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LIFESTYLE BEYOND THE GLASS

LIFESTYLE BEYOND THE GLASS

LIFESTYLE BEYOND THE GLASS Official GUIDE

#15 AUG/SEPT 2011 DrinkMeMag.com

LIFESTYLE BEYOND THE GLASS

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Jim Beam® Devil’s Cut™ Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 45% Alc./Vol. ©2011 James B. Beam Distilling Co., Clermont, KY

Because it's what you make of it...

Ingredients

ISSUE 15

Note from the Editor 8 Design: A Touch of Wood 10 Homecraft DrinkMeMag.com

6

2

The confluence of newbie brewers

by Brian Yaeger

12

Book Reviews

16

Micro-Distilleries and Craft Beer

by Daniel Yaffe

New Booze: Pierda Almas

By Amy Murray

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San Francisco Cocktail Week

Special section

24 The

Democratization of Wine

Crushing grapes with the commoners

by Victoria Gutierrez

28 Profile:

30 The

John Lunn, Distiller

by Samir Osman

History of Craft Cocktails

Tradition, tradition!

by M. Quinn Sweeney

34 Nano

38 Still

Distilling

The intricate craft of spirit making

by Nate Nicoll and Chris Jew

48 A

Breweries

Starting out small

by Brian Yaeger

Reason to Leave the Savannah

Homemade hooch around the world

by Corey Hill

54 Websites

to Drink to 56 Eat Your Booze:

Slow-cookin' with rye

by Denise Sakaki

59 Libation

Laureate

By Ale Gasso

60 Featured

Recipes drink me 3

LIFESTYLE BEYOND THE GLASS

This is a QR code. You can scan it with your smart phone and link directly to us. Want to find out more?

Check out RedLaser.com

Editor In Chief: Daniel Yaffe TRAVEL Editor: Paul Ross Art DIrector: Lance Jackson Web Developer: Aman Ahuja Copy EditorS: Victoria Gutierrez Online EditorIAL: Samir Osman

Advisory Board: Jeremy Cowan, H. Ehrmann, Cornelius Geary, Hondo Lewis, David Nepove, Debbie Rizzo, Genevieve Robertson, Carrie Steinberg, Gus Vahlkamp, Dominic Venegas

contributOrs: Frank Bulter, Crushpad, Craig Edelman, Ale Gasso, Liza Gershman, Victoria Gutierrez, Stephanie Henry, Lance Jackson, Mick Jeffries, (MickJeffries.com), Craig Lee, (CraigLeePhoto.com), Nate Nicoll & Chris Jew of Whiskeywall, Dania Maxwell, Amy Murray, Samir Osman, Paul Oswell, Anand Patel (flickr.com/photos/58088438@ N03), Walter Quirtmair, Paul Ross, Denise Sakaki, Tim Stahl (StahlPhotographics.com), Brian Yaeger, Wendy Yip (flickr.com/ photos/yipski/4994457000), Sierra Zimei

Thank you: Sangita Devaskar, Sacha Ferguson, Stephanie Henry, Sitar Mody, Skylar Werde, Peter Vestinos

Publisher: Open Content www.opencontent.tv Eriq Wities & Daniel Yaffe

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Drink Me magazine is printed on 20% recycled (10% postconsumer waste) paper using only soy based inks. Our printer meets or exceeds all Federal Resource Conservation Act (RCRA) standards and is a certified member of the Forest Stewardship Council.

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The entire contents of Drink Me magazine are Š 2011 and may not be reproduced or transmitted in any manner without written permission.

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For more information 415.362.1116 www.sfbartending.com

f you look up “craft” in the dictionary, you might find something like this: “an art, trade or occupation requiring a special skill.” Google it, and you’ll find all sorts of easter eggs, crayons and paper cutouts . . . for now, let’s just stick with the definition.

It’s not quite a hobby and not quite a manufacturing machine.

I recently sat down at one of my favorite bars in New York and ordered a drink – I watched as my bartender meticulously measured ounces of a hand-made mezcal, added a few other small-batch liqueurs, a few drops of their house made bitters, chiseled off and shaped a piece of freshly frozen ice and carefully garnished my drink with the most beautiful strip of fragrant lemon peel you’ve ever smelled. It was the pinnacle of potable art. Needless to say, the drink was incredible with each piece handcrafted – a single drink that probably couldn’t be replicated anywhere in the world – thanks to the bartender, the agave roaster, the distiller, the bitters maker, and the farmer for their unique and careful craft. That’s the magic of having the touch of a human hand. I could say the same about my friend's pint of local toasted oatmeal stout.

In a sense, every issue of Drink Me could be a “craft” issue. Not bringing you the same old status quo, we’re continuing to mash up amazing art from local artists and carefully written articles and hand making every piece of it. This issue is a nod to all of those who have made our favorite drinks what they are. Behind your favorite beer, wine, or spirit, a visionary has painted its unique taste with fruit and grain and has shaped its profile from field to bottle. An art that requires a special skill indeed.

It seems there is always something to celebrate – this issue, we’re cheering to San Francisco Cocktail Week.

We hope you’ll be able to join to toast to the artists who have put their spirits in our glass…and the others who have mixed it up just right.

Salud, Daniel Yaffe

SEE VIDEOS ABOUT THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE VODKA.

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Design: At Home

the 20

A Touch of Wood

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Boxed wine is making strides from your poor college days. Companies are using innovative, sexy packaging and shying away from the awkward little pour spouts that used to spray all over the place. A new company called the20 is thinking outside of ye olde box to deliver better crafted wines. They've made a wooden case and pour spout that you'll be proud to have up on your counter - and designed a great way to enjoy wine without having the need to finish the whole bottle (their bags actually come in 3 liters). They are partnering with hand picked wineries to ship you sustainable bags of wine that keep fresh for up to 4 weeks and fit nicely into your reusable Red Oak cask (the same wood used to make many wine barrels) the20wines.com

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Woodinville Whiskey Company’s Age Your Own Whiskey Kit

By Denise Sakaki One part science project, one part happy hour in the making, the Age Your Own Whiskey Kit offers whiskey fans the opportunity to nerd-out and have the magically delicious process of un-aged clear whiskey transforming into caramelized gold, right under their own roof. The kit comes with two 750 ml bottles of Woodinville Whiskey Company’s White Dog un-aged whiskey at a rip-roaring 110 proof, which will mellow in a mini oak barrel. The only thing it doesn’t come with is time and patience – you’ll have to provide that, as the distillery recommends about 3 to 6 months of aging time, although the popularity of this kit has users suggesting 3 to 4 months for optimal balanced flavor. The kit also comes with two tasting glasses, perfect for sneaking a sip of the whiskey as it ages, so you can decide for yourself when it’s cocktail hour.

WoodinvilleWhiskeyCo.com

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H ome

craft

DrinkMeMag.com

By Brian Yaeger

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Rhubarb Blonde Ale. Peanut Butter Chocolate Porter.

Lavender Orange-blossom Mead. Smoked Cinnamon Oatmeal Stout. Anyone can throw the kitchen sink into a brew kettle, but it takes more than imagination to make the results sing, which is why these concoctions weren’t just among the stranger beverages I tried recently, they were among the best.

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he American Homebrewers Association purports that there are 750,000 homebrewers nationwide (that’s almost one out of every 400 Americans).

Quite likely, there has been no greater gathering of craftsmen than the 33rd Annual National Homebrewers Conference that took place in San Diego from June 17-19. This AHAsponsored event once again set a new record for sold-out attendance, having welcomed 1,900 people within the fraternity of homebrewers from all 50 states and Canada.

Not only is nearly every commercial braumeister or brewster a former homebrewer, but many keep tabs on what the amateurs are doing as inspiration in their professional workplace. Most notable are the hundreds of pro-am beers, wherein a brewery invites a regular hobbyist—albeit one with great talent and deep interest—to create his or her own recipe on a large-scale system and actually sell it in their brewpub or occasionally bottled. NHC had no shortage of such proams. What makes those fun is that in a few years from now, you can expect more than a few of those beers and those homebrewers will make the leap to the pros.

I, for one, can’t wait to say “I drank them when.”

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The numbers don’t tell the story, but they’re jaw-dropping nonetheless. Some 1,650 people entered virtually 7,000 homebrews into the competition. Over 700 kegs of homebrewed beer were on site at the conference, meaning if you attempted to try just one ounce of each beer (with plenty of honey mead, cider, and perry—pear cider—as well), you’d have to drink 15 pints worth each day.

