Make-Believe Moonshine in Massachusetts

Regular readers know that I take a dim view of calling "moonshine" all those clear grain- and sugar-based spirits cropping up from American distilleries. Doing so obscures the fact that moonshine was — and continues to be — made from nearly every carbohydrate available in North America from persimmons and pumpkins to quinoa and triticale. Sometimes, it is aged for decades. It was always illegal. Always. This so-called "legal" moonshine is a recent historical fallacy, one promulgated by marketers and distillers in the last five or six years who hope you'll suspend disbelief long enough to buy a bottle or jar.

That's not to say I don't like some of these make-believe moonshines. Some are quite good and modern bartenders have been making exceptional cocktails with them. Shoot, friends of mine — welcome guests at my home — make the stuff. I'm just not moved by attempts to redfine a word that has, for three centuries, entailed illicit distillation.

If I were anywhere near Julio's Liquors in Westborough, Massachusetts this weekend, though, you can bet that I'd be front row at the Loch &K(e)y Society's MASS Shine 2012 Expo and Competition (on Twitter as @MassShine). Alas, I'll be under three deadlines three thousand miles away. Distiller Curtis McMillan will present "Understanding taxed moonshine" (ahem) and Gable Erenzo of Tuthilltown Spirits will be talking about New York state moonshine.

For details on times which distillers will be on hand to share their wares, and how to sign up for the free classes, head over to Julio's website.

Do go if you're nearby. Do meet the distillers. Do try their spirits. Just...take as many grains of salt as will fit in your pocket.

Goes well with:

• Legal Moonshine? You've Been Conned
• Even the Ten Dollar Whore Sneered at Me, a look at how far white whiskeys have come in a few short years. 
• Lots of moonshine (actual moonshine) flowed during Prohibition. Here's a look at a 1927 recipe calling for Georgia or Maryland "corn." 

A Dispiriting Glimpse at Molecular Mixology's Latest Offering

My book Moonshine has lots of sidebars, little snippets of text related to the nearby sections, but just enough off-topic that they felt clunky in the main copy. They reflect my scattershot, parenthetical way of thinking and the somewhat difficult time I have keeping my tongue in check. One such sidebar I cut from the final draft concerned booty bumps.

Booty what? Oh, come now. Don't tell me you've never heard of booty bumps.

Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images from The Guardian

Working from the delusion that those around them are unable to detect its aroma, certain day drinkers drink only vodka. Regardless of federal guidelines that specify vodka is to be odorless and tasteless, it is neither. In fact, vodka has a distinct odor and only seems odorless and tasteless when compared with whiskeys, rums, brandies, and other spirits that have more obvious characteristic smells. In other words, we're all onto you, drunkie.

Consumers who want to employ an even sneakier workaround, several informants explained, may take their alcohol from the other end. They may, in effect, take vodka enemas. Ethanol is absorbed rapidly into the bloodstream through the membrane of the lower intestine, delivering the alcoholic punch of a shot of booze, but without the resultant telltale vodka breath. The booty bump. Of course, it's easy to take poisonous amounts of alcohol into one's system accidentally through this inelegant backdoor method. Lest there's any uncertainty; it is not advised.

The things one learns in the course of pursuing a life in alcohol.

I was reminded of this alternate quick-delivery system because this Sunday's Guardian featured a story about the WA/HH spray that's just gone on sale in Paris. Kim Willsher writes:

With one squirt, its inventors promise, you'll feel all the euphoria of being inebriated for a few seconds without the nasty side-effects of behaving like an idiot and falling over. 

Willsher goes on:

With each squirt from the WA/HH spray delivering just 0.0075ml of alcohol and about 20 squirts in each €20 (£16) lipstick-sized spray, it's pricey night out – the equivalent of €1,300 (£1,000) for a unit of alcohol.

