uh that is is for whipping. So that's the one we all used to make our meringues out of. And if you have enough solids, like we used to make just passion fruit puree and f 50 and then dehydrate them to make meringues. They're great, but they don't hold well. Maybe they hold in LA, it's pretty dry.
They don't hold in New York. Yeah. Maybe they hold in Arizona. Arizona they'll hold. Yeah.
Speaking of which, next week, if anyone's gonna be in Arizona, uh Jack Shram and I are doing a bar smarts presentation in Phoenix, I don't know, Wednesday, Thursday, something, and they never bother saying that we're gonna show up. So, you know, I I think you can sign up. I don't know. I don't know where to or how to sign up. So, you know, uh oh, and if you have questions for us or for Mike, uh and you're listening live on Patreon, calling your questions to 917-410 1507.
That's 917-4101507. Uh, and before I finish Methylcell, uh, why don't you uh John tell them how to uh join the Patreon or why they would want to do that? Patreon.com slash cooking issues. You get access to a bunch of great things by signing up. We got three different levels of membership.
You get different perks at every level. Uh you get access to our Discord with access to like-minded people and other listeners of the show. It's a great community resource. Um helps us get great guests. We've got a couple exciting people in the works.
Um Yeah, just a lot of good things. Discounts with Kitchen Arts and Letters, Edwards H meets other partners occasionally. Um yeah, so check it out. Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Yeah.
Uh so back to methyl cellulose for a second. Uh so yeah, you need the F50. There used to have another one called E. I forget which. There's so the the first letter, like F or or S G is the series that it's in.
You need the F. The second is the viscosity of it. So, and I forget whether it's a 1% or 2% solution, but that's I think it's 1% expected 50 50 centipoise, which is roughly 50 times thicker than water, which is still thin. It's still thin, right? So anyway, uh they used to have one called E that was for films to make like wafer papers and stuff.
You know what happened? What happened? Factory blew up. Factory exploded. Because of the methyl cellulose?
Or all powders are dangerous. Right. So like they discovered uh so one of the big uh inventions of the 1800s in in flour milling was this like classifier system. And the you know, they so they started like uh you know blowing a lot of flour around, and then they also started storing flour in massive quantities as mills started getting together, and so then they started blowing up and then they had to like mitigate that. Yeah, any sort of aerosolized powder, real static.
Like, yeah, you know, you know, and blow up a factory. Anywho, so uh yeah, get the right get the right methyl cell. Yeah, a lot of people buy high viscosity, they just call it HV methyl cellulose, and it's the worst. It's like the opposite of F50, and so they just end up with like you know, yeah, play-doh. The whole point of F50, folks, is that it's thin but has w whipping ability, right?
Now, uh I've been, you know, doing because I'm doing the what's it called, uh the remake. So I've been revisiting using all my old methyl cell powder and stuff. Uh what percentage do you I I so like I'm using it, I I try to make a syrup with it that can be used at the same ratio as egg white, so half ounce of the methyl cell syrup, it's not even syrup, half ounce of the meth of the goop is enough to do a whole cocktail. Like, what do you what are you using? Well, we're we're we're kind of doing that, but we're going one step further and making that into a 50 brick syrup that has half a percent methyl cellulose.
And so then the cocktail would have three quarters. Yeah, whatever. So we're doing like um we essentially make a semi rich simple syrup. So it's like 400 water, 600 sugar, disperse the methyl cellulose into the other 200 of hot water, yeah, get that in there, and so we end up with a 50 bricks half a percent methyl cellulose syrup. And then we will either use that for sours, so you're not adding that extra dilution of a half ounce of just methylcellulose water.
Um, or we like the cocktail on our menu, we then will add like a flavor to that. So straight methyl cellulose works really well with like a concentrate. We use a passion fruit concentrate to make uh like a mezcal sour. If we're working with something thinner, I find the foam holds a little better if you use uh they either call it foam magic or magic foam. It's got xanthan in it and it's predispersed with maltodextrin.
And so we'll use that for if we're using like strawberry juice and want to make a strawberry methyl cellulose syrup, we'll use also a little Xantha and also a little maltodextrin. I've done a bunch of Xanthan tests. So like uh I made some syrup with it. Um, but then I just look, I think if you're gonna use it in a specific drink, yeah, that's the way to go, right? It's just I wanted to have something so that at any minute you could replace an egg white in any cocktail.
And I was like, if you're gonna do an egg white cocktail, you want that lighter flavor anyway. Um so I don't know. I just made a we make it's really concentrated mine though. Like regularly concentrated. Oh, I forget.
It's something, it's something such that I did the math based on what I used to use for foaming. I'd have to look it up because I wasn't prepared to talk about it. Yeah, but uh, I did the math based on um the finished volume of a drink at a half ounce. So like you can't blend, you don't use a blender on my stuff. You blend it, we well, you mix it in with hot water.
Listen, people mix it in with disperse it. See the the key word that Mike used here was disperse, right? Nonhydrate. I had a guy tell me he wanted to like put it directly into water in a blender, like hold it. No, but no, you can have a lot of air in it.
If you get the foam magic from modernists that's predispersed in malted extrin, you can. You can use it. I'm in front of the F50, though. Oh, for F50, no, you it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare.
Because like I I took I told this guy I was talking to him, he was like, well, won't the air settle out? I'm like, if you have a month, I literally did one in the freezer for like overnight, and the foam might settle out. Yeah, I mean the ratio that I was using is freaking like anyway. So like anyway, hot. Disperse hot.
Disperse hot. I just throw in a couple of ice cubes and stir it with a spoon. Oh, that's smart. We just do we do two thirds of our water phase ice cold and one third of our water phase boiling hot and we disperse into the hot, stir into the cold. It's really fast.
Especially if you if instead of using the water for the cold phase, you're using cold syrup. So you already have your sugar in there. Right. Then you don't have to stir again and create more foam. So every it's like it's very, very fast.
Right. So the key is do not blend once you're making it cold. Stir. No. Stir.
Stir. Stir. Yeah, don't even whisk. Stir. Yeah.
Use a bar spoon. Because like the whole point of this goop is that it holds. And the problem with air, frankly, is that then you can't jigger it right. I mean, if well, you're not, I mean, like, I guess you are jiggering it because you're not doing a pre-batch yet. We're doing, well, we're doing a pre-batch for the menu cocktail, the passion fruit one that has about half a percent methyl cellulose.
Um, you have a straight 50 bricks unflavored methyl cellulose syrup. So 50% sugar, half a percent methyl cellulose that we use for like someone orders a whiskey sour. Um and we've played around with doing that one with also having the xanthan and the multixtrin, and it works a little better. And it's easier to make. Well, so I've been doing, I think I want to say like a quarter percent in the cocktail.
