Tomas Curras is the owner and main author for Vintage American Cocktails and has been covering cocktail history, drinking culture, and changes in the field for the last 4 years.
The Kamikaze was most likely invented in the early 1970s. In the October 1979 issue of Ski Magazine, on page 78, an article by Peter Miller Provides quite a bit of information about the Kamikaze cocktail. Miller states the kamikaze first came out of Florida in the early to mid-1970s and moved to New York. Once it became popular in New York, the cocktail spread to the rest of the country. The Kamikaze became particularly popular in the ski resorts of North America. The Kamikaze is named for its strength and the idea that it’s a one-way trip once you start to drink them. Miller provides the oldest known recipe for the Kamikaze.
1.5 oz of prechilled Vodka
A dash of lime juice
1 drop of Cointreau
The cocktail is not mixed with ice as the ingredients are already pre-chilled in the freezer. Combine in the glass and serve.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
1
servings
Calories
100
kcal
ABV
40%
Total time
2
minutes
How to make a Kamikaze cocktail.
Ingredients
1dashLime Juice
1dashOrange Liqueur
1.5ozVodka
Directions
Combine pre-chilled ingredients in a shot glass.
Larger versions can be served in cocktail glasses.
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The Brown Derby cocktail first appeared in the 1933 book “Hollywood Cocktails.” The Brown Derby was the house cocktail of the Los Angeles-based Brown Derby, a chain of formal high-end restaurants shaped like derby hats. Wilson Mizner opened the Brown Derby in 1926 to coincide with the release of the 1926 silent film “The Brown Derby,” starring Johnny Hines, Ruth Dwyer, and Edmund Breese.
Although this cocktail is commonly known as the Brown Derby, the exact recipe for the Brown Derby first appeared in the 1930 “Savoy Cocktail Book” as the “De Rigueur.” It could be a coincidence, but chances are the Brown Derby got the recipe from the Savoy. We will never know for sure, but two whiskey cocktails with the exact same proportions of grapefruit juice and honey being developed independently seem unlikely to me. But maybe they did.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
1
servings
Calories
300
kcal
Total time
3
minutes
How to make the Brown Derby
Ingredients
1ozGrapefruit Juice
1ozHoney Syrup
2ozBourbon
Directions
Combine all ingredients in the shaker. Add ice to the shaker.
Vigorously shake till the shaker is ice cold and frosted.
Strain into a glass.
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Fassionola was a line of tropical syrups made by the San Diego-based Jonathan English company. Jonathan English made Gold, Red, and Green fassionola syrup, each with a unique flavor. The gold was primarily passion fruit flavored, the red was fruit punch, and the green was mainly lime and guava. It is widely rumored that the Jonathan English company went out of business, and it was, but before the company went entirely out of business, it was bought by a new owner. I learned this from a Reddit post. The new owner still makes the classic Jonathan English red, green and gold fassionolas. As of writing this, there is an eBay seller who ships these original fassionolas, and here is the website of the distributor of Johathan English, but it seems distribution is limited to the San Diego area.
It’s not uncommon to find individuals who want fassionola to make their own. I’ve made my own, and it turns out pretty good. Again considering there is no definitive recipe for fassionola, make something fun and tropical. I built my recipes knowing that red is supposed to be fruit punch, gold is passion fruit, and green is lime and guava.
How I Came To This Recipe.
Like any food or drink, there is no single recipe, and most have their own variation. While Johnathan English fassionola was the go-to for most tiki bars back in the day, it doesn’t mean you can’t make your own or that it has to be 100% like Johnathan English. I made this recipe up entirely out of what sounded good while trying to highlight the primary flavor for each color of fassionola. With red fassionola in mind, I looked at the classic Red Hawaiian Punch ingredient list, saw what juices it had listed, and made those the ingredients.
Specific to red fassionola, I made half the volume cherry and strawberry juice and the other half the Hawaiian punch juice mix. The resulting syrup is a beautiful red color with a complex flavor and a clear cherry strawberry taste. The nice thing about cherries is they have a strong red color. This lets the red fassionola be colored red more naturally than using dye. Red dye would be fine, too, if you want to make red fassionola without a cherry flavor. Strawberries have a weak red color that quickly oxidizes, so the cherries provide all the color.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
15
servings
Calories
200
kcal
Total time
10
minutes
How to make a homemade Red Fassionola
Ingredients
2ozGuava Juice
2ozPapaya Juice
2ozApricot Juice
2ozPassion Fruit Juice
2ozApple Juice
2ozPineapple Juice
2ozOrange Juice
6ozCherry Juice
6ozStrawberry Puree/Juice
3cupsGranulated Sugar
Directions
Combine all the juices together.