Of course, that wasn’t all the beer on hand.

Dozens of craft breweries provided hundreds of kegs and cases of beer. As these beers were poured, the brewmasters freely offered tips for brewing their notable styles if not flat out answered questions about how to clone their beers. The brewing community is amazingly open source. Better still, it’s a two-way street between those who brew for a living and those for whom it’s a hobby.

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Swallow Your Words: Book Reviews

MiCRo-Distilleries in the U.S. and Canada Author: David Reimer Sr. Subject: A detailed catalog of more

distilleries than you knew existed

Synopsis & Review: Despite craft spirits being only about 5% of the entire market, mirco-distilleries are popping up all around the country. The void that was created in the years after prohibition is slowly being filled in. Everything from artisan vodka companies to craft whiskey distilleries now dot almost every state (and several provinces in Canada). Moral of the story: if you’re interested in checking one out, there’s one not far away. Author David Reimer has put together the most comprehensive book cataloging the hundreds of craft distilleries – including their history to their product line and information to visit.

Why we recommend it:

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If you want to look up a bit more about High West’s many whiskies or discover New Deal Distillery’s Hot Monkey Pepper Vodka, this book has it all. Reimer has even included a section for each distillery about their green efforts in addition to bizarre and interesting facts. Who knew that High West is the first legal distillery in Utah since 1870? Whether you own a bar and want to check out what the independent and craft spirit scenes have to offer or if you want to look like a licensed pro when you head to your local watering hole, we’re sure you’ll find something here to sip on. It’s fully indexed, well organized is the first guide of it’s kind to help you learn about the growing industry. Take it with you on your road trip across the country.

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About the Author:

David Reimer is a freelance journalist, photographer and even used to volunteer with the firefighters. He’s been published all over the place and currently lives in Pennsylvania. With the kind of growth that we’ve seen in the craft spirit explosion, we hope he’s hard at work catching up with all the new brands.

Beer Craft Authors: William Bostwick and Jessi Rymill Subject: Brewing your own great beer

Synopsis and Review: The book is a beautiful guide to making your own beer.

It doesn’t assume that you’re a pro, but gives you more than just a taste into making your beer great. In case you needed some inspiration, it’s sprinkled with interviews and information (and tips!) from some of the country’s most well known and best brewers.

We love that it breaks down the art of brewing into simple illustrations, and even when it gets into the science-y lessons of yeast strains, it keeps it fun. This isn’t your typical “how to” started guide. It’ll take you from 0 to 60 in one pint and help you understand how to make, drink, name, pair and even market your own beers.

About the Authors: William Bostwick is a writer, a beer critic (like we all strive to be) and an avid brewer. Jessi Rymill is an editor and designer (and collects beer labels and bottle caps). The book is clearly a mash of their talents and interests. They currently live and brew in Brooklyn and San Francisco.

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Why we recommend it: We love this book. If you’ve ever thought for a moment that you might pick up home brewing, this is your first step. This book proves to be an extremely clear and useful tool in making beer and an entertaining guide along the way. We were so inspired after flipping through the pages that we headed to the local brewing supply store to get ourselves a carboy and hops. This isn’t the kind of read that you need to sit down and concentrate for two hours – rather it’s part encyclopedia, part recipe book and part choose your own adventure. It has all sorts of side notes that help you get a better understanding of the brewing process and the authors carefully offer advice along the way – example: the chart that has one column that says, “my beer smells like…” and an adjacent column that gives a reason and remedies.

Needless to say, you’ll finally figure out how to get your beer to stop smelling like cardboard, cheese, and soy sauce.

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• 24 Taps & Over 150 Bottles • Great Wines • Gourmet Pub Fare with Beer Pairings • Kitchen Open ‘til 1 am

3141 16th St., at the corner of Albion, San Francisco, CA between Valencia & Guerrero | www.monkskettle.com

New Booze: Mezcal

Mezcal Pierda Almas

by Amy Murray of Cask

M

ezcal has been experiencing a longdeserved surge in popularity over the last couple of years; largely due to figures such as Ron Cooper, gatekeeper of Del Maguey Mezcal, who afforded the presence of premium quality spirit from various villages and producers around Oaxaca to be limelighted in the United States. Aside from that, a slightly newer line of Mezcal is presently winning hearts on both coasts: Pierde Almas brings us a single estate, single agave varietal range of mezcals from San Baltazar, Chichicapam, in Oaxaca.

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To date, they have released six different mezcals of various persuasions, and whose agaves are both wild-foraged and sustainably farmed. Pierde Almas uses 100% natural and traditional production processes and spares no detail to the quality and traditional, historical accuracy of their product.

Aside from knowing that this mezcal is produced with such meticulousness, one must not only taste it, but drink it-- hell, drink a lot of it. First it must be said that nothing tastes like mezcal. Nothing. And drinking Pierde Almas has a striking romantic effect unique to itself entirely-- as though one was finally able to see The Wizard.

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Continually, I return to the Mezcal Do-ba-daan. This was the second Pierde Almas that I tasted: its seductive, high earthiness and sweet floral undercurrent was a siren to my unassuming palate. Its nose is laden with evergreen and earth, with soft vegetal notes and a distant roasted quality. In one's mouth it is bright, with gardenias singing, white pepper, and big, rolling citrus to the finish; accompanied by more roasted agave, honeyed orange, and a warm, delicate smoke persisting throughout in perfect balance.

MezcalPierdeAlmas.com

Raise youR

glasses.

september

19-25

sfcocktailweek.com

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Special SEction

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Welcome

to San Francisco Cocktail Week 2011!

This is our FIFTH annual celebration of the cocktail which helped establish cocktail culture in general, worldwide, and continues to lead its development today. Five years go by quickly, but a lot has happened since we first decided to throw a few parties and help raise awareness about what our bartenders were doing across the Bay Area. We even established our very own Cocktail Bill Boothby Center for the Beverage Arts, a facility for educating and entertaining the public about this great culture. We’ve grown, the culture has grown and the momentum has grown.

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This year we are very excited to have engaged a broad team of professionals to make our little fête even better. We’ll promote the talents of the bartenders that have honed their skills and become shining new stars, while we honor the leaders that have gotten us here.

We’ll embrace our Indian Summer weather in new ways, with cocktails in hand, and revisit some of our successful programs of the past. Restaurants and bars from across the region will embrace the energy while talented bartenders and enthusiastic visitors from around the West (and beyond) will grace our bars, events and hotels.

Five will prove to be a great number for San Francisco Cocktail Week. We look forward to all it will bring and to seeing you out and about.

Maybe even five times.

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H. Joseph Ehrmann, Elixir Jeff Hollinger, Comstock Saloon Duggan McDonnell, Cantina Founders of San Francisco Cocktail Week and the Barbary Coast Conservancy of the American Cocktail

event Overview

San Francisco Cocktail Week packs a dizzying array of special events, seminars, dinners and after parties into a mere seven days. From Monday afternoon through Sunday night, we’ve got you covered.

Special Events We’ve partnered with the world’s best spirits companies as well as an array of community partners and venues to celebrate the Bay Area and West Coast’s liquid culture, cocktail heritage and bar talent. For seven straight nights we’ll host series of extraordinary special events, such as the Best of the West showcase, Barbary Coast Bazaar, Legends Awards Gala, Shaker & Flask, the East Bay Showdown and much, much more.

Seminars A league of extraordinary bartenders and distillers will curate and lead a series of compelling seminars throughout the week, with something for everyone – whether you’re cocktail-curious or an experienced pro.

Cocktail Dinners Produced in collaboration with an elite roster of San Francisco and East Bay restaurants, Cocktail Dinners will feature cocktails created by the industry’s best bartenders, paired with the cuisine of our region’s best chefs, on one very special night in restaurants across the Bay Area.

After Parties Party after another party? Why, of course. We’re sure this year’s After Parties will be nothing short of legendary.

tickets

For more information and to buy your tickets and Gold Passes, go to sfcocktailweek.com.

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Individual tickets for San Francisco Cocktail Week’s main events are on sale now and more will be added each week. New for this year, we have a very limited number of VIP Gold Passes for those of you who would like exclusive access to every event.

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mAin events

Shaker & Flask: Wednesday, September 21 Join us for an evening that showcases the science of cocktails.

