Following up on my earlier experiment infusing Oolong tea in gin, I decided to do another Chinese tea inspired infusion. This time round I wanted to use a tea blend called Jupu (??), which is simply a mix of chrysanthemum flowers (??) and a black tea called Puer (???).

You do not buy this tea as a blend. You simply buy a pack each of Puer tea and chrysanthemum flowers and blend them yourself in the pot. The ratio is up to you, but the usual thing is to use enough puer to make a decent brew and then add a teaspoon or so of chrysanthemum. This tea is very popular among Cantonese as an accompaniment to dimsum.

Puer is an interesting tea from Yunnan province in southwest China. Puer is a black tea, meaning it is fully fermented. After fermentation and roasting the tea is pressed into bricks and aged. This aging makes Puer tea unique. The finished tea has an earthy and almost fungal flavor. The top of the range stuff can be decades old and sells for huge sums.

You can buy Puer tea in various forms from any Chinese grocery or tea shop. Traditionally it is sold in bricks of varying sizes, ranging from enough for a single pot up to huge things that could keep a person supplied with tea for years. You simply unwrap the brick and remove what you need using your fingers or a knife. Breaking off exactly what you need is tricky, and things can become messy if the brick crumbles all over the place. These days loose leaf Puer is popular. Although not traditional, loose leaf Puer is easier to deal with and tastes good enough for everyday use.

Chrysanthemum tea should also be available from any Chinese grocery. It is sold in the form of dried whole flowers and is quite inexpensive.

My first experiment with this infusion involved gin. I infused the gin with the tea for two hours, and then made a gin sour sweetened with honey. I did not particularly enjoy the result. The idea behind the honey was to mimic the honey sweetened chrysanthemum tea which is a popular iced summer drink in Cantonese areas. However, I found it did not work well as a cocktail. The honey dominated too much and the gin seemed to clash with the chrysanthemum.

My second experiment used a different approach. I dispensed with the gin and turned to pisco. I thought Chilean pisco, with its ‘raisiny’ character, would make a nice base for this infusion. Pisco would contribute some similar characteristics to honey but without dominating nearly so much. Moreover, the absence of competing botanicals would leave the delicate chrysanthemum unmolested.

I made my infusion by soaking the following for two hours:

100 ml Bauza pisco

1 tsp puer tea

5 dried chrysanthemum blossoms

Then I simply used that infusion to make a pisco sour, as follows:

1 ½ oz chrysanthemum and puer tea infused pisco

¾ oz lemon juice

½ oz simple syrup (2:1 sugar to water)

1 egg white

Shake over ice and double strain into a cocktail glass. I did not bother with the Angostura Bitters garnish because I wanted to be able to enjoy the flavors without extra distraction.

This really worked. The pisco provides a nice soft background and lets you really appreciate the chrysanthemum. It makes for an interesting drink, albeit a slightly lightweight one. If I was to refine this further I would look to increase the chrysanthemum. I might also do the infusion in two steps, first briefly infusing the tea (say for 2 hours) to get flavor without too much tannin, then giving the chrysanthemum a longer infusion.

I guess vodka could also work, though right now I prefer to use the more light bodied piscos I happen to have lying around. If I were to do this with a more full on pisco, such as Machu Pisco or Demonio, I would definitely look to take the chrysanthemum up a notch. This might also work nicely if sweetened with St. Germain, though again I would look to increase the chrysanthemum if I went down that route.

I will update with a name when I think of one.

Grenadine syrup is an awkward ingredient. There are interesting drinks that call for quite large doses of the stuff, yet mixing up one of these in the average bar is likely to result in the grenadine being the nastiest single ingredient in the mix. Who wants to adulterate quality spirits with a vaguely fruity, artificial version of what was once a natural pomegranate syrup?

Some brands are truly shocking. Price is not a bad guide, with the cheapest often being the worst. However, even pricier options like Fees Brothers are not necessarily good. I have a bottle of Fees Brothers at hand now, and besides not tasting very natural, to me it tastes distinctly of cherry. The list of ingredients is not informative, just listing various flavorings. Some commercial brands are reasonable though. I think Monin includes a little pomegranate juice (around 15% from memory), so I guess it is not a bad choice. Having said that, I believe the formula for Monin syrups varies among markets, with the U.S. versions sometimes being inferior to those sold in Europe. Before buying a bottle of grenadine I would recommend taking a look at the list of ingredients to see what it is made of. Does it contain pomegranate juice?

