opinionated alchemist

So we tried to do the barrel aged Mai Tai in an 1l barrel - and the taste was really good. The only problem was, that the leftovers, of "diverse angel shares" were... not worth the effort. What angel share you ask? Well, first the barrel was leaking out of the spigot. It was leaking slow and sticky - but anyway. Another serious reason for the angel share was the tasting [sorry!].  This cocktail really has to be seriously tasted. This is ok for a large barrel, but for one liter barrel, it is a real problem... Anyway - batch no.2 is on its way. I did some amendments: I was always curious, why "Trader Vic" called for a dollop of French g arnier o rgeat in his original Mai Tai recipe. Almond syrup and dollop doesn't really properly align in my sense. But then it stroke me: what is orgeat: a syrup made from almonds, sugar and often a hydrosol [usually orange flower water]and water... guess which ingredient has all ingredients except of the water? Yes - marz...

Picture in courtesy of bonappetit.com When I started in the bar in Germany, bartender just muddled one drink. The caipirinha. And it made perfect sense. Then came the "Muddled_Mojito_Craze" from the US. In fact, the Mojito was known already before in Europe [ well, you can't really say, that it was known in Europe before it was known in the US - as the drink was definitely promoted at times of the Volstwad Act, when the only legal way of drinking alcohol, was to drink offsite of American soil and the most convenient place to do so was Cuba ], but it didn't had todays popularity. In the early 2000's - after caipirnhas were muddled [which is the only way to make them] and mojitos [which could be perceived as pretty bad], there were ton of new invented drinks, which supposed to get muddled. And if you are regarding the circumstances, it was reasonable. At this time, fresh squeezed (filler) juices were the exception. If you wanted to incorporate fresh f...