Produced in collaboration with Cocktail Lab and our community partner, San Francisco’s renowned Exploratorium, this event will be dedicated to the geekier, scientific side of cocktails, with guest bartenders who specialize in molecular mixology.

East Bay Showdown: Thursday, September 22 A cocktail battle for charity, this event collects the best bartenders from the East Bay, who will face off to create the best cocktails at their bar for the month of September. Guests can taste and place their votes at each participating bar and then join the finale party during San Francisco Cocktail Week to sample all their creations for the ultimate cocktail showdown! A portion of the proceeds will also be donated to a variety of local charities.

Best of the West: Thursday, September 22 With guest bartenders from San Diego to Vancouver, this cocktail tour will showcase the talents of bartenders across the West Coast under one roof. Showing guests the “best of the West,” each participant will offer a cocktail that uniquely represents their city and its cocktail culture. Take a trip without setting foot on a plane, or be inspired to book your next vacation to visit these stars in their hometowns.

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Barbary Coast Bazaar: Friday, September 23 The Barbary Coast Bazaar celebrates all things bizarre and delicious in a fantastical night of cocktails from San Francisco’s best bars, as well as passed appetizers, carnival curiosities and attractions. With entertainment that harkens back to the era of a 1920s traveling circus, the evening will include fortune-tellers, stilt-walkers, contortionists, magicians, fire-breathers and games in a darkly wonderful and memorable evening.

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Legends Awards Gala: Saturday, September 24 Recognizing the true innovators, influencers, mentors and historians in the Bay Area, the first annual Legends Awards Gala pays tribute to bar professionals who have truly raised the bar throughout their careers. In this feast for the senses, guests will enjoy a plated dinner, tableside cocktails and sultry burlesque dancers. The Bay Area’s best bar professionals will be awarded for the roles they have played in San Francisco’s cocktail culture.

A true (and well-deserved) toast to our living legends!

thank You

vAluAble pArtners Of 2011

For additional details and events, information and tickets visit sfcocktailweek.com.

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LIFESTYLE BEYOND THE GLASS

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Churchill 59 Reviews $$

198 Church Street, SF. This scabrous yet sophisticated watering hole has the look and feel of a WWII-era rathskeller, existing for the sole mission of getting you good ‘n’ liquored up with an army of potent, pre-prohibition-style elixirs. With sofas and chairs upholstered in weathered parachutes, tables constructed of reclaimed wood from the front lines of the FDR administration, and a ceiling covered with thick braided ropes, you’ll get the feel the owners were going for a groundbreaking new industrial design with the build-out of the old Bar on Church space: bunker chic.

As for the goods, here’s what yelpers are sounding off on: Sip: The Bee’s Knees: Tanqueray gin, lemon, honey, Creme de Violette.

Pegu Club: Hendricks gin, Cointreau, lime, Angostura bitters.

Jenny Jerome’s Brooklyn: Bulleit bourbon, Dolin dry vermouth, averna, maraschino, bitters, orange peel.

Drake’s Dry Stout: Served in a Mason jar.

Vibe: Nish N says, “After a few of their rank and file cocktails, you can start to see why Hitler never stood a chance.”

Kelsie M says, “Moody without being pretentious, historic without being contrived. I think I’m in love.”

Jared S says, “Thanks to Churchill, the dog days are over for bars on this cursed corner.”

Hours: 4pm-2am M-F, 2pm-2am S-Su Happy Hour: Yes Alcohol: Full Bar Ambiance: Hipster-casual

For more reviews of Churchill, as well as hundreds of other bars, restaurants, and any other business you’re looking to connect to, shimmy on over to www.yelp.com, or download the Yelp mobile app today!

CATCH THE GOLD RUSH! with ORO Pisco – the Best Pisco* For recipes and more, visit oropisco.com/drinkme *SF Int ’l Spirits Competition 2011

The Sandwich Place Brick Oven Baked Bread

gourmet vegetarian

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weekly specials

2029 Mission Street

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San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 431-3811

The Democr DrinkMeMag.com

By Victoria Gutierrez

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Historically, the barrier to entry for owning a wine brand was astronomically high. For hundreds of years, your only hope was to be the first male born into a wealthy, chateau-equipped family in France. More recently, your chances were much better but still pretty bleak: you needed to be a brilliant Silicon Valley entrepreneur on the fast track to IPO or Google buyout.

Provided you played your cards right, you ended up with more money and time than you ever dreamed of and suddenly felt a need to produce cult Cabernet in Napa Valley.

Photos courtesy of Crushpad

P

lop down $10 million for a prime spot in Oakville or Stag’s Leap, hire the best winemaker money could buy, and watch people line up on your email list to buy that $300 liquid gold.

not), bring in the grapes, make a wine, bottle it, and bring the wine to market for a few dollars per case. Still too expensive?

Buy ready-made wine on the bulk market, then blend and bottle at a custom crush facility for pennies on the gallon.

In almost every sense, the wine industry has changed dramatically since even the nineties. Wine brands don’t need their own facilities in order to make their own wine. ‘Custom crush’ facilities dot the state of California, running from Lake County down through Napa and Sonoma, through the Central Valley and down into Temecula. Each of these facilities allows a brand to bring in their winemaker (or

This drastically changes the commercial wine landscape, as anyone with grapes or the money to buy some can have a brand.

But ‘custom crush’ has lowered the barrier to entry one step further: to the consumer.

Enter Crushpad, with the goal of “democratizing the wine industry.”

Starting in a huge warehouse facility in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood,

ratization of

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work on you wine before and after work in the city.

It’ll be interesting to see how Crushpad reinvents itself.

Crushpad secured grape contracts with some of the best vineyards in Northern California and worked on warming up the wine-loving public to making their own wine. Just a barrel of wine, for as little as $5,700. As it turns out, wine has a habit of making people want to get dirty sorting grapes, doing punch downs (literally punching down the skins so that more color is imparted into the wine), weighing the pros and cons of different yeast strains, and debating over barrel aging. The Bay Area tech geeks apparently really like geeking out about grapes.

T DrinkMeMag.com

aking a cue from the co-op model in France and Italy, Crushpad also capitalized on the community-building aspect of winemaking, and formed groups that shared barrels; there were neighborhood wines and even a Twitter wine. The beauty of this model is that the customer can choose the level of involvement, from “I’m going to sleep on the floor next to my barrel” to “just make something impressive for me to send to my clients at Christmas.”

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In 2010, Crushpad moved from San Francisco to the Napa Valley, and in 2011 to Sonoma. For a large constituency of Crushpad’s clients, this was a big blow; there are dozens of places to custom crush in Napa and Sonoma, and the appeal of Crushpad was being able to visit and

But fear not, San Francisco would-be winemakers.

All is not lost! Enter Dogpatch WineWorks, the latest incarnation of consumer-driven custom crush in San Francisco.

Led by Crushpad vet Dave Gifford, WineWorks is furiously preparing for the 2011 harvest with the hopes of bringing high-touch, high-service custom crush back to SF. Dave brings a lazer-like focus on quality to WineWorks, and for the first harvest they are focusing on four varietals: Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Chardonnay. Starting at $6,800 for a barrel of Russian River Chardonnay and topping out at $10,000 for a barrel of Atlas Peak Cabernet Sauvignon, Dave and his business partner have tried to pick distinctive vineyard sites. There is one big hole however: they have yet to secure and announce the resident winemakers. This may be the democracy of wine, but winemaking works better as a dictatorship!

Widespread winemaking has crept into all fifty states, yet the consumer-driven custom crush model is one that will take a bit longer to grow. That being said, there are a couple of facilities on the East Coast worth noting.

Make Wine With Us in Wallington, New Jersey is providing consumers a custom crush experience in a much more structured (and affordable) setting. Sourcing grapes from California appellations in the fall and grapes from Chile in the spring, Make Wine With Us

is able to bring the bottle cost down about 50% compared to Crushpad. Clients choose to make either a half barrel or full barrel of wine and, contrasting with its California counterparts’ self-guided model, folks who sign on to make wine at Make Wine With Us attend four twohour-long classes over the course of their winemaking journey.

A handful of New Yorkers were clients at Make Wine With Us in Jersey for a few years before they realized that the whole point of consumer-driven custom crush is for it to be nearby. They quit their day jobs, navigated a huge learning curve, and opened Brooklyn Winery in Fall 2010.