Which is a lot compared to the syrup. Yeah, because we're we're at like we're at less than that. If we're using half, if we're using three quarters of an ounce of uh half a percent. Five and a half ounce. Yeah, so you're doing a tenth of a tenth of a percent, probably.
Yeah, back at the French culinary days, we were doing like a lot of tasting, and you really like once you start getting up over a half a percent finished volume of methyl cell, you can really start tasting it, right? So, like all of our recipes, we would try to knock the cellulose back, and we used to do like a bunch of texture uh effects. So I was trying to push it so that like the finished cocktail would be around 0.2.25, which is why you really can't blend the stuff that I'm using. Like you cannot blend it. But the advantage of it is is that you don't need uh any Xanthan.
Like because I did a side by side of it with and without the Xanthan. And uh, you know, jacking the Xanthan way down, just like a little bit of Xanthan. And in the foam, right? So when you're doing Xanthan and an orjah, you know, it's fine. You need it, right?
Especially like all these people doing high solids or saying that the, you know, you need to add extra xanthan because you do, right? But um, I don't know. There's something about when I put the xanthan in, it did hold slightly better over like 20 minutes of sitting. Can you feel it? You could see it.
It's not even that you could feel it. Like when you I I handed two cocktails to my wife, and I was like, bring this up to your face. Don't even taste it. Bring it up to your face. What do you see?
And like the one that was Xanthan, she's like, it's a little bit Santa Claus in the belly. And I'm like, yes, it's a little bit like a bowl full of jelly. You know what I mean? And so, like, I don't know. If you can get away without the Xanthan.
Yeah, like the one we're doing tonight, like we'll we'll be doing the barcelonette. It's like uh we're using a Satole, but it's like a Satole, passion fruit, Seuss, Lime. But the passion fruit is a essentially like a 40 bricks, right? Half a percent, no, sorry, like a third of a percent methyl cellulose syrup. That we went 40 bricks so I can use a full ounce of it, and we get a lot of passion fruit out of it.
And the way we do it, it's like this massive time saver is because acid's in it, dilution's in it, it's at nineteen Fahrenheit, and all we do is pour four ounces, hit it with a milk frother and pour it in the glass, and it's like the fastest sour in the world. It's like lightning fast. So we'll be doing that one tonight. And we made that's the one we made. The battery powered jobbies, or yeah, a little five dollar on Amazon little, you know, little blitz.
Yeah, I'm for those things. Like one second. Do you but uh at uh Thunderbolt, don't you use the uh the the Hamilton? Yeah, when we go on the road, we use the little milk frothers at Thunderbolt. We have the Hamilton Beach, like the stick blenders that everyone.
I never uh I know what like you freaking Garrett, like apparently they're great. They're great. Apparently they're they're good machines. Yeah, I mean they're even good for prep. Like you can use them, you can use them in prep as well.
They're good blenders. Yeah, yeah. And they're not that expensive, they're not loud. I mean, they're not that expensive. They're like if you get the Hamilton Beach name brand one, they're like 400 bucks.
But if you buy the Websterant Event Co. or whatever their brand is, it's you know, $180. And it's you know it's is it as good? Maybe that's not as good looking. It's not no, it's not as good looking.
That it's got plenty of power for what we do, but the way that the it's not as like it's not as analog. There's not just like a straight like on off thing. You have to like use their cup and it has to like press the safety button and then it will blend. Oh, I hate that. It drives me fine.
I hate to hit it. Uh family show. Uh are the cups interchangeable? Not with the not with the event co. But for with us, like we're with the Hamilton Beach ones, we're mostly doing it in the tin.
Like we're never we're using a big tin. We're never like hanging it on there because we're using it for two seconds. Right. We're going in, we're just we're using the manual button. Right, here's it.
There's a little two little blitzes and then go. Don't do this, but have you done this? Foot pedal for a blender? For the for the for the yeah, for the spindle. So you can just walk up and go like bam, bam, bam, and keep your other hand free.
I love this idea. Yeah. You can buy really heavy duty, like, you know, momentary foot pedals. I used to use them all the time for stuff like stomp pedals, like old school, like yeah, yeah. Jono's what I'm talking about, loves a stomp pedal, loves it.
Oh yeah. Yeah, man. And they're rugged because they're meant for musicians to beat on them. Right. And animals on stage.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Uh so I mean, it's not safe because then someone could, you know, step on it, but they're not unsafe. They're the little thing that's that's like the the hardest type of blender to hurt yourself on. And now that I say that, someone at the airboat's going to hurt themselves on it.
But like, you know, that it's not really like a sharp blade in there. It's like a little dish. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh anyway, try it out. Yeah. Great idea. Yeah. I love a love of hands-free.
Oh, yeah. I detest having to touch, especially because like what if you're doing something with this other hand? Yeah. You know, ideally, you're doing something. Squeezing a lime, flicking somebody off, something you need to, you know, you're never you you always usually have a foot free.
That's funny because uh you you you'd love my home. Uh I have our kitchen set up as a um almost like a restaurant dishwasher where you the on off with the hot and cold of the sink in the um in in the kitchen is uh foot-driven, like a yeah, like you're playing piano the pedal of a piano. Yeah, foot pedal. See, I got foot pedal sink. Why would anyone yeah, why would you ever want to touch a faucet?
I don't want to do those, even the kinetic energy where you touch the faucet. No, no, no. I don't want to touch it. You know what else I don't like? I know it's better.
I don't want to sit there and wave at my faucet. I'm not friends with it. You know what I mean? On, off with the foot. You know what I mean?
Anyway. Uh man, I feel like we got into some good stuff stuff right away. Well, I meant to like uh yeah. Anyway, yeah. So uh anyone got anything from sleep now from the past week.
Anyone? Anyone? Temperance wind bar is the newest carrier of uh the solid wiggles. Oh, wait, wait, what? Oh, yeah.
What happened? Temperance, uh we got solid wiggles now. Oh nice. That's exciting, yeah. All right.
Some of the products, yeah. Come in, come in and buy you some uh some jello. Exactly. Yeah. Uh well what were you saying there, uh molecules?
So uh my girlfriend's parents were in town for the week, and uh her cousin took us to some restaurant that will go unnamed in Los Angeles that had that had a water menu, which is something that I haven't seen yet. Like like a twenty twenty to twenty-five page water menu. Give me the price range. Give me the price range. Well, there's a water thumb there.
That's the thing. I mean, the the most expensive bottle was maybe twenty dollars. And you know, one of the pages was Fiji. So it seemed like a whole page of Fiji. Correct.