What's next? Whiskey tabs that dissolve on one's tongue? Patches that deliver small but continuous doses of Cognac for hours on end? Call me old fashioned, but I like my whiskey, wine, cider, port, rum, punch and other boozy repasts down my throat in liquid form. Ok, and maybe occasionally as a jelly. I enjoy the taste of alcoholic drinks. God help us all if we grow old in a world where the best option for a stiff drink is £1,000 spritzes of aerosol grain spirits.

If molecular mixology continues in this direction, that ass full of vodka might not seem like such a bad idea.

Getting the Apple out of Apple Whiskey, 19th Century-Style

Among the papers of John Ewing held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania lies an undated manuscript from about 1810. It describes a process for making a variety of ersatz liquors from a base of apple brandy, often called in early American idiom, apple “whiskey.” Once treated with charcoal and redistilled, such local orchard brandy could be made to seem like French brandy, Jamaican rum, Holland gin, etc. Emulating more expensive imported liquors using local goods was common throughout the colonial era, through the early Republic, and into the twentieth century. Time and time again, I come across recipes for faking one kind of spirit with another in household account books and recipe manuscripts. Though it’s less common these days, one still finds recipes to make, for instance, homemade gin from store-bought vodka.

From an unknown 19th century distiller, here’s

 To make gin out of apple whiskey

Fill hogshead of 100 or 120 gs. [gallons] with apple whiskey, into which pour a bushel of charcoal—stir the charcoal every hour for two days—stirring so often may not be necessary—then draw off whiskey and put it in a still—distill it and it will be found perfectly clear of the apple—In this state if mixed with French brandy, jamaica spirit or holland gin in the proportion of about one third whiskey to 2/3 of foreign liquors it will impart to the liquor any unusual taste or flavor. 

If in the distillation you add 15 or 20 lbs of juniper berries to the hogshead, it will make good gin. 

Before the still is filled 15 or 20 gallons of Water must be put in the still. 

 A 60 gallon still may be run out twice in the day—Charcoal must be made out of maple, chestnut or light wood—must never be wet—When taken out of the coal pit they should be put out by throwing dirt over it—burnt perfectly well—out at the top so as to let the smoke out—to be ground fine.

The manuscript goes on to calculate that the profit on 100 gallons of apple whiskey converted to gin is $16.30, or about $225 in today’s money. Not enormous profit, but if it were steady, one eventually could buy a house.
 
Me? I think it would be a shame to strip the apples from apple brandy, especially when so many good ones are coming back on the market. If you're curious about American non-grape brandies and happen to be in New Orleans next month, check out Paul Clarke's session Fruit of the Still at Tales of the Cocktail. 

Cthulhu Tiki Mug

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

~ Cole Porter

A casual look around the Whiskey Forge reveals that we are modest in our affection for neither liquor nor books. Even the barely interested can see that whiskey and cookbooks practically bow our shelves. The slightly more curious may note that there's an awful lot of rum as well...and swizzle sticks...and there, in the corner, a small case of tiki mugs. Downright nosy sumbitches will realize that someone, at some point, acquired an inordinate amount of materials by and about the American weird fiction writer, HP Lovecraft.

That would be me. 

Horror in Clay prototype

My days of actively prowling for Lovecraft books and ephemera are behind me. The hunt was far more enjoyable before the coming of the internet. Every book, pamphlet, or document I uncovered in a Pennsylvania barn or a Kansas City estate sale seemed like a little gem, like some real accomplishment. "I found this," I would think, "because I am very good at what I do and know the market better than these people." Now? Eh. Now when I want a title, I search online auction and antiquarian book sites in North America, Germany, Belgium, France, the Netherlands and — with a flurry of keystrokes — have the thing in my hands in no time at all. Effective? Sure. Fun? Not really.

But I do still leave room for serendipitous discoveries. And sometimes they come by way of that same internet that's sucked so much joy out of book hunting. 

