Tinctures, Part 3

Another update on the tincture batch.

The lemon tincture and all of the fruit tinctures that I started a few weeks ago are done.  Yesterday, after capturing a half-dozen grapefruit peels, I started a jar of grapefruit tinctures.  Also, the bittering agents that came as dried leaves (leafs?) or powders are all out and strained.  That means that in addition to the grapefruit tincture, the only ones left are the woody bittering agents (barks, peppercorns, cardomom pods, etc.).

I've tasted a few of the bittering agents, and they're definitely bitter!  All I do is dip my fingertip in and taste it, but still, they make my tongue go numb. And what an intense flavor!

I think I've got another week or so before I can strain the bittering agents, and at that point, I can start experimenting with creating cocktail bitters. Any requests?

Star Wars/Derby Day BBQ

Yesterday, S and I hosted a cookout at our place.  It was partly in honor of Derby Day, and partly to recognize Star Wars Day (May The Fourth Be With You!).   We had lots of people over for lots of grilled foods (sausages, hot dogs, garden burgers, shrimp, salmon, corn, asparagus, pineapple), salads (potato, brussel sprout/kale, quinoa), cakes (glazed fruit, chocolate), cookies, beer, wine, juice, and home-made Arnold Palmers.  We tidied up the backyard area and set out some chairs and a sun sail.  The grill was on all afternoon, and the Star Wars trilogy (the good ones) were playing in the living room.  A good time was had by all!

Tinctures, Part 2

It's been a week since I started the tinctures, so maybe it's time for a quick update. Every day I shake all of the jars, which, in addition to the functional benefit of encouraging the infusing, also gets me in the room to monitor the process.

The floral tinctures are already completed. The hibiscus was the first one done, followed shortly by the rosemary, juniper, lavender, sassafras, and a few others. There's no easy way to tell when they complete; you just have to taste them every day (taste, do NOT just smell, as the smell is pretty rancid). Then, when they're done, you remove the solids, rinse the jar, and re-jar the liquid.

Most of what's left still infusing are barks and woody bits, though I did add a jar of lemon tincture to the shelf a few days ago. It's already beautiful and yellow!

Tinctures, part 1

Last fall, I made a couple of batches of bitters, using recipes from Brad Thomas Parsons' great book on the subject. Both batches came out well, but through reading the book in detail, it became apparent that the way to really customize the bitters was to make them by blending tinctures. Simply, a tincture is an infusion of one ingredient into a solvent. Bitters tend to be a blend of tinctures of bittering agents (roots, etc.) and flavoring agents (fruit, etc.). So, for this next step of my explorations, we cleared off a few shelves in the music room and put up some tinctures.

Rosemary, Juniper, Ginger, Orange, Clove, and Hibiscus tinctures.

Right now, there are about 25 jars of tinctures on the shelf. Some are woody (Cherry Bark, Arnica Root), some are leafy (Sassafras, Rosemary), and some are floral (Hibiscus, Rose Hips). I'm using different solvents for different ingredients. For lighter flavors, I use Everclear, but for thicker or woodier flavors (like the Ginger or Clove), I use a high-proof rum or bourbon. I still have a few tinctures to make, but once they're jarred up, all you do is shake them every day and wait.  The floral tinctures will be ready in a few days, but the woodier flavors will take up to a few weeks.

USITT

Last week was final exam week at UCI, but it was also the week of the annual USITT conference. This year, the conference was in Milwaukee, so theatre designers and technicians from around the country converged in the frigid north for four days of conferences, seminars, panels, and socializing.  Here are the highlights of the trip, from my perspective:

• The Guerrilla Sound Challenge, a 3-hour, do-it-yourself, sound design sprint, which I officiated this year.  You can read all about it (and hear the pieces) here.
• Me Inc, The Business of Being an Artist.  I chaired this panel, featuring three sound designers of national repute: Toy Deiorio, Jim vanBergen, and Tony-Award winner Rob Kaplowitz. We talked about how to make a career as a designer/technician. The audience was packed for this session, filled with designers of all ilks, stage managers, and technicians. I got a lot of great feedback on this session, and I feel pretty good about doing a good job filling in for pal/chair Brad Berridge, who couldn't make the conference this year.
• The Sound Commission spent a whole day focused on networking, with John Huntington, Davin Huston, and Ellen Juhlin sitting on a panel. They talked about setting up networks, good network management skills, innovation in networking, etc.  I was really excited to see how big AVB has been getting. 
• Food and drink.  Ellen was our alcohol divining rod, and she led us to a number of great bars. Distil had some terrific cocktails and a chill vibe, and Stir, while more drab in appearance, had a well-cultivated bar and some innovative bitters.  

The low point of the conference was, for me, a session on video design that I attended. It was hosted by the Scenic Design commission, and it was almost entirely useless.  There were five panelists, but only one of them was a full-time video designer. Additionally, that one designer was the only person on the panel who appeared to have an idea about how professional theatre is done.  Of the other four panelists, three were professors with limited professional experience, and one was a scenic design student at one of their schools.  The discussion was uninspiring, and I ended up leaving halfway through.  

Now, with USITT behind us, Mike, Josh, and I are back at UCI with the rest of the cohorts, in the middle of three days of system training/tuning and mixing seminars with Tony Meola, Richard Bugg, Steve Bush, and Gavin Canaan.  It's part technical training, part storytime, and part art.  Fascinating!