Well, you know, each page had like a photo of the bottle with like descriptions of where the water comes from and the whatever. You know, like uh this one wasn't equal like this tastes square. It wasn't even, you know, fancy rare like weird water. It was just it was it was one of the dumbest things I've seen in a restaurant. Did they have uh did they have uh my three phase?
Did they have uh Vichy Catalan? I didn't make it very far into the water menu. Well, if you started alphabetically, did they have a Polinaris? I think that's a good water. Uh I don't think it was alphabetical.
Girlsteiner. These are three of my favorite waters. Yeah, yeah. It's a good waters. Great water.
Carol Steiner's great. Yeah. They also had like uh eighty eight uh eighty day aged um ribeye, which was I thought you were gonna say 80 80 David Forest. Uh but uh yeah, age aged in the world's best plastic. Yeah, how was it?
Uh it was fine. Yeah. You seem uh non-plussed. Non plus by the let me ask you this. Would you have enjoyed the whole meal more if you hadn't first buyed the water menu?
Um, I mean, it was fine. It was a very overpriced place, you know. One of these kinds of LA places. I don't know. 80 days seems too long to it just take.
People do infinity. Some people do infinity. I don't know, man. 80 drier infinity. Uh 80, you know, my dream is to, you know, uh, you know, now that there's global, you know, warming, go to the permafrost.
I mean, not right now because of the you know the troubles over there, but like when the when the uh uh what's it called thaws out, you know, the um what it woolly mammoth, get a chunk of that, you know, 10,000 year dry age. You know what I mean? There you go, there you go. Uh I would eat that. I think everyone would eat that.
Oh, yeah. I mean, if you're not you eat woolly mammoths, but you got mad at whale. It's dead. It's been dead for 10,000 years. It wasn't even killed by a person.
You might have to fight off Nathan Miravald for that one. I mean, well, yeah, probably. Uh like it's been a dream of mine, like uh it's been a dream of mine for years to just a little bit of one of those uh thought-out like megafauna from Siberia. I think it would be you know something to do. Something to yeah.
There's probably like a black market for that. I think they're super rare. There's uh there was an outfit in Korea who was buying all of the stuff they could so that they could do DNA sequencing on it so that they could like Jurassic Park one, you know, and then ingestate it in a modern elephant and then like bootstrap uh bootstrap the woolly mammoth back into the world. And uh I think if it had worked, we would have heard about it. Yeah, I think so.
You know what I mean? That's not the kind of thing you can keep uh under wraps. Yeah. No, I don't think so. Hey, by the way, uh so uh so that was a sad story there, Jack.
You went to an expensive place, you know, emptied your your pocketbook and uh didn't even get fancy water. Oh no, I didn't. I did not know. This was her cousin, it was her cousin's birthday. This is all out of my control.
I was just uh you know a guest at this dinner. Oh, is it still out of your pocketbook? No. Fine. So great meal then.
But I did take them to uh I took them to Kesmit instead, which they loved. Did they serve ice there? Did they serve ice menu? Like an ice menu? I would love a nice menu.
Oh no, no, that would be great, though. I'd I'd be into that. I would love an ice menu. I would love an ice menu. Um how much does ice cost in LA, by the way?
Like cocktail ice or cocktail ice, like like two and a quarter, two and a half inch cubes. What's a two and a half cube plus ice? We buy a little bit smaller ice, and I think we're netting out at like sixty cents for a cube, but they may the the bigger, like two and a quarter cubes, um closer to eighty, I think. It's like a significant percentage of the poor. It's a big percentage of the poor, and we serve almost everything on because we don't have a cold drive machine and we shake and stir with pebble and we serve everything on large format ice, and so we buy spears for Collins and rocks for our anything down, and it's a significant part of the pore cost.
Yeah, well, this is kind of funny. Uh, might as well talk about it now before we go uh any further. It's like he uh at Thunderbolt, I think what's interesting is that you know all the bartenders are like, you know, real like the bartender bartenders, right? They could go anywhere and work at a bar, but you guys have completely like thrown out you're like we don't need the cold draft machine. You know, in other words, like you don't take for granted what other bars uh say that you need for a particular kind of service, and you just work around your recipes to achieve the result you want with the workflow you want.
And it in a way I think it's uh different from most other places. You want to talk about that? Yeah, I think uh it was kind of like if we're if we're gonna talk about like a silver lining of it taking four and a half years for us to open from when we sign the lease to opening day. Uh the silver lining of that was uh we knew the menu before we ordered the equipment, is kind of what it comes down to. I think so.
Like we we weren't like shoehorning new techniques into a bar that was designed by an architect. We got to design the equipment sort of around what we wanted to do, which was really great. And we built carbonators into the walls of the bar die wall and like, you know, still in sparkling taps at every well and things like that that you're able to do if you like if you can think ahead. Um and it's also sort of it bites us in the ass sometimes. So like the ethos was like, let's remove anything that's unnecessary, um, even from the process.
Like if we can make it more consistent faster and we can get a drink in your hand uh faster and it's perfect every time, like let's do that. And so that's why we have like the the refrigeration that we can put like at the freezing point of the cocktail. And you know, occasionally we get that bad review of like they pre-bench the martinis there, it's terrible. And then like you have to like go on Yelp and respond, like, hi, like you can't make this without doing that because there's no water in it, whatever. Anyway, we stopped.
We just like turned off all notifications for all reviews, because I will never look at a Yelp review again because I yeah, there's I can't respond, and I just look at not, I don't have the power. I'm not mature enough to not respond. Yeah, you can't respond. Can't respond. You can't respond.
Yeah. It's like uh, you know, yeah, you're just yeah. It's a losing battle. Someone who like maybe didn't even ever go there, like writes some crazy stuff. Yeah.
And you're just like, okay. Yeah. Okay. Just gotta take it. Yeah.
My dream is uh to start a bar called one star bar, where you give everyone for the first like six months a free drink that gives you a one-star review. And so you control it, so you always have one star. Nice. And they can write something nice if they want. But then people who use Yelp to find a bar don't come to your bar because those tend to be the worst customers.
Yeah. So that's whether it's gonna be hard to convince someone with money to fund that project, but uh it's you know, it's it's in there. Is because it's got the star bar in it, is it a Japanese theme bar? It it can be anything, you know. It could be it could be a dive, it could be a very fancy buttoned up.
I think it has to be very fancy. Yeah, and it's very expensive. Yeah. I think it has to be super duper money. You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, I like the high-lo, the high low thing. Like is your because Thunderbolt LA, you've you've uh streamlined your service and all of this stuff, and I don't know why, but as a I don't know as a result, but also your you keep your prices pretty reasonable. I mean, like I don't know whether they're low. They just went up. Like I think we're our highest cocktail is 18 bucks now.