Brooklyn Winery’s model hinges on the idea that clients who want to be more involved will pay more for the privilege, and thus they’ve created four different winemaking ‘levels’, ranging from the Introductory which nets you a case of wine and three winemaking ‘parties’, up to the premium package that lets you get your hands dirty one-on-one with winemaker Conor McCormack for a full year of grapey goodness. It seems as if two distinctly different categories are emerging among the consumer-driven custom crush market: the first being a high-level educational one for novices, and the second being a more focused and ‘premium’ experience for the hobbyist.

We’ve gone from chateau, to IPO,

I

f I had to place my bet, I’d say that consumer-driven custom crush is going to enter the commercial winery’s own cellar. Within ten years, we’ll be at a dinner party drinking an Oakville cab that a friend made alongside Daniel Baron in Silver Oak’s cellars. We’ll get sick of a coworker calling himself a ‘Rhone Ranger’ for making a killer Grenache while rubbing elbows with Randall Graham at Bonny Doon. It’s already beginning at places like Judd’s Hill Winery, and it’s only going to get bigger.

I am concerned about what the growth of the ‘democratization of wine’ will have upon grape prices. Ten years ago, you may only have a handful of people trying to get their hands on a ton or two of grapes from a cult Cabernet Vineyard; with the opportunity for consumers to make their own barrel from such vineyards, the competition really starts to heat up.

More importantly are the implications on the consumer. On the one hand, more insight into the winemaking process makes a smarter consumer who will shop better, drink better, and ultimately appreciate their wine more fully. But on the other hand, a consumer making a barrel per year is going to have a ton of that single wine to drink. They won’t experience much else.

My biggest worry with the consumer winemaking trend is that there may come a time when all the mysteriousness, all the ancient traditions, agriculture, and complexity will be stipped away. That when the consumer has the elements at their disposal, wine may cease to be anything more its very humble parts: sun, dirt, grapes and yeast.

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As a winemaker and sommelier, questions arise about how they are shipping these grapes cross-country and cross-equator.

The mere weight of grapes upon each other in the bins post-harvest is enough to crush them. When your grapes are crushed, fermentation will naturally start, you’re getting skin contact on the juice, yadda yadda. Perhaps extended skin contact is good if you’re making Cabernet or Malbec, but not so much for your white wines. Food for thought.

to sophisticated custom crush to harvest party. What’s next in this democratization and globalization of winemaking?

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George Dickel is often overshadowed by it’s mega-giant neighbor Jack Daniel's, but Master distiller John Lunn shows us why the one who makes the most noise isn’t always the one you should listen to. It’s the quiet ones you gotta watch, right?

Profile: John Lunn

By Samir Osman

DM: Most masters come from a long line of the same, often generations deep. How did you get into distilling? JL: On a whim. I applied to an ad in The Tennessean

(the Nashville newspaper). I have a chemical engineering degree from Vanderbilt. I was working at a sponge factory and saw an ad for a Master Distiller trainee, and I thought “why not?” The story of how I got the job is really cool. I had to send my resume to Diageo corporate, and I made the first cut, and came in for a second interview with Dave Bacchus, the master before me.

I’d never tasted Dickel before that so I went out and bought a bottle of 8 year and a bottle of 12 year to study up for it. The guy at the store was cracking up because I told him I needed a bottle of Dickel for a job interview. I was never really a big drinker.

A friend called the morning of my interview and told me to take deer hunting pictures with me to relate to the people down here in Tullhoma. I told him “you know I don’t hunt.” I started to panic thinking “what am I gonna do?” So I figured in the world of rednecks and rural Tennessee what’s next best to hunting and fishing? I had two old Willis Jeeps I was restoring. Old cars is up there right? So I stuck two pictures of my Jeeps in the notebook I took for the interview. After an hour Mr. Bacchus was looking at his watch, so it was obvious he was over it and wanted out of the interview, so I let the pictures “accidentally” fall out of my notebook and he asked what the pictures were. It turned out he had one also and we ended up talking about cars for two hours, and the job was mine after that. He also told me that one of the things he wanted was someone local who would preserve the heritage.

DM: So what is a typical day for you? What does a master distiller do? JL: Ideally I like to come in and

check the distillery and make sure everything is up and running. . . Then I come down to my office and handle the business stuff since I’m also director of operations. Then I’ll go do a quality check on the distillate that’s coming out. If we’re filling barrels I’ll go check on those guys, or go up to the warehouse to see where we’re putting barrels away. Or we could be dumping instead. . . Of course it’s always better when we’re dumping because I get to check

the product to make sure it’s properly aged. Our bottling is done at a Diageo site, so probably the biggest thing, or what I like the most, is having the last word in whether or not the product meets my standards and is ready to go out before the tankers can leave.

DM: Does your chemical engineering background help you as far as making spirits? JL: It helps in understanding the distillation part. How the beer still

is set up, how the doubler works. It’s my understanding that a lot of people getting into the business come from either a chemical or biology background so they understand the process.

DM: You said you run a small operation here. How small are we talking? JL: Including everyone in the distillery, the tour guides, administrative,

secretaries, and security guards we have thirty-four total employees. We may not have the long family background of some other distillers (the Dickel family got out of the business during prohibition) but we have plenty of employees who have been here over thirty years.

DM: Are you and the other guys down the street the only Tennessee whiskies? JL: There may be a few very small operations popping up, but as far as

the major players are concerned we’re the only two. We produce roughly 1,500 to 2,000 barrels per month. All of our products are made exactly the same, and the only difference is how long they’re aged. The 8 year is our biggest seller, followed by 12 year, Cascade Hollow, and Barrel Select. The Cascade Hollow is our newest product. If you go back in the history of whiskey to George’s days in the 1800’s, they didn’t age their whiskey twenty years like we do now. They made it, and tried to sell it as quick as they could. What we decided to do was go with a younger version, so this one is three and a half years old.

DM: What about the Barrel Select? Do you personally select each barrel? JL: Yeah. I get to pick the barrels that go into that, and it’s all twelve years or

older.

DM: So is there a sweet spot above twelve years that you prefer or does it depend on the barrel? JL: Typically its around fourteen years, but it does

depend on the barrel. To me, the twelve-to-fourteen year range is the best time. Anything longer than that, the quality starts to go back down, and it gets too oaky for me. I don’t want the oak flavor to get overwhelming.

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DM: Can you tell me about the facilities? JL: We have 600 acres. . . We like to think of ourselves as a handcrafted whiskey. There are no computers or robots anywhere in the place. Every step of the process is done by people. People can get in there and see stuff, and taste it, and smell the mash and tell if it’s ok, and a computer can’t do that. . . are this Every bottle of Dickel tastes exactly like what you expect, and that would be much harder without a human touch. Using a forklift probably wouldn’t change the end product that much, but to me it then loses its ‘cool’ factor. It’s just so much better to see guys up there rolling barrels. These guys take it very seriously. They approach their job as if their name is on every bottle, and it definitely shows in the final product. That’s why people who drink Dickel are very loyal to the brand.

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T History of

 Craft

Cocktails

By M. Quinn Sweeney Photo by Craig Lee

While we may assume that the fancy infusions and quirky conglomerations on offer in craft cocktail bars are something new, it’s a tradition that goes back as far as formal fermentation. Even in the Iliad, Homer wrote of epic heroes drinking wine mixed with goat cheese and ground barley, which might make a Long Island Iced Tea not seem so bad.

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he current craze for carefully-constructed cocktails with fresh and exotic ingredients has its roots in a number of historical trends, so don’t be alarmed if a man wearing arm garters offers to make you a drink involving eight ingredients and six minutes to prepare; it’s all been done before.

Nearing the end of the Middle Ages, the technology for distilling wine and beer into stronger spirits was carried around the world by explorers, and mixological innovation grew exponentially to combat the fierce assault of raw spirits on the palates of peoples unaccustomed to the burn. Despite commonlyheld assumptions, cocktail lovers owe far more to those foul-mouthed sailors than to any mustachioed, vest-clad dandy saloon keeper.

It began with their discovering the effects of barrel-aging while transporting booze on ships, where time in oak would calm the fiery spirits and impart vanillin, oils and other flavorings.