Run juice through a jelly bag to remove small particles.
In a stovetop pot, over low heat, add the sugar and stir till fully dissolved.
Bottle and store it in the refrigerator or in the freezer for long-term storage.
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Fassionola was a line of tropical syrups made by the San Diego-based Jonathan English company. Jonathan English made Gold, Red, and Green fassionola syrup, each with a unique flavor. The gold was primarily passion fruit flavored, the red was fruit punch, and the green was mainly lime and guava. It is widely rumored that the Jonathan English company went out of business, and it was, but before the company went entirely out of business, it was bought by a new owner. I learned this from a Reddit post. The new owner still makes the classic Jonathan English red, green and gold fassionolas. As of writing this, there is an eBay seller who ships these original fassionolas, and here is the website of the distributor of Johathan English, but it seems distribution is limited to the San Diego area.
It’s not uncommon to find individuals who want fassionola to make their own. I’ve made my own, and it turns out pretty good. Again considering there is no definitive recipe for fassionola, make something fun and tropical. I built my recipes knowing that red is supposed to be fruit punch, gold is passion fruit, and green is lime and guava.
How I Came To This Recipe.
Like any food or drink, there is no single recipe, and most have their own variation. While Johnathan English fassionola was the go-to for most tiki bars back in the day, it doesn’t mean you can’t make your own or that it has to be 100% like Johnathan English. I made this recipe up entirely out of what sounded good while trying to highlight the primary flavor for each color of fassionola. With red fassionola in mind, I looked at the classic Red Hawaiian Punch ingredient list, saw what juices it had listed, and made those the ingredients.
Specific to gold fassionola, I made half the volume passion fruit juice and the other half the Hawaiian punch juice mix. The resulting syrup is a beautiful gold color with a complex flavor and a clear passion fruit taste.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
15
servings
Calories
200
kcal
Total time
10
minutes
How to make a homemade Gold Fassionola
Ingredients
2ozPapaya Juice
2ozApricot Juice
2ozApple Juice
2ozPineapple Juice
2ozOrange Juice
2ozGuava Juice
12ozPassion Fruit Juice
3cupsGranulated Sugar
Directions
Combine all the juices together.
Run juice through a jelly bag to remove small particles.
In a stovetop pot, over low heat, add the sugar and stir till fully dissolved.
Bottle and store it in the refrigerator or in the freezer for long-term storage.
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Fassionola was a line of tropical syrups made by the San Diego-based Jonathan English company. Jonathan English made Gold, Red, and Green fassionola syrup, each with a unique flavor. The gold was primarily passion fruit flavored, the red was fruit punch, and the green was mainly lime and guava. It is widely rumored that the Jonathan English company went out of business, and it was, but before the company went entirely out of business, it was bought by a new owner. I learned this from a Reddit post. The new owner still makes the classic Jonathan English red, green and gold fassionolas. As of writing this, there is an eBay seller who ships these original fassionolas, and here is the website of the distributor of Johathan English, but it seems distribution is limited to the San Diego area.
It’s not uncommon to find individuals who want fassionola to make their own. I’ve made my own, and it turns out pretty good. Again considering there is no definitive recipe for fassionola, make something fun and tropical. I built my recipes knowing that red is supposed to be fruit punch, gold is passion fruit, and green is lime and guava.
How I Came To This Recipe.
Like any food or drink, there is no single recipe, and most have their own variation. While Johnathan English fassionola was the go-to for most tiki bars back in the day, it doesn’t mean you can’t make your own or that it has to be 100% like Johnathan English. I made this recipe up entirely out of what sounded good while trying to highlight the primary flavor for each color of fassionola. With red fassionola in mind, I looked at the classic Red Hawaiian Punch ingredient list, saw what juices it had listed, and made those the ingredients.
