An Old Distiller's Trick Revived in Oregon

In Hillsboro, Oregon, west of Portland, the Imbrie family erected a granary barn around 1855, a few years before Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species. With a handful of repairs here and there and a new concrete floor, it remains standing today. Inside, distiller Bart Hance makes whiskey and brandy on a still that's almost as old as the building itself.

Look closely: that's a metal can dangling in the middle.

The still is a French model, known in Cognac as an alambic Chartentais, typically used to make brandy and popular on the American west coast. This one was found in an old barn in France and shipped to Oregon where it stayed boxed for years before being installed in the granary. Other than a few brass fittings, the pot still is entirely copper and has a graceful, curving neck through which alcohol-rich vapor rises on its way to the condenser. At 160 gallons, it's not the biggest still one will find in the United States, but it is one of the more venerable. Unlike some modern stills, it has no sight glasses, no thermometers, no computerized reports indicating what's happening inside. On an old still like this, to know what's happening on the other side of the copper at any given moment, one must relies on sight, smell...and sound.

Sure, there's the sound of the gas fire. The intensity of that sound will indicate broadly how much heat is directed at the bottom of the pot. If the sound of the fire dies away unexpectedly, trouble — dangerous trouble — may be brewing. But attendees of a brandy distilling workshop sponsored by the American Distilling Institute learned from Hance to listen for another sound: the jarring clang of falling metal.

See, it takes a long time for wine or beer to heat up in the boiler of a pot still, especially if it's at the frosty room temperature of an old wooden barn. A distiller can't just sit there like a plate of biscuits waiting for the wash inside the pot to warm. There are forms to be completed, barrels to move, and a dozen other tasks involved in running a distillery. So, lacking readouts and internal thermometers common in some modern stills, Hance deploys an old French trick well-known to Cognac makers that allows him to do those other jobs while the still heats. He attaches a large, empty metal can to a string, then loosely wraps the string around the still's neck. With a dab of wax, the string stays in place.

And then the distiller walks away.

As the wash heats and vapor begins to rise, the copper (an excellent heat conductor) grows warm. Eventually, the neck grows warm enough to melt that dab of wax and — CLANG — the can drops and clatters onto the bricks below, sounds loud enough to be heard anywhere in the barn. That's the signal that Hance has perhaps ten minutes before liquids start trickling from the condenser and to wrap up whatever he's doing; there are cuts to be made.

Hats off, Hance; that right there is some old school merde.

Goes well with:

• A visit to Cornelius Pass Roadhouse and Imbrie Hall. The former Imbrie homestead is now owned by McMenimins who were instrumental in getting the property listed on the National Register of Historical Places. The whiskeys, brandies, and other spirits made at Cornelius Pass and at the company's Edgefield distillery are not for sale in liquor stores, but are entirely for internal use at the various bars, hotels, and restaurants under the McMenamins banner. Imbrie Hall, however, offers a selection of bottles for take out.

Hubert Germain-Robin Offers Brandy Distilling Class

Charentais still at McMenamin's Cornelius Pass Roadhouse Distillery 

Just over the transom from The American Distilling Institute comes word that Hubert Germain-Robin is leading a brandy distilling class this November in Portland, Oregon. Germain-Robin was co-founder with Ansley Coale of Germain-Robin distillery in northern California in the early 1980's, though his family has been in the cognac business for centuries.

Writes ADI president Bill Owens:

This week-long workshop will combine traditional techniques of Cognac-style brandies with three decades of experience in working with New World varietals to create new flavor profiles.
 
The workshop addresses the conditions a craft distiller must be mindful of in the vineyard, the winery and throughout distillation. In keeping with the traditional methods of distillation the participant is encouraged to use all their sensory perceptions in creating their product.

Participants will get hands-experience with fermentation, distillation, barrel management and blending. A variety of tastings will include eaux de vie from different varietals of grape, Cognac, Armagnac, American brandies, and wines appropriate for distilling brandy.

The course will be conducted on the Charentais alembic still at McMenamin's Cornelius Pass Roadhouse Distillery. Participants will stay November 4-9 at McMenamin's Crystal Hotel in downtown Portland.