Some suggest using pomegranate molasses (sometimes labeled pomegranate syrup) in cocktails. I do not recommend this. This stuff really is a molasses like product, being thick, grainy, and extremely sour. While it has plenty of sugar, the emphasis is on the sourness. It is extremely concentrated and tends to be a dark-brown, almost black color. Looking at it you would never confuse it with grenadine. Pomegranate molasses can be interesting stuff to play with if you are unfamiliar with how processed pomegranates can taste, but it belongs in the kitchen, not the bar. It is great in marinades, sauces, etc. I have heard of people using this stuff as a grenadine substitute in drinks. This seems like a crazy manifestation of anti-commercial-grenadine prejudice to me. Sure the commercial grenadines are bad, but using a sour brown gunk as an alternative? There is just no similarity between grenadine syrup and pomegranate molasses. The former provides sweetness together with pomegranate taste, while the latter provides sourness together with pomegranate taste. They are designed to achieve completely different things.

A pomegranate juicer in action in the market in Kashgar

Given the difficulty of buying good grenadine and the lack of substitutes, it makes sense to make your own. Making my own grenadine has been a bit of an obsession since I took a trip around East Turkestan (the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of Northwest China) and found freshly squeezed pomegranate juice was ubiquitous as a roadside thirst quencher. Drinking the fresh juice gave me an idea of what grenadine could be if only it was made properly. The juice was sour, sweet, and tanniny, with quite a robust flavor. The intensity of the flavor is reflected in the fact it is often sold in quite small glasses, containing only 100 ml or so. As I wandered the streets drinking the stuff, true grenadine seemed tantalizingly close and yet very far away – the more so since the region suffers a shortage of cocktail bars. Fubar in Wulumuqi has a great line up of beers, but its martini glasses gather dust.

I have since tried three different methods of making grenadine, and have now found a method I am happy with. My experiments took me through the following three methods:

1 – Adding sugar to commercial pomegranate juice to make a juice flavored syrup: take ½ cup of bottled pomegranate juice, heat gently on the stove, add a scant 1 cup sugar (slightly less since juice already contains some sugar), stir to dissolve sugar, briefly cook, cool and use.

2 – Cooking pomegranate seeds in simple syrup: make a cold process 2:1 simple syrup by mixing 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of water (using a pulse blender for the mixing makes this easy), cut a pomegranate into quarters and remove seeds (do this in a bowl of water and you will find the seeds sink while the white pith floats), place seeds in a saucepan with the syrup and gently simmer for 30 minutes until mixture forms a slightly thickened syrup*, add red food coloring to deepen color (recommended), strain, cool and use.

3 – Mashing pomegranate seeds to extract the juice, adding sugar and water, and cooking into a syrup: seed a pomegranate as described above, place seeds in a saucepan and lightly mash with a potato masher to extract most of the juice (you only need to burst the pods around the seeds, not crush the seeds themselves), add 1 cup sugar and ½ cup water, gently heat while stirring until sugar is completely dissolved, simmer on a low heat for 30 minutes into a thick syrup, add red food coloring if desired, strain, cool and use.

After trying the above three approaches I found an interesting recipe for a fourth method (read about it here at All the Marmalade). This method is similar to method 3 except that the mashed seeds are marinated overnight with the sugar to let the flavor develop. Another difference from method 3 is useing two pomegranates where I used just one. This should mean a more intense flavor and likely no need for added food coloring. Finally, the cooking is done at a low temperature and for a shorter time.

4 – The process for method 4, the marinating method, is basically as follows: seed two pomegranates and place seeds in a bowl with 1 cup of sugar; mash seeds and sugar together to release the juice and dissolve the sugar; rest overnight in the refrigerator; remove seeds by straining into a saucepan; add ½ cup water and gently heat for a few minutes to kill any bacteria. Personally, I think cooking for a little longer may still be a good idea.

This fourth method looks very promising, but due to a lack of pomegranates in the shops since finding that recipe I will have to leave it for my next batch. Of the three approaches I have tested I recommend method 3.

Method 1 simply just produces an extremely sweetened fruit juice. It is OK if you are in a hurry, and better than most commercial brands, but still not great. The limited cooking in method 1 also means the syrup is not especially thick. I think a little thickness is desirable. Method 2 is an improvement on method 1, mainly because it extracts some flavor from the seeds. The seeds have a hard-to-describe, slightly nutty or vegetal taste, and for me they really improve the syrup. You eat the seeds when you eat a pomegranate, so surely grenadine syrup should also capture their taste. The weakness of method 2 is that the juice tends to remain with the seeds rather than flowing into the syrup. Although the syrup still picks up plenty of flavor, it lacks acidity and natural color. Method 3 is the clear winner, producing a syrup with a natural purplish/red color (best boosted with red food coloring if you want attractive drinks), and a full pomegranate flavor, including both the acidic juice and the seeds. Method 4 will hopefully be even better than method 3.

