bibamus, moriendum est

My muses

2008-06-14T12:13:00.001-07:00

Sebastian

The Baroness von Klauen

Weber Haus.

2008-06-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

After emailing back and forth and making a few calls, I'm proud that we've got Weber Haus Cachaça as our house cachaça, replacing 51. Now I just need to get a cocktail that shows it off. I'm thinking of a loquat caparinhia or something of the sort. I want to do something with loquats, and the flavors seem like they'd play off each other well.

From wikipedia: "A type of loquat syrup is used in Chinese medicine for soothing the throat like a cough drop. Combined with other ingredients and known as pipa gao (枇杷膏; pinyin: pípágāo; literally "loquat paste"), it acts as a demulcent and an expectorant, as well as to soothe the digestive and respiratory systems. Loquats can also be used to make wine."

Maybe I'll make my way up to ChinaTown and try to get some of that.

Success and Failure.

2008-06-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

Friday night, being slow at the restaurant, I had some time to play around with things. Burnt Cherry Bitters.

Since I'm just starting out on the whole infusion business I've been keeping all the ingredients separate for now. 40 cherries, burnt over a mesquite grill, placed in 500 ml of everclear, infused for two weeks, sweetened, reduced by about half or so over the fire. Added a little rose blossom, ginger, orange, canada snake root, and gentian infusion.

Quite nice, but a little light. I need to use more cherries next time, and more bitter. I might play with this one a little more.

I'll mark it down as success though.

Failure.

Bacon infused Weller bourbon. well, the bourbon, I feel, is a success, but the cocktail I tried making with it was not good, not good at all. I've been obsessed with doing a play on Bacon and Eggs, or some kind of breakfast cocktail. So we have; Bacon Bourbon, Eggs, some champagne for the toast, maybe some jam, salt and pepper maybe, melon possibly, etc etc.

The first try was a bit of a flip. One egg, 2 oz of the bourbon, some lemon, shaken, and then topped with champagne.

And... it was good.

But not bacony enough.

So I tried again. This time, making almost the exact same cocktail, but with 1/2 oz of rendered warm bacon fat in it.

And... it was not so good.

The chef made a gurgling noise and spat it out. Everyone else politely took a small sip and tried not to grimace too much. The fat coated the inside of one's mouth and left it feeling uncomfortably creamy.

So onto round three. I made a manhattan with the bourbon, Antica Formula, sugar, and a little OJ. That was good. And it tasted bacony. But that's not what I want to do, so I need to keep working on it.

Let's try this again.

2008-06-14T11:43:00.000-07:00

Here's my first post. I'm always starting a blog that falling off on it, but let's see if we can't keep this thing going. One a day, even if there's nothing to say.