pistachio liqueur

I love pistachios so much that when a friend offered me a sip of Dumante, a pistachio liqueur, I nearly tackled someone as I lunged towards the cup. Sadly, I was left a little wanting. It had pistachio flavor, but it was really light and gentle. (Pistachios are the most aggressive nut, but this didn't sing to me.)

I found a recipe online for pistachio liqueur, but I wondered how it would turn out if I omitted the spices. Some further research - via misspelling liqueur "liquore", lead me to the glorious discovery that Sicilians make a "creamy" style. Recipes seem to vary between adding actual cows milk cream, or blending the pistachios down and soaking them in alcohol so it is a bit of a nut milk infused booze.

I decided to start with the dairy-free style and see if I could attempt a clear liqueur.

I purchased half a pound of unsalted in-the-shell pistachios, and then shelled them.

Then I rough-chopped them, and it yielded a scant cup of meat.

I added them to a Ball jar (yes I put nuts in a ball jar), and covered them with 750ml of vodka.

I hemmed and hawed about it, but decided I did in fact really want some beautiful vanilla to join the party. I had Madagascar and Tahitian on hand. Smelling both, the Tahitian was the clear winner since it is a much lighter, fruit-ier vanilla, and I am hopefully it will play nicely with the nuts.

Then I took a blurry picture of nuts settling with the bean.

I labeled the jar and made a pact with myself to shake it every few days and taste it after two weeks.

gluten free alcohol - new rules

I tried Omission beer and really fell in love with it. Heck it is a gluten-removed beer, so real beer. The problem was, shortly after I was polishing a post about it, I read that the ELISA tests that Omission uses is not sensitive to be less than 20ppm accurate. I decided hold off on blogging and to email Omission directly about their testing policies. One of their reps said they would look into it and get back to me. Well that was in March of 2013... I am still waiting.

So I have chosen not to drink Omission, or Dura, or any of the other gluten-removed beers. It doesn't seem worth the risk, especially with all of the confusion. (Most of the confusion is because in the U.S. alcohol does not have to be labeled the way food does; it is actually a separate governmental agency Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, that deals with labeling, not the FDA.)

Today ATT released a revised policy on gluten in alcoholic beverages and spirits. This is huge because there are now rules about what alcoholic beverages can (and can't) be labeled gluten-free. The gluten-removed beers, they cannot use the term. I hope this helps everyone, but especially the newly diagnosed, better navigate the world of beverages.

Thanks to Gluten Free Fun for sharing the news.

The bare truth about beer, what a bear

So I have been sitting on a post about Omission beer. It is pretty much my new favorite (ok was my favorite till this morning) but I have been having trouble figuring out just how to write about it.

Omission is brewed with gluten-containing items, i.e. barley. But then the beer goes through a magical process that renders it gluten-free, or really very very low gluten. They post their ELISA tests for each batch online. This level of transparency, plus the taste of REAL BEER, made me feel like this was a slam dunk. (I have consumed it 7 times without a gluten-reaction; and my reactions tend to be pretty strong and violent.)

I was feeling pretty great about this brew until this research came out, and now I am looking long and hard about my beverage decision. The guts of the study show that basically the ELISA test (the one used by Omission) is coming up with false negatives. Yup, you read correctly, the test is not consistently detecting gluten.

This leaves me, and perhaps you dear reader, in the same leaking boat. Without legal standards (still waiting on the FDA), and with faulty testing, it is up to each person to determine what risks to take when eating and drinking. What really infuriates me is what about people who don't have access to the internet, or the time to do all of this research and then extra research about the research to ensure they have the facts about what they are about to ingest?!

Is it worth rolling the digestive and long-term-health dice for a delicious beverage? If you are up for the challenge I have 11 beers with your name on them.

Thanks to Gluten Dude for highlighting the research. 

Dear Dogfishhead,

You owe me more than a beer. You owe me an apology. For over a year I have been excited, touting the hypothetical glory that would be getting to sip that very first sip of your gluten free beer offering. A small, craft brewer, taking their time to concoct something different, something good, something that didn't taste like all the other gluten free beers out there. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled a bit when I heard you were creating something with fruit. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, perhaps you were making a lambic. No. Still I held out hope that your brew house wouldn't waste your time, and customer's money - customers who are so often disappointed by crappy gluten free offerings. 

And then you went out and one-upped me on all of the worse possible combinations of wrong I ever thought could be shoved into a glass bottle. 

Let's start at the smell shall we?

Nail salon plus ode de Strawberry Shortcake doll from the 80s. How did you bend chemistry to morph fruit and sorghum to reek of acetone?