Well made grenadine becomes not merely a sweetener but a flavor in its own right, making grenadine cocktails a field for serious exploration. The question then becomes what cocktails to try it in.

* Pay attention not to overcook the syrup or it will start to form candy. You want to cook it to the stage where it no longer dissolves instantly when you drop a little into a bowl of cold water. However, it should still dissolve easily when stirred. You do not want to cook it to the stage where it forms a soft mass that holds it shape even when stirred. If it gets to this stage you are on the road to making candy. Adding a little water will rescue things. If you demand grenadine that mixes a little easier then simply don’t cook for as long. Personally I don’t find requiring an extra couple of stirs when mixing a drink to be a big deal, but then I don’t mix hundreds of drinks every night.

With a name like Seamus, I felt obliged to come up with something to mark St. Patrick’s Day. Thus, in a moment of inspiration, I reached for the Crème de Menthe, Chartreuse and Midori, then got busy carving a clover out of a lime shell. The world was about to be introduced to the Leprechaun’s Abortion.

Don’t worry. . . I realize the world does not need another drink whose only distinguishing feature, besides tasting awful, is being green. Instead, I thought again along the lines of tea, specifically Twining’s Irish Breakfast Tea. Incidentally this tea comes in a green cardboard box that could be cut into fine clover leaf garnishes if required. I elected to leave this aspect of the product’s St. Patrick’s Day potential unrealized however, deciding instead to simply infuse Irish Breakfast Tea in Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. Why not?

Then I thought there was not much point infusing whiskey with tea alone, and Irish Breakfast Tea at that. Does an Irish breakfast not demand bacon? Thus into the infusion went some bacon. Wisdom intervened at this point, quietly whispering that I should leave the eggs aside until the infusion was finished. I obeyed.

So there I had my drink. It would be a whiskey sour, that quintessential morning potion of leisured Americans, made Irish for the day with hearty breakfast flavors of tea and bacon, and bolstered with a silken egg. It would be simultaneously Irish and American, a true immigrant success story. Some luck would be required to make it all work, but the Irish are rumored to be blessed in that department.

The above is not a joke. Tea infuses beautifully in gin, so why not in whiskey? Quite a few people have experimented with infusing vodka with bacon, and some have also tried Bourbon, so again why not Irish? Bacon and tea are a popular breakfast combination, and there is even such a thing as tea-smoked bacon, so why not combine them in a drink? Then consider the alternative – a mixture of crème de menthe, Midori and Chartreuse. The bacon breakfast cocktail idea is looking tempting, no? So mutter a Hail Mary and take the plunge. . .

The recipe:

1 ½ oz tea and bacon infused Jameson’s Irish whiskey*

¾ oz lemon juice

½ oz simple syrup

1 egg white

Shake long and hard over ice to froth up the egg. Strain into a cocktail glass. I like to double strain shaken egg drinks (i.e. strain through a sieve as well as with the cocktail strainer) to remove ice shards and possible strands of egg. I find ice shards do not sit well in shaken egg drinks.

The verdict? Not bad at all. The strength of the bacon taste will vary a lot depending on the bacon used, the quantity, the infusion time, etc. I found that the tea dominated, with the bacon occupying the background. The bacon was there as an aroma and some saltiness. This was more or less what I was aiming for, the sense of drinking a cup of tea at breakfast time. Irish Breakfast is quite a tannin heavy tea, being a blend with a high ratio of Assam, so this drink has a little bitterness.

I thought about using maple syrup rather than simple syrup but decided not to, at least initially, because I wanted to see how the flavors worked in isolation before complicating things further. Maple syrup would probably be a nice addition, though perhaps too dominant.

* Make the whiskey infusion as follows. The quantities are small because this was experimental. Put 1 tsp Twining’s Irish Breakfast Tea into 100 ml whiskey to infuse for two hours. After two hours, strain to remove the tea. Now place a rasher of lightly fried bacon in the tea-flavored whiskey (I used a mild and lean Danish bacon). Infuse for at least 24 hours before using. The bacon is slow to infuse compared to the tea. You could probably infuse for several days or longer. You will get some bacon fat on the top of the infusion. Since I used very lean bacon the amount of fat was minimal and I didn’t bother removing it. Small quantities should get either emulsified by the eggs or removed in the strainer. If you have large quantities of fat then simply lift them off the infusion with a spoon. Fat solidifies in the fridge so this is easily done.