I may try to get there. Haven't decided yet, but I've a weakness for Portland and deep respect for Hubert. [Update 9/21/12 I'm going; see you in Portland] Those attending need to get to Portland on their own, but the course fee runs $3,500 and includes "instruction, hotel, bus tour of local distilleries, and most meals." The ADI website does not yet include registration instructions. If you're keen to do hands-on brandy distilling with a master of the craft, keep an eye on the ADI's website (www.distilling.com) for updates or send them a check:

ADI
Box 577
Hayward, CA 94543

Dispatching Zombies for Halloween

They might not seem like much one at a time.

But in a group, all riled up and hungry?

Man, you 

watch 

your

ass.

~ Morgan to Rick Grimes

The Walking Dead

Halloween candles from Chicago's P.O.S.H.

Last Thursday, I bought candy — bags of candy — for tonight’s trick or treaters. We won’t get very many visitors, I know (there just aren’t that many young kids in our neighborhood), so I expected to have leftovers. What I didn’t expect was that the boys would devour nearly half the stash before Halloween. Yeah, ok, I may’ve helped.

Treats the neighborhood kids won’t be getting tonight, though, are our zombies. Seriously, now; it’s Halloween. What else are we gonna drink? After the recipe, check out Blair Reynolds of the Oregon Bartenders' Guild crank out a slightly tweaked version.

First, though, from Beachbum Berry’s Tiki+ app, here’s Don the Beachcomber’s midcentury version of this potent tiki classic. And a parting word of warning. As Morgan says above, these might not seem like much one at a time, but a bunch of them? Watch your ass.

Don the Beachcomber’s 1950 Zombie

1 oz lime juice
1 oz lemon juice
1 oz unsweetened pineapple juice
1 oz passion fruit syrup
1 oz gold Puerto Rican rum
1 oz white Puerto Rican rum
1 oz 151 Demerara rum
1 teaspoon brown sugar syrup
dash Angostura bitters
sprig of mint

Shake well with lots of crushed ice, pour into a tall glass. Garnish with mint sprig.

Bookshelf: The American Cocktail

She was rather like one of those innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that, you will knock his head off.

P.G. Wodehouse (1919)

My Man Jeeves

With Christmas less than two months off, we’re solidly into cookbook season. This year, that means cocktail books as well. Of those, a handful of new American drinks titles should be on the radar for the cocktail geek in your life (even if that happens to be you). We’ll take a look at some of them over the course of the next week.

First up is The American Cocktail by the editors of Imbibe magazine. Imbibe writing is spirits-heavy, but covers drinking broadly, so any given issue may have stories on tea, soda, coffee, wines, beer, cider, or even water. Producing a cocktail book was a natural course for them; I’m glad to see the editors finally got around to it.

Headnotes on fifty recipes in the book give historical context, ingredient notes, and drinks origins. The recipes themselves are from bartenders across the USA and are broken into areas of the country (The South, Northeast, Midwest, West, and West Coast) where regional ingredients from sassafras to huckleberries lend a sense of place to all of them. Without getting to the elaborate preparations of molecular mixology, the book gives a pretty representative look at what drinking looks like in craft cocktail bars around the country. Wisconsin Kringle syrup to liven up your brandy, anyone? What about a persimmon margarita?

An eight-page appendix of American craft distilleries is a particularly welcome addition, as is specifying particular spirits from local distilleries throughout the book. Yeah, yeah, distribution is limited for a lot of the spirits, so you can usually swap out the specific spirit with a similar one you’ve got on hand, but hats off to the bartenders and editors for making the point to call out local liquor in many of the recipes. Hunt around online; you can often find merchants willing to ship local wet goods to your door.

In the section on the South, spirits and wine director Shannon Healy at Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill — my old stomping grounds — deploys the North Carolina cherry flavored soda Cheerwine in a bittersweet cocktail called Big Bay Storm.

Big Bay Storm

1.25 oz Gosling's rum
.75 oz ounce pineapple juice
.75 oz fresh lemon juice
.75 oz Campari
Ice cubes
1 ounce Cheerwine soda

Combine the rum. Campari, lemon juice, and pineapple juice in a cocktail shaker, add ice, and shake vigorously. Strain into an ice-filled Collins glass. Top with the Cheerwine. Stir to combine and garnish with the orange wheel.

From Portland, Oregon comes Evan Zimmerman’s North by Northwest cocktail, balancing apples in three forms (local brandy from Clear Creek Distillery, fresh-pressed juice, and apple butter) with lemon juice and Averna, a dark Italian amaro we use to good effect in dark Manhattans from time to time.