Everything was 14 for years and then it went up to 15, and then you know, everyone else in LA is getting 20 bucks plus a cocktail. But we're trying to be cognizant of like we're not in like a super wealthy neighborhood. We don't want to alienate the people that live around us. So we like what we sacrifice on poor cost, we make up for with like having less bartenders on in a night because the drinks are faster. So like labor we can make up for, you know, we're we're able to like balance it out.
It's not a typical bar PL if you compare it to like most bars. Yeah, so uh uh one star bar though, like a taccate is 22 bucks. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, 20 $20 beers. Well then the one star bar has to it has to end up with a Michelin star by the end to complete the cycle, you know. Yeah, all you need to do is hire the right PR person and you're good. You know what I mean? Hire the right PR person, uh, you know, and will will it to happen, get the right people in there, the right pictures taken.
One star on Yelp, one star in Michelin. Yeah, that's it. That's the goal. And I think, you know, somebody listening probably wants to fund this for us. So you know the call-in number.
And then, you know, the harder one's gonna be, you know, a couple years later when you try to open two-star. That's harder on both things. It's hard to get an exact two on Yelp and you know, two Michelin stars for a bar. Never happened. Yeah, it'd be a first.
You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, but if Jiro can get three stars, we can do anything. Okay, great. Yeah, no, I'll take your word for it.
I've never been. Yeah, gotta be, you know, 85 years old, gotta be in a subway station, gotta have a movie made about it. It's gonna say three Michelin. If you can get a Netflix movie, yeah, then you can have whatever you want. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Every time I mention that place and stash it gets triggered. Yeah. Did you hear it happen? The trigger happened?
Yeah, I can hear it. Rice does. Yeah, yeah. No, it doesn't bother me. Yeah, uh, nice, good.
Hey, speaking of uh uh that uh they've built the majority of the spin's offs. Now we just gotta get them shipped to the United States. Is that true, Stas? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Exciting, right? You excited? I'm excited. You sound excited. Yes, yeah, right.
There are a lot of very excited people to get these. Yeah, I appreciate that. Mike actually, we did not rig this. It's just because you also were the biggest placer of orders, had the most uh entries into the raffle. You were the winner of the uh raffle.
Yeah, we got the prototype. Yeah, we've got to be. What do you think? Yeah, we've been we've been beating it up and it's doing great. Yeah.
Yeah, we've run um, we've run a lot of stuff through it we've been doing a lot of batch mode stuff and we I like won't go too far down a rabbit hole for people who don't care about spin cells on the that are listening but um yeah continuous mode batch mode everything's been great it's fast it's cut I mean we were doing 15 minute cycles for uh Hustinos and for like uh tomato we do in batch mode and now we're running four or five minutes a lot faster way faster way faster yeah better stronger faster yeah it's the Lindsay Wagner of uh Centerfuges you know bionic woman there you go if you remember her uh oh also I I'll be remiss to say uh next week we have Andre Mack he had to cancel before he's coming on so get your Andre Mack questions in and the week after that Michael Fabro is coming in to talk about Ikime and farm raised salmon coho salmon so raising them inland and then I don't know if he's doing needle through the spine I think he's just doing brain spike I'm I mean apparently it's an Ike rubber. Well I mean do you need a human to do it or no what do you mean yeah he's got an engineer who's like but it's brain spike only not spinal ablation so you know half half half half a J May but really Ikajime is just a killing technique the the Shinkanuki the spine ablation that's what I used to love you know uh like doing like testing that I mean I didn't enjoy the act of killing the fish and sticking the the rod up its spinal cord but I did enjoy the results of it. You know what I mean? Yeah yeah delicious it sounds tedious. I like the idea of a robot doing it.
Yeah, but I think maybe I'm soft but I think uh yeah, I mean, robot for the brain spike I could see doing, but I don't see I don't see a robot being able to do the spine. You know what I mean? I don't think there's robots looking like sew the skin in a grape. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you have a couple million dollars, yeah.
If you have a couple million dollars, you can buy one of those, like, you know, completely like it's basically human hands, and then you just motion control, yeah, for sure. But I mean, like if you're an actual company, like trying to sell fish, I don't think you can do it. You know what I mean? Like it's possible. Yeah, yeah, a lot of things are you know, we've sent someone to the moon before.
That's possible. You know what I mean? It's just not really, you know, likely. What about you, Quinn? You got anything this week that happened before we get into the uh meat of the question?
We got some meat already. I've started some projects. I'm applying my guanchale recipe to some goose brist, which I think would be interesting. And I have started two new regular guancholis, and I am starting to change one variable for each piece. Okay, nice.
Is it gonna be are you gonna make it the same level of dryness? Before you made it pretty dry, right? It was like dry. Like more like the one again. Yeah, like you were doing like La Quercia level, La Quercia level drying, not like Volpe level drying.
Like Volpe is like a wet, wetter guan chale, which I kind of like a wetter guan chale. Yeah, and La Querchus is like, you know, like a piece of wood. You can, you know, mail that to the future and it'll still be the same, you know what I mean? Where are you? Somewhere in between those two.
Have you had the La Quercha or no? I haven't had any of those. Yeah. Volpi, you probably had. If you just if you just buy Guan Chale somewhere, it's nine out of ten.
Well, maybe in the States, it's made by the Volpi Corporation, but no offense to Volpe. I like Volpe. It's fine, it's good. Yeah. Um, all right.
So uh and and are you thinking that uh that's the best thing to do with the goose because once you dry it, it's uh you're not gonna notice how stringy and tough it is because you're gonna slice it real thin. Well, no, I just I want I want it uh it it could have been a little fattier because it looks like kind of a young goose. But I'm basically trying to get the closest I can to a pork cheek or with poultry. I figured a goose breast would be decent. Why?
Why goose as pork? Like why is it goose? Why is a goose more porky than duck? I thought there'd be a bigger cat like fat cat on the breast. I don't know.
They raise a lot of ducks. I don't know, they do a good job raising ducks. Whatever. Anyway, let me know how it works out. Uh speaking of Queen, we have a question that only Quinn can answer.
You ready for this, guys? Ready? All right, you ready for this, Quinn? Yeah. All right, all right.
Uh where is it? Okay, from uh DJ Random 927. Hey team, I got a question about Umami. At this point, everyone is familiar with MSG. That's modern sodium glutamate, but there are other compounds that provide umami sensation, such as IMP, which is I believe in in I can't, whatever, IMP.