It is certainly relatively common in Barbados, being drunk in classic local drink the Corn’n'Oil (rum, falernum, Angostura Bitters, and a squeeze of lime). The Corn’n'Oil shows how versatile and easy to use Falernum is. You can simply splash it into rum to enhance the rum, or it can be used to create a more elaborate concoction like the Don the Beachcomber Mai Tai. It is sort of like a mildly alcoholic tropical version of sweet-and-sour mix.

So far I have relied on making falernum myself. Although I have tasted the Fees Brothers product, I do not rate it highly. The formula seems far too close to standard sweet-and-sour mix to be interesting.

I have tried two different falernum recipes. As with Pimento Dram, I found different recipes yielded very different results. Happily, my second attempt once again proved better than my first.

My first attempt was made as follows:

In 1/2 cup of white rum (Bacardi) soak the following for 48 hours: 6 cloves, 3 cm vanilla bean, zest of 2 limes, and 3 thin slices fresh ginger, and 2 drops almond extract (I was using a highly concentrated almond extract, possibly of dubious quality, hence the very small quantity).

Create a simple syrup from 2 cups white sugar and 2 cups water. Strain the rum mixture and add to syrup. Bottle and use.

This recipe made a tasty lightly spiced syrup. The flavor was not particularly concentrated so there was a temptation to use a lot and thus end up with a very sweet drink. Stored at room temperature the flavor of the syrup began to deteriorate quite rapidly. The low concentration of sugar in the 1:1 simple syrup would not have helped the shelf life of this falernum.

My second attempt used a different recipe, as follows:

Take 4 oz overproof white rum (Sangster’s Conquering Lion, 64%) and infuse it for three days with the following: 20 cloves, 2 tablespoons chopped almonds (approx 25 gms) lightly toasted in a frying pan. Add the zest of 4-5 limes (depending on size) and ¾ oz fresh ginger and infuse for a further day. Adding the limes and ginger only on the last day of the infusion stops the mixture from turning slimy and avoids over-extraction of these flavors.

Strain the above mixture through a moistened cheesecloth, extracting all liquid. Mix the rum infusion with 7 oz simple syrup (2:1 sugar to water ratio), 2 ¼ oz fresh lime juice (strained), 1/8 tsp high quality almond extract, 1/8 tsp high quality vanilla extract. Bottle and use.

This version turns out beautifully. The lime juice gives it an amazing freshness, and also eliminates the need for a squeeze of lime when making a Corn’n'Oil. Of course the lime juice also means you will need to store this syrup in the fridge or freezer. However, since the juice free recipe did not last well at room temperature, refrigerated storage is probably a good idea anyway. This version is like an all purpose rum enhancer, with sourness, sugar, and spices all rolled into one.

If I was to criticize I would say that the almond could be toned down a little. I may try it without one of either the toasted almonds or the almond extract in future. Be very careful not to over-toast the almonds given that they are an assertive taste.

A key point that emerges from comparing the two recipes is probably the importance of overproof spirits when doing infusions. The higher alcohol content extracts flavors better, so make an effort to find and use overproof spirits for infusions, particularly when the infusion is itself to be used to make a liqueur or syrup (dilution of the infusion makes it even more important that it is as intensely flavored as possible to start with). Another point is that when making falernum it makes sense to go heavy on the spices. The first recipe, with only 6 cloves to 500 mls of syrup (infused in standard proof rum), did not really cut it. The second recipe, with 20 cloves to approximately 250 mls of syrup+juice (infused in overpoof rum), was a big improvement flavor-wise. If your falernum somehow ends up too spicy you can always cut it with simple syrup, but if it lacks flavor there is not much you can do besides using huge quantities and producing overly sweetened drinks. Therefore you may as well be generous with the spices.

The first time I tried making Pimento Dram I had limited access to raw materials on account of being in Shanghai. I couldn’t find whole allspice or Demerara rum! It’s amazing I made pimento dram at all. A holiday to Cambodia and Hong Kong sorted out the spice problem, while for the rum I improvised by using Bacardi 151 – a bad idea. My first attempt was as follows:

Infusion

½ cup allspice in the form of lightly crushed whole berries (actually slightly more because my Cambodian purchased allspice – the last tiny pack in the shop – seemed slightly less flavorsome than the Hong Kong stuff)

1 ½ cups Bacardi 151

Syrup

3 cups water

750 grams molasses sugar

Infuse the rum and allspice for 2 weeks. Strain spice out. Rinse spice with a further ¾ cup of rum (Meyers). Heat the water and sugar on the stove until all of the sugar is dissolved. Allow to cool. Mix the syrup with the rum infusion and bottle. Leave for a month before drinking.

