Hendrick's Gin

The other day I finally gave in to impulse and bought a bottle of Hendrick’s gin. I’ve only tried it a couple times, so this was my first chance to really play with it and figure out how to use it.

I didn’t like it (but keep reading, it gets better). I tried using it to make my standard slutty dry martini recipe, which is along these lines (I don’t measure):

• 5-6 Large (or 7-8 small) olives with pimento filling
• ½ oz Olive brine
• ¼ oz Dry vermouth
• 5-6 oz Frozen gin (I keep it in the freezer)
• Dash of wormwood bitters (homemade by soaking wormwood in grain alcohol for a couple months)

It didn’t taste right. I like my martinis rather salty and dry, and despite going a bit heavy with the olive brine it wasn’t much of either. I couldn’t put my finger on why it didn’t taste right, but it was not like any of the martinis I’ve made with various London dry gins (Plymouth, Beefeater, Gordon’s, Bombay, Bombay Sapphire, and probably a few others).

The bottle came with a cute little pamphlet written in the style of the Powerthirst video. It focused on how Hendrick’s has cucumber in it, and that it works best when you play to that. Okay, let’s try something a little different:

• ¼ oz Dry vermouth
• ~2 oz Frozen gin (didn’t want to make too much, in case it was nasty)
• 3-4 Dashes of cucumber bitters (from Cecil & Merl)

Ugh! The slutty martini was just sub-par, but this was actually bad. I finished it only because it’s hard to justify dumping any of a $40 bottle of liquor, but by the last few sips I was basically shooting it and hoping the taste wouldn’t linger.

Tonight I decided to try something a little different, though. Going back to the traditional dry martini, I realized the olive was probably the problem; they aren’t exactly cucumber-like. But how to emphasize the cucumber…

Ohh, what about pickle brine and cucumber vodka? So this is what I mixed:

• ½ oz Pickle brine (from McClure's dill pickles)
• ½ oz Effen cucumber vodka
• 3-4 drops Dry vermouth
• ~3 oz Frozen gin
• Dash of Cecil & Merl cucumber bitters

Perfect! It’s like a pickle shot (½ oz pickle brine plus 1 oz cucumber vodka in a shot glass, very refreshing on a hot day) crossed with a martini. I had been wondering how I would get rid of the Hendrick’s; now I am wondering how long it will last.

Tasting bitters

Getting a feel for how bitters taste is important, especially when making your own (but also I am realizing I should have done more with the ones I've purchased).

The difficulty, though, is that bitters are, well, bitter. And they are strong! Strong enough that you can't really taste background flavors.

So here are three ways to get an idea of the flavor of bitters:

1. Put a drop onto your palm (use a chopstick if you are macerating your own in a wide-mouthed jar). Rub your palms together, and then cup them and smell.
2. Put a little into some unflavored soda water and taste that.
3. Just taste a little straight. This might give you an idea of the strength, but you probably won't get much out of it, though, and it will probably wreck your ability to taste anything for a few minutes.

As my bitters macerate (steep), I am tasting them with methods one and three every day. I use a chopstick to get a drop to smell, and then I lick the chopstick. So far, the insta-gin has too much orange, so I removed the bit of peel, and the gentian root is really really bitter; the longer it sits, the stronger it gets and the longer it lingers.

Homemade Bitters

In April, my wife and I (and our pets) moved from Schenectady to Brooklyn so I could take a new job with Google. Unfortunately, my beer brewing equipment could not accompany us on this journey.

To put this into perspective, I've been brewing beer since late 2008. We moved in early 2013. That's about four and a half years. It was my main hobby, at least through the warmer months.

Luckily, my awesome wife noticed that I'd lost my main hobby, and came up with a replacement. For Christmas she gave me a binder with about twenty recipes for homemade bitters, along with some dropper bottles and Gentian root (more on this later).

Recently, I've been getting more into trying bitters. There is a kitchen store not far from our apartment that has a large selection. Of course they have the standards (Angostura and Peychaud's), but they also have a large number of less well-known items. At least, they are to those of us new to the bittering world. I've purchased a few bottles from them, but each is around $20, which is a little beyond my impulse purchase price. Especially for a bottle smaller than my hand.