Jonathan Chaffin's campaign on Kickstarter brought a smile to my face and made me realize that I can make some room on the shelf for at least one more tiki mug. Chaffin is pimping a prototype of a mug he calls The Horror in Clay. It's taken from a line in Lovecraft's 1928 story The Call of Cthulhu about the dreams of artists and madmen the world over whose febrile nightmares are stirred by Cthulhu, a giant tentacled and winged entity who slumbered fitfully in the sunken South Pacific city R'lyeh. At least, it slumbered at the beginning of the tale...

Chaffin is looking for various levels of contributions to his funding campaign to make a full run of several hundred mugs. Tiki folks will go for it. Lovecraft geeks will want in on the ground floor. The level I'm interested in starts at $40. For that, contributors get a finished 28-ounce mug. Mo' money, mo' mugs.

This leaves me with two questions: (1) When will they be cool enough to handle? and (2) What would Cthulhu drink?

Goes well with:

• Jonathan Chaffin's Horror in Clay campaign is here. 
• My review of Jay Strongman's book (with an intro by Tiki Farm's Holden Westland) Tiki Mugs: Cult Artifacts of Polynesian Pop  
• We've covered Lovecraft here at the Forge before. There's both the candied Cthulhu-head citron I made last November as well as a short film based on HPL's 1926 story of horror in the Cool Air.
• Lovecraft's not the only oddball writer whose stuff I snagged at every turn. Of a once-huge collection of Charles Bukowski materials, one of the few remaining items is a goof, a counterfeit, a sheet of fake stamps that would fit right in Thomas Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49.
• My Culinary Library: What Good Does It Do? I've spent the better part of three decades collecting books on food and drink. Why? What good could possibly come of it? Here are some thoughts on the value of such a collection.
• Finally, if you believe that's a Cole Porter quote, I've got a mug I want to sell you for $80.

Bookshelf: John Egerton's Southern Food

In the summer of 2004, I threw a small get-together in Birmingham, Alabama. I was on the board of the Southern Foodways Alliance then, a group dedicated, in a nutshell, to celebrating the food and drink of the changing American South and the people who made it. Maybe a hundred of us were there for a small conference. After two long bus rides that day, the group was beat, so I invited a handful to come up to my hotel suite for restorative drinks and food once they'd recovered from the sun, the bourbon, and the rides.

One of those was historian John Egerton.

A few restaurateurs showed up. Several editors from papers, magazines, and broadcast news were there. Bartenders and writers rounded out the group. A half-dozen different conversations rose and fell until one voice—one kindly, avuncular voice—dominated the room: Egerton's.

Egerton is a charmer with a ready smile and (almost) always a kind word to say. He so mesmerized this group of experts with his tales that they soon gathered around him in a loose semicircle on the floor and spilled onto beds and chairs, absorbing warmth from the Promethean fire of his insight and wisdom.

John Egerton is a central figure in the modern history of Southern food and the man can tell a story like nobody else. He was one of the architects of what became the Southern Foodways Alliance around the turn of the millennium. His 1987 opus Southern Food has never been out of print and it remains the only book of which I own two copies — one for the shelf in the library and a reading copy for the kitchen, a copy I don't mind getting splattered or dogeared. I buy secondhand copies when I come across them to give to friends. Though it has recipes — and plenty of them — the 400-page book is as much travelogue and history as it is a cookbook.

This morning, I learned I'm not the only one who acts as a nano Southern Food distributor. In The Oxford American, Rien Fertel reflects on the 25th anniversary of the book's publication and how, as a post-Katrina New Orleanian, it held special resonance. He writes:

His thesis stung hard. It resonated in that place that wished this physical and emotional inundation that accompanied Hurricane Katrina was all a very bad dream. The South’s “past now belongs to myth and memory,” he wrote, while its food endured despite the intrusion of that decade’s new American cuisine and its “sin of subtraction.” Modern cookbooks removed fat, salt, and sugar from recipes—cooking no longer took time. Egerton highlighted the endangered species, those Southern foods struggling to survive: country ham and crawfish bisque, Brunswick stew and slow-cooked pit barbecue. The region’s diverse culinary cultures, like my flooded city, required defenders and preservationists.