Sadly this turned out rather badly. I think I committed two key mistakes. The first mistake was using Bacardi 151. The second mistake was using molasses sugar. I figured I would go for the darkest sugar I could find to ensure a nice rich taste. Molasses sugar just does not work, giving an odd pungent and sour taste that is just not good

My second attempt was far more successful. This time I was making it in New Zealand, where obtaining allspice and Demerara rum was not a problem. Scared by my last attempt I was more cautious with the quantities.

Infusion

Generous ¼ cup lightly crushed allspice

1 1/8 cups Demerara rum (Woods)

Syrup

1 ½ cups water

350 grams light Muscovado sugar

Infuse the rum and allspice for ten days. Strain spices out of the rum. Rinse remaining spices with a further 1/8 cup of Demerara rum. Boil water and sugar until sugar is dissolved. Cool and add rum mixture. Leave for a month before drinking.

The second version was far superior to the first one. I think the difference was using Demerara rum and a lighter sugar. Unfortunately you really do need the Demerara rum to make this liqueur. Demerara rum has a spicy and sweet taste that helps the flavors integrate. The high alcohol content also helps in the infusion, and plus Demerara rum is simply a better quality product than Bacardi.

Well there you have it. . . I have seen recipes online for more complicated pimento dram recipes that include ingredients like lime zest and Angostura Bitters. I am not sure there is any need to get too complex. The above recipe works well for me.

Now the only problem is finding good cocktails that use this stuff. . .

I decided to give infusing gin with tea a try. I started by making the Earl Grey Martini as written up by Gary Regan in the San Francisco Chronicle. Earl Grey is possibly my least favorite tea. I don’t hate the stuff exactly. Oil of bergamont is an interesting flavor. Unfortunately, that taste just doesn’t work for me in tea. To me, black tea must have milk added to it, and tea with milk should be a pedestrian affair, free of surprises. Oil of bergamont just does not fit into the picture.

So where does a guy like me get his Oil of Bergamont fix? The answer according to Gary Regan is to infuse your Earl Grey tea in gin and drink the gin. What an amazing idea! Where do I sign up?

OK, in reality I exercised a little caution. Rather than following Gary Regan’s instructions exactly and infusing ¼ cup of tea leaves in a liter of gin, I infused a heaped teaspoon of tea leaves in a mere 100 mls of gin (infusion time 2 hours). I didn’t want to risk ending up with a bottle of weird and disgusting Bergamont flavored gin that would be good only for plying old ladies with.

I then made the drink as described by Mr. Regan, 1 ½ oz infused gin, ¾ oz lemon juice, ¾ oz simple syrup (Gary Regan suggests an ounce but that seemed too much to me) and an egg white, shaken over ice. Bloody delicious! The sugar could possibly be taken down another notch, but no faulting the concept. This tea infused gin is great.

On a roll, I began rummaging through the house for things to infuse. There was some method to the madness. I figured I’d try some Chinese style tea infusions. My favorite tea is Oolong so I did an infusion of 1 heaped teaspoon of Oolong in 100 mls of Plymouth Gin (infusion time two hours). Then I did the same using Bokma Genever (infusion time three hours because of the lower alcohol – only 35% for the Bokma versus 42% for Plymouth). I figured rich Oolong tea might really work well with heavy bodied Dutch Genever as opposed to English gin.

I used good tea for this, namely a very good quality autumn harvest Iron Goddess of Mercy (???). Iron Goddess of Mercy is a popular Oolong tea from Southern Fujian and basically my favorite tea. With good quality Iron Goddess of Mercy you cannot go wrong. Good stuff should be in the form of rolled green leaves, will smell fruity and aromatic, and reusing the same leaves will yield three or more brews with evolving rather than diminishing flavor. Iron Goddess of Mercy is the most aromatic of Oolong teas, and the autumn harvest is the most aromatic of the variety (though the more delicate spring tea fetches the highest prices). The generic blackish Oolong you get in most Asian grocery stores is not even close to being a substitute. Search around for good stuff. A specialist Chinese tea shop will sell it.

I took my Plymouth gin Oolong infusion and threw together a gin sour as follows:

1 ½ oz Oolong infused Plymouth Gin

¾ oz lemon juice

¾ oz Kuei Fei Lychee Liqueur

Shake over ice and strain into a glass.