It's a rival nucleotide thing, monophosphate, uh, and uh GMP. From my understanding, these compounds amplify the effect of MSG, but do they actually contribute flavors on their own? Is there a point to using these compounds if you can just add more MSG? I can see in the case of dry preparations like chips, but uh in a lick a liquid preparation, what uh would it make any sense? Um and the reason they don't use it, uh the reason I think they use as little of it as possible.
I think it's a cost a lot more uh than uh MSG, which is fundamentally free. But uh my my friend uh DJ Random, you are in luck because my man Quinn happens to have bought 400 grams of a mix of uh IMP and uh GMP. And Quinn, how much of that 400 grams set you back? Um I don't remember. It wasn't like a lot of blame.
I think it was like 30, 40 bucks. Okay, so it's a lot for a potato chip manufacturer to do by the ton compared with MSG. So it's like 15 times or 20 times or 30 times the price of MSG, but it's not gonna break the bank of a homework. I'm sure it would also be, I'm sure it'd also be cheaper if you bought a lot more. Same with MSG though.
You know what I'm saying? What I'm saying is is that like it's the thing that would be expensive to use industrially, it and so you would minimize its use, but it's not relevant to the cost for someone like you or even for like John at the at the restaurant. That's what I'm getting from you. Yeah. Okay.
Now, you have not yet tasted it on its own. But there in next to you right now is a bowl of powder, and Quinn is gonna taste it for you random DJ. I do have to I do have a disclaimer. Okay. Because it was it the usage rate is so low.
It is dispersed. Uh I dispersed it in a little bit of multi dictionary. That's we shouldn't. That's fine. It's just it's just gonna make it sticky.
You have to eat more of it. All right, here we go. All right, ready? Come on, I feel like what do you got? There is like the aftertaste of a strong cheese.
Aftertaste of a strong cheese. Like obviously when you taste the parmesan or the really aged cheddar, you get the initial like savory hit. But then there's like the aftertaste. And I would say in other instances when I've cooked with it. Not with MSG, just on its own in other food.
Let me say it makes things taste more uh brothy. Yeah, well that makes that makes sense. I mean the whole point of it, I like how the base is still like decreasing down. Uh the whole point of it is that you can use less of everything when you put those things in in conjunction with MSG, and it's so people can reduce the salt. So, you know, if you you know, if you need to do that, especially IMP uh and GMP are non-sodium-based ones, right?
So anything they can do, because they they don't really care about reducing the these ones are sodium-based. Oh dithodium bromylate and disodium and oceanate. Uh all right. Well then, but the reason that most people add them to these mixes is as a way to reduce sodium. That's what they're doing, right?
They're trying to reduce overall sodium. But I will say, having tasted raw at Unilever years ago, one of their things where they're reducing sodium, everything tastes brothy. Everything tastes like, you know, dashi got added to it. And like I love dashi, right? But I don't want I don't want my Alfredo tasting like Dashi.
You know what I mean? Unless I do. And then I know how to do that. I got combu and bonito flakes, and then I can, yeah, you know what I'm saying? Anyway.
So uh Quinn, I'm gonna go ahead and say don't use it on its own, right? Not worth using on its own. No, don't use it on its own. But again, I do like I like using it again. Dilut is like this in small amounts strategically, because it's like in the same way there are uses for fish sauce, soy sauce, and pure MSG.
Sometimes you want a little bit of that pure brothy shit, and I would say it does increase both savory intensity, but also some complexity as well. Right, but like you just tasted it on its own and you said you got a little bit of a cheesy aftertaste. It's not like it in other words, yes, it's a synergistic thing, but uh it didn't appear, you weren't like, oh yeah. Oh yeah, uh I know that taste. You know what I mean?
You're like, eh, it's like brothy and a little bit cheesy aftertaste. It's not like I mean, like you this person wants to know whether they need to go out and buy this stuff and use it on its own. And what I was hearing from you Okay, what is what is use on its own mean? Like you would use you gonna put it in food. Right, but like in other words, like most people use it if you say brothy, MSG also makes things brothy.
So is there a reason to use just this stuff, which is 30 times the price of MSG, as opposed to just a little bit of this mixed in with a little bit of MSG as kind of a a Cezanne, as you know, as an as an accent powder, you know, uh brand name, you know, brand. Yeah. The other thing you have to consider is that a lottery bullion powder does also have this built in. Yes, I know that. But my but my point is it I wasn't getting from you an oh yeah, this flavor on its own is super duper important and you need to go buy it.
Like Succinic Acid, for instance, is super duper important, very unique. You use it in conjunction with other things, you don't use it on its own. You know what I'm saying? Anyway. If you if you're telling me, yeah, I can't live without this crap, and I need to buy it, as opposed to just using MSG, then say then are you saying that?
Again, I would say in the same way. You're asking me to say something on its own. Uh, is the main benefit is the synergistic effect. All right, you've answered yes. All right, there we go.
Got there. Yeah, yeah. All right. Dr. Smokehouse wants to know.
Uh, they make their own Nochino and they have two questions. Any cocktail recommendations for using the chino? I always make uh mate with some cinnamon and clothes, but I've added orange peel, star anise, and uh most recently elderberry flour. So looking for suggestions. Well, I don't really work with it much.
What about you guys? I know that Quinn loves it. Mike, you like it? Yeah, we've done some stuff with it. Um I've worked on a couple Italian restaurant menus and you know, old-fashioned Manhattan variations.
Now you have that Billy Joel song in my head. Son of a guy. Yeah. Uh bottle of red. God damn it.
That's not his worst work. No, it's not what's his worst work. Be careful. Oh man. We didn't start the fire.
Ooh. Uh Nastasia, what do you think of his live live performance if we didn't start the fire? It wait, he's saying that? I don't remember that. You don't remember?
Yeah, he played it live. Of course he did. You just blocked it and he blotted it out. Maybe. I blotted out all of the uh Brinkley era stuff.
What what do you say, Soss? Did you hear that they redid that song? I don't know who, but some new band. And they changed all the words. I've heard it.
Yeah. I I haven't heard it. I've heard that someone was doing that. Uh have you listened? You haven't listened to it or you have.
I change it when it comes on the radio. I don't want to hear it. God, it's Fallout Boy. Jeez. Oh, it's Fallout Boy, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Uh yeah. Did they keep anything? Or is it all like new stuff? Well, the chorus is the same.
No, well, it's always been, you know, burning since the world's been turning. So there's no reason to change the chorus. Oh my god. The first stanza here has Monsanto and GMOs in it. Monsanto GMO.
Is that is that uh Nick Coleman doing it on Van Sur? Son of a gun. No, it's uh caridine. Oh my god. I can't keep my keratine straight.
I can never keep my carotene straight. I'm like, you mentioned one of them, they're all floating around in my head. I I didn't know there was more than one. Yeah, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Nochino. Old fashioned. Yeah?
