Blue Ice and Distilled Resources Trip

Two days after I returned from Finland, I was off again visiting the Distilled Resources distillery in Rigby and Sun Valley, Idaho courtesy of Blue Ice Vodka.

At DRinc (Distilled Resources, Inc.- pretty clever) they produce about 17 different potato and grain vodkas and liqueurs, and also organic alcohol for use in food goods and processing. But we focused on potato vodka and Blue Ice, since they were footing the bill.


There was a great, small group of writers on the trip, including New York wine and spirits educator Harriet Lembeck , Chicagoan Sean Ludord of BevX.com, Louise Owens, booze writer from Dallas, and LA-based Meridith May, publisher/writer/co-owner of The Tasting Panel Magazine and former monster truck driver. (When we learned this, we all pretty much bowed to her awesomeness forever more.) These were really smart people who know their booze. But my relative ignorance meant I was learning the most. Here are some fun facts I picked up.

Distilling:

• The DRinc distillery was a biofuel plant leftover from the Carter administration that they bought and turned in to the distillery.
  
• They use a four-column distillation process. Column distillation does not scale down so that you can have a small column still. Also, pot stills only scale up so far, so that if someone needs to produce mass-quantities of a pot-distilled product they need to buy a whole bunch of pot stills.
  
• After the raw material (potatoes in this case) is fermented into beer, they heat it up and distillation starts. The first distillation column just strips out all the solids from the beer. The rest break down the vapors into the desired components.
  
• You could have just one giant column instead of four or five or whatever, but this way is more compact. So booze that's x-times distilled should refer to pot distillation instead of number of columns, but you never know with the vodka marketing craziness what's really up. Blue Ice compromises and labels their bottles as "four column distillation."
  

Bottling

• The bottling process isn't just taking finished booze and sticking it in bottles. Bottling is often diluting, blending, filtering, flavoring, and bottling at a "bottling facility." Thus, one could order up alcohol from a distillery and flavor it at a separate bottling facility where it becomes distinct products/flavors. (At DRinc they bottle on site.)
  
• Thus the water that brings the product to proof and the flavorings are added at the bottling facility. It is the bottling facility city that is legally required to be put on labels, not necessarily the distillery where the alcohol was first created.
  
• The filtering and treatment of water is a big factor in the finished product- vodka is 60% water, after all. The line between "treating the water" and "flavoring the vodka" isn't terribly clear to me.
  
• There are a lot of ways to filter the water and the final product. Many places run the vodka through a charcoal/carbon filter, but here they add carbon granules to the tanks then filter them out. They say their carbon filtering is actually a clarifying agent for the vodka rather than an important part of the flavoring (they use a "five stage filtration").
  

Waste Products (You know I love distillery waste products):

• The name for the grains or potatoes leftover after fermentation is stillage DDG, or distillers dried grains. Except at Blue Ice they're still wet and they're potatoes, so I guess they should be called DWP. Anyway, this gets sold off as animal feed.
  
• The heads and tails from the distilling process combined are called fusel oils, and are often sold off to be used in chemical processing and cosmetics. However, at DRinc they have to prove to the ATB (via purchase of testing equipment) that there is no more recoverable alcohol in the fusel oils before they do, and by "recoverable" they mean "taxable."
  
• I had the opportunity to smell a jar of fusel oils!
  
• Waste heat from the distillery (steam) is pumped under the floors of the storage warehouse in the winters to heat it.
  

Blue Ice

• They have to get certified to say that they make the product from Idaho russet potatoes, as that term is trademarked, by proving that all their potatoes come from Idaho.
  
• They don't make a lot of organic potatoes in Idaho, which is why DRinc makes organic grain-based vodkas for other brands but not an organic potato vodka. It would be just too expensive on the shelf.
  

Call me a sucker, but I love distillery tours. At every one I learn more, and also how much more I need to learn. It's an ongoing study of booze, and these are the field trips that keep it exciting.

Finland recap

I filed my write-up of my trip to Finland with Finlandia Vodka in my personal blog, as there isn't too much information about vodka in it beyond the ridiculous amounts of it that were consumed while there. But if you're interested, you can read part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Party at the Hangar Distillery July 14th

I'm going.

St. George Spirits Summer Open House

Take a spirited retreat this summer to a sunny island –one that won’t break the bank or use up vacation time- to St. George Spirits/ Hangar One Distillery on Saturday July 14th from 1pm-6pm in Alameda.

