Fulton's Harvest Pumpkin Pie Cream Liqueur

Autumn is upon us, and you know what that means: a torrent of foods and beverages either tainted or enhanced with the flavor of pumpkin (depending upon your point of view.)

Personally, I find this whole "put pumpkin into everything in autumn" thing to be rather silly. In New England, pumpkins are goddamn everywhere, starting the day after Labor Day and going right through Christmas, thanks to the Pilgrims, who survived the horrible winter of 1621 by carving out a gigantic pumpkin the local Indians called "Squanto" and huddling inside, sheltered from blizzards and sustaining themselves on Squanto's seeds which they roasted over a smoldering fire built from corn cobs. Ever since then, pumpkins in New England have been symbolic of the harvest and Thanksgiving, and lately it seems that they're also symbolic of the clever ways marketers and flavor engineers use to separate us from our discretionary income.

This wouldn't be happening, by the way, if more people got off their asses and cooked a real, honest-to-god pumpkin pie, instead of settling for the flavorless shit precooked and frozen in the supermarket. Consumers aren't longing for the flavor of pumpkin, they're experiencing nostalgia for the flavorful pies that their Moms or Grandmas used to make, when they'd come home from school and find that the whole house smelled like spiced pumpkin because of that freshly-baked pie cooling on a wire rack in the kitchen. 

So anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Fulton's Harvest Pumpkin Pie Cream Liqueur. It's delicious, really, and tastes like pumpkin pie-infused Bailey's Irish Cream. Lynnafred adores the stuff and particularly likes it poured into Green Mountain Pumpkin Spice coffee; she's also working on a few cocktails using it as a featured ingredient.

I will say only that if you enjoy cream liqueurs and you like pumpkin flavored stuff, Fulton's Harvest is right up your alley.

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Review: Angry Orchard Crisp Apple Hard Cider

There has been a huge explosion in the number of hard ciders available in the past ten years. I remember when they were kind of hard to find. Now, I can find a couple brands in supermarkets, and huge numbers more in package stores.

I decided to try Angry Orchard cider because of their cool label (what else is new, right?) A gnarly, pissed-off looking apple tree glares from the label like some demonic Ent. But despite the name and the graphics, Angry Orchard is refreshing, smooth, and carries over a lot of apple character with it (with very little actual sweetness - this is not an alcopop.)

There are three varieties in Angry Orchard's line: Traditional Dry, Crisp Apple, and Apple Ginger. I decided to go with the Crisp Apple for this initial tasting, because I wanted Lynnafred to give it a try. She isn't a fan of hard cider the way I am and I thought the Crisp Apple would have more raw apple flavor remaining to entice her, rather than the more abstract applish flavor that characterizes most drier ciders.

And there is no denying that Crisp Apple has that fresh apple thing going for it. While it doesn't taste anything at all like supermarket apple juice or apple soda, there is a subtle hint of sweetness in the background with, well, crispy apple and yeasty flavors wrapping around it.  With its interesting combination of sweet start and tart, dry, beery finish, I thought Angry Orchard Crisp Apple to be a decent, middle-range hard cider.

PS - If you're wondering if Lynnafred liked it, that is a negative. She took a swig, wrinked her nose, and said, "I'm not a fan of hard cider."

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Brew Review: Boddingtons Pub Ale

I'm not really all that much of a beer drinker, and when I do it's usually a lager, pilsner, or IPA. But my brother-in-law Nick had been gifted with a case of Boddintons Pub Ale recently, and I couldn't resist giving it a try.

Boddington's is imported to the US in nitro-cans, the same type of container that allows Guinness to pour successfully even when not drawn from a proper tap.  And let me tell you, it is a gorgeous pour - the same tumbling cascade of rich creamy foam, perhaps a bit less dramatic than a Guinness pour because the head roils and builds against a honey-golden backdrop instead of the deep chocolate color of Guinness.  After a moment or two, the head settles to a thick top layer about an inch or so thick, ready to sip through.

The ale itself is surprisingly mild, and almost bland. Malty sweetness hides behind a strong cereal flavor tinged with a touch of grassy hops, and when the initial nitro-charged creaminess fades after the pour, Boddingtons winds up a little on the thin side.  But for all that, it was still a decent and refreshing brew and went quite well with the marinated London broil and barbecued chicken which Nick was serving from the grill.