So, coming back around, my wife decided that homemade bitters might be a good substitute for beer brewing while we are living in an apartment. Her recipe book, assembled from Google searches, came with a few easy recipes and a few complex ones. I, of course, chose not to follow any of them (yet). To me, recipes are for inspiration.

But before I describe my current concoctions, I will cover the bittering base ingredients, as I've discovered from various search queries. I do not yet know much about these herbs and spices, beyond what the packages say and how they smell:

• Angelica root: Smells sweet, like a picturesque morning on the shore of a mountain lake, condensed into something that looks like sawdust.
• Cinchona bark: A very mild smell, like peppery wood. This is the main flavoring in Tonic water (quinine).
• Gentian root: Seems to be the most common modern bittering agent (similar to how hops replaced virtually everything else used for bittering beer). Smells like peppery wood, but much stronger than Cinchona bark.
• Quassia chips: Smells very clean, mixed with something like a Tibetan store that burns incense, but very weak.
• Wormwood: Smells like chamomile tea.

And, of course, there needs to be some kind of liquid. I am using Spirytus grain alcohol (96% ABV) because I could not find overproof vodka at the local liquor store. But they had this, and I think I can mix it with vodka if I want something in between. The higher the alcohol content, the more efficient (fast) the flavor extraction from the flavoring ingredients.

My first batch is just Gentian root and Spirytus. A bunch of the recipes call for drops of Gentian extract, so I am making my own. I went with 200ml Spirytus with 15g Gentian root, ground up in my spice grinder. I expect it will need to sit for ~1 week, with daily agitation.

Because I could not wait, though, I am also making something I will call Essence of Gin, if it comes out well. I am reluctant to post the recipe because I have no idea how it will turn out, but hopefully anybody that finds it will read this paragraph first.
Ingredients:

• 50ml Grain Alcohol
• 1/2 tbsp (about 30) Dried Juniper Berries
• Pinch of Angelica Root Powder
• Pinch of Cinchona Bark Powder
• Pinch of Celery Seed
• 2 Fennel Seeds
• 1in² Fresh Orange Peel, with the pith scraped off

I plan to agitate this daily, and I expect it will be ready in ~2 weeks. But I honestly have no feel for making bitters yet, so please don't try this recipe unless you know what you're doing and it actually looks good to you. And if you do know what you're doing, please leave suggestions in the comments.

Oh, and something I have yet to see on bitter recipes: The reasons I chose the ingredients:

• Juniper berries: Because this is the main flavoring of Gin, and I want a bitter that I can add to vodka to make it taste reminiscent of gin, or add to gin to make it even more gin-ey.
• Angelica root: Because the package of Juniper berries said that they were a substitute for Angelica, and because the Angelica package said it adds some sweetness, and because it smelled good. I used very little because I am pretty sure it is also quite bitter.
• Cinchona bark: Because gin-and-tonic tastes good, and this might add a little bit of tonic flavor.
• Celery seed: Because I like them, and think it might add a clean flavor.
• Fennel seeds: I looked at a gin recipe, and it used licorice root to cover up any bitterness. I don't have licorice root, but fennel has an anise flavor. Hopefully this won't do much but add a hint in the background (I don't really like anise).
• Orange peel: The gin recipe also used orange peel, and I thought it sounded like a good idea. Hopefully a weak citrusey background flavor.

New Blog

I created a new blog, Recipes of a Hearty Chef, for recipes. I've been wanting to post more recipes recently, but felt that Ramblings of a Computer Guy was an odd place for them. I'm hoping that, paradoxically, having two blogs will encourage me to post more often on both.

Chili

I love chili. It's one of my favorite foods. The only problem, though, is that when I make it, I make a lot of it.

This isn't really a problem (I get to eat one of my favorite meals every day for the next two weeks!), except that once I've finished eating all of it, I'm so tired of it that I can't eat any more for a few months.

Anyway, that wasn't why I decided to post about chili. I figured that I've made it enough times to have a recipe that I'd like to share. It's based on my Mom's chili recipe, combined with some input from Alton Brown's chili recipe in The Big Chili and some input from my friend Matt.