Yeah. Yeah. Uh I somewhere I have the actual sugar level, so I can tell you what to sub it in for just on a sugar basis. Uh but you know, I've never seen my phone with it. We've just bought Nochino before.
No, but I'm saying, like uh I've I have uh I measured uh Dolan's Nochino and uh or not Dolan uh but you know whatever house alpines carries I measured their Nochino Nux Alpine. Yeah, Nux Alpine, yeah. I measured theirs uh their sugar level. And honestly, I'm like, whenever I think of this, uh all I'm thinking of is flavor and then how much sugar is my subbing in or out. That's all I remember.
It's not enough to be the only sweet in an old fashioned. I've tried that. I've not measured the sugar content. At what level of pour? Even like up to close half an ounce.
It's like not, it's still a very dry cocktail. And then, but what if you did one in one? You could do one in one. Is it an old fashioned still then? It does.
I mean, is it ever an old fashioned? Yeah, I don't know. But uh, yeah, one in one might get you there, but it's not, it's not frangelico sweet. I I talk about frangelico a lot because it's like 40 bricks, so I can use that like syrup in an old fashioned. And I love it.
That's like my favorite thing to do with it. It's like my bartender butter, but um the nuxal pina's not. Well, it's interesting you mentioned that. Are you ever gonna do that cocktail for me? The one my dream, because I'm never gonna do it.
Wait, which one? Where you uh it has to be on the back bar together, a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth's and a bottle of frangelico, because they're kind of married. Yeah, and then you know, a drink that has the both in them. You know what I mean?
Yeah, how hard could it be? Can't be hard. You know, it's like something else in it. It's well, you got corn syrup there. Corn syrup, uh, probably fenugreek or some sort of sautelone, and like a little bit of dicetile, right?
That's Mrs. Butterworth's, and then like whatever, you know, whatever nutty sugar frangelico is. You know what I mean? Yeah. But they that's a marriage made in heaven.
That sounds like a totally fine cocktail. Yeah. But frangelico almost sweet enough to put on pancakes on its own. Yeah. Uh I'm gonna open this because yeah, so uh Quinn, what I know you're a Nochino man.
What do you what do you what do you talk say to Dr. Smokehouse? I bought my make it a little bit more than a lot of things. They just want to know what to do with it. They don't they don't want advice.
They like their nochino. They just want to know what to do with it. Now that you know now that they've found Nochina, what what should they do with it? Yeah. You think you think we'll get back to it.
JPM wants it. Well, so why don't you say what you're pouring out? Oh, okay. So I brought look, I found out I was coming on the show after I was in New York. So I didn't get to bring anything from home, but I brought one of the cocktails we're doing tonight.
Um really plugging this event. Like, you hear this, near this people? That's the sound of somebody caring. Care a lot. I'm really I am uh degassing a carbonated bottle of cocktail.
Very slowly. I appreciate this. I appreciate this uh no end because when someone just goes shwam and like undoes the thing and like ruins all their work, it's like I get depressed. Well, it's my feelings. Every bartender at Thunderbolt has at least once like lost their handle on these tops and hit the ceiling, and we have to mop the ceiling, like you know, monthly because of that.
Uh but this is uh cocktail that's not on our menu, but we always do it during the holidays. It's uh like a champarado. So we use the nixta for that like masa flavor. Champerado, the if someone listening does not know what I'm talking about. Uh like the traditional Mexican hot cocoa beverage made with masa.
So it's cinnamon, it's bourbon, it's nixta, which is the Nixtamall liqueur. And lactose salt. Now we have a qu that that question's coming up next, actually. I think that's all the time. Yeah.
Oh god. Yeah, that's gonna be in there for good now. Yeah, see, see that's what I'm here for. Uh cheers. Cheers.
Cheers. So while you're tasting, I'm gonna ask the question, then I'll taste while you're answering the question. How about that? Mm-hmm. Okay.
Uh for Mike and the cooking issues team. Fun fact, I actually got the Patreon notification while I was sitting at the bar at Thunderbolt that you were gonna be on. Thank you. Uh incredible drinks and service always. So that's your guys.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh one thing that's always impressed me at Thunderbolt are the high balls across the board. Huh? We're talking about it now.
I know the service flow is super fast on using cans. By the way, your can setup is ridiculous. And we gotta talk more about this after this question comes up, right? Uh uh Do you see any carbonation loss in glass or in in glass or cans versus coming straight out of the carbo bottles? And then the second question is uh, how did you come to use lactose?
I'm guessing lactic acid, but it could be wrong here. You're wrong here. Uh different thing. We use lactic acid too, but different things. In a tropic uh tropic pop in a ton uh sense, uh wait, uh it makes a ton of sense uh in the good and bad bubbly because the cream soda vibes, but surprisingly delicious in the tropic pop.
So it's basically a question about uh uh lactose. Are there other acids? This is not an acid, but this is gonna be a long. So are there other acids other than the big ones that you know are in liquid intelligence? By the way, I'm redoing that whole section.
I just wrote 10,000 more words on that. Wow. Yeah, great uh that uh you were testing in high balls. So uh why don't you answer that while I taste your uh your uh your cocktail here? Okay, uh we can talk about carbonation loss first.
I think we'll I'll try to go in order of what he said. So um okay. Yes, there is uh inevitably a small amount of carbonation loss going from the carbo bottle to the can. However, it's much less carbonation loss than uh like trying to slowly degas these bottles and re fluff them with carbonation every time you serve one of the cocktails. And so uh uh I think a can is like the superior delivery vessel.
That's why we do it. Um it's fun. It's fun. Uh it's look, it's we've we were carbonating uh cocktails since we opened, but we were serving them in the in the traditional way of de gas the bottle, pour very slowly down the side of the glass, takes forever. Recarb it, put it away.
Your drink takes a few minutes. COVID happened. We were able to sell cocktails to go. We got the can seamer like week one. So we immediately moved to a can.
We got we got lucky. I have a lot of people to thank for that. Uh yeah, there was people in LA who like knew what we were doing and made that thing appear for us, and we ended up getting to keep it, which was amazing. So uh Jason Brandon and Joe Brooke, if you're listening, I love you guys. Um so we you know, we still are able to sell to go.
That's one of the reasons we still can, but we realize that the can is like a far superior vessel for serving this thing. One, because it's instant service. And again, we run into that thing where I have to be like, yes, it's in a can. We made it here three days. Yeah, we can't we it took us a couple days to carbonate it and then we canned it for you here.