The mariners’ importance extended through the early-1600s with what some argue to be the greatest drinking innovation since the advent of distillation: the creation of punch. The salty seamen of the East India Trading Company prepared punches by combining their strong brandy with citrus (to combat the effects of scurvy), sugar and spices being transporting in the ship’s hold, and water that may not have Photos by Liza Gershman

British colonialism offered more punchy wisdom, like the rhyming recipe for Barbadian Rum Punch "One of Sour, Two of Sweet, Three of Strong, Four of Weak," in this case meaning one part lime juice, two parts sugar, three parts rum, and four parts water. Garnished with fresh-ground nutmeg, that recipe holds up well even today, if the water is frozen and you add a dash or two of bitters.

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n fact, it was the bitters that differentiated the cocktail from all previous punches, and which distinguished it as a uniquely American invention. Created by steeping medicinal herbs in alcohol to extract and preserve their healing properties, bitters were first sold for their purported curative value, but the patient’s resulting robustness probably had naught to do with anything vegetal in the mix.

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Prior to the 19th century, drinks had not evolved very far beyond the original punch recipes, but once the Revolutionary War was resolved (we won!), great things started happening on the American cocktail scene. The first cocktails were hangover cures, blending those healthsome bitters with a little hair of the dog and a spoonful of sugar, but eventually cocktails made the transition from morning medicine to evening indulgence. One of the most renowned instances of this development occurred in New Orleans around 1850, when Aaron Bird, seeing the long lines for an elixir being made made by his local pharmacist, Antoine Peychaud, opened the Sazerac Bar and began using Peychaud’s Bitters in his signature cocktail.

1862 saw the publication of the first cocktail manual, The BonVivant’s Companion by “Professor” Jerry Thomas, which provided recipes for hundreds of drinks and detailed a number of innovations in the American cocktail craft, like stirring and straining, using gomme syrup, and fancy garnishes on many drinks, even specifying “berries in season” to “dress the top” of many of his punch recipes.

Americans continued in unfettered creativity with spirituous beverages up until the darkest years in American history (1920-1933). Prohibition forced most every skilled bartender who had not taken up another profession to expatriate to Europe and ply his trade. Even with the repeal of the Volstead Act, most never returned. The prevailing tastes devolved over more than a decade of contraband hooch as new cocktails were designed to hide the flavors of bathtub gin, and whiskey was rare because it required years of dangerous barrel aging.

The post-prohibition palate still wanted the strong, simple drinks to which it was accustomed, but after World War II, veterans who had been stationed in Photo by Mick Jeffries

been safely potable without the sterilizing effects of alcohol. It was a highly efficient and delicious system for fighting back the cold, while keeping one’s teeth from falling out [insert disentary joke here, something about the poop deck].

the South Pacific brought back a love of Polynesian drinks and launched a craze that consumed American pop culture through the end of the 1950s. In the 1960s, vodka went from zero-to-sixty faster than an Aston Martin, thanks largely to the James Bond films; everything was served on the rocks in the seventies; and sweet, simple shots dominated the eighties. At some point in the nineties we began to renounce the sins of our fathers, and as the new millennium dawned, a generation of drinkers rediscovered classic cocktails.

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This trend can be traced most directly to bars in coastal American cities like New

The more specific developments, however, are harder to track.. Contemporary trends no longer follow the distinctly linear paths they once did, and the driving forces in the beverage industry have become decentralized and multi-directional. With the rise of a DIY ethic in the arts and the ease of online information sharing, the necessary knowledge has been disseminated for modern mixologists to home-brew sodas and tinctures, infuse their own liqueurs , pickle garnishes, and even barrel-age a batch of Negronis, and no such gimmick has gone unexplored.

Just as culinary progress has spawned the recent molecular gastronomy movement, there have been parallels in the cocktail world. Molecular mixology brings science behind the bar to transmogrify traditional ingredients into jarring sensory experiences, such as drinks topped with Campari foam shot, crystalized Chartreuse scattered as a garnish, grenadine suspended as a gellified sphere, or whole drinks being frozen with liquid nitrogen.

The story of the well-crafted cocktail embodies everything we honor about the American spirit, and its resurgence unsurprisingly hearkens back to simpler times. The historical influences of the movement are evident now, with a number of new bars designed in the fashion of saloons and speakeasies, with both punch and Tiki trending again, and as many top bartenders openly model their recipes (not to mention their facial hair) on the nineteenth century styles of the early mixologists.

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any contemporary cocktailians pay homage to Dale DeGroff, who was among the first to develop what he calls the “gourmet approach to recreating the great classic cocktails.” Around the same time, the seeds of California Cuisine blossomed into the New American culinary approach, with a focus on fresh, seasonal ingredients, and experimentation that stemmed from a reverence for classical French technique, pioneered by chefs like Alice Waters and Wolfgang Puck.

This trend has been mirrored in the contemporary craft cocktail craze, rejecting sour mix for fresh-squeezed citrus, and jars of maraschinos have been tossed out in favor of fresh cherries marinated in brandy behind the bar. As often as possible, ingredients are made in-house and some purists won’t even serve a Cosmo because they refuse to carry bottled juice.

Bar-tops are dominated by bowls of fresh fruits and herbs, hand-labeled apothecary bottles, and towering pillar juicers; cocktail menus change weekly or daily to make the most of what is available at the farmers market. Higher regard is being paid to all ingredients, and great debates rage over the optimal techniques and ingredients for individual drinks.

York and San Francisco but there are also distinct influences from Europe, where the development of cocktails was never interrupted by Prohibition. It is of little surprise that most every new concoction is a twist on a classic and its roots can likely be followed back to the , printed in London in 1930, written by Harry Craddock, an American expat bartender.

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Nano breweries

By Brian Yaeger

Mike Wright orders a Blue Foot Flanders Red-style ale, a slightly sweet and sour beer with notes of cherries aged in a Pinot Noir barrel. It’s his first time trying the beer despite the fact that he brewed it. The woman behind the bar who brings it to him is oblivious to this detail, despite the fact that Mike is on a bar stool in Southeast Portland at Victory Bar, one of Beetje Brewing’s half-dozen accounts, and it’s five blocks from his house.

T DrinkMeMag.com

he definition of nano is that it’s one billionth the size of something, so there are a billion nanometers in one meter. In regards to nanobreweries, the definition takes some liberties, but not many. Compare, for example, Beetje to Budweiser. Anheuser-Busch brewed roughly 100 million barrels of beer in the US alone in 2010. Beetje made and sold less than five.

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Small time, under capitalized enterprises driven more by passions than profits—the kind where the CEO is the one sweeping the broom at the end of the day—are the very reasons it’s become fun to eat and drink again. Whether it’s topping crackers with some strawberry-basil-pinot jam made by a homesteader gone pro or drinking pints

of Daddy’s Chocolate Milk Stout in the very basement of the artisan who brewed the beer, the realm of food and drink continues to expand by way of shrinking the scale of production.

Homogenized goods on supermarket shelves continue to give way to culinary delights found only at outlets such as farmers markets and, in the way of suds, adventurous neighborhood ale houses willing to tap offerings from neighboring nanobreweries.

This renaissance is no longer new nor is it proprietary to one state or region of the country. But it’s still driven by craft.

It isn’t, and can’t, be realistically driven

by anything else.

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anobreweries are indeed federally licensed breweries. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be legal to sell their beer. But the equipment their beer is brewed on is, in many cases, the very same systems that the brewmasters worked with while simply tinkering in backyards, albeit several steps above introductory homebrewing kits.

Oxymoronically, nanobrewers are like professional-homebrewers who sometimes don’t have to leave their own garage; such is the case with Wright’s Beetje. The name, incidentally, inspired both by his Flemish wife and the Photo by Tim Stahl

Above photo by Frank Butler

Belgian beer styles he makes, means “Little bit.” Unsurprisingly, start-up costs for a new brewpub are higher than those of a restaurant. But the cost of launching a nanobrewery fairly resembles that of the beloved foodcarts driving the crafty comfort food industry.

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nd just like how food carts tend to pop up in places with a lot of great restaurants, making the cooking world an even tougher nut to crack, nanobreweries are more readily found where giant-by-comparisonsized microbreweries already have solid footing. Portland, Oregon boasts seven.

The San Francisco Bay Area has or will see nine in operation, all of which poured their wares at the “Brewers of Tomorrow” event during the last SF Beer Week. Half of the nanobreweries in the state of New York are in the greater NYC metro. And San Diego County, beer-famous for its 35 craft breweries, is home to four nanos, the first of which was Hess Brewing.