The taste... not much better.
It is sweet and sour-ish at the same time.
I find it hard to believe a hops came anywhere near the bottle. 
The carbonation is all wrong, bubbles too small and not enough of them.

The Tweason'ale is the only gluten free beer I have not finished. Two sips and I was done, forever. The rest got poured down the drain.

I could not be more dissapointed,

Kristina
 

Gin for the win

After more than 2 weeks, the juniper infused vodka looked like this:

I am affectionately calling this the "boba" faze.
I sniffed the brew, and the STRONG, sharp smell of Christmas has dissipated from last week, so I decided it was officially done.

I strained the berries out, and combined the final product with a small amount of the original herbal "gin" to help balance it. Final product: 1.5 cups juniper infused vodka + 0.25 cup spice infused vodka = GIN!

No someone who likes gin please come taste it, because to me, it still tastes like licking the sap of a Christmas tree.

Gin take 2

1 cup of vodka
1 tablespoon dried juniper berries

For those who truly love "real" gin, aka juniper-based gin, I am making a side supplement to my juniper-free gin. I shall report back in a few days.

gin-us

Last Friday night a few people encouraged the gin making to stop, mostly to allow for more substantial gin tasting to occur. I have to say, these are some of the smartest people out there because the end result was amazing.

The "headiness" of the bergamont, where it was very strong in the nose, has really mellowed. So much so I am not sure I would pick it out as the first smell. The flavor is a lot more spicy, in the slightly prickly way - I could really taste the cubebs and grains of paradise! The other marked improvement is that the beverage tastes a lot less, well, vodka-like. Don't get me wrong, but I was a little disappointed when the original recipe I read online suggested steeping for 24 hours, because after 24 hours this was less awesome than after 17 days.

I am going to have to whip up a batch of tonic water asap. 

not by the hairs of my ginny gin gin

Ever since I tackled tonic water, I have been wanting to attempt homemade gin. Actually, that is a bit of a lie. Several years ago, I got into a rather heated discussion about my adamant dislike of gin. It falls into the category of "it tastes like licking a christmas tree, which I am not into". (see also, pine nuts)

For this reason, I had been seeking out a juniper-free gin. Apparently if you remove the juniper, gin it cannot be. Gin only is if juniper is present. This conversation lead to a quest for an "infused vodka" that contained all of the gin botanicals, sans juniper. We found one, but Four Square. It was ok, but very very very floral, and I say that in a grandma's perfume sort of way; not what I want in a cocktail, ever.

Recently being given a bergamot orange, I got inspired to muck around with centuries worth of fine acohol making. (Bergamot oil and/or peel is what gives earl grey tea its quintessential flavor and aroma.)

"Gin" or "infused vodka attempt 1"
4 cups vodka
1/4 ceylon cinnamon stick
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 bay leaf
2 whole allspice berries
1/2 a green corriander pod
1/4 tsp whole cubebs
1/4 tsp grains of paradise
zest of 1/4 a navel orange
zest of 1/4 a bergamot orange

I zested the citrus into the vodka, to aid in it funneling back into the bottle. I didn't use the full peel, because I fear the bitter.

I am hoping that the bergamont will offer up some of the intensity that the juniper usually does. I didn't have any licorice root, so I went with fennel seeds. The cubebs and grains of paradise are hard-to-find spices, but they don the back of the Bombay Sapphire bottle, so I thought since I was out at Christina's Spice Shop, I may as well pick some up and give it a try. The bay leaf isn't on any recipe either, but Knauer's recipe in Gourmet called for rosemary, and since I think that stuff takes like turpentine in large quantities, I thought maybe the bay would bring some earthiness and subtlety to the bottle.

All that is left is to wait and taste.

stagger lee - Crispin cider

I have had Crispin cider before, but I haven't written about it. On the whole, I don't write about products I don't really like. Crispin cider is ok. Its not great, though its better than most I have tried, it just isn't fantastic, and I don't see the point in writing about things that aren't fantastic.

Crispin's limited release of their Staggar Lee, well its worthy of grabbing a pen. The standard Crispin cider is a bit boring, one note, and while it is less sweet than the standard ciders (Magners, Original Sin, Harpoon) its still not a slam dunk. Stagger Lee is beautiful. There are complexities and flavors beyond that of apple. It is not floral, but a little smokey, and the rye barrel flavor really comes out. Its a bit pricey, $5 for a single bottle, but I believe its worth it. There are some subtle flavors that you have to go hunting for to find, so I wouldn't recommend it as a with-food beverage, but it certainly could handle a meal.