Thursday, April 23, 2015

Barritt's Ginger Beer (US Version) - Thursday, April 23rd

I hate ginger ale. There, I said it.

Okay, let me elaborate a bit. I have a love/hate relationship with ginger ale, heavily leaning towards the "hate" camp. It's a fine soda, I suppose, except I have bad memories of it. It's always been a health tonic for me. It was drunk flat and warm while sitting on a Thomas the Tank Engine blanket while home sick from school with a stomach bug.When I had my spinal surgery, it was LITERALLY one of the only things I could consume for about six days. I still keep it on hand, occasionally, for when my medicine makes me nauseous but it's really a "Break In Case of Imminent Biscuit-Spiffing" kind of soda. And the brands out there do it absolutely no justice at all. I'm sure a properly brewed ginger ale could be good! But when you crack open a warm can of Seagram's, Canada Dry, or Schweppes, you're met with an overly fizzy, tooth-rotting sweet, and barely ginger flavored simulacrum of a beverage.

So I generally stick with ginger beer. It has that fiery ginger to salsa on my tongue and soothe a wonky tummy. It's a great mixer for bourbon, vodka, rum, or whatever else you feel like putting in there. But all ginger beers are not created equal. My stand-by (and the one I can get easily) is Reed's Extra and it is a zesty balm for my soul. But that's not to say I don't like branching out. Recently, while perusing Christmas Tree Shops (don't ask), I came across a four pack of Barritt's Ginger Beer. Here's a bottle of it:


I've heard of Barritt's Ginger Beer before and it's a not-very-common sight around here, even though US version is made one state over in NJ. After chilling a bottle and trying it when I wasn't feeling fantastic, I decided to do it justice and chill another one for review. Let's take a closer look, shall we?








I enjoy the labeling on it. It's not "hip", it's not flashy. It's gorram soda and it's been around longer than you have and you will like it. Taking a peek at what's inside yield's this:


A slightly cloudy maelstrom of ginger-based light diffusion. Which is odd, actually, because this stuff is manufactured, not brewed, so they must add some ginger squeezin's in there. Here are the notes:

Nose: I feel like an idiot describing the nose of a soda. This is what my life has come to, I guess. It's surprisingly light. Ginger is apparent but not much else. Doesn't have that sickeningly sweet aroma you get with HFCS. That one that permeates your nostrils and coats it like Augustus Gloop in the choco-tube. Slight herbal note in there which I'm guessing is from the Quillaia bark.

Taste: Clean. Sweetness first; the real sugar sweetness. It doesn't linger, it doesn't give that gross HFCS film on the tongue. The ginger comes and gives it oomph but it's not a hot ginger flavor. There's a bit of heat as you drink the entire thing but it's not the mouth-crumpling punch that Reed's doles out. It doesn't overpower the sugar but rather compliments it, if that makes sense. Bit of creaminess in there as well. Slightly lemony too. Carbonation is subtle with fine bubbles.

Short form: it's good. It's not in line with your traditional ginger beer but the subtlety of it is refreshing and let's whatever you want to put in it shine through. I have one extra bottle left that I will save for a medical emergency (such as when my rum needs a prescription). If you've done the math correctly, you may note that I drank one bottle before, drank one for this review, and have one left over. What happened to that missing bottle? Magic, friend. I tucked it into a snow-bank in February and it got cold enough to partially freeze. Semi-liquid and semi-frozen, I drank it and it was like manna from heaven. So if you want to try something delicious, maybe make it into a granita. Okay, scratch that "maybe" part. Definitely try it. I think that's where my last bottle is headed.

Monday, April 6, 2015

Give It A Light TAP NY 2015

A photo posted by Scott Spolverino (@inwithbacchus) on

Any day that you get to begin the day with a Double IPA from Captain Lawrence brewing is a good...good day. And, luck have it, I get to repeat this day again!

A few weeks ago an email crossed my inbox that made me all giddy inside. TAP NY, and it's Marketing and Communications Manager, Kaitlin O'Connor (Katie), was enticing me with media passes to this year's TAP NY. This means two things to me:

  1. I get to go to TAP NY.
  2. Last year I did not make an utter fool of myself and get myself barred from one of the finest beer festivals NY has to offer. Either that or I did but they are willing to give me a second chance to redeem myself / blow it and drink barrel aged stout all day and mumble incoherently about the lack of cask milds in the US like I'm Ding.
Both of these are pretty meaningful to me. In REALITY (self-deprecating humor aside), it means that someone liked what I wrote. Which feels good, y'know? In a world where a lot of things are going wrong, something that I DID went right. I guess. I'm not gonna look into it too deeply ere I find something contrary to that notion. But, as I am in a world where a lot of things are going wrong, TAP NY presents a bit of a quandary for me. I really can't drink heavily / all day anymore. I thought about this for awhile: would it be ethical for me to accept press passes when I can no longer swig export strength stout anymore? 