Read the rest of Fertel's essay here. And if you should relocate to New Orleans and run into Mr. Fertel, he may just set you up with your own copy of Southern Food. Maybe you could trade some whiskey or barbecue...

Goes well with:

In his essay, Fertel laments only a single chapter in Egerton's book on New Orleans. If you, too, want more on that city, see these two:

• John Besh's cookbook My New Orleans written after Katrina: "The story of our city is greater than those storms. We have been here for over 300 years, and we'll be here for another 300."
• Sara Roahen's Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table. A book I've given away so often I no longer own a copy for myself.

I Woke This Morning Thinking of Tits

I woke this morning thinking of tits.

"So what?" you may ask. "I myself think of tits no less than 329 times a day." Yeah, ok, fair enough. You and a bunch of my friends. But bear with me. This is noteworthy for several reasons. I do not recall ever, in the last forty-some years, greeting the day with thoughts of tits. Oh, I can appreciate a nice rack when I see one. I'm gay, not blind. But I spend just slightly more time mulling them over (even in passing thoughts) than I do thinking about which kosher wine I'll serve with breakfast, what's in this month's issue of Cat Fancy, or whether this is the weekend I'll finally crochet a cover for my oven.

To clarify: I do none of that.

Bardot and her, um, raccoon eyes

But here's the thing: I was thinking specifically of Brigitte Bardot's tits — and this despite the fact that no concrete image of Brigitte Bardot came to mind as I stretched under the sheets. Some European sex kitten, I vaguely recalled, whose popularity peaked before I'd learned to walk. Blonde, perhaps.

They were being talked about in my mind in the gravelly, booze-worn voice of British actor Michael Gambon. Though Gambon is known to younger generations as Professor Dumbledor in the Harry Potter movies, his roles as dangerous, dastardly men are what stick in my mind. Albert Spica, for instance, in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover or Eddie Temple in Layer Cake. The voice, though I could not make out particular words, had a distinctly lascivious tone. Not wholly unexpected, given that these were, after all, tits being talked about, but the voice was overbearing, boorish. I pictured him pawing at me while explaining something...something that clutched at the edges of my memory, then slipped away. This had to do with dinner. I was sure of it. Did Bardot, perhaps, pen a cookbook? And it wasn't jugs, or hooters, or headlights; it was...

My eyes snapped open. I had it! In my best Michael Gambon voice, I barked out "...roast chicken like Bridget Bardot’s tits." A muffled hrrmpf came from the other side of the bed. Not everyone was awake yet.

The phrase that had been haunting me was from A.A. Gill's essay Tour De Gall in last April's Vanity Fair. The piece is so good, so anchored in my memory, that it seemed to have had me wondering whether I'd switched teams in my sleep. In it, Gill wrote about the Paris restaurant L’Ami Louis, frequented by titans of state and screen and which he excoriates, in devilish detail, as the Worst Restaurant in the World. I like the passage below dealing with the recommendation best in the Michael Gambon voice. Try that bit in Michael Caine's if you like, but not soft, velvet Old Michael Caine: Young Michael Caine, all loud and nasal and vaguely threatening.

In all my years as a restaurant critic I have learned that there is a certain type of florid, blowsy, patrician Brit who will sidle up and bellow, with a fruity bluster, that if I ever happen to find myself in Paris (as if Paris were a cul-de-sac on a shortcut to somewhere else) there is this little place he knows, proper French, none of your nouvelle nonsense, bloody fantastic foie gras, and roast chicken like Bridget Bardot’s tits, and that I should go. But, they add, don’t bloody write about it.

If you missed it the first time around, read Gill's essay. L’Ami Louis may or may not be the worst restaurant in the world, but Tour De Gall is the most enjoyable restaurant review I've read in a long time.

