Friday 17 December 2010

The layering of a drink

Layered cocktails are always appealing to the eye.  this is due to the colours and patterns created.  Yet there is more to these drinks than meets the eye.  Firstly you need to know the density of the liquors and spirits you are using so below is a copy of the Gravity Chart







Gravity chart for layered cocktails
When making layered drinks, also known as a Pousse Cafe, you'll need to know which ingredients are heavier than the others. The technique is simple; the heaviest liquor is poured into the glass first, and the lighter ones are layered carefully on top with the lightest one on top.
This table list shows some of the most common liquors, along with their Specific Gravity that is the weight of the liquor relative to water. The higher values indicate heavier liquors.
Name
Gravity
Color
Southern Comfort
0.97

Tuaca
0.98
Amber
Water
1.00
White
Green Chartreuse
1.01
Green
Cointreau
1.04
White
Peach liqueur
1.04
Dark amber
Sloe gin
1.04
Deep red
Kummel
1.04
White
Peppermint schnapps
1.04
White
Benedictine
1.04

Brandy
1.04
Amber
Midori melon liqueur
1.05
Green
Rock and Rye
1.05
Amber
Apricot brandy
1.06
Amber
Blackberry brandy
1.06
Dark red
Cherry brandy
1.06
Dark red
Peach brandy
1.06
Dark amber
Campari
1.06
Red
Yellow Chartreuse
1.06
Yellow
Drambuie
1.08

Frangelico
1.08

Orange Curacao
1.08
Orange
Triple sec
1.09
White
Tia maria
1.09
Brown
Apricot liqueur
1.09
Amber
Blackberry liqueur
1.10
Dark red
Amaretto
1.10
Light brown
Blue Curacao
1.11
Blue
Cherry liqueur
1.12
Dark red
Galliano
1.11
Golden yellow
Green Crème de Menthe
1.12
Green
White Crème de Menthe
1.12
White
Strawberry liqueur
1.12
Red
Parfrait d'Amour
1.13
Violet
Coffee liqueur
1.14
Dark brown
Crème de Banane
1.14
Yellow
Dark Crème de Cacao
1.14
Brown
White Crème de Cacao
1.14
White
Kahlua
1.15
Dark brown
Crème de Almond
1.16

Crème de Noyaux
1.17
Bright red
Anisette
1.17
White
Crème de Cassis
1.18
Dark Red

So go have fun and start making your own versions of the pousse cafe.

And the Award for best Mojito goes to..

Recently our mojitos have been getting reviewed and it is great pleasure to announce that Bar Sixteen has been awarded 10/ 10 for our Mojitos. for more information or to post a review please visit ilovemojito. Thanks

Thursday 16 December 2010

Why Is Mixology a Dying Art...