After mulling it over for awhile, I realized (much like previous) that there were two things. One is the fact that, across the nation, craft brewing is slowly inching towards accepting low ABV beers With the success of Notch, and what seems like an absolute flood of funky-yet-low-ABV beers that are becoming popular (looking at you gose and Berliner-weisse), I'd be able to find plenty to drink. The other thing I realized is that...it doesn't matter how much I'm able to drink. If I have one beer in hand all day, I'm okay with that. I can still tell a story. And, as I hope you've realized by now, I sure do like telling stories.

So I will be at TAP NY on April 28th, with my photographer, snapping photos and drinking water/Peeksill Simple Sour. If you want to buy tickets, you can still buy them here for both the Saturday and Sunday sessions. DD tickets are available as well so be responsible and buy one for a friend who wants to watch your drunken antics. So if you've got the ability, money, and wherewithal to come, let me know and we can hang out. You can be woven into the narrative tapestry for the after-action report I write up on Monday.

I might even tell you a story.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Of Replicants and Reactions

These days, it is hard to invoke a response from me. Couple the myriad of medications I'm on with my constant fatigue and general laissez-faire attitude about things and getting me to react in an emotional way is pretty difficult. I wouldn't say I'm robotic in nature but things are definitely taken with a grain of salt. Well...salt substitute. High salt doesn't work with some of my medication. I suppose, in some aspects, that I am a simulacrum of a distiller. I act like a distiller, think like a distiller, live and breathe distilling...but I don't distill. If you're familiar with Blade Runner, I guess I could be considered a distiller replicant. Only, in my world, there is significantly less 80's style film noir and far more video games and coffee.

But...

Recently, a paper came across my desk. A white paper by Lost Spirits Distillery. A white paper that has proved to be my Voight-Kampff Test. In case you've never seen Blade Runner (shame on you), the Voight-Kampff Test is an analysis machine used to evoke an emotional response in its test subject to determine whether or not the subject is a replicant or not. Here is an example from the movie of a Voight-Kampff test:



A replicant, in case you still haven't seen it by the time you've watched that video and realized how awesome of a movie it is and how your life isn't complete without watching it, is a synthetically made android designed in every way, shape, and form to mimic a human...except for their emotional response. Why? Because how do you instill love, hate, passion, perseverance, and understanding into something when it is so varied and poorly understood in the human instilling it? But...I digress.

The Lost Spirits Distillery white paper (available here for full reading) is the latest in "scientific" papers put out by those seeking to tame the savage and patient beast that is barrel aging. I have been watching Lost Spirits for a long time now, carefully examining the papers they put out, and, truth be told, enjoying the work they've been doing. It's not all-encompassing but it's an interesting peek under the hood of one car. However, their latest paper makes some bold claims that, frankly, I see fault in. Not that I necessarily DISAGREE, per se. It is more of a situation in which far more research is needed and, once again, fails to encompass the entirety of the situation. If you'll permit me (and I hope you will considering you're reading this), I'd like to critique it. So let's jump in, eh?

The Model 1, as they call it, is their newest introduction into the world of accelerated barrel aging. A skid mounted chemical reactor to be charged with new-make spirit and oak chips, turned on, and the magic worked. It focuses, almost exclusively, on the esterification process (which I've mentioned here) for  fermentation-based acids and decomposition and esterification of wood / phenolic aldehydes. This takes place in a three-stage process catalyzed by "energy in various forms". Phase 1 esterifies fermentation-based acids into short chain esters. Phase 2 is a catalyzed breakdown of lignin/cellulose into constituent phenolic aldehyde precursors. Phase 3 replicates the maturation process by catalyzing reactions of phenolic aldehydes / oak-based aldehydes into medium and long chain esters.

So far, the science is correct...if seemingly implausible. It seems very much like most of the other products out there. If I had to guess what forms of energy its using, I'd guess ultrasonic, heat, and maybe some sort of electricity-based redox (reduction/oxidation) setup in the line of a plating system...although that last one I'm not sure of because A) there's no highly conducive feedstock and B) RUNNING A REDOX REACTION IN BARREL STRENGTH SPIRITS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA. I'll get back to you on that last one. However, the actual hard data is where they lose me completely. While I won't steal their work and post their data here, I urge you to boot up their paper (once again, found here) and follow along as I get to do what I've always done: break out my big red pen and play TA.