And if you still can't quite place Gambon, here he is as Albert Spica in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Not entirely Safe for Work, but, then, you're sitting there reading about tits, so either you're not at work or you suffer from the delusion that nobody knows what you're doing on company time. That's Helen Mirren with the hair and a very young Tim Roth at the table.

 

Amsterdam's Canals: A Drunkard's Deathtrap

Understand that Amsterdam is one of my most favorite cities in the world. In fact, when I lived in Philadelphia, I kept a bag packed for those weekends when roundtrip airfare to Amsterdam dropped under $200. It didn't happen often, but when it did, I knew I'd soon be eating breakfast at Cafe Luxembourg overlooking Spui, the cobblestoned square at the heart of so many of my Amsterdam adventures.

A "private" model from whatsupwithamsterdam.com

Heavy drinking and concomitant public urination is so common in the city, however, that residents have a term for it: "wild pissing" (wild plassen in Dutch). Despite the presence of outdoor pissoirs throughout the city, such pubic conveniences aren't always used. Anything is fair game when a full bladder demands attention — trees and buildings, for instance. Even the city's famous canals are not exempt from a good hosing down.

Earlier this year, Radio Netherlands relates a story from De Telegraaf that 51 people have died in those canals over the last three years. One was the result of crime. The other 50?

De Telegraaf newspaper concludes that the other deaths were the fault of the victims themselves: they fell into the water and were unable to get out...Most of the canal casualties are apparently men who fall in while attempting to urinate into the water from the side.

How is it determined that men fell to their deaths while urinating? The article doesn't specify. Of course, witness statements might help establish that. But my guess is that their open flies were the common giveaway.

The article makes no mention, either, of the obvious: many of these drowned men with their supposedly open zippers had to have been drunk enough to lose their balance at the canals' edges and, hands occupied, tumble into the dark waters below: an ignominious end.

Please, dear readers, should you visit Amsterdam, have a few drinks too many, and find yourself outside, use the public toilets. That's why they are there. If the completely open four-man pissers make you a bit shy, keep an eye out for older, more private ones like the one above.

And before your flight back home, be sure to piss on a fly in Schiphol Airport.

Hands-on Whiskey Distilling Class in Colorado

For the past several years, the American Distilling Institute has offered small hands-on classes for aspiring distillers and those who want to know more about distilling. ADI president Bill Owens once (in)famously fermented and distilled doughnuts at one of these five-day workshops. Owens, it must be noted, has an impish side and likes tweaking peoples' notions of proper whiskey.

June 3-8, ADI is holding another class. I've got nothing to do with this; just passing on information. This class will be led by distiller Jordan Via. Via has led similar events at Sweetwater Distilling (in Petaluma, CA), but is now plying his trade at Breckenridge Distillery, site of next month's get-together. 

The class includes;

• Denver International Airport shuttle to and from Breckenridge 
• Sunday night welcome BBQ 
• Five nights lodging in Breckenridge
• Breakfasts and lunches    
• Hands-on instruction with Master Distiller Jordan Via (Monday through Thursday)  
• Demonstrations and presentations by industry professionals and suppliers 
• Optional morning walk with ADI President, Bill Owens 

Attendees will participate in the process from charging the still with distillers' beer to the final steps of wresting the usable alcohol from that beer. Since this is a slow process, there will be breaks during which speakers will talk about aging, blending, distribution, marketing, branding, sourcing materials and other topics about opening and running a distillery. Lots of smelling and tasting.

Distiller Jordan Via explaining how to run a still

The five-day class is $3,500. Owens tells me that, at that price, most of the attendees already have done their reading and are seriously considering either launching a distillery or — in the case of the occasional sommelier who signs up — are professionals in the beverage field who want to expand their knowledge of how spirits are made. For more details, head over to the American Distilling Institute's website.

For first-time drinkers in Colorado, Owens offers words of advice: "...[C]onsuming alcoholic beverages at high altitude can get you drunk fast, so limit your drinks to 1 per hour. Bottom's up!"

