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mothmanns · 1 year

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i would like to know the cocoa recipe

yes yes yes of course!! its soooo easy and not to sound like a mommyblogger but once you try this homemade…. i won’t say you’ll only ever make homemade hot cocoa again cause god knows i love swiss miss but the world becomes your cocoa oyster. this is for one serving, but feel free to adjust as needed!

now the first thing youre going to do is set the kettle on. if you dont have a kettle, you can boil water in the microwave (i won’t tell anyone). the key thing here is that you only need about a tablespoon or two of water per serving; just a tiny splash will do, so it won’t take long at all for your water to boil.

while your water is getting het up, you’re going to get a small pot. to the pot add one heaping spoon of cocoa powder and two heaping spoons of sugar. stir them together and wait until your water boils.

once your water is boiling, add just a splash! You want barely enough to form a liquid. If you’re uncomfortable eyeballing, measure out 1-2 tablespoons; this isn’t a picky recipe. whisk together the water, cocoa, and sugar, and put it over medium or medium-high heat. continue whisking until all the lumps are gone.

when your chocolate syrup (yes, you just made chocolate syrup!) starts to bubble, its time to add the milk. i personally like to measure out a shy mugful of milk and pour it into the pot to make sure you always have the perfect portion size.

and… thats basically it. adjust the heat and stir occasionally until the milk is steaming. if you accidentally scald the milk (ie, bring it to a boil), no problem— take it off the heat, wait for it to cool a bit, then use a spoon to skim the skin off the top. then add a pinch of salt (NOT OPTIONAL). salt is a flavor enhancer and you need it to be able to fully taste the chocolate and sugar. otherwise your hot cocoa will just be bland and boring.

BAM. CONGRATS, you just made homemade hot cocoa! the best thing about this recipe is that it scales perfectly; ive made a dozen servings in the same pot without a problem (just measure the ingredients accordingly). this is, of course, a very basic recipe, so i’ll tell you some ways to spice it up!

1) add vanilla (or any!) extract! make sure you add any alcohol-based flavors at the very end, after youve taken the pot off the heat. this will keep the flavors as rich and prominent as possible. try out any extract you want! almond is my favorite, but mint and rum are both good too. add about 1/2 tsp (or a tiny splash) per serving.

2) make salted hot chocolate. simply add a few extra pinches of salt, tasting along the way until its perfect! this is my favorite way to “elevate” hot chocolate (protip: you can also add salted whipped cream as a garnish! simply whip heavy cream with a few pinches each of sugar and salt and throw a dollop on top of each serving.)

3) add cinnamon! i prefer to add a cinnamon stick with the milk and keep it in the cup when i serve it, but you can also use powdered cinnamon; just know that the powder will be present in your final product.

4) spicy hot chocolate: to the syrup, add a bit of chili powder. i like a mix of ancho and cayenne for the perfect level of smoke. don’t add too much! you want just enough to make your throat burn.

5) make it bougie, by which i mean richer. replace some of the milk with an equal volume of heavy cream. i always do this, no matter what kind of hot chocolate im making; the final product comes out thick and luscious and wonderful.

6) add alcohol. my personal favorite is amaretto (about 2-3 tablespoons per serving will do; add it after you take it off the heat). peppermint schnapps is another good choice. you want strong flavors to compete with the chocolate, so choose something like whiskey over vodka.

7) make it italian. this is an advanced hot chocolate technique, but i believe in you. take out about 1/4 c (per serving) of the hot chocolate and add it to a cup or bowl. then, add about half a teaspoon of corn starch. whisk until completely smooth (a handheld milk frother is especially handy), then pour the cornstarch mixture back into the pot. stir while you bring it back up to heat. the heat “activates” the corn starch, making your hot chocolate thicker. true italian hot chocolate is essentially pudding, and it’ll make some really weird noises while you slurp it; use less cornstarch for less thickening power.