New Budweiser Can Design Unveiled

Anheuser-Busch has trotted out a new design for their flagship Budweiser beer - the 12th redesign of the can in 75 years. They've done a pretty good job of deemphasizing all that fussy verbiage on the former label, placing most of the visual emphasis on the Budweiser "bow tie."  (I don't think that's really a bow tie.  Take a look at it on end, as in the photo at left, and it looks a lot more like a traditional beer glass.)

Personally, I think that the elegant lines of the original 1936 can are timelessly appealing and would have been a better choice (the company did release a limited-edition repro can a few years ago, so someone at Anheuser-Bush must agree with me.)

No matter what kind of label is on the can, though, it's what's inside that counts, and  this tweet pretty much sums up the real problem with Bud:

Rums from St. Lucia: Chairman's Reserve & Castrie's Peanut Creme Liqueur

Thursday night, I was at Table & Vine in West Springfield; it's the largest package store in the area and it's my go-to liquor store when I want something hard to find or unusual.  One of the things I like about them is the in-store tastings they have.  Usually, it's wine - not really my forte - but Thursday night, they were pouring shots of rum.  How awesome is that?  They were promoting two rum products from St. Lucia.  I tried them both (no way was I going to turn down free shots of Demon Rum) and wound up buying a bottle of one of them. 

Chairman's Reserve by St. Lucia Distillers, Saint Lucia. 80 Proof - Until a year ago or so, this rum wasn't available in the US, and I can see why the people of Saint Lucia would want to keep it a secret.  This is a relatively inexpensive rum that tastes like it should cost at least twice as much.  The gentleman doing the pouring told me that Chairman's Reserve is a blend of double-distilled pot still and continuous still rums, which give it a "sipping rum" flavor at a "mixing rum" price.  It's aged in used whiskey and bourbon barrels to develop a more complex flavor.

Brown sugar and caramel on the nose, with no harsh alky vapors; the first sip is like vanilla caramel velvet with a nutty, brown spice finish.  Chairman's Reserve is indeed an awesome sipping rum, as good on the rocks as it is neat.  

It was an easy sell for me - after the tasting I bought a bottle, and it was quite a good deal at about $20 for the 750ml bottle, purchased at Table & vine in Taxachusetts.

Castrie's Peanut Rum Cream - This is a cream liquor made from St. Lucia rum, Madagascar vanilla, roasted peanuts, cream, and spices.  It is undeniably smooth and creamy - like taking a sip of a silky peanut butter milkshake spiked with a good shot of premium rum.  It went down easily but peanut flavor is not one of my favorites and I involuntarily made a face as I swallowed.  Lynnafred and Maryanne, watching from the sidelines, laughed and said, "Ha! DO NOT WANT!!" 

I can think of dozens of things I could do with a bottle of Castrie's Peanut Rum Cream.  I bet it would be fantastic mixed into a cocktail with, say, Kahlua and garnished with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup on the edge of the glass.  Or poured with hot fudge over premium vanilla bean ice cream. Or, um, poured with some raspberry liqueur for a peanut-butter-and-jelly cocktail.  Okay, so that last one is probably a bit of a reach, but just because I don't really care for the flavor of a peanut-butter liqueur doesn't mean it's swill.  It isn't.  I just wouldn't want to drink it.

Seagram's Escapes - Peach Fuzzy Navel Flavored Cooler

I hardly know where to begin in describing this beverage.  Like most bottled drinks of its kind, which are meant to sort of imitate "real" cocktails, it's alcoholic without containing any hard liquor.  No, these drinks are actually pretty closely related to beer - they are malt beverages, fermented without hops to avoid too much of a beery taste, then sugared up and flavored to appeal to, I guess, a younger demographic.  One that has grown up drinking Coke and Mountain Dew and which doesn't care for the bitterness of hops or the full body of a "real beer."

So, with that part understood, and accepting this Seagram's Peach Fuzzy Navel for what it is, I will tell you this:  it's pretty good.  Refreshing, even, in the same sort of way you might be refreshed by a soft drink.  It's lightly carbonated, somewhat more sweet than I'd like but that's the nature of the beast I guess, and it tastes like a juicy fresh peach (albeit with a very slight back taste of malty brew.).  They go down easy.  On a warm spring evening, standing over the grill and keeping an eye on the hot dogs, the Fuzzy Navel is a great quaff. 