This experiment turned out strangely delicious. The gin ended up quite bitter but with fantastic tea fragrance. Some people dislike bitterness and may find it too much, but for me it was more or less what I was looking for. It may be possible to reduce the bitterness by refining the infusion process. I was not sure how well the lychee liqueur would fit. It seems such a cliche to whip out the ‘Chinese’ liqueur to match the Chinese tea. I was getting sick of always reaching for the St. Germain though and wanted to give something else a try. The lychee works well. Some people describe the fruity tastes in Oolongs as resembling lychee. Drinking the two together in a cocktail like this really does produce an effect like drinking a fruity, alcoholic, Oolong tea. Although the lychee is very much a one note liqueur, there is enough complexity in the rest of the drink that this is not an issue.

On reflecting, the odd thing is that the original tea brewed in water may have a more intense flavor than the cocktail. Iron Goddess of Mercy is traditionally brewed extremely strong. Instead of adding a few teaspoons of tea to a large pot you take a tiny pot and pack it so full of leaves that the leaves swell to fill the pot once water is added. A single pot of leaves will yield multiple brews, which drinkers enjoy from from tiny liqueur glass sized cups. Just maybe I should increase the quantity of tea in the infusion. However, it may then become too much to handle. Oolong is also high caffeine and even drinking it at the above strength I almost thought I was getting some caffeine effect before the alcohol.

I will do something with the genever infusion soon, most likely the same recipe.

Update 1:

The next day I tried exactly the above drink using the genever infusion, again with very pleasant results. This version somehow seems less bitter and more fruity. I wasn’t exactly scientific with my tea measurements so I may have unintentionally put slightly less tea in the genever compared to the Plymouth. Or maybe the lower alcohol of the genever meant it extracted less of the bitter components despite my infusing it for an extra hour.  Possibly the sweetness in the genever also offset the bitterness. Finally, the bitter tastes might have been reduced by the strained infusion spending 24 hours in the fridge.

Update 2:

The genever version of this drink has been quite well received and I think it deserves its own name. I am going to go for The Fort Zeelandia Cocktail. Fort Zeelandia was the Dutch capital during their colonization of Taiwan. The rationale for the name is that the drink combines Dutch-style gin with Taiwanese-style tea.

Gum syrup is simple syrup with the addition of gum arabic (or gum acacia), an edible gum produced from the acacia tree. Gum arabic alters viscosity in liquids and can act as a stabilizer. The special textural properties of gum arabic meant that historically had quite a range of uses, from photography and printing through to food manufacturing. While gum arabic has been superseded in many applications by cheaper alternatives, it is still used in confectionary and soft drinks. Therefore, while gum arabic can be hard to track down, the best place to find it is in a specialist baking supplies store.

Added to simple syrup, gum arabic does several things: first, it prevents the syrup from crystallizing (a problem as syrups become more concentrated); second, it alters the consistency of the syrup and imparts an interesting ‘silky’ texture; third, it provides a very subtle ‘warm’ aroma. Some may disagree with this last point, but I think there is something there.

The production of gum syrup by adding gum arabic to simple syrup may originally have simply been a means of preventing crystallization. However, the textural properties were surely also appreciated.

Making your own gum syrup is extremely straightforward. You need to bear in mind though that gum arabic has a reputation as an inconsistent substance in terms of its chemical properties. Gum arabic from different sources may vary, so treat the following as a guide for experimentation. Don’t be nervous though. There is no room for real error. So long as your gum syrup contains gum arabic it will have some degree of the properties of gum arabic. It will merely be a matter of how noticeable those properties are, which will depend on the nature of your gum arabic and how much you add. Play around until you get a result you like.

I’ve been making my gum syrup as follows:

Take ½ oz of gum arabic and place in a bowl. Add 1 oz of hot water, stir together, and leave to stand for a while until ‘dissolved’. The gum arabic will gradually soak up the water and turn into a kind of a sticky paste. Some recommend leaving overnight but I think a few hours is long enough.

For the next step make a 3:1 simple syrup in a saucepan, using 6 oz sugar and 2 oz water. Heat while stirring until dissolved, bring to the boil, add the gum arabic mixture, bring to the boil again, use a spoon to remove the scum that will have appeared on the surface, cool (placing saucepan bottom in a sink of cold water will speed up this step if you are in a hurry), strain through cheesecloth or a sieve, and bottle.

Stored in the fridge or freezer it should keep for a long time. The high concentration of sugar means it shouldn’t freeze solid unless your freezer is particularly cold.