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Founded by Michael Hess and run with the help of his wife, Lynda, and two others, Michael started homebrewing some 15 years ago, before San Diego had anything close to resembling the beer scene it enjoys today. As some of the breweries enjoy tremendous

growth—Stone Brewing is opening a second brewery in Europe—Hess’s goal is to remain miniscule. One of the best elements of the Hess Brewing blog (hessbrewing.blogspot.com) is that it lists every nanobrewery they know of, which is over 60 already licensed and operating and nearly 50 in the planning phase.At the Brewers Association, employee Erin Glass has added to her title of Membership Coordinator to

Photos by Tim Stahl

include Brewery Detective. Even she uses the Hess blog as a resource. She says she found a guy “who owns a construction/ snow removal business that decided to add a brewery to the mix.”

One of the NYC area’s nanos is the Blind Bat Brewery in Centerport on Long Island, still a good 40 miles outside Brooklyn. Paul Dlugokencky started homebrewing mainly because he couldn’t find the kinds of beers he liked to drink.

Isn’t that the main reason anyone crafts something on his or her own? If you want something done right, DIY. Paul apparently likes smoked beers, typical of Bamberg, Germany, where Rauchbiers (Rauch means smoke) reign. Of his three beers brewed with smoked malt or smoked wheat, he may have been the first to commercially resurrect a Grodziskie, a smoked wheat beer previously lost to the annals of Polish brewing history. It’d be damn near impossible to call him a trendsetter, but two Portland brewpubs have since tapped Gratzers (the German name for the style).

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eer fans are no doubt familiar with Dogfish Head Brewing, which owner Sam Calagione started on a similar 10-gallon system. His brewery now cranks out what is still small-batch beer, but on a 75-barrel system, and Sam briefly hosted his own reality show on the Discovery Channel.

“I didn’t have any lofty goals of being the next Deschutes or Widmer,” Mike Wright says, which is a good thing since his output is a veritable drop in the barrel, comparatively. In fact, while he’s now a pro brewer according to the OLCC, he can’t quit his day job. But he’d like to. “I think every nanobrewer would like to do this full time.”

Asked if Beetje will join the statistic of failed breweries, he says stoically, “That means that I lost a bunch of savings. I gave it a shot. It didn’t fly.” Not every brewery succeeds. No numbers are available for any nanobreweries that have already opened and closed. But it’s safe to guess that they will. And when they do, the brewmasters will go back to being homebrewers.

Because at the end of the day, making beer is all about the craft.

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Blind Bat’s brewing system recently expanded nine-fold. Paul went from a ten-gallon system to a three-barrel one (30 gallons each). Paul writes “If the beers are received well enough, then I’d like to expand the brewery (and, of course, quit

the ‘day job’). With the economy as it is, however, it will likely remain a part-time smaller-than-small operation for a while.”

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Still Distilling The Intricate Craft of Spirit Making When speaking spirits, people’s tendency to focus on the word ‘distillation’ or ‘distiller’ can lead one to believe that the distillation process is all that makes a quality spirit. While you will have great difficulty in producing a spirit without some form of distillation, it’s actually one of the later stages in production.

An oversimplification of the distilling process looks something like this: ingredients + fermented product + still = spirit. The process of distillation does not magically round out the edges or take liquor to the next level. In fact, if the ingredients put in the still (the wonderful invention in which distillation happens) are marginal or flawed, the distillation process will likely accentuate those unpleasant peculiarities, resulting in a poorly made and poorly tasting product.

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s one can imagine, there are endless opportunities for a distiller to stick their nose in along the way and tweak the process. There is the actual art of distilling – the process, methods, and devilish details, not to be confused with the more recently coined term “craft distiller.”

While craft distilling is often contrasted with the current norm of mass production and scalable factories, the concept of a careful, handmade production is arguably the original form of distillation. Through

a modern resurgence, craft distilling has become something boutique and novel.

We’ve been distilling for over 800 years and it wasn’t always to make liquor. A modern day non-alcoholic example sits on the shelves of your local grocery stores: distilled water. The distillation process separates the water and the unwanted impurities are left behind. The trends changed sometime roughly 500 years ago when artisans in Europe took some extant distilling

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Photos courtesy of Four Roses Distillery

By Nate Nicoll and Chris Jew from Whiskeywall

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Four Roses Distiller Jim Rutledge checks out the whiskey mash.

technology and got down to the business of making spirits.

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e’re a resourceful species and as a result we have learned that a multitude of different ingredients can be distilled and transformed into something arguably more enjoyable. From the barley, corn, rye and wheat in whiskey to the apples sacrificed for the greater good of calvados, to grapes and other fruit that have a long and robust tradition. Generally, these raw ingredients are heated up to extract sugars then cooled and mixed with various strains of yeast to start the fermenting process. A distiller is more appropriately called a chef of grain, according to Mr. Cimino, the distiller from 1512 Spirits in Northern California. From the selection of the right grain, to milling, to factoring in the balance and components of one’s local water, attention to detail is key.

Let’s focus on whiskey. You’ve landed yourself some quality ingredients, but before you jump over to the still, the ingredients are first “cooked” with some added water to create what is known as the mash. The fermentation process is then pushed along by various strains of yeast cells that impart different flavors.

Think of the distinctly different flavor a Belgian beer has or the unique flavors classic sourdough bread – both products of different strains of yeast. Even within this process, variables include the temperature the mash is cooked at, the length of time the mash is left to ferment, and whether or not the fermentation is left open to air and elements. The Leopold Brothers distillery in Colorado utilizes an open fermentation process and makes some fantastic small batch traditional spirits. The development of a well-crafted mash is paramount and Continued on page 44

INTRODUCING KNOB CREEK SINGLE BARREL RESERVE. ®

WE POUR OVER EACH AND EVERY BARREL TO HAND SELECT THE VERY BEST BOURBON. AS EXHAUSTING AS THAT SOUNDS, WE’RE DEDICATED TO PERFECTION. YOU WOULDN’T WANT IT ANY OTHER WAY – NEITHER WOULD WE.

WORTH THE EFFORT Knob Creek® Single Barrel Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 60% Alc./Vol. ©2011 Knob Creek Distillery, Clermont, KY.

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Join the Stillhouse at KnobCreek.com

secrets of the trade often remain secrets.

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fter the fermentation process is complete, the resulting liquid can be distilled. Frankly put, it’s time to take the makings of a wine or beer and turn it into a high-proof substance. For you budding chemists: the liquid is heated up so that the alcohol transforms into vapor, separates, and rises in the still. The alcohol vapors are partially segregated from water and other constituents, cooled, condensed, and finally returned back into their liquid form in a higher concentration.

The resulting liquid is your spirit. The specifics of the distillation process are unique to each distiller, and again several factors (such as how many times you run the liquid through the still) all impact the final flavor.

Finally, what do you do with unadulterated raw spirit after it comes off of the still? Vodka usually goes straight into the bottle. Other spirits, such as

whiskey and Cognac, are often stored and aged in wood casks that can alter the flavor drastically. Casks formerly used to age Bourbon will tend to impart vanilla, charred wood and spices. Sherry-caskaged spirits tend to be more full-bodied and rich. Some distillers even make use of port pipes, Sauternes (a French sweet wine) casks and plum wine casks.

Craft distillers are not only attempting to create a hand-touched alternative to the more readily available spirits, but are also creating a renaissance of appreciation for the cultured consumption of fine liquors.

The art of craft distilling is not akin to a hobbyist’s dabbling in liquor production, and few things could be farther from the truth. The investment of time, the dedication to learning and building upon traditions, and the attention to detail often require a passion that borders on obsession.

To add to the pantheon of quality spirits is a noble endeavor and an arduous and worthy pursuit.

YOU’VE NEVER HAD EFFEN N LIKE THIS BEFORE.

Drink responsibly.

EFFEN® Cucumber Flavored Vodka, 100% neutral spirits distilled from wheat grain, 37.5% alc./vol. (75 proof). ©2011 EFFEN Import Company. Deerfield, IL.

New Montgomery St.

4th St.

Hawthorne St.

311 Third Street SF, CA 94107

Clara St.

Harrison St.

I-80

By Samir Osman

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Lounge Hours 3-11 pm.

One of many of the Osha Thai Restaurants, their drinks are a fine match to their fresh Thai flavors. They've built a cocktail list around fresh herbs, fruits and spices (try the Lychee Martini).

They've also got a bunch of sakes to choose from. One of the only places in San Francisco to grab great Thai food and decent drinks.