The main problem is bartenders and bar owners. For a long time style counted more than taste. We can collectively blame Tom Cruise and the movie Cocktail for that. Flair bartending is great entertainment and there is no doubt that it can fill a bar and get people excited and smiling. But it can be time killer and behind the bar we need to get drinks out and fast, otherwise we’d be unemployed. The volume of drinks sold can generally increase the tip pool and the owners profits. So more drinks means more money. There are bartenders, like myself, who can generate the same amount in tips, by selling half the drinks. This is called customer service, but you need the proper attitude (i.e. no ego, just confidence) and you must be willing to listen to your guest. More on this in a future post.
So any bartender who wants to entertain will generally cut back on the types of drinks they make. They'll throw out the muddled drinks, the blended drinks and anything with too many components. That way they can serve more drinks and get more tips. Ask for a Mojito in a busy nightclub style bar, and you'll most likely get rum, club soda and a spoon of granulated sugar at the bottom of the glass. In some places if the bartender actually cares, they'll say that they don't have time and come back when it isn't so busy.
The other issue is the quality of the drink. Many bartenders don't have a sense of taste, nor do they care about how a drink tastes. To some, being a bartender means going out to the bar to party, but just standing on the other side of the wood. It is not perceived as an art or career, like being a chef. It is usually thought of as a job to get you through school.
To become a bartender you can walk in off the street and start making drinks. Even in fine dining establishments, the appearance of the bartender means more than their capabilities. No reputable restaurant will hire a "nobody" to work in their kitchen. And if they do, they usually start in the dish pit and slowly move up through the ranks to prep or line cook. Basically, there are no qualifications needed to be a bartender.
Once behind the bar these newly minted bartenders start generating cocktails. When a customer sits down at the bar and starts feeling brave, they may try to order something different. This newly minted bartender, doesn't have a clue, but instead of looking in a book, (time killer) they just whip up something and serve it, usually a very strong, unbalanced thing in a glass. After the first sip, the guest is mortified by the malevolent flavour and chokes it down. Fearful of this experience, the guest will take weeks to recover from the experience. Next time they will just order a simple cocktail that, even if made poorly, still won't taste all that bad. How can you mess up a White Russian or a Blue Lagoon? It is impossible!
The other common experience is if a guest orders a creative cocktail, the bartender will look the customer straight in the eye, say "I don’t know what that is or how to make it, how about of Pina Colada?" Very few people are going to argue, so they relent and start sipping on a Pina Colada.
To make a long story short, the problem is that customers don't have confidence in their bartenders. It seems every bartender makes their drinks different and doesn't really care what the drinks taste like. Ask a bartender what he truly thinks of a drink you order and you’ll probably get a "I dunno?" or a can answer designed to part you from your money. There is also downward pressure from the bar owners to sell more drinks, which increase profits, so the bartenders have less time to be creative. To be fast, the bartenders just makes the tried and true top 10 cocktails, they don’t taste bad, but they rarely taste great. The status quo will rule until bartenders become better trained and the same quality standard applied to the kitchen, applies to the bar.

Chilli Mai Tai with a Pina Colada toothpaste

The Mai Tai 

The Mai Tai is an alcoholic cocktail based on rum, Curaçao liqueur, and lime juice, popular in "Polynesian-style" settings.
It was purportedly invented at the Trader Vic's restaurant in Oakland, California in 1944. Trader Vic's rival, Don the Beachcomber, claimed to have created it in 1933 at his then-new eponymous bar (later a famous restaurant) in Hollywood. Don the Beachcomber's recipe is more complex than that of Vic and tastes quite different.
"Maita'i" is the Tahitian word for "good." The spelling of the drink, however, is two words.
The Trader Vic story of its invention is that the Trader (Victor J. Bergeron) created it one afternoon for some friends who were visiting from Tahiti. One of those friends, Carrie Guild, tasted it and cried out: "Maita'i roa ae!" (Literally "very good!", figuratively "Out of this world! The Best!") — hence the name

The Classic recipe is as follows 
1oz White Rum
3/4oz Orgeat
3/ 4oz Curaçao
1/ 2oz Fresh Lime Juice
1/ 4oz Grenadine
1oz Dark Rum
Shake all ingredients except the dark rum together in a mixer with ice. Strain into glass and float the dark rum onto the top. Garnish and serve with straw.

The Chilli Mai Tai
Now for something different using the same recipe as above add 1/4 a teaspoon of brazilian chilli powder - if you want more spice add more. leave this ready to shake and serve whilst preparing the Pina Colada toothpaste.
The Pina Colada Tooth Paste





For the tooth paste you want to mix 15ml coconut milk (syrup if milk is unavailable) 30ml pineapple juice and a splash of white rum then 50ml of warm water, add a teaspoon of xanthan, stir, bring to boil and leave to set.  


Now for serving
on a toothbrush add the Pina Colada toothpaste and leave on the side.  In a rocks glass fill with ice and then strain the Mai Tai over it add the dark rum on top.   
For drinking I personally recommend to drink the Mai Tai and when your mouth needs cooling brush the tooth paste round your mouth leaving it feeling tropically refreshed. 
The Chilli Mai Tai

The Berry Brandy Brulee

Tis the season to be jolly so why not leave Father Christmas an extra special treat with his mince pie...

This drink is currently our most popular winter cocktail at Bar Sixteen and with Christmas round the corner here is a truly remarkable winter warmer.