8) garnish it. my favorite garnish is a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but feel free to use ready whip, actual whipped cream, a candy cane, a cinnamon stick, marshmallows/fluff, whatever you have on hand!

thats about it! you can use whatever alternative milk you want, i guess, though in this house we use ONLY full fat organic dairy milk (you think using 2% doesnt make a difference; i assure you, it does.). feel free to use more or less sugar or cocoa depending on how you like it! if you have any questions or if you give it a whirl, let me know! im more than happy to help spread the word of homemade hot cocoa :^)

#annswers #recipes #hot cocoa #keep in mind this is hot cocoa and not hot chocolate #but tbh i prefer cocoa #its so much easier and so much less work for the same reward #actually a better reward cause you dont have flakes of solid chocolate in there #this made me so happy thatnk yoh so much for asking

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pizzabass8-blog · 5 years

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Noma at home: Lemon verbena kombucha

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Yield: Makes 2 liters

Photo by Evan Sung.

240 grams sugar 1.76 kilograms water 20 grams dried lemon verbena 200 grams unpasteurized kombucha (or the liquid that comes with a packaged SCOBY) We’ll begin our kombucha making with a recipe that closely follows the method for brewing a classic kombucha made from sweetened tea. The only difference is that our base liquid is an herbal infusion rather than a tea infusion. You can easily substitute a different herb or tea in place of lemon verbena  if you like; you’ll still get a good handle on how to manipulate the various factors that affect the flavor, sweetness, acidity, and fermentation time of your kombucha.

The geology in Copenhagen leads to hard, mineral-rich tap water, which can distort the flavor of the kombucha. We filter the water for our ferments with a reverse-osmosis system. If you live somewhere with softer water, there’s no reason tap water would harm your ferment, but if in doubt, filter your water.

Equipment Notes

Kombucha doesn’t need much equipment other than a glass or plastic container of at least 2.5-liter capacity. Don’t use metal containers—they can react negatively with the acid in the kombucha; plus, you won’t be able to see what’s going on inside. A SCOBY needs access to oxygen, so avoid vessels with tapered necks, like carboys. Large, wide-mouth canning jars work fantastically; clear plastic buckets and tall Tupperware also do the job nicely. You’ll also need cheesecloth or a breathable kitchen towel to cover the vessel, and larger rubber bands to secure it. And as with any of the sensitive microbes in this book, the SCOBY is best handled while wearing nitrile or latex gloves.

In-Depth Instructions

To begin, dissolve the sugar in a small amount of the water. (You only need a 1:1 ratio of water to sugar to completely dissolve the sugar, so heating the full amount of water is a waste of time. Plus, you’ll have to wait for the water to cool before you introduce your SCOBY—yeast and acetic acid bacteria can’t survive temperatures warmer than 60°C/140°F.) Bring the sugar and 240 grams of the water to a boil in a medium pot. Remove the pot from the heat, add the lemon verbena, and allow it to steep, uncovered, for about 10 minutes.

Once the tea has steeped, stir in the remaining 1.52 kilograms water and strain the infusion through a fine-mesh sieve or chinois into the clean fermentation vessel.

To jump-start fermentation and to help prevent unwanted microbes from getting a foothold, backslop the infusion by adding the 200 grams unpasteurized kombucha to your vessel (which is 10 percent of the weight of your other ingredients). Ideally, you’ll be backslopping with a previous batch of lemon verbena kombucha, or a complementary flavor. If this is your first batch, use the liquid that your SCOBY came packaged in. Stir well with a clean spoon.

Put on your gloves and carefully place the SCOBY into the liquid. It should float, but don’t worry too much if it sinks—it sometimes takes a day or two to rise to the surface.

Photo by Evan Sung.

Cover the top of the fermentation vessel with cheesecloth or a breathable kitchen towel and secure it with a rubber band. Fruit flies love the scent of acetic acid and alcohol, and will be particularly drawn to your new kombucha, so you’ll want to do everything you can to keep them out.

Label the kombucha with its variety and the start date so you can easily keep track of its progress.

SCOBYs work best in slightly warm settings. If you’re brewing in the summertime, you’ll probably notice that your kombucha finishes faster than in the winter. In Noma’s fermentation lab, we keep our kombucha room at a steady 28°C/82°F to encourage speedy production, but you don’t need to dedicate a whole room of your house to kombucha. It will ferment just fine, albeit slightly more slowly, at room temperature. If you like, you can place your kombucha close to a radiator or on a high shelf in the kitchen to provide an environment that’s slightly warmer than room temperature.