Uncovering Spirits

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Folsom St.

2nd St.

Osha Thai

3rd St.

On the map

Howard St.

Luxardo Amaretto di Saschira

The amaretto market in the United States is typically dominated by one brand, but that certainly doesn't mean there aren't others worth exploring. Luxardo makes a delicious amaretto that has won awards not only for its distinct almond and vanilla flavor, but also for its bottle design. It's full of sweetness and aroma, and coming in at just 56 proof is perfect for mixing in cocktails, kicking your morning coffee up a notch, or pouring over vanilla ice cream if you like your vices stacked.

Natoma St.

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Š2011 Imported by Pilsner Urquell USA, Washington D.C. * Beer Please drink responsibly.

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A Reason to Leave the Savannah Homemade hooch around the world

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By Corey Hill

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Alcohol was one of the first things human beings learned to make. After eons of wandering about, chasing down big game and foraging, ancient humans decided that it was time to settle down. We used complex tools, domesticated grains and animals, and constructed pyramids. The transition to a more grounded lifestyle allowed for extra free time, and the naturally inquisitive human mind turned to the plant matter all around us. Quite by accident, we discovered that the natural enzymes in saliva act as a catalyst for the fermentation of many grains and starches.This discovery ranks up there with the invention of written language.

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Palm Wine Since all you need to make palm wine is a palm tree, a container, and air, it’s no wonder it has such a wide reach. The name changes with location: Emu in Nigeria, Tuba in the Phillipines, and in India and Sri Lanka, it’s called Palm Toddy, or just Toddy. But a few things remain constant.

T he tree of choice in Africa tends to be the wild date palm, and in Asia, the coconut palm.

The palm tree is cut, and the sap is drained into a container. This task is often completed by the appropriately titled ‘tapper,’ an individual whose job description includes climbing palm trees barefoot and inserting a spigot into the side of the tree.

Photo by Craig Edelman

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istorical records indicate we are a species with a strong pedigree of making our own hooch -- Few civilizations throughout history have gone without some form of libation or another, whether it’s a corn beer tipple before human sacrifice (pre-Colombian South America) or a cool home-brewed ale to enjoy on the stained futon in your Berkeley co-op.

To honor humanity’s fine tradition of self-made booze, I’m presenting a round up of some of the world’s most popular DIY alcohol varieties. These fine drinks represent the zenith of millions of years of evolution expressing themselves in the opposable thumb, upright posture, and well developed cerebellum that allow us to know when our palm wine is ready to drink.

The sap is sweet, and nonalcoholic, ten to twelve percent sugar, and completely neutral.

The sap is left to ferment naturally, often times in a plastic container such as a Fanta bottle or a drum for a bigger batch. The high sugar content attracts natural yeasts necessary for fermentation, and thus the same containers are often reused, retaining the yeasts from the previous fermentation.

Within two hours, the sap will have fermented into a wine with an alcohol content hovering around four percent.

The taste naturally varies depending on the variety of tree, and as the fermentation process is rapid, the same batch will grow more bitter and approach a vinegar-like taste as the day wears on. Commercial variants are available, but as this is a drink easily made fresh from readily available ingredients, folks have little incentive to look beyond their own backyards.

Palm wine can be converted fairly easily into spirits. Distilled palm wine, stronger and without much of the natural sweetness of palm wine, goes by a variety of names and often plays a ceremonial role. In Ghana, a tumbler of Akpeteshi is the traditional greeting awaiting a first time visitor to a village.

Kvass

Eastern Europe has the highest unrecorded alcohol intake in the world.

Translation: more people are making their own booze here than anywhere else in the world. It’s partly through economic necessity that the region has such a preponderance of do it yourselfers. The post-Soviet era has been tough, and grinding poverty has provided a strong incentive for the people to produce their own hooch. It’s also a country that values good drink –­­these are the people who invented vodka, after all. Enter kvass: the Slavic home brew champion, named after a Slavic word meaning yeast.

Bread is key. Kvass is typically made from wheat, rye, or barley bread that is naturally fermented. For those without the means to purchase bread specifically for the purpose of kvass preparation, the drink is oftentimes made from stale, leftover bread.

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The future kvass is stored in a cool (not cold) place for five days. When the raisins float, the kvass is ready.

The drink has a long history in the region. During the time of Peter the Great, (late 1600s and early 1700s in case you weren’t paying attention in your Russian History class), kvass was the most popular drink in the land. It was widely credited with restorative powers, including the ability to act as an aid for digestion and a cure for hangovers. For the next couple of hundred years, the drink was enjoyed by the proletariat and bourgeoisie alike, as a mainstay of life on monasteries and in villages.

With the collapse of the Soviet system, globalization has created a deluge of commercial imports from the world over. Western soft drink companies muscled in to the former Soviet Bloc and began pushing out the native kvass producers.

But the people weren’t having it.

Within the last few decades, consumers have turned back to domestically produced kvass, and the drink has enjoyed a revival. Rather than purchasing sham kvass from foreign enterprises, the good people of Eastern Europe and Russia are honoring their time honored tradition of turning sandwich holders into booze.

Chibuku In the tin roof nightclubs of Southern Africa, the chunky, yeasty chibuku rules. With the nutritional clout of grits and the alcohol content of ale, chibuku

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he bread is dried and baked into suhari, or simple croutons. The baked bread is then added to boiling water, removed, covered with a towel, and allowed to sit at room temperature for eight hours. The soaked bread is then strained through a sieve, and yeast and sugar are added.

Ten minutes later, after the mixture has doubled in size, mint and more sugar are added, and the mixture is allowed to sit for another eight to twelve hours.

The mixture is once again passed

through a sieve into a container, this time with raisins added to the mix for additional flavor, and the container is sealed.

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be called Chew Chew.

Photo by Wendy Yip

is quite unlike any other libation out there -- both a meal and after dinner drink all in one. Plus, it comes in a milk carton.

Four ingredients go into chibuku: maize flour, yeast, water, and millet or sorghum (grains common to Africa). First, Maize flour and water are mixed together in a pot to create a porridge, stirred the entire time to ensure proper consistency.

O

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nce the maize porridge has cooled, the millet or sorghum is added.

The contents are allowed to sit for one day, and the following day they are reheated, and yeast is added. The ideal fermentation period is three to five days.

Too short, and the result is a drink with negligible alcohol content. Wait too long, and the chibuku is too acidic to drink.

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When it’s ready, it will have a nice yeasty smell and a consistency somewhat similar to oatmeal, or a banana smoothie. As the yeast is still working when it’s time to drink, the chibuku will have a zesty effervescence.

The commercial variety is commonly known as Shake Shake – perhaps self-contained directions for the drink. With its consistency similar to that of cottage cheese it could also

The slew of empty cartons along roadways is testament to the drink’s popularity. Chibuku is a mainstay of the underground dance halls of the region, places with tin roofs, wooden benches, and loud thumping music. A thin slit in the carton indicates solo enjoyment, while lopping off the entire top of the means that the chibuku is ready to be enjoyed communally.

The Best Kind of Handcrafts

It might be hyperbolic to declare that home brewed hooch is the cornerstone of civilization. But clearly, there is an innate drive in people to craft their own hooch. In addition to the few listed here, there are countless others: Tiswin in the Sonora desert of the United States and Mexico, Caium in Brazil, Chicha in Peru, Feni in India. Here in the United States, we’re moving back toward a small, home production model that honors tradition. We have homedistilled whiskey and home brewed beers. Bartenders are making their own bitters.

I may never follow through with the do-it-yourself detergent recipe I looked up online, and I’ve made home made peanut butter and deodorant, so I can tell you not everything is worth the time it takes to make them. But through my office window, I can see a few palm trees. Perhaps it’s time to see what the city code says about sap collection.

Websites to Drink to

walks into a bar...

Two cartons of yogurt walk into a bar. The bartender says to them, "We don't serve your kind in here."

One of the yogurt cartons says back to him, "Why not?

We're cultured individuals."

CraftBeer.com

W

e couldn't help but feature CraftBeer.com for this issue. It's a fantastic tool for everything on...craft beer. From finding a brewery to visit on the weekend to keeping tabs on beer news across the country, this website is a sleek peek into some of the best artisan beers that you can find. It's a great site to check out if you're just diving into the craft or a master of the trade. The writers walk you through the history of craft beer to pairings and recipes. Created by the Brewer's Association, this multimedia website is tapped into the best and most up to date craft beer news and resources you could ever ask for.