North by Northwest

1.5 oz Clear Creek apple brandy
.75 oz fresh lemon juice
.75 oz fresh-pressed apple juice
1 tsp apple butter
Ice cubes

Combine the brandy, lemon juice, apple juice, Averna, and apple butter in an ice-filled cocktail shaker. Shake well and double strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

The Editors of Imbibe Magazine (2011)
Photos by Sheri Giblin
The American Cocktail: 50 Recipes That Celebrate the Craft of Mixing Drinks from Coast to Coast
144 pages (hardback)
Chronicle Books
ISBN: 081187799X
$19.95

Tiki Tuesdays

Whether the house specials are tropical drinks or tacos, it seems as if Tiki Tuesdays are cropping up in bars all over these days. Some tikiphiles don't even bother with bars and simply make delicious rum concoctions at home before the work week is even half over. Me? I don't know why we have to make it Tuesday. Seems Tiki Wednesday and Sunday are perfectly fine days to mark the passing of the week. That's not to say I would turn around and leave if I should stumble across a full-blown Tiki Tuesday in progress...and that's exactly what I found at Rogue Ales public house in Portland last month.

Because I intended to catch up with Blair Reynolds of tiki syrup fame, Craig Hermann (aka Colonel Tiki), and their families while there, I packed along a Hawaiian shirt. For this, I was roundly mocked at home. This was, of course, not the first time that has happened. Whenever I don one of those floral shirts, my sidekick Dr Morpheus asks "Is that what you're going to wear?" Sometimes, admittedly, I put one on just to elicit this response. I never said I was not mischievous. Photographer Douglas Dalay will more blatantly lean in closer to me, cup one hand to his ear, and make the most pained expressions when he sees me wearing such a shirt. "What?" he'll mock-shout. "What?! I can't hear you over that loud shirt."

So with those two in tow, I dropped by Rogue Ales to take a load off and try to catch up with distiller John Couchot. John was offsite that day, so we visited him at another Rogue property, but not before discovering that Rogue, too, had a Tiki Tuesday. The deal was that anyone walking in wearing a Hawaiian/tropical shirt would get a free beer. Mine was locked away in the rental car a block away. Ah, well. After much travel, it felt good to sit and enjoy a cool beverage and I wasn't about to go get it.

Dalay had other ideas. Not one to pass up a good deal, he asked for the keys and disappeared. About five minutes later, who should stroll through the front door talking smack about free beer? I wasn't sure because I had one hand cupped to my ear, leaning in, and trying to make out what he was saying over the loud, loud shirt.

Goes well with:

• Simbre Sauce, the pre-batched cinnamon-allspice-vanilla-bitters syrup we use at home for Nui Nuis, ice cream, over granola, etc., is named after Douglas Dalay.
• Rogue Ales. There are several venues for Rogue, but the one we dropped in that day for Tiki Tuesday was at 1339 NW Flanders in Portland, OR [(503) 222-5910]. They also host a Bacon Wednesday. At least, that's what the sign by the host station read. I didn't have a shirt for that.  
• Other Portland stories include Remember the Maine? Hell, I Barely Remember the Walk Home and Pok Pok's Chicken Wings (with recipe).   

Pok Pok's Chicken Wings

I've lost my goddamned mind: 

just conducted an interview 
of the chicken wings I'm frying at home. 

Surprisingly, they have a voice a lot like mine, 
only higher.

~ Facebook post from me last night,

an increasingly rare occurrence

Last month, I spent the better part of a week in Portland, Oregon. Like so many before me, I was smitten. Can you blame me? I’m from San Diego, a desert town on the coast. It’s hard not to be taken with Portland’s lush greenery and air so moist you can feel it even on a sunny day (or, rather, during sunny parts of most days). Add to that the breweries, the distilleries, the Bookstore, hiking out in the gorge, the cocktails, and the food…oh, sweet Jesus, the food.

We ate. When someone asks me what we did in Portland, my answer is simply: we ate. Bacon macaroni and cheese from a food truck, sour cherry water ice, bulgogi tacos, truffled popcorn, pickles, ice cream sandwiches, fried-to-order chocolate donuts, pork ribs, chicken fried steak, boar, an amazing red pork stew, cured meats, cheeses, biscuits, fried chicken, berries, cherries, lefse, blue cheese burgers. I didn’t feel right for a week afterward. It was glorious.