As the days go by, you’ll notice the SCOBY growing significantly, fueled by the sugar in the liquid. Every other day or so, peel back the cloth covering enough to get a good look at the SCOBY. It should extend out toward the sides of your vessel, while also thickening in the middle. You may also see it puffing up in some areas as the yeast releases carbon dioxide. If you notice the top of the SCOBY drying out, use a ladle to pour a little liquid over it. The liquid keeps the SCOBY acidified, staving off mold growth.

There are a few different ways to measure the progress of the kombucha itself. The simplest method is one you’re already well equipped for: Taste it. At Noma, we look for our kombuchas to maintain the essence of their base ingredient, while developing complexity and a harmonious opposition of sweetness and acidity. Put more simply: It’s done when it tastes good. The kombuchas we brew at the restaurant usually take 7 to 9 days to ferment to our desired taste. If you enjoy sour kombucha, then let it ferment for an extra day or two.

Photo by Evan Sung.

In the fermentation lab, we use equipment to measure the acidity and sweetness of our kombuchas in order to maintain consistency from batch to batch. A refractometer allows you to track sugar levels in the brew. Taking a measurement in the beginning lets you know how much sugar you started with, and each subsequent measure tells you how much is left. A pH meter or pH strips gauge acid content. Infused lemon verbena syrup will begin with a pH of just under 7, which is close to neutral. Backslopping with a previous batch of kombucha should drop the pH to about 5. Fermentation further increases the acidity to between 4 and 3.5. If you’re equipped and inclined, keep track of your kombucha’s progress and measure the pH and sugar content of the final product so it’s easier to replicate.

If colorful (pink, green, or black) mold shows up on your SCOBY, it means your base liquid probably wasn’t acidulated enough at the outset. (Though a healthy SCOBY may develop slight variations in color.) Don’t try to salvage the liquid or SCOBY in this instance, as pathogenic molds can produce harmful toxins that dissolve into the liquid. Trying to identify whether an invasive mold is malignant or benign isn’t worth the risk. You can always brew more kombucha.

Once you’re satisfied with your kombucha’s flavor, put on a pair of gloves and remove the SCOBY. Transfer it to a plastic or glass container into which the SCOBY fits snugly, and cover with three to four times its volume in kombucha. Cover the container with cheesecloth or a breathable kitchen towel, and secure it with rubber bands. It’s fine to let the SCOBY hang out at room temperature if you intend to make another batch within the next few days. If you’re not using the SCOBY again soon, store it in the fridge until you’re ready.

Strain the remaining kombucha through a sieve lined with cheesecloth or a fine chinois. Now you can enjoy it straight away, or save it for later consumption or use in a recipe. Kombucha will keep in the fridge in a sealed container for 4 to 5 days without much change in flavor. You can also freeze it in an airtight plastic container or vacuum-sealed bag if you’ve made a larger batch than you can use immediately. To freeze your kombucha, chill it in the fridge for a few hours to slow fermentation before packing it into the container or bag, or it could inflate and even burst before freezing solid.It may take you a couple of tries to nail a kombucha you’re happy enough with to take to work or school. That’s fine! You can still use overfermented kombucha for syrups. Meanwhile, your SCOBY will happily dive into a new batch, so keep trying.

1. Water, SCOBY, lemon verbena, sugar, and finished kombucha.

2. Make a syrup using the sugar and an equal weight of water.

3. Combine the syrup and lemon verbena and allow to steep before adding the remaining water.

4. Strain the infusion through a fine-mesh sieve into the clean fermentation vessel.

5. Backslop with the unpasteurized kombucha.

6. Place the SCOBY into the fermentation vessel and cover.

7. Measure the sugar content using a refractometer (optional) and check again after 7 days.

8. Use pH strips to check the acidity of the kombucha. When the pH has reached 3.5 to 4, the kombucha should be close to ready.