“Giants” is a registered trademark of the San Francisco Giants. All rights reserved.

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©2011 BLUE MOON BREWING COMPANY, GOLDEN, CO BELGIAN WHITE BELGIAN-STYLE WHEAT ALE ©2011 BLUE MOON BREWING COMPANY, GOLDEN, CO BELGIAN WHITE BELGIAN-STYLE WHEAT ALE

55

Eat Your Booze

Now You’re Slow-Cookin’ With Rye

By Denise Sakaki

I

t’s no wonder that meatballs are becoming the new trendy food item – there’s something comforting and downright cute about the humble little meatball, especially when it’s in a rich, flavorful sauce. Something else comforting is the way a long, slow simmer can bring several ingredients together to make a fantastic barbecue sauce – the perfect use for a slow cooker, which performs a good part of the work in this recipe. Fruit sweetness mixed with savory mustard and vinegar is enhanced by the dry spice of rye whiskey and comes together with caramelized onions to make a sauce that tastes of both late summer and early fall. The sauce is

both sweet and sour, and you can push the flavor with more vinegar or sugar to modify it to your taste.

The meatballs use bacon, which contribute a smoky, flavorful touch.

Shredded apple helps keep the meatballs moist during their turn in the slow cooker for the final braise.

A fresh relish of fruit and onion balances out the richness of the meatballs with the sauce. These meatballs are hearty enough to be served on their own with a side of coleslaw, but they can be made smaller for appetizers. They can even be put in soft sandwich rolls to make a barbecue meatball sandwich.

Rye BBQ Pork Meatballs with Sweet and Sour Chutney (makes 15-18 meatballs, depending on how large you roll them) Ingredients for the meatballs: 3 1

1 1 1 1 1 1

lbs ground pork cup shredded Granny Smith apple (about 1 apple) lb bacon, chopped fine cup breadcrumbs tablespoon dry oregano tablespoon garlic salt teaspoon fennel seed egg, lightly beaten

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Ingredients for the BBQ sauce:

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2

1 1 1 1 3

large yellow onions, sliced thin (about 4 cups’ worth) cup rye whiskey cup Dijon mustard cup brown sugar, lightly packed cup orange marmalade tablespoons cider vinegar

2 1 1 1

teaspoons paprika teaspoon garlic powder teaspoon black pepper teaspoon salt

Ingredients for relish topping: 2 1

2 1

peaches or mangoes, cut into a small dice red onion, cut into a fine dice (about ½ cup) tablespoons vinegar tablespoon sugar

Special tools/appliances: a slow cooker.

You can do this in a Dutch oven or heavylidded pot, sitting in the oven at about 200 degrees, but one of the benefits of using a slow cooker is that you can leave it alone, unattended for hours, plus it’s energy efficient!

Prepare sauce a day ahead in slow cooker: place sliced onions and all the sauce ingredients in a slow cooker and set to low, allowing at least 8-10 hours of cooking time, or until the onions have melted down and caramelized. The finished sauce should have a thick gravy consistency.

To make the relish topping, mix the diced fruit with the red onion, and toss with vinegar and sugar until incorporated. This can be made ahead to let the fruit and onion fully soak in the vinegar and sugar.

Sprinkle the relish over the meatballs when ready to serve.

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For the meatballs, place all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix together until fully incorporated and you can see that the bacon and shreds of apple are spread evenly throughout the pork. Take small handfuls of the pork and roll into spheres, about the size of golf balls for entrĂŠe-sized meatballs, or smaller bite-sized pieces if you want to serve these as appetizers. Carefully

nestle the meatballs into the cooked barbecue sauce and lightly cover with the sauce before setting the slow cooker to high for 1-2 hours, to slowly braise the meatballs in the sauce.

Periodically check the meatballs to turn and make sure they’re not sticking and baste them with the sauce. Turn the slow cooker off when the meatballs are cooked to a tender state, ready to be served.

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Bartenders Crafting Their Own Mixers

By Sierra Zimei

By Sierra Zimei

I

f you were to ask for a cocktail 30 years ago, there were only a few spirits to choose from, basic bar mixers, and no homemade ingredients. Today if you walked into a “mixology” bar you would see hundreds of different labels of spirits on the back bar, at least 10 different bitters bottles and countless homemade syrups, tinctures, and an assortment of garnish options that some obtuse patrons mistake for a salad bar. Here are a few bartenders that have decided to take their own bar blends and make a professional mix for public purchase.

In Chicago, Todd Appel has committed himself to the craft of bartending and is constantly improving his culinary and cocktail skills. In the past few years he was noticing a shortage of a decent lime cordial, the basis for a traditional Gimlet, and started making batches of fresh cordial in his home. After searching for a recipe and coming up empty, trial and error led him to the basis for Todd Appel's Lime Cordial that you can now find in a few restaurants and bars around the Chicago area. Find Todd at www.Piranhabros.blogspot.com.

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Neil Kopplin is an accomplished bartender in Portland, Oregon. It was over dinner with friends one night that the topic of vermouth came up.

They couldn't understand why, with all of the incredible wineries in Oregon, that there wasn't a local vermouth being produced. Soon after this

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discussion, Neil and 2 partners began the creation of Imbue Vermouth. Being a small batch product they try and keep Imbue as consistent as possible, using local Pinot Gris grapes and adhering to the same recipe, although batches can change slightly due to the vintage of the grapes. Learn more about Imbue at www.ImbueCellars.com.

If you haven't heard of Small Hand Foods, you cannot call yourself a Cocktail Nerd. Started by one girl with small but mighty hands, these syrups have become the benchmark for quality cocktails around the United States. Jennifer Colliau is a bartender in San Francisco by night and a Cordial Queen by day, starting with her flagship orgeat syrup, which uses only the finest and fresh ingredients, including California almonds. Small Hand Foods syrups are used by bartenders in competitions, showcases, restaurants, and can be found to purchase in retail stores throughout the US or on her website SmallHandFoods.com.

SATIN ROAD 1.25 oz. Imbue Vermouth 1 oz. Rye .5 oz. Benedictine 2 dashes Orange Bitters Garnish with fresh lime wheel.

Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

Libation Laureate

He’ll Remember You as a Nuisance, if He Remembers Anything At All

by Ale Gasso

In a moment of furious writing he forgets he’s at the bar with all its high demands of people thinking drink deserves praise because he drinks too and is gifted

disruptive shots are sent over all those smiles waiting for a nod that means he knows they exist and somehow they have bonded with their idol.

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Featured Recipes

People's Choice Winner: Illegal Tender

by Brian Means

BBQ Buck

by Summer-Jane Bell for the Hotsy Totsy Club Ingredients: 1.5 oz. Four Roses .75 oz. Fresh squeezed

lemon juice 2 dashes Memphis

Barbeque Bitters

(The Bitter End) .5 teaspoon fine

sugar Fever Tree

Ginger Ale Technique: Combine all except ginger ale and shake.

Double strain over ice in a highball glass and top with ginger ale.

Garnish: with a lemon wheel.

Ingredients: 1.5 oz. Hornitos Reposado Tequila .5 oz. Illegal Reposado Mezcal 1 oz. pineapple juice .5 oz. agave nectar

infusion (infused

with lime and

pink peppercorn

tincture, recipe below) 6 1 inch chunks of

muddled red bellpepper

Technique: Muddle the red bellpepper in a mixing glass, combine remaining ingredients into the glass and add cracked ice and shake for about 10 seconds. Rim a coupe glass with a sugar and salt mixture. Strain the cocktail into a rimmed glass (sugar and spice recipe to follow as well) Garnish: with a sweet pepper cut into the shape of a flower.

...Agave Nectar Infusion:

...Sugar and Salt Rim Mixture:

6 oz. Agave Nectar 6 oz. Lime Juice 1 oz. Pink Peppercorn

Tinture (made

with 6 oz 151 Grain Alcohol and 2 oz.

Pink Peppercorn.

Let sit for

3 weeks and strain)

1/2 of a red bellpepper

cut into small cubes 3" Piece of ginger cut

into thin slices 2 Tbsp. Turbinado sugar 1 Tbsp. Red Clay

Hawaiian Salt

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Technique: Dehydrate the pepper and ginger and then throw into a small grinder, add the sugar and salt.

60 Photo by Louise Davis