The balloon on a rocks and ingited
In your cognac balloon throw in raspberries blackberries strawberries and blackcurrant's and a generous measure of your favoured cognac, mine personally is Remy Martin but any will do.  Now for the fun part, rest your balloon on a rocks glass filled with hot water and slowly start to rotate the balloon so you are coating all the insides with the cognac.  Now patience is important for this part with a lighter take it to the edge of the glass and spark trying to ignite the cognac in the glass.   Once a flame is there rotate the glass continuously until the drink starts to bubble.  Take a glass and trap the air so the flame goes out and sit back and enjoy a berry infused cognac but be careful not to burn your tongue...


If you have problems lighting the drink in a spray bottle add some absinthe or overproof rum spray into the glass and then spray over the flame into the glass this should ignite instantly.

Snowballs and Supermarket deals

Whiskeys and Cognacs
So it's that time of the year again supermarkets have started there Christmas campaigns with there numerous offers on spirits that follow the same format of spirit and mixer please but here's some ideas that can really make these spirits more useful. Especially with entertaining guests and getting into the Christmas spirit. 

Gin - a simple recipe following an old British classic use 50ml of gin and 20ml of almond syrup - monin if possible and then boil milk add this to a mug stir and add chocolate sprinkles to it. 

Vodka - this is a herbal warm cocktail with those christmassy flavours of berries. Boil apple juice and add raspberries and blackberries and orange peel to infuse add the vodka and serve in mugs or heat proof glasses this is a ratio of 4.1 apple to vodka 

Jd - simply place a brown sugar cube in a glass splash with soda add a dash of cinnamon syrup stir until sugar dissolves add 50ml of jd and 25 ml of frangelico for hazelnut or disaranno for almond, or for even more difference try creme de figue. Fill with ice and enjoy. This can be done with rhum as well but substitute the nutty flavours for a vanilla or coffee liquor. 

And finally instead of buying in baileys make it that bit more special and make your own. All you need is double cream a cheap whisky and a chocolate liquor (Mozart is my personal favourite for this as they have a White dark milk orange mint and range of nut flavoured chocolate liquors) then in a glass add 20ml cream 20ml whisky and 20ml choco liquor. This is for a basic taste if you want it more creamy add more cream more chocolatey add more liquor and more whisky based add more whisky. 

The Negroni

The Negroni is one of the most important aperitif cocktails.   The bitter smack on your taste buds just gets you ready to eat.
Classic Negroni


History
While the drink's origins are obscured by time, the most widely reported version is that it was invented in Florence, Italy in 1919, at Caffè Casoni, now called Caffè Giacosa. Count Camillo Negroni invented it by asking the bartender, Fosco Scarselli, to strengthen his favorite cocktail, the Americano, by adding gin rather than the normal soda water. The bartender also added an orange garnish rather than the typical lemon garnish of the Americano to signify that it was a different drink.


Variations.
The standard recipe is very well balanced; however there are some variants. The Negroni sbagliato ("wrong"in Italian) uses sparkling wine (e.g., prosecco) instead of gin. Negroski is a recipe with vodka again as substitute for gin. Punt e Mes Negroni instead replaces standard red vermouth with a specific, distinctively more bitter-tasted brand called Punt e Mes.


In a Modern Drinking World.
Now this drink in the modern world can be revamped and I have discovered two alternatives that are a real treat to the taste.   The first variation happened when a supplier instead of sending me orange bitters sent me Luxardo Bitter Orange liquor.   Instantly the decision was to send it back as who drinks bitter orange.  Yet after tasting the product the mind starts to think of tastes smells and uses for the product, a bitter cosmo aimed at a male audience to generic.  How about my old favourite the old fashioned, yet this really isnt doing anything to a drink that contains bitter orange  then alas what about substituting the Campari from the Negroni, after trying it doesnt really work but there is something there hiding ready to be released into the modern world. . .


In a rocks over ice add build 
1oz Gin
1oz Bitter Orange
1oz Campari
stir and add an orange wedge 
The Old Negroni Fashioned


Yet this didnt stop going back to the old fashioned idea again.  Instead lets play around with the products more. . . then it happened two beautiful classics merge into one powerful drink that leaves you saying wow - the same wow you get when you introduce an American to Ardbeg so I bring to you to try The Old Negroni Fashioned 


In a rocks glass muddle a sugar cube with a splash of soda water, then add 
1/ 2oz Campari
1/2oz Bitter Orange
1oz Woodford reserve
stir together and fill with ice cubes then add a orange slice and cherry.