A plate of spicy chicken wings at Andy Ricker’s restaurant Pok Pok, though, was so good that we ordered another round even though there wasn’t one single hungry person at the table. I’m not the first to write about the wings. I won’t be the last. The have a fame of their own. When my friend Barry sent directions for making them from a 2008 Food & Wine recipe, I bought three kilos of flappers and broke out the fryer.

It was too much. None was left.

Ike’s Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings
(aka Pok Pok Wings)

The menu calls them Ike’s Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings. No disrespect to Ike, but most everyone I spoke to in Portland called these crispy glazed chicken wings Pok Pok wings. In brackets are my adjustments and notes. You’ll notice that I like garlic and heat. To add some spice to the glaze, I added a healthy dollop of sambal oelek, an Indonesian crushed chile paste that’s widely available even in whitebread grocery stores.

½ cup Asian fish sauce [Viet Huong brand nuoc mam]
½ cup superfine sugar
4 garlic cloves, 2 crushed and 2 minced [8-10, 4-5 and 4-5]
3 pounds [whole] chicken wings
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, plus more for frying
1 cup cornstarch
1 Tbl chopped fresh cilantro
1 Tbl chopped fresh mint [chiffonade]
[2 Tbl sambal oelek, Huy Fong brand]

In a bowl, whisk the fish sauce, sugar, [sambal oelek, if using], and crushed garlic. Add the wings and toss to coat. Refrigerate for 3 hours [more than that and they become oversalted from the fish sauce], tossing the wings occasionally.

Heat the 2 tablespoons of oil in a small skillet. Add the minced garlic; cook over moderate heat until golden, 3 minutes. Drain on paper towels.

In a large pot, heat 2 inches of oil to 350°F. Pat the wings dry on paper towels; reserve the marinade. Put the cornstarch in a shallow bowl, add the wings and turn to coat. Fry the wings in batches until golden and cooked through, about 10 minutes. Drain on paper towels and transfer to a bowl.

In a small saucepan, simmer the marinade over moderately high heat until syrupy, 5 minutes. Strain over the wings and toss. Top with the cilantro, mint and fried garlic and serve.

Salty? Yes. But not too much so as long as you don’t overdo the marinating time. Cook a pot of plain white rice, crack open a beer, and make sure you've got plenty of napkins.

Remember the Maine? Hell, I Barely Remember the Walk Home.

Treat this one with the respect it deserves, gentlemen.

~ Charles H. Baker, Jr.

Charles H. Baker, Jr. — bear with me, drinks people; I know you know this, but others may not — is a towering figure in cocktail literature. His 1946 two-volume The Gentleman’s Companion was one of the first serious cocktail books I bought almost twenty years ago. Because bars sometimes base cocktail programs on his recipes more than half a century after publication, a passing familiarity with them helps tipplers navigate options at bars that trade in old-school drinks.

This weekend in Portland, I was pleased to recognize Remember the Maine, one of his classics, featured at Teardrop Lounge. It's not unlike a Manhattan, but with an absinthe kick, you wouldn't mistake one for the other. The drink's name refers a popular slogan that decried the sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana's harbor, thus sparking the 1898 Spanish-American War. Baker invokes the slogan in his typically florid and heavily-capitalized prose: 

REMEMBER the MAINE, a HAZY MEMORY of a NIGHT in HAVANA during the UNPLEASANTNESSES of 1933, when EACH SWALLOW WAS PUNCTUATED with BOMBS GOING OFF on the PRADO, or the SOUND of 3" SHELLS BEING FIRED at the HOTEL NACIONAL, then HAVEN for CERTAIN ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS

His original recipes reads: Take a tall bar glass and toss in three lumps of ice. Onto this foundation donate the following in order given: one jigger good rye whiskey, ½ jigger Italian vermouth, one to 2 teaspoons of cherry brandy, ½ tsp absinthe or Pernod Veritas. Stir briskly in clock-wise fashion -- this makes it sea-going, presumably! —turn into a big chilled saucer champagne glass, twisting a curl of green lime or lemon peel over the top.

