Bitters: strain and boil

After two weeks of daily shakings, it was time to open the jars of bitters. With each jar, the process was the same: strain the solids out of the liquid, add the solids to a pan of water, and boil.  The pots are cooling now, and when they cool completely, I'll put them in two more jars for a week of sitting and filtering.

The charred cedar jar smelled more like cedar than char when I opened it today, and while I was filtering it, the cheesecloth grew black and gunky with the ash from the char. I suspect that when I finish this process and get rid of the wood, the charred aroma will take primacy over the cedar.

The coffee pecan bitters smell amazing!  More like coffee than pecans, actually.  I suspect that is because coffee has more of a natural aroma than pecans, but once I throw the solids away and am just smelling whatever has seeped into the whiskey, the aromas will balance out.

Chop de Wood

My precaution got the better of me tonight when I got home from work, and I pulled out the long pieces of charred wood and chopped them smaller.  It didn't seem to make a difference in terms of how much wood was covered by whiskey, but at least it made me feel better.

After reviewing the recipe, I'm confused at how it's all supposed to go together. That much charred wood, plus other dried herbs, only covered in two cups of bourbon? Seems highly unlikely.

This is my skeptical face.

Then again, I tripled the amount of whiskey and still only cover half of the wood.  Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Bitters: a side project

I like cocktails. Whiskey drinks, mostly. Bourbons, ryes.  Manhattans, Old Fashioneds. Sazeracs.  Knowing my affection for booze concoctions, S gave me a book on bitters for my birthday. The book is divided into three sections: part I is a history of the bitters, a discussion of the social impact of bitters, and a survey of the more significant bitters, both historically and current.  Part III is a collection of recipes for cocktails and foodstuffs that can be made (or enhanced) with bitters.  The middle section of the book contains some discussion of barware, equipment, and a number of recipes for bitters themselves. There are perhaps a half-dozen recipes, each with a complex list of unusual ingredients (cassia? wild cherry bark?) and an alchemical creation process (store in dark place. shake daily. repeat for two weeks. filter. boil.).

Over the past few days, I’ve motored around LA collecting the ingredients and materials needed to make a couple of these recipes. I also cut and dried some orange peels (they're downstage center in the photo).  Here’s everything, nicely laid out and ready to get made:

Bet you can't identify everything!

I chose two recipes to start with: Charred Cedar Bitters and Coffee and Pecan Bitters.  The basic process to make each is basically the same: combine ingredients and booze, let sit, shake daily, filter, boil, refilter, skim. Today, we combine ingredients.

The Book

I ran into some trouble yesterday when the shop I went to for herbs didn't have wild cherry bark. This was the second shop I tried, so I punted and thought I'd combine a few different herbs as a substitution.

This morning, I got up early to fire up the grill and char the cedar planks. Once those were cooled, I scraped off the ash and broke them into pieces. Into the jars went spices, herbs, peels, wood, beans, nibs, and nuts. Then, the bourbon!  You need to add a high-proof bourbon so that it can soak up the flavor without losing too much potency.

Here are the jars, ready to go:

So, moving forward, I have two concerns.  The first is that the cedar chips are not fully immersed in the whiskey.  In fact, I've had to triple the suggested amount of whiskey in the cedar chips jar, and there's still a lot of wood sticking up. I may go back after a few days and cut the wood smaller so that it can be fully immersed in the boozy boozy goodness.  The second is whether the bitters will be useful without the wild cherry bark (my guess is it will).  Stay tuned!

Thank you, Endeavour

After millions of miles flown, the Space Shuttle Endeavour took a victory lap around LA before landing at LAX. Fortunately, I had some time this morning to catch it, so I went out with a friend and shot it over Griffith Observatory.  Here are my shots (click here to see a slideshow):

the summer is winding down...

Soon, it's back to school time for me!  UCI starts classes late, so still have a few weeks left before I have to get back in the classroom mode.  In the meantime, I've been spending most of my time working from home on a couple of big projects:

• A new class, The Rock'n'Roll Spectacle Show, at UCI, which I'll be teaching in the Winter Term. The class tracks the design of rock and roll shows from the late '60s through to the present day.  We'll be looking at key players, key concepts, and key technological advances. It's a lot of work, and I've been trying to watch one concert DVD a day every Monday-Friday since late July. I started with The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and have gotten as current as Genesis in 2007. I'm backtracking a bit now - today I watched the Talking Heads in 1983. Along the way I've also conducted interviews, and I've been reading a LOT of back issues of Live Design and Lighting & Sound America magazines.
• Directing/Producing The Radio Plays at UCI. We're doing three plays in one night this year as an experiment in theatre without a visual element. All acting and sound design. I'm producing the whole event and directing two of the plays.
• BUILD at The Geffen Theatre and VENUS IN FUR at Theaterworks Hartford both started rehearsal this week.
• After a long period of planning and chasing paper tigers, I finally have a new professional website for work-related things. Check me out here.  The site also has a blog, which I'll be using for professional posts.  So, that makes three blogs: this one for my personal life, this one for my freelancer life, and this one for my UCI work (the entire UCI sound design program has access to this one).  It's a lot to keep track of, but it's important for me to keep these parts of my life somewhat separate.