opinionated alchemist

I got a sample barrel of www.muddle-me.com for a corporate bar workout. As we don't have any unaged whiskies in the region [which are so trendy in the US], I had to think differently. Negroni and other similar aperitifs? Already done and boring [well - not really, but boring in a sense of no more that  cutting edge]. …but what is about a barrel aged mai tai? Especially in the Middle-East, you have to think beverage cost. A adequate rum [if available] cost a lot here - and due to your budgeted beverage cost, a proper Mai Tai will be very expensive - though still lay heavy on your cost. What is an adequate rum? As something like Cadenhead Jamaica Longpond Estate Cask Strength [until now my undisputed favorite for a Mai Tai] is definitely not available [well, it will be on very short supply - I think they don't have anymore of this beauty left] you still have to use something Jamaican. Precious. Same company as the original Wray Nephews 17 years old could not harm. Talk...

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...

Only due to the fact, that I am for the moment exploring the possibilities of tea infused beers, I stumbled over this issue... If you are buying a fancy green [or black] tea, you have most of the time small blossoms and flower petals, pieces of fruit rind, dried fruits and other interesting things laying among the tea leaves. This is all decoy! This "botanicals" won't give a lot of additional aroma to the tea. But stop - why is aromatized tea tasting so fruity, zesty, spicy...? Because the producers are bathing the tea leaves in essences and oils from the fruit. Or even not from the fruit. See - one pretty well known example is, that you can produce a strong strawberry aroma, if you are manipulate wood splints. The essence out of it, you will find quite in everything, which says, that it contains "strawberry flavor". But hold on - now comes the bummer: as wood chips are a natural source, producer can say: natural strawberry flavors! I am not totally...

After I have reviewed the ultimative Darbo elderflower, I was really looking forward to taste the other syrups as well. And after my days off, I found in our F&B office a bag with four more syrups. Let's get directly to the point: Darbo Blueberry & Cassis Syrup It is a very dark syrup - undiluted it is almost black. In the glass with some water it changes in a beautiful dark crimson. Already when you open the bottle, the room fills with wild blueberry aromas. It intensifies if you pour it into the glass. The black currents are almost not showing up in the nose. On the tongue there is a hit of blueberry aromas, but directly followed by black current notes = cassis. It plays back and forth - but the afterthought is definitely cassis. I cannot remember, to have tasted a better berry syrup. Ever. Well - a home-macerated wood strawberry syrup might be a worthy contender... but apparently it is always much easier to open a bottle [and if you think about wild wood str...

Sometimes, I guess, people think, that I am a mad man. No, really. I guess this impression went through the head of Lito of the Dubai Garden Center, when I asked for agave leaves [blue agave, or Americana to be specific]. Lito, operation manager at the Garden Center, though was very nice and friendly and offered me that I pass by and get some. Today I went to the plant store and met him, he is incredible nice - and I am looking forward to make so many other things, which have to do with plants and green. When I left, I was the proud owner of a spiky blue agave. First step taken, but what next. I took off some leaves. I took first of all the not so nice parts - for my experiments, I don't need the whole plant [at least not at this time]. I cut very deep, that I got the thick and juicy end of the leaves. Then I cut of the edges, which are full of "dangerous" spikes. They are really sharp, and you don't want to handle agave leaves, with the spikes intact. ...

I am using Amarena cherry several years now. I thought they are the best compromise (even if they are a compromise at all) between taste, looks, quality. If only they were Amarena cherries with stem (they've got lower points in the style, due to this reason). Amarena cherries are beautiful almost black cherries in very sweet syrup, they still have a snap and they are quite natural [this is a bit confusing - because obviously they are heavily processed, they are cooked in a lot of sugar and half inverted - with quite natural I mean, that the producer don't help themselves with the box of food-additive wizary - all ingredients are "really" natural]. This is pretty much the opposite of the typical bright red Maraschino cherry, which is bleached, stabilized, dyed and flavored with artificial colors and flavors. It was not long after I've started to use this amazing product, that I wondered, how to use the dark sweet syrup, which is full of the Amarena flavor ...

I had a couple of days ago a meeting with Craig - we will have a corporate bar workshop and Craig helps us to showcase the culinary wizary as he works for the supplier muddle-me.com. Besides of a bag full of goodies he brought the Soda plus appliance - a piece I didn't encountered yet. Well he took the mouth quite full, that it is cheaper and better as the cream whippers (e.g. iSi) or Perlini...  As I have to test it, before I show it to a bunch of high profile F&B guys, which are coming from across the GCC countries, I took it today to a test. And as I shopped at Spinneys today, I thought it is a good thing to take their excellent apple elderflower squash back home; but wait, I just reviewed Darbo elderflower and I pretty we'll know the Waitrose product. So I took the gamble to buy the grape and peach variant. And who doesn't know my very dear friend Knob Creek? If it comes to extra aged and extra toasted American whiskies, this is one of the best (especially if you pu...