opinionated alchemist

You might know, that I am not the best person for smoke and mirrors (no pun intended)... personally I like the simpler presentations.  However I also understand the psychology when it comes to drinks. And using smoke, is pretty much the easiest wow factor if you do have the equipment. From a flavor standpoint it can be also tempting, but often it is just unnecessary. If you are anyway mixing with Mezcal or Scotch (at least the smokier ones), smoking is just falsifying the aroma of the distillate.  On the other side, I made the experience, that peat (of malts) usually don't work very well with other regular cocktail ingredients like citrus juices... however some smokes do much better in this department. Equipment Polyscience Smoking Gun I bought myself (for the use in the hotel...) a Polyscience Smoking Gun. It is made out of plastic, and it is very obvious, that the plastic body is taken from a cheap volume produced consumer product (*cough* mini table va...

I am cocky, when it comes to ginger beer. When distributors or ginger beer producers are coming and presenting their product, I cannot wait, to tell them how easy it is to make homemade ginger beer and how great it taste. I've experienced commercial ginger beers as always slightly "medicinal" - even "artificial" tasting. This usually comes from the dried ginger [or ginger extract], which seems to be pretty much industry standard. Don't get me wrong - products like East Imperial Ginger Beer and Fentimans Ginger Beer are great... but yeah - house-crafted is better, much cheaper - and it seems questionable, why anyone would buy a product, which he/she easily can produce in a better version. So I thought until now. I came across Cawston Press in one supermarket [I believe it was Spinney's] and as always when I see beverages, which I don't know yet, I had to buy them and try them. Now - I bought, the "plain' sparkling apple, the lemo...

I have seen Thomas Henry sodas on the mixology.eu blog before. The company from Berlin is advertising, that it was co-created by experienced bartenders. And now it is available here in the UAE. Visual: The small 200 ml bottles look good. Its modern, but also classy. Well done. The ginger ale, is quite dark, if compared with Schweppes. The ginger beer [called Spicy Ginger] is off white medium-opaque. The bitter lemon has the same half-translucency however with a hint of green. The soda, elderflower tonic and tonic water are clear [it seems, that the tonic has a hint of blue - but I could be wrong]. Nose: The ginger ale smells quite gingery. Nice. The tonic has a quite sherbet nose [you know- the bubbly fizzy powder, you had as a kid]. Hints of citrus… pleasant. TH Bitter Lemon has a very pronounced citrus zest smell - maybe a bit on the oxidized citrus side - but overall good and much better than Schweppes. The TH Spicy Ginger surprises with a dried ginger nose - almos...

There are few mixed drinks, which I really appreciate as top notch - and even fewer in the category of highballs and long drinks. The El Diablo might be invented in the 1940's but the exact history remains unclear. There was actually a panel who discussed this drink for the New York Times . There the El Diablo didn't fared well with the taste of the panelists. Personally I have came across this drink more than a decade ago. And as soon as I tasted it, it became one of my favorite tequila drinks. Maybe poor products and poor measures can put this drink off - but produced properly, there is a lot of magic, which is created, when the sum is greater than the parts. El Diablo [the devil] 5 cl   100% agave tequila [blanco or reposado] 1.5 cl fresh lime 1.5 cl Crème de Cassis 12 cl  Ginger Ale Squeeze the lime juice into the ice cube filled highball glass. Add tequila and ginger ale. Float with crème de cassis and stir briefly. This is a very simple recipe. But fo...

It might sound strange, however ginger is one of the flavors, which is working fantastically in mixed drinks. Especially with aged spirits, it really shines. But even white spirits you can combine with ginger - hence it might be one of the most versatile flavors in the bar. There are different beverages carrying the aroma ginger - ginger liqueur, ginger syrup, fresh ginger which you could muddle, but the most common ones are ginger ale and ginger beer. But what are the differences between those two? One can be sure, that ginger beer was the first concocted ginger beverage. An interesting note is the traditional preparation. The strained liquid [you may call it juice], from fresh grated ginger, was combined with water, citrus juice and simple syrup and was fermented. However originally no yeast, but ginger beer plant was used. This ginger beer plant [usually abbreviated to gbp] is a composite organism - a in symbiosis living microorganisms- bacteria and yeast [lactobacillus...