That "cherry brandy" has caused some confusion — or at least room for interpretation — among bartenders since both Cherry Heering (a dark, sweet, cherry-infused brandy) and Kirsch or Kirschwasser (a clear distillate of cherries, nearly double the proof of Heering) may be used. I find the lower-proof Heering rounds out the drink nicely, but feel free to experiment. The drink doesn't call for much absinthe, but tread lightly if you're unsure whether you enjoy the taste; its presence is not a subtle one.

Remember the Maine (modern adaptation)

2 oz rye
.75 oz sweet vermouth
2 bar-spoons Cherry Heering
½ bar-spoon absinthe

Stir briskly with a bar spoon in a mixing glass with ice. Strain into another glass and serve up.

Goes well with: A stop at Teardrop if you're in Portland. In fact, it's one of the reasons to visit.

Teardrop Lounge
1015 Northwest Everett Street
Portland, OR 97209-3117
(503) 445-8109
http://teardroplounge.com

Distillers to Gather Once More in Portland

Gather 'round, ye distillers of brandy and gin, ye wranglers of whiskey. This April, the American Distilling Institute holds its 8th annual Craft Spirits Conference & Vendor Expo in Portland, Oregon.

As usual, there will be tastings and judging. Vendors to the distilling industry will show off bottles, labels, yeasts, grains, and even barrels for stowing away slumbering spirits.

Granddaddy of the American craft distilling scene, Steve McCarthy (Clear Creek Distilling), Lisa Laird of Laird & Company (we absolutely adore her 100 proof bonded apple brandy, even though a bottle hasn't been seen on San Diego shelves since last year), and Henrik Mattsson, author of Calvados, will speak.

Bill Owens, president of ADI, also promises hands-on distilling classes at Portland distilleries: Whiskey at Bull Run Distilling, brandy at Stone Barn Brandy Works, infused vodka at New Deal Distillery, and gin at House Spirits Distillery (transportation and lunch provided).

Details:
ADI 8th annual conference
April 4-8, 2011
The Benson Hotel
Portland Oregon

For full information, see the American Distilling Institute's site.

Moonshine's Original Intro

Distiller: "What are you doing with that book?"

Me: "I wrote it."

Distiller: "No shit?! Dude, will you sign it for me?"

Rummaging around for something else this morning, I found the original introduction I wrote for my book Moonshine! Now, even though that intro got cut, I'm perfectly happy with how the book turned out and both touched and pleased how it's been taken up by amateur and professional distillers as well as a growing urban homesteader movement as well as folks who just are curious to know how spirits are made.

It's on sale at Amazon but it seems like Powell's in Portland sells more copies of that book than any other free-standing bookstore in the US. Hats off to Powell's — and especially to Tracey, whom sources tells me wrote a very nice review of the book and posted it right there on the shelf.

This, then, is for Tracey: The original introduction for Moonshine!, which has never been printed anywhere. Cheers!

I’m walking in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, musing over a dinner conversation with my waiter. Jesse is twenty-six, maybe twenty seven, a transplant from Pennsylvania. And he’s a moonshiner. Not a home distiller, as a New Yorker or Californian might call himself, but a moonshiner. We are, after all, in the mountain South where in some circles a certain degree of pride accompanies the term. As I pass a grizzled old man on a bench, he looks me right in the eye. “That boy,” he announces, “cain’t hold his liquor.”

Who cain’t hold his liquor? I cain’t hold my liquor? Why would he say that? Do I give off some fear-like pheromone that tells drunkards I cain’t hold my liquor? Jesus. Can cops smell it? Maybe it’s Jesse who cain’t hold his liquor. The old man could have overheard our conversation at the restaurant. Was he warning me to stay away from the waiter? No. No, this is not a restaurant kind of guy. It’s his own weakness he’s throwing on to others, a conversational sleight of hand to confuse anyone who suspected him of upending too many bottles himself.

In the end, the disjointed pronouncements of a chronic drunk say more about my state of mind than his. Moonshine has infected my thoughts more than I suspected. I’ve become so attuned to signs of illicit distilling, interpreting codes, and listening to the spaces between words that a blush of moonshiners’ natural paranoia is coloring my regard for other people.

Moonshine is back. Here’s what I know about it.

Snag a copy for Christmas from Powell's. I'm pretty sure cops can't smell it. Unless they can smell cool.