This is the basic recipe, and I'll follow it with some options on how to augment it:

Ingredients:

The Beans

1 lb	Dry Black Beans
1 lb	Dry Red Kidney Beans
2	Bay Leaves
2 tsp	Kosher Salt
2-3 cloves	Garlic, sliced thickly
2-4	Dried chiles, sliced (optional)
~½ gallon	Water

1. Preheat the oven to 250° While it is heating...
2. Boil the water. While it is heating...
3. Sort the beans (remove any pebbles or weird-looking specimens)
4. Rinse the beans (a colander works well)
5. Place the beans in a large, oven-safe pot (I use a 2 gallon graniteware), along with the salt, bay leaves, chiles, and garlic.
6. Once the oven is hot and the water is boiling, pour just enough water over the beans to barely cover them.
7. Place the beans in the oven, covered, and set a timer for ~20 minutes.
8. When the timer goes off, check the beans. They will likely need some more water. Re-boil the remaining water (bonus points if you started heating it a couple minutes before the timer went off) and pour some more over the beans (again, just enough to cover them).
9. Set the timer for 30 minutes and repeat the previous step.
10. Set the timer for 30 minutes. When it goes off, the beans should be nearly done. Remove them from the oven and drain them (they will be cooked some more later).

The Chili

1-2	Large onions, diced
3-5 cloves	Garlic, crushed and chopped
½-1	7oz can of chipotle peppers
3	14.5oz cans of diced tomatoes, any style
1	6oz can of tomato paste
2	15.25oz cans of whole-kernel sweet corn
1-2	Fresh jalepeños, diced
1-2 tbsp	Dried oregano
½-1 tsp	Turmeric
~¼ cup	Chili powder
~½ tsp	MSG (optional)
~12 oz	Dark beer, preferably home brewed
~4 handfuls	Tortilla chips, crushed coarsly
	Salt & pepper to taste

1. Much of this procedure can be performed while the beans are cooking.
2. Preheat the oven to 300°
3. Sauté the onions and garlic. If you are using meat (see below), cook them in the rendered fat from the meat (augmenting with olive oil if necessary). If not using meat, cook in olive oil (no need to use extra virgin, it would be overpowered by everything else).
4. Dice the chipotle peppers.
5. Briefly toast the chili powder in a dry skillet, until fragrant.
6. Combine all ingredients except for the corn, in an oven-safe pot. The pot that the beans were cooked in should do nicely, once they are done and drained. Stir to combine. Add additional ingredients to taste, keeping in mind that the tortilla chips will give up quite a bit of salt as they disintegrate. Don't forget to include both the diced chipotles as well as some of the sauce from the can they came in.
7. Bake for 1 hour, covered.
8. Once removed from the oven, stir in the (drained) cans of corn.
9. Serve, generally over rice with some shredded cheddar on top.

Accents

Depending on whom I expect will be eating the chili, I may go either for a vegetarian or a con carne version.

For the vegetarian version, I will generally add another pound of dried beans (small red beans, navy beans, ...; whatever looks good), along with one more teaspoon of salt and another bay leaf. In the chili, a package of fake ground beef works well, but it generally disintegrates in the oven and provides only a hint of flavor. Tofu chunks also go well, but remember that they will not provide any real flavor, only absorb it. If you use tofu, you may need to add more of some of the other seasonings, especially chili powder. You may also want to drain the tofu first.

For chili con carne, I like to use 1-2 lbs of meat, an equal balance of ground chuck (80-85% lean) and ground pork. Ideally I would use equal portions each of ground chuck, pork, and lamb, but I can never find all three at the same time, so I have never tried it. Brown the meat before cooking the onions and garlic, then cook the onions and garlic in the fat that rendered out of the meat.

In my latest batch, I managed to get my hands on some ground lamb, but I did not find any ground pork. Combined, I had about 0.6 lbs of 80% lean ground chuck and 1.3 lbs of ground lamb. The chili came out quite well, except that it tasted very strongly of lamb. Next time I would discard some of the fat that rendered out of the meat, as I think that provided most of the lamb flavor, and there was quite a lot.