The hangar doors will be open, spectacular spirits will be flowing, and the stills will be running, allowing a rare opportunity to get up close and personal with the distillation process. Music and hors d'oeuvres will be supplied throughout the day to keep everyone upright.

Have a summer fling with the Aqua Perfecta Basil eau-de-vie available for the first time on July 14th. A rare and distinctive unaged brandy made from several varieties of basil, including Sweet and Thai, perfect for summer cocktails.

Also showcased will be renowned local artisans June Taylor Jams and Recchiuti Confections who will be sampling their transcendent chocolate truffles and other goodies.

Shuttle service will be provided between the West Oakland BART station and the Alameda Main Street ferry to and from the distillery on the legendary Mexican Bus from 1pm to 6pm. Flash your admission ticket to get on the bus.

Tickets will be available in the distillery store and by phone starting Wednesday June 20th (with a $1.50 service charge per order) for $25. If event tickets are not sold out admission will be $30 at the door.

St. George Spirits, artisan distillers of Hangar One Vodka, Aqua Perfecta eaux-de-vie and liqueurs, and St. George Single Malt Whiskey.

Saturday, July 14th, 2007 from 1pm to 6pm
St. George Spirits/Hangar One Distillery
2601 Monarch St, Alameda CA 94501
Map/directions available at: http://www.stgeorgespirits.com/pdf/stgeorge-directions.pdf

Tickets are $25 in advance, $30 at the door.
$1.50 service charge added to all phone orders.
No phone orders taken after July 8th.
This is a 21 and over event. Please bring your picture ID!

For more information contact Lou Bustamante, Spirit Guide, 510.769.1601, tastingroom@stgeorgespirits.com

St. George Spirits: : http://www.stgeorgespirits.com
Michael Recchiuti Confections: http://www.recchiuticonfections.com
June Taylor: http://www.junetaylorjams.com/
Mexican Bus: http://www.mexicanbus.com/
Alameda Ferry: http://www.eastbayferry.com/

Booze News

I checked the booze news for the past week while I was traveling. It was a good week.

Tennessee is set to become the first state in the nation to require carding of anyone, without exception, who buys beer for off-premises consumption. Now underage drinkers will have to resort to asking older people outside the store to buy them booze, just like they always have.

A study shows that gastric bypass surgery turns formerly hefty people into alcoholic lightweights.

The EU voted that legally-termed vodka can be made from things other than cereals and potatoes (such as grapes and maple sap) as long as its labeled accordingly on the bottle. But as far as I know, every vodka that isn't made from corn proudly labels the bottle as such anyway.

A manufacturer invents a "cocktail condom" that you use to cover your drink while you leave it so that you can be sure nobody drops date-rape drugs in it while you're not looking. So it's kind of like the don't-drink-my-drink coaster, but with glue.

Someone created a pizza-flavored beer. Great idea, combining things that are commonly consumed at the same time into one tasty treat. I always pour a half gallon of milk into my cereal box and keep it in the refrigerator for the month.

It turns out that most organic certified beer isn't totally organic- most hops aren't, but you only need 95% of organic ingredients to be USDA certified. In the wake of the bad press, one hopes more hops will go orgo.

Heineken launches a new skinny, taller can for its light beer- sort of like the Virginia Slims model of package design. But wait Heineken light? Does it taste like water, with extra-extra water flavor?

Land of the Hangover

Hey y'all- I'm in Finland right now courtesy of the people at Finlandia vodka and Brown-Forman, whose products I drank way too much of last night. I'll post a more complete entry later, but here are my thoughts so far:

• If the luggage loader breaks and they can't load half the luggage on the plane, why not wait until it's fixed before sending the plane off? My comfy airplane t-shirt did not make a great urban exploration t-shirt for the additional 24 hours I was forced to wear it (so far).
  
• Finn Air's wine and spirits selection in business class was delightful. The veggie meals? Not so much.
  
• Monday night and we went bar-hopping to four venues. I think we got back sometime after 3:30AM. I like this place.
  

Thursday update-I'm back from a night of partying in Lapland, where the sun is shining 24 hours a day now. I am absolutely polluted with vodka that at some point of the night we stopped drinking in cocktails and began chugging out of the bottle. Boy do I ever need a shower.

Sunday update- I'm back in SF now. Pictures are here. More details after I'm back from my next trip.