And then once people hear that, they're like, oh whoa, and they get it. But you know, you gotta you gotta hold people's hands a little bit. Um how is it that you like like service and we have but there it's two people and people are so problematic. Yeah, it's it's the problem is like we have done so many things to get a drink in your hand faster and more consistent. But I think when you end up on some of these like lists, people come into your bar expecting uh like you know, the bow tie and the apron and the arm garters and and maybe an attitude and and maybe they want their drink to take 10 minutes, but our drinks are like really, really, really fast.
Um anyway, well, they should specify beforehand, you'll just wait. Yeah, we could just like we could ignore you for five or six minutes and then get you your drink. Like we could do that for you. If you would come in and ask for that, and we're happy to do that for you. Um wear a hey, people, if you do that, wear a special stop sign pin and they know then it thunderbolt.
Yeah, I think it's like Fogata Chow, where it's like the green and the red. You know, if you still want meat, you have the green. If you want us to ignore you, just put the red side up and we will pretend you don't exist. Right. Or but no, but you it needs to just take longer.
It needs to be a slow roll button. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I can open a can pretty slowly.
Yeah. Just really right up in the microphone. Um so okay, so that's why we can. Uh you mentioned glass bottles. Glass bottles are really hard.
Like uh they hold carbonation fine, but counter pressure bottling is an absolute nightmare. Like if you don't have a hundred thousand dollar counter pressure bottling rig, uh, then you have to use one of these like handheld teas, and it's like sort of a complicated choreography of purge air, gas on fill, and like you make a huge mess. And you used to do it. I could do we used to do it. I hated it.
It's a nightmare. And I could probably do 30 cans in the time it takes me to do three bottles. So the cans are hyper fast. We got good at the bottles, but I hated it. I hated it.
I could do 10 perfectly, and then on the 11th, I spray cocktail all over myself. I gotta start over. Um okay, and then lactose. Uh I do get I get this question a lot, and people are thinking lactic acid. Lactose is a sugar, lactic acid is an acid.
Lactic acid is tart, but it's not like uh citric or malic tart. We use it a lot, and I'm about to Dave go to like I'm gonna transition to liquid. Gotta go look like you are, and I I want to talk, we'll talk about that later. But um, we're still using powdered lactic acid. The Travipop is honestly on its like third recipe of the same cocktail.
We and we do this a lot, we're like constantly updating. It didn't have lactose when we started. It was also like a 6.25 ounce volume when we started. But when we moved to cans, we had to switch up the recipe, make it a little lower ABV and make it bigger to fit an eight-ounce can. Uh and so we at that point sort of revisited it and started from scratch, and we, because we were lowering the ABV, we had to do a few things.
One, I wanted more creamy texture, and so lactose gives you that. Lactose is also it's a non-fermentable sugar, it's not near as sweet as uh sucrose. So what it does is help lower my freezing point so that when I lowered the ABV to put it in an eight-ounce can, it wouldn't freeze in our refrigeration at 19 Fahrenheit. So lactose helps me get to that lower freezing point while adding the creamy texture. And it's the same thing for the uh good bad bubbly that you mentioned.
So we like lactose a lot. And we put it on the menu because some people are lactose intolerant. And we, you know, we are like almost a completely allergen-free place. And we started toying with glycerin a little bit. We use it in our non-alks a lot, but we started toying with like potentially glycerin could replace the lactose in the Tropicop.
Well, it's not gonna give you the anti-freeze. You'd have to switch to invert you have to switch to invert sugar. Yeah, it's not gonna help with the freezing. If you used invert sugar, because it's twice the freezing power. So like instead of sucrose, if you used invert, it'd be twice the freezing power.
But I have you uh I'm sure you have. Uh I started playing around I for I love glycerin. So my latest thing, and someone asked a question, I think it was uh Michael JK about my uh it's it well sorry. This is also interesting to me is like, you know, like uh because I as we're working on the book, the new stuff I'm working on, I'm trying to work on stuff that is as plug-and-play. I'm always like a plug and play person if I can be.
So I'm trying to make things that are like swappable around. And so one of the issues with glycerin is like what are you gonna add it to? Because you don't want to add it, it's hard to add alaminute unless you're doing batch cocktails. So if you're actually using it, sugaring, yeah, right. It's fine if you're carbonating, but if you're doing jigger stuff, so like I have the two things I use are are glimple, which is glycerin uh simple syrup, okay, and glassid, which is glycerin acid mix.
And I'm really loving the glassid, but Michael wants to know. I'll I'll Quinn, can you get it from me and I'll put it on the Patreon like soon? Yeah, so the thing about glass it is uh like I'm using it in Amaros constantly because of because you can't aluminute carbonate every Amaro you own. So you has to be Amaro plus seltzer, basically, and glassed. Uh right.
Yeah, yeah. But have you played with, because uh for some reason people, some people are still resistant to glycerin. And I by the way, I think that this uh the uh the texture you get with the low ABV with uh lactose is great, but you're using a large quantity of lactose. We're I can like reliably get about 15% to dissolve into water. Yeah.
Um, and then that is just serving as our dilution and that we have two lactose cocktails, and so yeah, it's about it's a 15% powdered lactose solution that we buy from a brewery that we buy beer from for like nothing. It costs very much. What percentage of the finished cocktail is that 15%? So uh in the Tropic Pop, there's like uh it's I'm air quoting like five ounces of dilution, but three of that is carbonated uh or sorry, is clarified pineapple and two ounces of that is a 15% lactose solution. So it's like four or five percent lactose in the end.
Yeah, so it's eight-ounce cocktail. So two ounces of an eight-ounce cocktail is fifteen percent lactose. Uh yeah, it's probably like less than five percent. Right. So, but but the point is is that you're getting an extra.
I want to here's what I want everyone to think about. And this was what I thought was the most fun when I was in LA with you, is just going over. So my original carbo specs are all very alcoholic. You know what I mean? Like, and so like I've dropped them all, they used to be like 13% or so, 13-14.
I've dropped them almost all to 11. You've dropped them below 10, and you need to have some mitigation in there once that alcohol level goes below about 10, and you don't want the sweetness, and when I say sweetness, the actual like apparent sweetness of like uh sucrose to be uh you need to jack it in order in order to have the body be there when you drop below 10. And so there is you have to figure out ways around it. The same with non-alcoholic cocktails, and so I, you know, my crutch is glycerin, but the lactose is another way to up your bricks, which is amazing, right? Um, and so it's it's serving that that function.
So you you you hit whatever ABV you want, and I thought it was great the way that you I was really like I thought it was amazing what you were doing there, like upping the solids content of the cocktail, which also helps in your freezer. I didn't even think about that. And yeah, because we we live at about 19 degrees in those Fahrenheit, right? So our it's it's one temperature range that needs to work for a 24% alcohol martini that we keep in there, but also needs to work for a 9.5% droppy pop. Yeah.
