Sauced

Talk About A Cocktail: The Gin Gimlet

It’s officially spring, break out the gin and juice.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 23, 2011 at 10:15AM 3 Comments

Gimlet!

Photo Courtesy: venuez.be

Gimlets—with vodka—are what my parents drank when I was growing up. It was a special occasion thing, if you consider Friday to be a special occasion.

There was always a bottle of Rose’s Lime Juice squeezed onto the refrigerator door shelf between the Heinz Ketchup (Hunt’s ketchup is vile) and the Grey Poupon.

To a child, Rose’s Lime Juice is chief ambassador for that category of consumable called Things That Should Taste Delicious But Do Not (see also: baking chocolate, fruit cake, scalloped potatoes, and Hunt’s ketchup).

To an adult, Rose’s represents the fastest path to gimlet goodness. And it’s not only about expediency. Many adults swear by Rose’s, insisting that a gimlet with that stuff tastes better than one made with lime juice and simple syrup. Even Robert Hess thinks that. So if you think that, you’re in good company.

Maybe it’s those traumatizing swigs of it that I took as a child—I should have learned the first time, but kept trying again just in case it had turned into delicious soda since last I checked—but I do not enjoy Rose’s Lime Juice at all. So I like my gimlets with fresh squeezed and a little sweet stuff.

It was Chelsea Anderson at Sun Liquor who reignited my interest in gimlets when she made one in this video, and a gimlet with Plymouth gin was one of the the first drinks I tried at the new Sun Liquor. I loved my Sun Liquor gimlet—it was very limey but with no pucker factor, a triumph of balance. I have yet to find one I like better, though I’m happy to keep trying. Woodinville-distilled Voyager gin makes for a decent gimlet. I had one with Voyager at Local 360, where they’re using all PNW spirits in their drinks.

Honestly, if someone—like, say, my dad—serves me a gimlet with Rose’s, I’ll drink that thing happily. But I’ll be more happy that I’m hanging out with my dad than I am about the high fructose corn syrup in my cocktail. As for Hunt’s ketchup, that I can’t do.

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Tags: Cocktails, Gin, DIY Cocktails, Spring Drinking, Talk About A Cocktail

Lessons From Tales of the Cocktail Vancouver: Ice

Cold took center stage at the BC cocktail conference.

Posted by: Jessica Voelker on Mar 16, 2011 at 12:00AM 0 Comments

Jon Santer’s block of ice.

Ice—a subject I’ve written about before —was something of a theme at Tales Vancouver this year. At least half of Dave Arnold’s seminar was devoted to the subject.

The should-be-obvious-but-often-isn’t takeaway from that lesson: Don’t ever let anyone tell you that a certain shape/type of ice is colder than another, all bar ice is 0 degrees Celsius. An ice cube that melts slower is chilling less. I could try to summarize all the fascinating stuff Arnold explained about dilution in cocktails, but he does it himself so well: Read all about that here.

Later in the day, Charlotte Voisey (unfairly pretty and has an English accent) and Jon Santer led a second ice seminar. Voisey gave an engaging lecture detailing the history of commercial ice, and then Santer destroyed a big-ass block of it with a chainsaw.

But wait, you may be thinking, who cares?

Good question, and one I think that Santer addressed well when he recalled how he came to care about ice. He told us that back when he was a bartender in San Francisco, he and his colleagues wrung their hands over the fact that the drinks tasted better at craft cocktail bars in New York than they did on this coast. Why would that be, Santer remembered thinking, when the west coast has better spirits and much better produce than back east? He went on a reconnaissance trip to NYC’s top spots and there he discovered the answer. It came down to the care and attention they were putting in to their ice programs.

If you want good bar ice, it generally has to come to you by way of:

1. A Kold-Draft machine, an expensive device with an inverted evaporator system that produces cubes under pressure, locking out air and impurities.

2. A big-old block of commercial ice—purified, air removed, and agitated during the freezing process—delivered to a bar/restaurant and then broken down by way of a bartender with a chainsaw. (The ’tenders at Rob Roy and Mistralkitchen do that.)

Now that we’ve established the importance of good ice, the question is: How can you make the best possible ice at home, assuming you don’t have the space/time/funds to invest in a $200 block of it and break it down yourself? Firstly, if you’re going to serve cocktails, you want the freshest ice possible. Freeze it that day, if possible, in clean trays. Use filtered water. Boil it first. If you can freeze in a freezer that’s only used for ice, all the better. Santer suggested investing in a silicone tray. And if you want to freeze a big block and then chip the ice yourself into spheres or whatever, you might invest in a hotel pan. But that’s a whole other ball of…ice.

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Tags: Cocktails, Tales of the Cocktail, Tales from Tales, Tales Vancouver, Ice, DIY Cocktails