South Carolina Orange Cordial

200 Years of Charleston Cooking was first published in 1930. If you were to flip through the edition in my library, you will find a recipe for homemade orange cordial using not brandy as one might expect, but “good corn whiskey.” Should you have access to a gallon of corn whiskey and the patience to gather the pith-free peelings of fifty oranges, then you are in business.

The original headnote calls this recipe “doomed to go untried.” In 1930, you see, Prohibition was still the law of the land and beverage alcohol was illegal. In spite of this, I suspect the good people of Charlestown, South Carolina wouldn’t have had great difficulty, if they were so determined, getting their hands on even as much as a gallon of corn squeezin’s.

Orange Cordial 

Another recipe doomed to go untried reads: 

"Take the thinnest parings of fifty oranges to a gallon good corn whiskey. Leave two months, then pour off and add a thin syrup made of two and one-half pounds of first white sugar and one pint water boiled until it commences to thicken." 

 — Bluff Plantation, Cooper River

Getting a Grip on Smoke: an Idea from Chip Flanagan

Chip Flanagan is on my mind today. Flanagan is executive chef at Ralph's on the Park, a mid-city restaurant directly across the street from City Park in New Orleans. Catching a breeze on the upper story's wraparound porch after a meal is a thoroughly civilized — and mighty enjoyable — way to keep cool on sultry Summer evenings. Helps to have some whiskey in hand (which the bartenders downstairs will happily supply).

But it's the not drinks, the view, or the architecture that's got me thinking of Ralph's; it's what Flanagan has been doing with smoke that's got me mulling options for our new place in San Diego.

Smoked pork belly at Ralph's

Back in December, we bought a 1914 Craftsman house. The sellers had hidden the pad for the original garage out back under a layer of new mulch next to loquat and lilly pilly trees. It was well disguised and we took nearly a week to discover the deception.

The options, as I see them, are two; (1) keep it or (2) get rid of it. The area gets a lot of sun. If we rip it up, I can plant avocado or citrus trees in the 180 square feet. If we keep it...what to do?

And then I remembered Chip Flanagan: I could turn the pad into the foundation for an outdoor kitchen, starting with a smoker. From little more than an old proofing box and a couple of hot plates, the chef has rigged a respectable smoker that he showed me when I was visiting. At the time, a few pork bellies hung within, each slowly acquiring a mahogany mantel. Not long afterwards, I greedily tucked into some of that unctuous, soft, sticky swine.

A flare up in the smoker

Yeah. That's what I want.

Smoked meat is the birthright of every Kansas City native and ever since I was a kid growing up in that town, I've wanted a smoker of my own. When we lived in places a smoker was either impractical or illegal, visions of home-smoked hams, sausages, bacon, chickens, and more have kept me up at night — but the obsession over smoked meats didn't abate. Now that I own the ground under my feet, it's time to decide not whether to build one, but what kind to build. Flanagan's steel box is a compelling design — it's simply a bakery proofing cabinet with the electrics removed and it's on wheels already, so it's mobile(ish). Flanagan uses old skillets with wood chips heated on portable hot plates and for the smoke. The thing would have to have vents to control the flow of air. Add a few cross bars for hanging meats, maybe a wire shelf for smoking cheeses or salt, and we're on to something.

That's it.

With such a simple box, the chef makes great stuff for the restaurant. There's the smoked belly, of course, but also cauliflower, which he uses in soups, salads, and custards. Right now, he's got an oak-smoked pork chop on the menu and he also sometimes cold-smokes tuna with hickory.

Tonight, I'm picking up a little bullet-shaped smoker from a guy who's never used it. That will hold me until I figure out whether I take the Flanagan route or take the plunge and build something more substantial.

But mark this: come Monday, we'll have smoked chicken gumbo for the first time in many years.

Ralph's on the Park
900 City Park Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70119
(504) 488-1000
www.ralphsonthepark.com