9. Remove the SCOBY. Strain and bottle the kombucha.

Suggested Uses

Kombucha Syrup Almost any kombucha can be cooked down to a remarkable and complex syrup, but it works especially well with kombuchas that are approaching the point of being too sour. Pour about 450 milliliters of kombucha into a medium saucepan on the stove over medium-low heat. Let the liquid slowly evaporate until it’s about one-quarter of its original volume and can coat the back of a spoon. The slower the kombucha reduces, the better—don’t let it come to a boil or you’ll cook out all the flavor.

The next time you cook a batch of pancakes, drizzle a bit of this syrup over the top. It won’t be as sweet as maple syrup, so if you have a sweet tooth, you may want to add a dusting of powdered sugar. As a dessert, spoon some lemon verbena kombucha syrup over good-quality ice cream. Bonus points if you sprinkle freshly picked lemon verbena on top.

Lemon Verbena Kombucha Vinaigrette Blending together equal parts mild oil, such as virgin rapeseed or avocado, and lemon verbena kombucha syrup will produce a thick vinaigrette—sweet, sour, and creamy. You’ll need to taste for salt and acidity and adjust accordingly, but the result is an exceptional dressing for root vegetables. For a first-rate side dish, toss salt-baked beets in the vinaigrette and garnish with torn fresh basil leaves and chopped pistachios.

Bottling Kombucha Bottling kombucha will extend its shelf life and encourage carbonation. A day or two before you’re happy with the flavor (gauging this point will come with experience), strain the liquid, transfer it to sterilized swing-top bottles (or regular beer bottles, if you have a capping tool), and move them to the refrigerator. The residual bacteria and yeasts in the liquid will continue to work, even in the fridge. Bottling traps the gases from fermentation, some of which will dissolve into the liquid. A kombucha fermenting in open air will have a slight effervescence, but bottling will increase the bubbliness.

Take care not to bottle your kombucha too early. If there’s too much residual sugar in the kombucha, it will fuel an excess amount of carbon dioxide production, which can result in exploding glass bottles. To mitigate this risk, make sure your kombucha is close to where you want the finished product before bottling—around 8°Bx, if you’re measuring with a refractometer. Be sure to keep bottles in the fridge and consume them within a couple of weeks.

Source: http://blogs.kcrw.com/goodfood/2018/11/noma-at-home-lemon-verbena-kombucha/

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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Dr. Daves Field Guide to Bad Cocktails

If the idea of sitting in a dark, elegant bar, lapping at a small, icy pool whose waters have a way of smoothing the furrows in your brow and oiling the trunnions of your tongue appeals to you, then as dark as these times may be there is at least one recompense. It is now possible to get a perfect cocktail, or close enough, in every city in America. Ten years ago, it was not. That is a positive good, then, and sometimes a very positive one indeed.

But it doesnt always go that way, though, does it? You do your part OKgetting to the bar, finding a seat, putting your damn phone away, ordering a drink, looking expectantand the bartender does a stylish job of picking bottles, measuring and mixing, and pours your drink into a steaming-cold glass with a precise, crisp flourish. Then you take a sip. Oh no. The drinks list billed this Transitive Nightfall of Diamonds as a subtly-accented take on the classic Dry Martini. What you got instead is potpourri-tasting gin, cilantro-infused vermouth and aggressive splashes of bitter gentian aperitif and crme de violette, with a huge swatch of bergamot peel squeezed over the top. It smells like Victorian hand soap. It tastes like Victorian hand soap. It costs $15, before tip.

The expansion of the Cocktail Renaissance (as its aficionados have come to call it) from a few bars in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and a couple of other places to hundredswho knows, thousands?of bars practically everywhere has depended on a concurrent expansion in the amount of bartending and mixological talent and knowledge. But good bartending has expanded not as air does when filling a balloon, where theres an equal amount of it in every part, but more like how Legos fill a hallway when, on your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, you kick over the huge tub of them your kid left out. Although it doesnt happen with every step, every part of the hall holds the danger of putting your foot down on something fun that has turned diabolical.

