Good Bye 2017 - Welcome 2018

Folks...

A belated Happy New Year to all of you. There has been a lot of changes... I have got the feeling, that these changes will lead to a great year 2018...

First: I have left my position as Beverage Manager at the Ritz-Carlton Dubai Beach. Better said, they made my position redundant (we will see, how well this works out for them 😶).

I am not gonna lie - I loved to work with my previous Executive Assistant Manager i/c F&B Isabelle. It was simply inspirational and we have had a lot of brilliant and at times borderline crazy ideas! However Isabelle left the beginning of last year - and nothing was the same again. Let me not get into this too much...

Second: Despite the fact, that I have had some offers as Beverage Manager again, I decided to go back into the operations - I am now “freshly appointed” Bar Operations Manager at Noir at the Kempinski Mall of the Emirates.

The bar is beautiful, and had a short but somewhat controversial and very turbulent history. The idea is, to lead this bar to be one (if not THE) of the best bars in Dubai. And this is what I do best!

I will be definitely able to apply quite a lot of new stuff here.

Three: And yeah - here I would like to refer to the new year, with a lot of innovations at times regional innovation, at times international innovations. During the last years, there are a lot of things, which formed in my mind... and I am ready to pull this out now. And I will share here - on the opinionatedalchemist.com all of cocktail evolutions and revolutions I will introduce.

Once more - have a good 2018... and see you here for some amazing revelations. Let’s make the opinionatedalchemist.com great again! 😆

Comments

Agar-Agar Clarification

Not often, I am posting here things, which are clearly not my ideas... However Dave Arnold is clearly a mad scientist [no, he really is!] - and he posted amazing stuff on his website www.cookingissues.com - no - don't click now - just follow the link later. One of the most impressive posts about mixology, besides of demystifying the mechanics of shaking, were clarification techniques. Look, after him, you could use a centrifuge [which would set you back a couple thousand bucks] and a chemical compound, which solidifies sediments. I am not a fan of that. Then there is gelatine clarification; this works quite well [I tried it several times my self] - you gelatinize a liquid [with little gelatine only], freeze it, thaw it [in the fridge] over a colander and a muslin cloth. Thats it. Unfortunately this has several problems: Gelatine is made out of animal bones - hence it is neither vegetarian nor vegan, which you won't usually expect of a beverage. You have to freez...

How to use citric acid - and why you might not want to use it anyway!

To be honest, I shied away of this topic, because I think, people can misinterpret this - big time. I don't want to be part of the problem - I want to be part of the solution! But when Chris, over at A Bar Above discussed this subject- I literally could not resist to join into "the discussion". Here is the video: I - however take a bit slower approach than Chris. What is citric acid? Chemical Compound Citric acid is a weak organic acid with the formula C6H8O7. It is a natural preservative/conservative and is also used to add an acidic or sour taste to foods and drinks. Wikipedia Formula: C6H8O7 Molar Mass: 192.124 g/mol Melting Point: 153C Density: 1.66 g/cm3 Boiling point: 175C Soluble in: Water Why is it controversial? In my "mixology world" it is controversial, as citric acid is the stuff, which makes the nightmarish sour mix [ preferably in powder form ] sour. Yeah - citric acid is the main ingredient in one of the most ...

"Monin Rocks!" - Really?

R ussell S anchez MONIN UAE MONIN Rocks @ HARD ROCK CAFE Dubai — with Rhiandro Gardiner and Louie Aquias at Hard Rock Cafe . I have seen this on my Facebook timeline. And well... I wanted to write about Monin since quite a long time, but haven't. However this message was a catalyst, to speak up. It is already a couple of months ago, that I routinely checked the ingredient list of a Monin bottle. ...and was shocked.... Point is, that I have always defended Monin against my US colleagues as decent brand. At least with the products they offered here in the Middle East and in Europe; they came from their factory in France. Most of the ingredients [except lets say in Blue Curacao syrup] were natural. Long time ago, somebody from Monin explained, that this is due to the quite strict regulations in France for syrup - there it is a family culture to drink syrup sweetened water/seltzer. And off course ...

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