Sample Styles

The New York Times today has a piece on gin tasting, which is unique in that they sampled the gins in martinis rather than straight.

I've always thought that this was a problem with a lot of comparison tastings of spirits- nobody drinks gin or cachaca or pisco or a lot of other spirits on their own. I think the juniper-forward gins that work great in martinis taste far too powerful on their own. As they point out in the Times article, some gins, mostly the newer expressions, though complex and bright and delicious, just don't mix well with vermouth. They singled out 209 Gin and G'Vine as examples that they didn't feel were right in martini form. I completely agree with G'Vine, which is a flower bomb that's really tasty but needs to be tempered with tonic water.

I've also done a vodka sampling at room temperature. Yes, you can taste more nuance at room temperature, and coldness hides impurities, but name a single vodka drink served at room temperature. If the cheap yucky stuff tastes just as good as the expensive fancy stuff when it's served in a cocktail, what does it matter how good it tastes warm?

Anyway, I'm glad to see that someone did a taste test in a real-world environment. Here's to more of that.

Cocktailing with Cameron Bogue, Part One

Last week I went out drinking with Cameron Bogue, Smirnoff's cocktail consultant. As I understand it, Cameron's job is to travel the country, find out what people are drinking in different cities, talk to bartenders, and then create some new recipes based on what he learns. Yes, it does seem to be a very sweet job, especially the travelling and drinking part. But no, it doesn't appear to be an easy one.

Throughout the course of the night whenever we'd encounter a bartender doing something unusual, homemade, or hard-to-achieve, it would often turn out that Cameron had successfully tried it already. He's got a steam distillation device at home so he can make his own orange flower water. His experiments in molecular mixology for the company resulted in him creating a sushi platter of material made from booze, including the wasabi and ginger. (I'll post a picture later- it was amazing.)

And when he creates recipes, not only do the quantities of alcohol in each drink have to conform to strict company standards, he has to have the names and recipes approved by a legal team before they're released to the public. (He said they had problems working with Kumquat because it was hard to find names that didn't sound dirty.) You can find the last installment of his cocktail trend report here (big pdf file), and hopefully the next one will have pictures of the sushi.

In my next post, I'll talk about what we drank and what's going on in SF.

Very Special Vodka

(In Today's SF Chronicle)

Vodka for special moments?

For something that tastes like nothing, spirits companies can find a lot of ways to market vodka. We've seen vodka flavored with garlic, vodka bottles shaped like a bong, vodka made out of cactus, and vodka with energy supplements. What more could they possibly do to sell the stuff? Add bubbles, of course!

At least two new products have started what could be the best worst trend in vodka. Vodka O2 (www.sparklingvodka.com) has infused bubbles that "create a lightly effervescent texture that gently tingles on the tongue." Better yet, Nuvo For Her (www.nuvoforher.com) is a pink "vodka liqueur" (vodka, wine and fruit nectar) with ad copy that reads like something you'd expect to buy at Good Vibrations rather than BevMo: "The world's first sparkling vodka liqueur that celebrates 'Joie de Vivre,' the Joy of Life, and the pleasure of women sharing beautiful moments. Nuvo's delicate fruity taste, distinctive pink colour, and enchanting bottle allow you to experience a whole new array of sensations like never before." We've just discovered a new spirits category: soft-core vodka.

-- Camper English

Hip Sips

The book Hip Sips, by Lucy Brennan of Portland, Oregon's Mint and 820, is finally released. I've talked about the delicious beet-infused vodka martini I had there.

I got a review copy of the book a while ago and made the beet-infused vodka. I think I let mine infuse about one day too long, but it was still pretty tasty. (Though not as tasty as it was at her bar.) You can actually find the recipe for the Ruby and the beet infusion in the April issue of Wine&Spirits Magazine, where I did a tiny write-up of the venue as well.

Other drinks in the book include and Avocado Daiquiri and a Rhubarb Cooler- really unusual creations. Many of the drinks are labor-intensive (unless you already have fig puree around the house) but really unique. It's a nice alternative to books endlessly repeating classic recipes (Hip Sips lists 20 classic cocktails out of over 60 recipes) with impressive ingredients.

Purple Hooter Haze

An entrepreneur in Seattle released Hendrix Electric Vodka and Jimi's sister ain't happy about it and is suing. She controls his music rights, but her (non-dead) brother is involved with the vodka so they bill it as a "Jimi Hendrix family company." For some wacky reason, the sister doesn't want a liquor associated with her brother, who died of an overdose of booze and pills. Read more here.