That leads me to another point.  The Fuzzy Navel is fairly low in alcohol content at 3.2% alcohol by volume.  It's sweet peachiness and gentle fizz make it easy to guzzle, and therefore easy to pound down quite a few without feeling the alcohol sneaking up on you.  3.2 or not, if you drink enough of them in a short enough time, you're going to feel it.  It's up to you to decide whether it's worth paying premium alcohol prices for a mildly-intoxicating alcopop.

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It's a Clam Digger, not a Bloody Mary

Mornings are usually pretty hectic around here.  Weekday or weekend, my days start early - usually by 0530 I'm up and around.  Monday through Friday, I get my morning chores done quickly so I can get out the door to work by 0715.  Saturday has it's own routine of household things to accomplish after morning chores are done, but Sundays...Sundays are lazier.  We take time to have a leisurely family breakfast and linger over coffee and an old movie on Turner Classic Movies, or a favorite cooking show like Gordon Ramsay's F-Word on BBC America.  And sometimes, those Sunday morning breakfasts start with a Clam Digger or two.  A Clam Digger is a variant of the Sunday brunch favorite Bloody Mary, flavored with a bit of clam juice and dosed unapologetically with enough vodka to create a mild drink that stimulates the appetite and set a casually relaxing mood.  Who gives a damn if it's 0930?  I've been up for almost four hours - and besides, the sun is over the yardarm somewhere in the world anyway.

I favor certain ingredients in my Clam Diggers for the extra flavors which add a certain measure of complexity to the overall taste profile.  I prefer V8 juice to plain tomato juice, for example, and although the recipe as I've written it below only calls for about a teaspoon of horseradish, I usually put nearly a tablespoon in my own drink because I like the flavor and kick of Root.  Oh, and I should also mention that you can leave the vodka out if you're skeevy about morning alcohol.

Clam Digger

1 tall drink

8 oz V8 Vegetable Juice

4 oz clam juice

2 oz vodka

1 rounded teaspoon of prepared grated horseradish (or more to taste)

A couple shakes of Worcestershire Sauce (about 1/2 teaspoon)

A couple dashes of Louisiana Hot Sauce (to taste)

A bit of coarsely-ground black pepper

Leafy celery stalk for garnish

Combine all ingredients but celery stalk in a tall 16-ounce glass and stir well; garnish with celery before serving.

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Samuel Adams Noble Pils

After seeing the television spots for Samuel Adams' Noble Pils, I decided to see if I could find a sixpack.  I'm partial to lagers and pilsners, and I've enjoyed Sam Adams beers since the first bottles hit New England shelves as a regional microwbrew in the mid-1980's.

Noble Pils is crispy, dry, distinctly hoppy and very refreshing.  I don't taste the "citrusy" aspect that they note in the advertising, which is just as well because I don't much care for that kind of stuff in my beer.  It's being promoted as one of their seasonal brews, which means it will probably be out of the stores by March or so.  I hope the Boston Brewing Company decides to bring it back next year.

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Carl Brandt Liquor Chocolates

I found these delicious little treats at a local store over the weekend: Brandt Brandy Beans, and Brandt Whiskey Beans. Manufactured in Germany by Brandt Zwieback-Schokoladen GmbH, and imported by their US division Carl Brandt Inc. of Fairfield CT, these marvelous liquor-filled goodies are one of my favorite confections.

Each candy is an inch-long bean-shaped dark chocolate shell filled with a whiskey or brandy liqueur. Although not very strong (the label on the Whiskey Beans indicates "whiskey 13%" in the ingredients, or about 7 proof) the candies are immensely satisfying: The chocolate is silky and luxurient and the whiskey is ever so slightly warming and vaporous. Couple that decadence with the "naughtiness" of the whiskey and it is easy to see why these are so appealing.

According to Brandt's website, there are three flavors of Brandy Beans available - the original Brandy, and three newly-introduced varieties: Orange Liqueur, Whiskey, and Vodka. I look forward to trying them all.

Links:

Carl Brandt Inc. US website (includes contact information for US wholesalers and retailers)

Brandt Zwieback-Schokoladen GmbH (English language site)

Brandt Zwieback-Schokoladen GmbH (German language site)

Red Star Erguotou - Chinese Firewater

Several years ago, my brother-in-law Bob and I were selling at a flea market in early November. Like many of the vendors, we had set up a small camp behind our sales area; we would be there for three days and two nights, so we had a camper van, a canopy and a small cooking area.