Now that your syrup is ready your only problem is what drink to use it in. The gum syrup texture really shines in drinks that fit the classic 19^th century definition of a ‘cocktail’ (i.e. spirit, sweetener and bitters, diluted with a little ice). You will find that the drink comes across as mellower, but without any loss of flavor. An Old Fashioned makes a good place to start playing around with this stuff, and of course you also need to try a Pisco Punch. A Sazerac may be my favorite gum syrup cocktail though, pretty much to the point where I no longer want a Sazerac made any other way. Since a Sazerac contains no ice the gum syrup texture remains undiluted right through to the final sip, and there is just something about the way the gum syrup works with the robust old-worldly flavors in a Sazerac – especially the anise and lemon oil. I never experimented with gum syrup too much in long drinks (Tom Collinses and suchlike). I think that the more diluted the drink the less you are going to notice the difference from regular syrup. However, gum arabic is supposedly still used in manufacturing coke and other sodas, so perhaps this could be an area to experiment with.

The theme for this month’s Mixology Monday is Repeal Day, and Pre-prohibition drinks are thus in order. Pisco is flavor of the month at my place since I managed to pick up three different brands of the stuff. That makes the Pisco Punch the obvious choice for this month’s drink.

I mentioned Pisco Punch the last time I wrote here. The problem with Pisco Punch, and it is quite a problem, is that the original recipe seems to have been lost. Certain things about the drink are known with certainty though.

Pisco Punch was invented at the Bank Exchange on the corner of Montgomery and Washington streets in San Francisco. The Bank Exchange was a meeting place for the San Francisco business community and one of the city’s preeminent watering holes for much of the period between its opening in 1854 and its closure on the arrival of Prohibition in 1919. The drink appears to have been invented by the original owners of the Bank Exchange and the recipe was passed on to Duncan Nicol who ran the establishment from the late 1870s until its closure.

For some reason Pisco Punch attracted exaggerated praise among imbibers. Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1889 that the famous punch was: “compounded of the shavings of cherubs’ wings, the glory of a tropical dawn, the red clouds of sunset, and the fragments of lost epics by dead masters”. Another commentator stated more ominously that it would “make a gnat fight an elephant”. The drink was clearly tasty, potent, well-marketed or some combination thereof.

The recipe was a closely guarded secret and seems to have been lost following the death of Nicol. The result is that various different recipes now claim to be the original. All of these recipes share in common the use of pisco and fresh pineapple chunks marinated in syrup. Almost all also call for lemon or lime juice, though at least one uses grape juice in place of citrus and cuts the pineapple juice down to a mere teaspoon. One or two recipes include a dash of absinthe. Some variations call for a spicy element, either from marinating cloves together with the pineapple or though a dash of Angostura Bitters – this last being a variation that may result from confusion with the Pisco Sour. The controversy surrounding the recipe suggests that there may have been some ‘secret ingredient’ that foiled attempts replicate the taste of the original. However, given that Nicol guarded the recipe so closely he might easily have fed rumors of a ‘secret ingredient’, even if none existed, simply to throw imitators off the scent. It seems difficult to know the truth of the matter, but the idea of a ‘secret ingredient’ is certainly attractive.

An article on a blog by Knox Bronson claims that the ‘secret ingredient’ was gum syrup (see The Secrets of Pisco Punch Revealed). I am not sure about this theory. Gum syrup (sugar syrup with the addition of Gum Arabic to prevent crystallization and give a silky texture) was a standard 19^th century sweetener. Modern drinkers might be struck by a unique texture when the punch is prepared with gum syrup rather than standard syrup, but for drinkers in 19th Century San Francisco gum syrup would have been nothing unusual. Having said that though, punch recipes in Jerry Thomas’ 19^th Century bar guide exclusively call for loaf sugar as a sweetener, with gum syrup mostly restricted to use in cocktails. Jerry Thomas does give one punch recipe that uses gelatin to provide a silky texture, an effect that could also have been achieved with gum syrup. A gum syrup sweetened punch therefore might have been an unusual punch variation. It seems less plausible though that it was a ‘secret’ innovation. After all, owing to its easy mixability compared to sugar, gum syrup would likely have been a common substitution for sugar among bartenders mixing single serving punches in a hurry. Concluding that gum syrup was the ‘secret ingredient’ in the pisco punch seems premature.

Bronson also argues that, despite rumors at the time that the recipe included absinthe, this could not have been the case because the absinthe would have dominated the flavor and been easily discernable. I’m not so sure. The use of very small quantities of absinthe (i.e. dashes) was fairly common in other drinks of the time and hence the use of absinthe would not necessarily have implied an absinthe dominated drink. A punch containing absinthe may have been unusual though. Jerry Thomas lists various absinthe drinks, but not a single example of absinthe in a punch. The apparent lack of other absinthe punches, combined with the absinthe rumors associated with the Pisco Punch, thus could be interpreted as evidence that absinthe was the ‘secret ingredient’.