What I mean to say is, not all tattooed young bartenders are the modern-day Jerry Thomases they think they are, and not every cocktail they make is the nectareous, brow-smoothing trunnion oil you hope for when you order it. Some, alas, are just plain bad.

The badness of many modern cocktails has been discussed widely and often, and by discussed I mean ranted about. Its easy to go off on the excesses of eager young mixologists who apparently watch too much Adventure Time and let its deadpan randomness infect the drinks they come up withlamb-fat washed rye-corn-barley eau de vie, citrus colloid, Indonesian palm sugar and brick dust, finished with a beet-Malibu foam; like that. What we need, however, is not more rants, as fun as they might be, but some basic science.

Before we can solve the problem of bad cocktails, we need to know the different ways a cocktail can go bad. We need a botany, a zoology, a classification. Every creeping thing that slideth over the bar must be known by his kind, that thou mayst order him no more. (I think it said that in the Bible somewhere, although I might be getting some of the words mixed up.)

Thats not a simple task. At first glance, it seems like cocktails follow Dostoyevskys happy-family rule; that the good ones are more or less all alike, or at least fall into a handful of common patterns (bitters-sugar-booze; bitters-vermouth-booze; sugar-citrus-booze, etc), and the bad ones are each awful in its own peculiar way.

Upon soberish reflection, though, one can identify two main realms of error, each with its inevitable subdivisions. The Strategic and the Tactical. Here, then, is a subjective, preliminary and open-ended attempt to sketch out the different ways mixed drinks can go bad. In this, Ive left out the main one, statistically speaking, which is the old Garbage In-Garbage Out: shoddy, artificial ingredients mixed sloppily together will rarely yield anything drinkable. Fortunately, most modern cocktail bars are out of that phase, at least. These, then, are higher-order errors, the kind you can make with booze that costs more than $20 a bottle and mixers that dont come out of a gun or a #5 can.

But before I get into the details, let me just say that as a mixologist Ive made drinks that fall into just about every one of the following categories and foisted them on the general public, whether at bars Ive consulted for, at charity events, at parties, during my occasional bartending shifts, or via the printed or pixelated word. I write, in other words, from inside the House of Bad. Its partly from making so many wrong drinks that Ive learned to make the occasional right one. Bearing that in mind, Im going to give examples here, some of mine, God help me, but many drawn from actual bars, lightly disguised (the purpose of this isnt to assign individual guilt, of which there is plenty to go around).

STRATEGIC ERRORS

Drinks with strategic errors will never be right because theyre wrong from the get-go; not even an Audrey Saunders, a Jim Meehan or an Alex Kratena, some of the top bartenders out there, could make them taste good without major surgery to the recipe. Here are a few of the most common mistakes.

Historical Errors

Warning signs: David Emburys recipe

Bad drinks, like disease, have always been with us. Some of them have interesting backstories. That does not mean they should be revived. Some of the most respected mixologists from the past, including Charles H. Baker, Jr., author of the legendary, and damned amusing, Gentlemans Companions, and particularly David Embury, the great theorist of mixing drinks, did not know how to balance a cocktail. Even the great 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book has far more wretched drinks in it than brilliant ones. Some whole periodsthe shockingly booze-forward 1950s; the sweet and sticky 70sare largely devoid of good drinks (the 70s ones, for instance, tend to require major surgery to make them drinkable, such as Jeffrey Morgenthalers addition of 125-proof Bookers Bourbon to the Amaretto Sour). You fish in these waters at your peril.

I learned this lesson back in 2005, when I was asked to provide an opening cocktail for a dinner featuring a few of New Yorks top French chefs, including Jacques Ppin and Andr Soltner, two of my culinary idols. I chose the Henri Souls Special, a drink recorded in Ted Sauciers 1951 drinks compendium Bottoms Up. Soul was the formidable presence behind Le Pavillon, New Yorks leading French restaurant in the 1940s and 1950s, and since Ppin had gotten his start in the city there I thought it would be an appropriate tribute.