Vanity Spirits update

This is getting a little out of control. Though celebrities have been buying up vineyards for years (I call them vainyards), more of them are getting into the spirits industry. One of the first was Sammy Hagar with Cabo Wabo tequila. Now we have Willie Nelson's Old Whiskey River bourbon, Trump Vodka, Jay-Z and Damon Dash's Armadale vodka, and I just read that Vince Neil bought a tequila Tres Rios.

North Side Dining

Tonight I went out for drinks and dinner with a rep from the Hime restaurant in the Marina. Though they have an interesting cocktail menu (bigger than what's online), we stuck with sake. We started with a sampler of 3 nama (unpasteurized) sakes not normally on the menu. The first one, Harushika, was our favorite, being smooth, round, and only slightly fruity.

After that , we compared the ginjo and daiginjo versions of the same sake- Wakatake. Ginjo sake has its rice polished to a certain percent, and daiginjo is further polished. The ginjo had the rice (an almost gamy, slightly overripe flavor that's usually present in sake but not my favorite flavor in the world) ever present in the taste, whereas the daiginjo opened with a fruity floral taste then followed with the rice flavor.

After that, we tried two junmai sakes: the very dry Otokoyama which was only outstanding for its dryness, and the Akitabare which was bold but didn't make a strong impression. Our server recommended we move from Daiginjos down to junmais since the palate gets tired, but I found that's not really true for me. The junmais just seem so bold as to be boring.

Anyway, they offer over 30 sakes total, with several seasonal or rotating off the menu.

The food we had was creative and pretty darn tasty. They asked me a ton of questions about what I do and don't eat since I'm a vegetarian- is fish broth okay? how about eggs? and so on. I was worried that they really didn't have anything vegetarian on the menu and were desperate. However, they brought us so much food we couldn't eat it all, from a mushroom salad to asparagus wrapped in something fried that tasted like peas altogether, to fried tofu topped with yuzu sauce, to tempura served as vegetable popsicles on long wooden skewers, which was a great touch. With the effort and presentation on the veggie stuff, I'd bet the fish is good too if you're into that sort of thing.

Afterwards we went for a cocktail at Mercury Appetizer Bar a good walk up the street. We had a dessert there, which was a chocolate and butterscotch pudding combo where the butterscotch is made from real scotch.

WAIT A MINUTE, YOU CAN MAKE BUTTERSCOTCH FROM SCOTCH? How did I not know this?

Anyway, I had their Green-tea'ni that is only vodka mixed with Zen Green Tea liqueur. At first I hated the drink, then liked it by the end, but maybe my taste buds were tired like the waiter said they would be earlier in the night. We also tried the Chai Iced Tea that has Phillips Union Vanilla Vodka (yuck) with Voyant Chai Liqueur (yum!) and iced tea and cream. It was really a drink built around the flavors of the Voyant, but I really like those flavors so I was all for it. Worth checking out.

Then I stumbled to the bus stop and took the 49 all the way home. One hour later I'm still a little tipsy. Occupational hazard, I guess.

Fun with Vodka

A poster on the DrinkBoy forum pointed out these hilarious 42 Below Vodka University ads on YouTube. They're totally not PC (and slightly not safe for work) with gay jokes, rimming jokes, strippers, and Mexican wrestlers. It's about time vodka got a sense of humor!

Hair of the Dog

For hangovers, bartenders prefer the 'hair of the dog'

Camper English, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, December 29, 2006

Most readers will glance at the following two sentences and ignore the advice in them, so perhaps it's best to skip this first paragraph altogether. The best way to cure a hangover is to avoid getting one. Standard suggestions for hangover prevention include drinking in moderation, drinking a glass of water between every cocktail, eating plenty of food so that alcohol absorbs through the stomach lining at a slower rate, and not mixing different kinds of alcohol during your night out drinking.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's face facts: On Jan. 1, plenty of people will be hurting from overindulgence the previous evening. Hangovers are a fully preventable condition that most of us forget to prevent. We needn't feel terribly bad about having one (focus the guilt on what you said to your ex last night) because even people who work with alcohol on a daily basis slip up occasionally and pay the price, just like the rest of us.

We asked a few Bay Area bartenders who should know better than to get a hangover in the first place what they do to make them go away.

Read the rest of my hangover story in today's Chronicle here.