Regarding the possibility of the secret ingredient being some spicy element, Jerry Thomas gives an interesting recipe for a California Milk Punch that contains pineapple, lemons, sugar, cloves, coriander, cinnamon, brandy (unspecified but possibly in California this meant Pisco?), rum, Batavia Arrack, green tea and milk. Jerry Thomas contains several punch recipes that call for pineapple, but only the Californian version combines the pineapple with spices. This could simply be coincidence, but possibly there is a connection between this Californian spiced pineapple punch recipe and the Pisco Punch?

Personally I suspect that much of the novelty of the Pisco Punch may have lain in the use of pineapple. Pineapple is an interesting fruit from a social history perspective. Originally from Brazil, Europeans first encountered pineapple in the Caribbean at the close of the 15th century. The extraordinary natural sweetness of the pineapple (sugar was a luxury item at the time), its exotic appearance, and the difficulty of transporting the ripe fruit (which only deteriorate after harvesting) initially cemented the position of the pineapple as the fruit of the elite. European ships would load pineapples in the Americas, then make the long return voyage to Europe and present what few fruit remained unspoiled to the local monarch. From such lofty beginnings the pineapple could only really see its status decline, but it managed to retain its exotic and aristocratic associations into the 20th century.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries European aristocrats invested huge sums in hot houses and expert gardeners solely for the purpose of growing pineapples with which to impress dinner guests. Such a luxury were these hot house pineapples that often they were not even consumed, instead being presented as ornamental centerpieces during desert. Guests would recount both the number of pineapples presented and the number actually eaten, perhaps saying that a particular banquet had included “six pineapples, two cut”. The American gentry in the early years of the United States followed this English fashion for growing pineapples in hot houses.

The arrival of steam ships and rail in the 19th century reduced transportation times sufficiently that the hothouse cultivated variety became uneconomical compared to imports. The middle classes and even the poor could suddenly afford occasional pineapples. It ceased being de riguer to serve pineapple only by ceremonially cutting a whole fruit, and pineapple ices, pies, fritters, punches, and other recipes began to appear. Pineapple retained their exotic associations though, and in big cities greengrocers would rent out particularly handsome pineapples as decorative centerpieces for dinner parties. One London socialite joked that no dinner party was complete unless the table was graced by Lady Curzon and a pineapple. Pineapple had become a commodity rather than a true rarity.

Pineapple lost its aristocratic exclusivity by the late 19th century, but nevertheless would have remained a novelty throughout most areas of the United States.  The fruit only became truly ubiquitous after commercial farming and canning operations got underway in Hawaii in the early 20^th Century. Thus the use of pineapple, plus the pisco (unfamiliar to most drinkers outside of California), would already have made the Pisco Punch unusual and worthy of comment among drinkers. Just possibly a dash of absinthe, spice, or even Batavia Arrack added the finishing touch.

Maybe though the original recipe really has been found again? A certain Peruvian San Franciscoite named Guillermo Torro-Lira has recently released a book on the subject entitled “Wings of Cherubs: The Saga of the Rediscovery of Pisco Punch, Old San Francisco’s Mystery Drink”. I have not read this book since I only just saw it online while Googling around for different Pisco Punch recipes. Still, the book may shed some light on what mystery ingredients, if any, were contained in the original Pisco Punch. Has anyone in the US had a chance to check it out?

I made my picso punch as follows (recipe scaled down to single serving size):

2 oz pisco

¾ oz lemon juice (or experiment with lime?)

½ oz pineapple flavored gum syrup* (perhaps with spices?)

Perhaps add a dash of absinthe or absinthe substitute?

Place a chunk or two of marinated pineapple* in a glass. Gently muddle if you feel like it. Stir pisco, lemon juice, gum syrup and (if desired) absinthe over ice and strain into the prepared glass. Recipes for the scaled up punch generally include an ounce or so of water per serving so give it a good long stir over the ice to allow plenty of dilution.

I have also tried adding various other herbal flavorings, such as Chartreuse (green and yellow) and Peychauds Bitters. Chartreuse has an affinity with pineapple, and Peychauds Bitters has anise notes not unlike pastis. It might not be very authentic but there is room to experiment with something along these lines. Still, absinthe/pastis probably works as well as anything.

* Make pineapple marinade by chopping up a fresh pineapple into chunks, covering in gum syrup (sugar syrup with the addition of gum Arabic), and leaving overnight. Both the fruit and syrup are later used in the punch. You could try adding spices to the marinade, perhaps cloves, cinnamon and coriander as in the California Milk Punch. If you added spices it would make sense to gently warm them in the syrup before adding the fruit to allow better infusion of flavors.