Here, however, was the drink: 2.5 ounces Cognac, 1 teaspoon sugar, half a teaspoon lemon juice and two pieces of orange peel, shaken with ice and strained into a cocktail glass. OK, perhaps a trifle strong, I thought, but that was how they liked em then. That may have been true, but it was not how they liked em now: Ppin took one sip and left his on a convenient shrubbery-pot, and few people got through more than a few sips. They were right: the drink tasted like California jug wine fortified with rubbing alcohol. A good story does not fix a bad drink.

Also, see below under tactical errors.

Thematic Errors

Warning signs: garnishes fashioned to resemble known objects

A very fertile source of bad drinks is the idea that the drinks name should determine its ingredients. This can make for perfectly lovely drinkstake the Rob Roy, a Manhattan where Scotch whisky has been substituted for American ryebut it is risky, as it can lead to the choice of ingredients for reasons other than flavor and texture. A prime example is the drink I came across recently called the Indian Itch, where a few slices of the little, blisteringly-hot green Jwala pepper so common in Indian food were muddled in Indian rum, shaken with pineapple juice and a hearty pinch of curry powder (thats right, curry powder), strained into an ice-filled glass and topped with ginger ale. Yes, it conveyed the idea India. No, it did not also convey the idea drinkable.

A great deal of modern mixology flirts with this error: many modern drinks are thematic, and use unorthodox ingredients, from distilled dirt (seriously) to pigs eyeballs (again, seriously), to reinforce their themes. Are such drinks always bad? No. Should you be wary? Again, pigs eyeballs.

Volume Errors

Warning signs: bartender is either unenthusiastic or too enthusiastic at your order

By volume here I mean not the amount of liquid in the drink, but the amount of flavor. Some drinks have too little, but given the choice between, say, light, blended Irish whiskey shaken with lemon juice, simple syrup and a dash of elderflower liqueur, and Navy-strength gin, green Chartreuse, Fernet-Branca, Pimiento Bitters and rich, concentrated and sweet Pedro Ximnez sherry, Ill take the dull one. Two or three strong-flavored ingredients played against each other can work well, but with each additional one you risk the whole thing falling apart.

Unclubbable Ingredient Errors

Warning signs: herb garden behind the bar

The unclubbable ingredient is the one thing you add that refuses to get along with others, either by being loud and bullying and entirely blotting them out or by being passive-aggressive and persistent and speaking through all the silences. Smoky Scotch, Chinese baijiu, some mescals, absinthe, Fernet, and some pot-still rums all are dangerous in this way. But so are herbs, such as tarragon, chervil, and the like. They dont drown out the other flavors like the big spirits do, but they have a persistence that makes them linger when all the other flavors are gone. Thats not to say they cant be used well, just that they very often are not.

Brown Drink Errors

Warning signs: over 5 ingredients

Just as all colors, when blended, create brown, theres a flavor profile drinks tend to take on when theyve got too many ingredients. Sorta sweet, sorta bitter, sorta herbal, a little bit fruity, maybe sourish, too. Inexperienced mixologists, faced with a drink that doesnt quite work, have a tendency to keep adding ingredients until the thing tastes OK. Eventually, almost any drink, as long as it doesnt have an unclubbable ingredient, can be made to taste OK if you add enough stuff. But just mediocre isnt worth $15. For that, you want a drink that is focused; that doesnt taste like a little of this and a little of that, but rather has a point of view and a harmonious identity. The only way to get there is to strip away ingredients and start over with different ones; ones that get along well together. Knowing what those are takes experience. The older the mixologist, the fewer ingredients he or she tends to use. As the great jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge once told Dale DeGroff, dean of American bartenders, when I was younger I used to play all the notes; now, I just play the right ones.

So much for strategic errors.

TACTICAL ERRORS

Drinks with tactical errors are fundamentally sound, but something has gone wrong in their execution. Here, Im not going to bother with simple incompetencereaching for the wrong ingredient, under-stirring, pouring fruit-fly infested liquor or spoiled lime juice, serving a drink in a warm glass, things like that. Thats just bad bartending, not bad mixology.

