Alcoholist Yet another cocktail blog.

TotC2009 notes: Chemistry of Cocktails

(Event link)

Because it was led by Melkon Khosrovian, who co-founded Modern Spirits and the TRU organic spirit line (I love the latter’s gin, which is more his wife, Litty Mathew, pictured there), I was looking forward to this one. There is some good stuff here, but the presentation’s a bit flat as compared with some of the other seminars. Oh well, it’s still interesting content.

• Modern Spirits creates “artisan” vodkas, consults on infusion/spirit food pairings
• Discussing:
  • where flavor comes from,
  • expansion rate of spirits,
  • and spirits & food pairings
• Flavor
  • comes from:
    • fermented material
    • oils, extracts, etc.
    • wood from the storage barrel
  • as an example, rose petal vodka
    • discussed with a parfumerie, who synthesis of just the odor; using the whole plant for vodka because spirits are not just odor
    • chefs were pairing this vodka with oysters and they didn’t understand why; parfumerie explained that the various vegetal and salty flavors and odors in the rose petal match with oysters because they have the same mix
  • another rundown on the modern understanding of taste that Sebastian Reaburn gave earlier, but including “fat” rather than “smoke”
  • Lemonine is the odor in citrus (I guess I just wrote this down to remember it?)
  • Methods for extracting essence from an orange, ranging from more complex and less intense at the top to less complex and more intense at the bottom:
    • maceration
    • essences, extractions, distallates
    • synthetic (eg, perfumes)
  • The keys to layering liquors in a dirnk are complexity and intensity.
  • Tasting: comparing TRU2 (macerated) gin against Blue Coat (distilled) gin; both are good, but trying to do different things (also, kind of unfair, since TRU2 has twice as many botanicals, but who’s counting)
  • Next was a Bronx cocktail, made with both TRU2 and Blue Coat, to demonstrate how the flavors present themselves across tasting the drink because of their different flavor profiles, best represented with a recreation of Melkon’’s diagram:
    
• Expansion
  • all alcohols dissipate at different rates
  • this matters because you can alter the base spirit to change the character (bold v. mellow) of a drink
  • tasting a tea-infused vodka, the tea prickles all of the mouth because of its tannins with just wheat vodka; reformulated with potato & wheat to redistribute the taste, but they’re “not sure” why it works
  • some bases are more (potato) or less (wheat) powerful
  • flavors within vodka:
    • grape – middle of the tongue, expands slightly
    • cane – expands over the tongue further
    • potato – covers the whole tongue
    • corn – over the full palate
  • wheat or rye – almost the same as above, wheat is more pepery, most expansive flavor
  • there was a nice chart on which of the above flavors are used in which spirits (vodka, liqueurs, gin, whiskey, rum, brandy; descending variety of source flavors), but I couldn’t copy it down quickly enough
  • In a Sazerac, there’s a sliding scale from mellow to bold with the relative quantities of cognac to rye.
• Food pairings:
  • Melkon’s fiancé (Litty, of TRU) hated vodka/spirits (preferred wine), but his family always drank spirits with food; he got her interested through vodka infusions
  • She said “Oh, the food tastes different with liquor!” -but she could just taste it better, in Melkon’s opinion
  • Restaurants in the US are moving to small plates, meaning we need something as a palate cleanser between tastes.
  • It’s challenging to pair mixed drinks with dishes, as both are complex mixtures of flavors.
  • “Dishes are getting bolder.”
  • Small plates are worldlier, molecular, richer, bravier, and spicier.
  • Cocktails address this change because they provide a wider array of flavors and serve as palate cleansers
  • Chefs like this because they don’t have to cook to a specific wine taste profile, cocktails can be modified to match the food.
  • Old thinking: wines cleanse the palate and cocktails dull it.
  • This is scientfically wrong: sommeliers claim acidic wine cleans, but that’s also not true; wine instills its own tastes.
  • Explanation is a hydrophobic reaction:
    • Wines are acidic, so they cover the fats on the tongue, but don’t mix with them, but just wash away when you swallow.
    • Cocktails are higher proof and absorb fat and wash it off the tastebuds.
  • Foods that we generally eat are 5% to 45% fat (ranging from grilled chicken to bacon or foie gras).
  • These should be paired with cocktails that are 20% to 45% ABV
  • On that scale, the proof ranges from 4x the fat to 1x.
  • The fat-o-meter (what percentage fat various foods are):
    

    foie gras	44%
    bacon	42%
    chorizo	38%
    smoked gouda	32%
    roast duck	28%
    goat cheese	21%
    porterhouse steak	19%
    lamb shank	19%
    carrot cake	18%
    tuna belly	13%
    fried chicken	9%
    grilled chicken	5%

  • An example pairing: lamb au poivre& bleu cheese with a veal demi glace and roast sage(flavorful & fatty) with black truffle vodka (high proof) – enough flavor in the cocktail to match, strong enough to cleans
  • Pairing tasting: cheesecake with lemon vodka and also a diluted lemon vodka: higher proof is a better match, and the more diluted vodka tastes boozier (because it’s absorbed less fat).
• Q&A tidbits:
  • It doesn’t really work to pair salad with cocktails, because there’s very little fat content to work with.
  • It’s better to use distilled water in cocktails and for bringing the proof of infusions & macerations down because it forms a better ionic bond with the spirit and the flavors, which leads to: Consider adding a filter on your Kold Draft machine’s input side.
  • Mixing flavors with alcohol produces more pronounced flavors because the alcohol evaporates in your mouth, carrying the flavors. Mixing flavors with water softens them.