On the first night, after the gates had closed, we decided to walk around the market grounds and see what some of the other guys were selling. The market was at a local racetrack and was kind of an automotive swap meet, and we thought we might find some tool or parts sellers, or maybe some who were selling stuff like ours: car-related toys and collectibles.

About a hundred yards down from us, some Chinese vendors had set up a "dollar store" with rows and rows of boxes filled with hardware, inexpensive tools, tarps, bungees, and just dozens of small, indispensable things that everyone likes to pick through and buy. There were six or seven of them sitting in a circle around a big campfire, and they were passing around big half-gallon bottles of some kind of clear liquor. We smiled and waved at them as we walked by, and they all smiled back and waved us over to the fire. We sat down with them and shared the bottles as they passed along - none of our new friends spoke very much English, and Bob and I didn't speak any Chinese, but that didn't matter. We all spoke the universal language of Drink, and within an hour or so we were all half-popped, telling jokes (Bob and I in English, and our hosts in Chinese) and laughing like idiots. I don't remember much else that night. In the morning I woke up and found myself warm and toasty in my van with my propane heater running, so I must have had enough on the ball to find my way back and get ready for bed. I got the camp stove going and put on a huge pot of coffee, and while Bob rummaged around the cooler in search of bacon and eggs I went over and invited the Chinese crew to breakfast. Breakfast was alcohol-free, but we still had a great time, laughing it up as we managed to communicate in broken English and hand signals.

Bob and I never ran into those guys again, but we've never forgotten them, either.

I never knew just what we were drinking that night, only that it was strong and a little harsh and reminded me of very strong, very cheap vodka. It wasn't until years later, when my friend's daughter Stephanie brought me back a bottle from China, that I found out what it was: Erguotou ( 二锅头) an inexpensive 112-proof firewater distilled from sorghum and popular with blue-collar workers in northern China.

These days, Steph speaks fluent Mandarin and has a degree in Chinese Studies and lives in Shanghai teaching English in a Chinese school. She recently came home for a visit during the school's Spring Break, and brought me a small 100ml bottle of Red Star erguotou, bless her.

Red Star Erguotou is extremely popular in Beijing. It's cheap and strong. Stephanie likens the aroma to gasoline, but I don't think it's all that bad. It is indeed quite vaporous, but it reminds me more of the purple-printed mimeographed sheets we used to get in grade school than it does of petrol. Despite the aroma, it has little or no flavor, but it does have quite a burn! 112 proof would be strong enough on its own, but erguotou is harsh and raw-edged, too, and a big swallow burns all the way down. I enjoy the hell out of it, and when I have a bottle of it handy I always have the first drink from it to the health of the anonymous Chinese flea market vendors Bob and I met those years ago.

Links:

Red Star Company's website (English language version) - uses Flash and loads kind of slowly, even with a broadband connection.

Stephanie In Shanghai is Steph's blog about living in China. Stop in and enjoy her perpective as an American ex-pat in China as she recounts her adventures (and her mundane everyday life, too.)

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Not Very Good Wine, But Very Good Bacon

Made by B F Clyde's Cider Mill in Mystic CT, Clyde's Yellow Jacket is an apple wine with orange concentrate added. It's put up in clear glass bottles, through which one can admire the rich, cloudy amber of the wine and the thick layer of yellowy sediment choking the bottom.

The label says to SHAKE WELL and so I did before pouring. Shaking it, of course, distributes the orange concentrate throughout the wine and gives it the appearance of water pulled from a peat bog with a bucket.

Despite this appearance, the wine is thin, with very little body. The citrus is absolutely overwhelming to the point of throwing the flavor out of balance, and in fact the stuff is almost unbearably sour. Orange concentrate in this wine equals epic fail. I found it unpleasantly acrid; comments from other tasters included "horrid," "bitter," (okay, so the actual comment was much less kind: "it tastes like earwax") and "what the hell were they [meaning the cider mill] thinking?" No one - including me - finished the short pourings I'd provided. It really was that bad, and letting it breathe improved it not one microscopic bit.

Note: The sour acidity was purely the result of the orange concentrate. The wine had not corked or started to turn to vinegar - there was no taste of acetic acid at all, so speculation that the wine had somehow "turned" is misguided.

Allowing the sediment to settle back into bottom-of-the-bottle sludge, I carefully poured off some of the less-adulterated (but still somewhat cloudy) apple wine and found it somewhat less disagreeable. It was now identifiable as an apple wine, though it was still not as good as the other apple cider/wines we tried from B F Clyde's.

