opinionated alchemist

Ok - folks, as always an apology! It have been quiet around here. Yes - my work-life balance actually totally broke down. Festive season - a wine trip to Italy [well - this was at least a bit of life - nice trip though and nice wines... let me know, if you want to learn more about it]. Anyway - I am back... that means, not completely - I am just standing before a rather big challenge - another opening of a restaurant with a challenging beverage concept: tiki cocktails. If you have been more than once, you might have had the notion, that I am more like a classic cocktail kind of guy. Yes - I love to do something new - but always on rather simple cocktails with few ingredients.  Tiki is not necessary right in my alley. However my style formed working almost 2 decades in the beverage business. And yes - I did my fair share of tiki. I will definitely post some picture of the tiki madness. However today, I am dedicating my time and this space for one particular ingredient: banan...

I thought actually quite a few hours about the tricky parts of agar-agar clarification : the calculation of the variables: quantity of liquids, quantity of agar-agar, temperature of liquids... And then I 'tried' to clarify pineapple juice and just made myself wrong: I wanted to clarify 0.75 liters - though then used [without valid reason] 1.5 liter juice without the adjustment of the agar - and the most stupid thing was, that I've only acknowledged my mistake, when the "to be clarified" juice was already in the ice water bath! Lame! That is why I looked for a handy calculation widget, which I post here on my blog. Unfortunately it was quite tough to find a proper tool. I finally found editgrid.com , which is an amazing and simple tool, for just posting spreadsheets on blogs or on websites. It is not very elegant - however it works... And with my embedded calculation, you will be able to just add the weight of the liquids and the temperatures and you will...