Historical Errors

Warning signs: Imbibe, by one David Wondrich, and a collection of other history books behind the bar

Some drinks are bad because their makers have gotten hold of a piece of knowledge from the wrong end and are letting it mess them up. For example, a common error I encounter occurs with the New York Sour, a whiskey sour with a float of red wine and one of my favorite drinks. Sometimes when I order one the bartender will add egg white to the drink. Historically, some sours used egg white, but never this one. The egg white produces a layer of froth on top of the drink, which clashes with the layer of red wine also being added to it, and you end up with a drink topped with an unattractive, pinkish muck, rather than a visually-striking, thin red line. Here, history has trumped common sense.

Another historical error involving egg whites occurs when the bartender, following an old recipe, adds a whole egg white to a drink, not realizing that eggs were much smaller in 1918 than the supersized jumbo ones we get in 2018. A little egg white adds a nice texture; a lot, and youre tasting egg white. Nobody wants to taste egg white.

Arts & Crafts and Food Tech Errors

Warning signs: more than two house-made ingredients on the cocktail list, or bar uses purchased simple syrup

Its fine to make your ingredients if you can do them masterfully and theres no other way to get them. Alas, too many bars make theirs just to say that they did. I cant count the number of times Ive had an overly sour Jack Rose (apple brandy, lime juice and grenadine) because the bar makes its own grenadine from pomegranates and sugar rather than using the commercial stuff. Admittedly, the ingredients of the supermarket brands are fairly appalling, but at least theyre really sweet and brightly colored, which is why grenadine was called for in the first place. Nobody ever talked about the stuffs flavor. A good house-made grenadine will duplicate the heavy sweetness and intense red color of the commercial stuff, leaving out the high-fructose corn syrup, the artificial flavors and the dyes (okay, sometimes a little food coloring helps). A bad one, as one encounters more often than not, will be sour and brownish and will neither adequately sweeten nor color the drink. Then there are the clumpy orgeats, the gritty tonic waters, the weird-tasting bitters, the infused vermouths that no longer taste like vermouth. Homemade ingredients can be great, but they have to be great, so to speak. Nothing so-so should go in a drink, no matter who makes it.

Which brings us to the other side of the equation; the crappy commercial products that are mucking up a perfectly good drink. Otherwise-crafty bars that purchase things like simple syrup (sugar and water, mixed), lemon and lime juice and Bloody Mary mix should be avoided. Theyll charge you three times what the corner tap will for the same quality of drink, or worse.

Helping a Brother Out and Helping a Sponsor Out Errors

Warning signs: More than 10 bottles youve never heard of; no bottles youve never heard of

These are the booze versions of the Arts & Crafts/Food Tech errors. We live in an amazing time where literally hundreds of new, small distilleries are making every kind of spirit imaginable. Some of them are even good at it. Many of them, though, are not quite there yet. When I see a local gin I havent heard of being used in my Martini, I start to get very worried. The Martini is a pitiless drink, and it demands a tight, focused gin. All too many of the new brands, in an understandable move to differentiate themselves from whats already out there, employ wide ranges of non-traditional botanicals. These can make for a weird Martini. A Martini should not be weird.

The same goes for whiskey. Too many of the new brands are under-aged, which mean that Old-Fashioned will be hot and fumey and redolent of the wet-dog aroma of new-make grain spirit. Thats not what you want. On the other hand, if the bar carries only big national brands, or has the whole line of Large Producer Xs flavored vodkas or rums on display behind the bar, it might not be the place for a fine cocktail.

Glassware Errors

Warning signs: All the drinks look like a giant, translucent version of a kids cup-and-ball game

Many new cocktail bars, having expensive and elaborate ice programs, like to show off by putting as many drinks as possible in bucket glasses (basically, large whiskey glasses), each holding one huge ball or cube of ice. Thats fine for an Old-Fashioned. Its not fine, or even acceptable, for a vast range of other drinks that want to be straight up in a stemmed glass. If I have one more Last Word served to me on the rocks I swear I shall go to a mountain cave and speak no more.

We could go on with all this, and perhaps in the future we shall. In the meanwhile, be warned and drink well.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/dr-daves-field-guide-to-bad-cocktails

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