Figure 1:

First off, my problem here is they are using three spirits. Two control (the new make and 33 year old control) and the variable "aged" sample. First off, you can't even calculate a standard deviation. Or a confidence interval. Or error bars. This is bad. If you wish to present a white paper to draw in potential investors/clients, you might want to expand further than one sample. The more samples you present, the more it seems like you've tested it. Also, the less it seems like you cherry-picked data.

Also, it states that the acetyl peak is 60% of the 33 year old sample and, thus, is 15-20 years old. Where did this number come from? There is no source for the "chemical marker concentration" analysis. I mean, 60% of 33 is 19.8 so is that what was went with? There's no context to that statement.

Figure 2:

To start, the graph has no units and that bothers me. Are they picograms? Micrograms? Kilograms? What are the units of measurement here? Once again, two samples are used. Once again, two samples are not enough. But I think the BIGGEST problem I have here is the data itself and what it's telling me. In most cases, save ethyl octanoate and (maybe) isovaleraldehyde, Mark 1 is producing more esters in six days than in a barrel for 33 years. Isn't that a tad...excessive?

You have to understand here, esterification is not completely a two way street. The balance between aldehydes and acids is constantly in flux because of the instability of the additional oxygen molecule to the structure. The polarity of that oxygen destabilizes the whole molecule and makes it prone to, well, breaking the bond. But once you esterify something...it takes a lot of work to go back especially in the instance of barrel maturation. There are two reasons for this. Reason one is that the barrel reactions could potentially undergo Fischer esterification. Fischer esterification is an acid catalyzed esterification of carboxylic acid and alcohol. The acids made during both the aldehyde/acid equilbrium, as well as the acids left over from fermentation, could catalyze the reaction. The equilibrium constant of a Fischer esterification favors the products side (usually Keq > 1) but the reaction will not go to completion. The only way to break that equilibrium would be to invoke Le Chatelier's principle. Le Chatelier's principle, while pretty serious sounding, basically states that you can interrupt equilibrium by concentration, temperature, or pressure and the system will change its equilibrium. In simpler terms, imagine that you have a tug of war team that is stuck in a stalemate. No one is able to pull the other across the line so, in order to win, one side calls in a friend to help out. The tug of war stalemate is equilibrium, the extra friend is the Le Chatelier's principle modifier of "concentration". One side of the rope has more people on it so the balance tips in their favor. How is this done for Fischer esters? Well...since one of the products of esterification is water, lowering the concentration of water will do. Say...by evaporation. See where I'm going with this?

That being said, all of this is conjecture and there are a lot of "ifs" in there. There is also the fact that all three of the Le Chatelier's principle variables are changing within a barrel. Temperature, pressure, AND concentration are in constant flux. The Mark 1 does not suffer from evaporative losses so a changing water concentration IS out but if it is a sealed container, temperature and pressure are definitely changing.

Figure 3

Two samples. No units. Unsubstantiated age claim. I won't harp on that. What interests me is the level of sinapaldehyde. Sinapaldehyde should be reacting into sinapic acid / ethyl sinapate but I've seen no mention of it in the paper. Odd.

OKAY.

By now I'm sure you're saying to yourself "But Bacchus, we've let you ramble for twenty minutes and you haven't gotten to the point!" And you'd be right.

The Mark 1 is promising. This paper raises more questions than it does to answer them. Despite its flaws, it intrigues me. But from what I can see is that the spirit the Mark 1 will produce isn't a traditional spirit. It is...a replicant. Exact in all the ways that we know...but yet somehow different. It shares a lot of the markers common in aged spirits but it neglects a lot of the other underlying chemistry that we don't understand. What of the evaporative need for sulfur-based compounds? What of the ethanol-water clustering? What of the concentrations of base aldehydes and acids that ALSO contribute to the spirit? The focus on heavily reacted esters is...admirable...but, like a replicant, it is trying to fabricate one aspect of spirit maturation when there are so many facets that we don't understand and cannot replicate. It may look the same. It may constitute chemical similarity. But on the inside, I don't think it will BE the same. There are so many microcosms of reactions and interactions that I don't think can be replicated by the Mark 1. It sacrifices much for the headlong goal of long-chain esters that may be critical to the flavor, aroma, and mouthfeel. But much like Deckard, I will watch. I will wait. I will see what it can do. It's the most promising foray into maturation science I've seen in awhile and the fact that someone is using GC-MS to quantify spirits makes me happy. This paper has been my Voight-Kampff test. But whether I reacted appropriately remains to be seen. I hope I did.

Otherwise I would not be a very well manufactured replicant.