So it's cold, but we we bump up the bricks with things like lactose to so it doesn't freeze. We did some isomol tests, but we never put it on the menu because we were going to put some non-alks in our vending machine, and but we just never we never did it with isolate. How cold was the vending machine at uh minus it was four Manhattan's, so it was only at uh I have to do Celsius. It was at minus, I think six. Okay.
Yeah. Um yeah, that's like minus six, like twenty. Something like that. I don't know. Uh, but I don't know, I'm not sure.
But get this. You know what I've been playing with? Have you played with polydextrose yet? No. So I looked up what do they add to diet soda to give it the body back?
Because there's no solids in diet soda, polydextrose. It's not sweet. And you can make a 50 bricks, not 50 bricks. You can make a one to one polydextrose syrup, right? And it I still like glycerin better because you can use glycerin at much smaller rates.
But if you're pouring like three quarters of an ounce of poly into uh uh of polydextrose, and it doesn't change the flavor, and that's what they use to make diet soda. One of the things they use to make diet soda have the body of other sodas. So it's another bodying agent. So I think But it's not sweet at all. Nope.
Whoa. Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna see you tomorrow. We'll you can pull F around with it.
Yeah, yeah. Uh all right. Um, so uh we see. George Sante says, I've been trying to figure out a quicker way to clarify spirits blend with other ingredients, yeah, i.e. a slice of key lime pie or whole brown.
There's so much in brownies and key lime pie, George. There's so many things, dude. It's like you're all over like there's no one thing. Anyway, well, keeping it all vegan, including the brownies pie, etc. This is very complicated, George.
Uh I've gone the usual alternative milk punch routes. I even tried this new powdered coconut milk process. I haven't tried powdered coconut milk. I don't even uh but they take a lot of time and work. I've randomly uh seen a video where someone uses a Buchner funnel system.
Uh anyway, whatever. Mike, I don't know. This is more like up your alley because like, you know, I'm stuck in my old fart ways. Like what, like what how are you gonna clarify a key lime pie? Like, and the crust?
I don't know. I would get the flavor of the crust in another way, and then yeah, I don't see a reason you couldn't spin out key lime pie with treating it in a sense. Like if you have a spin thall, go ahead and do it. No, it's gonna be cloudy. And then you get the solids out, but it's gonna be cloudy.
I mean, milk punch is a good idea. I'm I'm not we do a lot of milk punch with coconut milk, but I've never used coconut milk powder because I like the liquid from coconut milk to be the dilution of the cocktails. What do you break it with acid? Oh, you have to buy the you have to buy the non-stabilized stuff. I mean, like the Thai brand coconut milk out of the can that we buy works great, and it has a ton of stabilizers, and it still breaks.
Still breaks? Yeah, no problem. We have one, we have a milk punch on the menu right now. One of our bartenders West is a our best-selling cocktail right now. It's called the Pastelito, and it's uh based on the guava cheese Danish from all the Mexican bakeries in LA.
And uh we break that with coconut milk. And the there's like uh, I mean, we're we're there's no citrus in a reason citric acid to break it, and not a lot, uh like somewhere in the realm of half an ounce per cocktail. Speaking of acids, we didn't answer the other part of the question. We're gonna run out of time. But listen, so I've been trying to think of other acid blends because I, you know, lime acid, especially with the succinic.
Succinic's good, right? You like the citizen. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Game changer. And the champagne acid, which I love in Omaros and other things like this. It's my that's my crutch for go for non-alks or for low, low alks. Chinarin, channar and glass it meant like all day, every day.
But I've been trying to figure out other acid blends, like uh, especially with phosphoric. I've been trying to figure out a good use for uh acid adjust phosphoric. I've tried carrot, like carrot cola, but I I've got stuff that's okay. We used to do an Amaro, called it a Maro Cola, and the I I can't remember the recipe. There were like four different Amari in it and phosphoric acid, and that was cool to try to do like uh it would came out like it's like Dr.
Peppery and like phosphate. It could find, yeah. I mean, it's like like Dr. Pepper is phosphoric and citric, so it's good in cocktails, and I think so is Pepsi. That's their thing.
Uh Starving Violist, Violist. Uh, I wonder if you explain what's up with sous-vide recipes that call for long oven cooked times after the cooking is done. For example, a Rishi Chef Steps recipe for faux porchetta calls uh cooking the uh belly souvie for 24 hours to set the texture, then popping it to a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes to render and brown the skin. The meat continues to cook in the oven, right? Aren't you gonna end up with something like traditional textures?
A sous vide just fancy par cooking at that stage, and the recipe engineered so that they hit their desired dunness with list oven time uh than doing it from scratch. For the record, I grew up vegetarian and first aid eat uh meat at the age of 29, and I tend to prefer fussy sous vide uh textures for meats rather than traditional ones. Um, so listen, yes, uh starving. Uh that's sous vide for insurance, right? Low temperature for insurance.
But like because 30 minutes i in an in a 400 degree oven is nowhere near long enough to cook uh a porchetta, right? So typically you would let it cool for a little while before you put it in the oven. So there's no danger of overcooking the the inside. You let the entire meat, you cook the center up to where you want, right? Then you let it cool for a while, right?
And then you blast it in the oven so there's no danger of overcooking. But yes, it's just separating the variables the variable of the inside of the meat uh and the variable of the skin. Separating them is always a good thing. But yes, it will give you more traditional texture. If you want it less traditional, you want it wall to wall.
I've tasted big pieces of meat that are wall to wall. You want some texture in that. Yeah. But if you don't, then just deep fry that sucker. Like pull it out, cool it for a while, deep fry it, get that skin to puff up.
Uh uh, Mike, while I have you here. Have you ever used uh uh citrus uh trifoliata, the like the weird sour oranges and no one? I've used them, but not in years. They grow in Phoenix on the side of the street. No.
And I have used them, but they're like bitter. So like they're worried. John's worried because they're bitter and like weird, but just embrace the bitter weird. Like, like don't you love uh bitter like bitter lemon orange orange is amazing. Yeah John just use it.
I've never had those. Yeah just don't don't don't uh don't get rid of the weird embrace the weird. Yeah. Mike, listen, pleasure to have you on. You're welcome anytime you're back in New York.
Uh someone go to uh Jack's uh hangout go to Thunderbolt LA if you want if you want to see and I like uh love your champarado thank you if you want to see somebody doing a really really good job uh and doing it their own way and uh being fresh go check out Thunderbolt LA in Los Angeles uh what's the neighborhood again? It's an Echo Park Filipino town. Nice beautiful cooking issues.
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