By the end of dinner, I still had a good 2/3 of a bottle remaining. Well, not really "good," if you know what I mean. But it's still many ounces of 34-proof undrinkable beverage, and I wasn't sure what to do with the rest.

But it so happened that I had a couple of chunks of pork belly in the refrigerator, waiting to be made into bacon. And so it was decided to use the remainder of the Yellow Jacket to flavor the bacon, because the whiskey-cured bacon I'd made previously was so good.

The pork belly pieces spent three days marinating in the apple wine. Then I poured off the wine, patted the meat dry with paper towels, and rubbed it with a mixture of two parts kosher salt to one part brown sugar, with a dash of Morton TenderQuick added. After three days in the rub, I rinsed off the excess cure with a touch more Yellow Jacket, and put the pork over apple smoke at 200 F for three hours to make a Russian-style "hot smoked" bacon.

The result was excellent. The finished bacon has a sharp apple-wine aroma accented by the smoke. Eaten in the Eastern-European manner - sliced without further cooking - the wine flavor nicely complements the salt and smoke flavors in the pork. When fried, the apple smoke becomes more prominent and the wine flavors fade. But best of all, the sour citrus flavor is not present at all in the bacon.

Links:

B F Clyde's Cider Mill Official Website - Clyde's is the oldest steam-powered cider mill in the United States, and they produce a number of hard ciders and apple wines. The other ciders we tried - Lucky Lion and Old Fashioned Hard Cider - were very good.

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There's a new flavor of Mike's Hard Lemonade hitting the coolers of supermarkets and package stores: pomegranate. It's delicious, and has a surprisingly complex flavor for a fruitbeer. The pomegranate is front and center, of course, but there are subtle hints of citrus and black cherry as well. Refreshing and a little kicky, too, with a 5% alcohol content by volume.

Although my favorite Mike's flavor is still Lime, Pomegranate edges out Cranberry for second place, followed by Lemon, then Wild Berry (which is too cloyingly sweet for my taste.)

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Beer + Clamato = WTF

I was at the package store, buying vodka for Jello Shots, and they had these "Cheladas" on the counter by the cash register. I guess they were hoping for someone to pick them up on an impulse buy. I asked the guy at the register about them, and he just laughed. "I put them there hoping someone would want them out of curiosity," he said, "They taste really bad. Plus everyone sees Clamato on the label and they're like 'Man that shit's nasty.'"

Rumor has it that "Cheladas" are popular with Latinos, but we have a pretty sizeable Hispanic population around here and none of my Latino friends has ever tasted a Bud Chelada. I wonder who the hell ever thought that this would be such a popular product that it had to be produced commercially. There are two main things wrong with it:

• Budweiser (and Bud Light) are not, despite all the money they pour into marketing, "premium" beers. They're lowest-common-denominator suds which, by virtue of brand identity, are able to command a slightly higher price for quality and taste that is not all that much better than Pabst Blue Ribbon.
• Clamato is, all by itself, fairly disgusting. Originally made by Mott's, it was once upon a time a decent drink - tomato juice, clam broth, a touch of seaoning - that made a killer Bloody Mary (called a "Clammy Mary" around here, or a "Caesar" in Canada, eh.) But those days are gone forever. Mott's was bought out by Cadbury-Schweppes in 1982, and now Clamato is made with tomato juice, "clam powder," and high-fructose corn syrup. It's not the same drink, and it doesn't taste the same.

The actual Budweiser Chelata Experience far exceeded my horrific expectations. For starters, the color is a bloody-phlegm pinky/amber. Kind of translucent, with tiny suspended reddish particulate (Bud says the can should be gently spun between your palms before opening to mix the sediment with the beverage.) There's no head. In fact, there's very little carbonation; it's a lot like soda pop that's been left in an open cup overnight. I have to admit that the smell is a little enticing: a bit briny, a bit tomatoey, a bit yeasty. So I took a sip.

Big mistake. The mouthfeel is thin and watery. The flavor is vomitous: reminiscent of rotted tomatoes in a salt flat at low tide. Gah. Horrid. I'd almost be willing to eat a bite of dogshit just to get the flavor of Chelada out of my mouth.

'Man that shit's nasty.' Yes, that sums it up quite tidily, I'd say.