Specific to green fassionola, I made half the volume a mix of lime and guava and the other half the Hawaiian punch juice mix. The resulting syrup is not green, so I added green food dye. Green is almost impossible to make flavorless and naturally, so green food dye is your best option. There is nothing wrong with using food dye to enhance color when appropriate.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
15
servings
Calories
200
kcal
Total time
10
minutes
How to make a homemade Green Fassionola
Ingredients
2ozPapaya Juice
2ozApricot Juice
2ozPassion Fruit Juice
2ozApple Juice
2ozPineapple Juice
2ozOrange Juice
6ozGuava Juice
6ozLime Juice
4-5dropsGreen Food Dye
3cupsGranulated Sugar
Directions
Combine all the juices together.
Run juice through a jelly bag to remove small particles.
Add green food dye to color and then add 1 or 2 extra drops to concentrate the color for mixing.
In a stovetop pot, over low heat, add the sugar and stir till fully dissolved.
Bottle and store it in the refrigerator or in the freezer for long-term storage.
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The honey hole is a beautiful blend of floral flavors with spice. The flowery sweetness of the elderflower liqueur and honey are balanced well with the spiciness of the rye. You can choose to pour this neat if you want for a short, strong pre-dinner cocktail or serve it up tiki-style and pour it dirty for a refreshing sipper. Either is good, but I choose to do it tiki-style for the photo because it is terrific served this way, and I feel this style of pouring is underrepresented.
This is not a classic cocktail, but one I made for a friend’s wedding I bartended for. The bride was a big whiskey sour kick at the time and wanted that to be one of the drinks on the menu. They planned the wedding near Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in a beautiful wildflower field, so I modified the cocktail to be floral. The bride pushed me to add the cocktail to the app and website and call it Jack’s honey hole, and while I enjoy a good dirty, off-color joke, I feel I should present the semblance of decency.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
1
servings
Calories
300
kcal
Total time
3
minutes
How to make the Honey Hole.
Ingredients
1ozLemon Juice
1/2ozHoney Syrup
1/2ozElderflower Liqueur
2ozRye Whiskey
Directions
Combine all ingredients into a shaker, and add a scoop of crushed ice.
Vigorously shake till the shaker is ice cold and frosted.
Pour the whole shaker into the serving glass. Ice and all
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The Butterscotch Alexander is excellent. The blend of butterscotch and chocolate flavors goes great together and the brandy gives the drink a little kick. The Butterscotch Alexander is not a classic cocktail; It’s just an excellent way to use butterscotch liqueur. My wife bought a bottle of butterscotch liqueur a while back because it sounded fun, but we never used it. One day when she asked me to make her a Brandy Alexander, it hit me that this would be an excellent way to use the butterscotch liqueur. The cocktail was a hit with her and everyone I have served it to, so I figured it would be a fun recipe to share with others.
The History Of The Alexander Cocktail.
The first printed recipe for the Alexander is from the 1917 book “Recipes For Mixed Drinks” by Hugo Ensslin. This early Alexander is gin-based, and so is the Alexander recipe in the Old Waldorf-Astoria. This means the two oldest known Alexander recipes are both gin cocktails. Even though the Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book was printed in 1935, it documented the bars recipes from the 1890s to 1920.
Europe, it seemed preferred to use Brandy instead of gin. The earliest printed recipes for the Alexander in Europe come from “The Savoy Cocktail Book” by Harry Craddock and “Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails” by Harry McElhone. Both books refer to it only as an Alexander cocktail, not specifically a gin or brandy Alexander. Interestingly the Savoy list both the older style gin-based Alexander as an Alexander #1 and the brandy-based one as an Alexander #2. Harry’s ABC book only lists the brandy recipe and does not have the gin version. With all the European cocktail books I looked through from the 1930s on, I noticed that most had both a gin version and a brandy version and referred to both of them as Alexanders. The gin-based Alexander is often called an Alexander #1, and the brandy-based one is called an Alexander #2.
The first American book I could find to include an Alexander with brandy is the 1951 book “Bottoms Up” by Ted Saucier. He lists them as an Alexander (Gin) and an Alexander (Brandy). By the 1970s, the gin-based Alexander goes back to just being called an Alexander, and the Brandy one gains its more common current name of a Brandy Alexander. I first saw this naming convention used in the 1972 Trader Vic’s Cocktail Guide.
Personally, I like the Bottoms Up naming convention for the Alexander and its variations. It’s clear and descriptive and easily allows for additional variations.
Should I use Dark, White, or Clear Creme De Cacao?
None of the Alexander cocktail recipes specify precisely what kind of creme de cacao/chocolate liqueur to use, and honestly, they all taste the same. The dark, white, clear, or lightly aged color depends mainly on the base spirit used and if dyes were added. That being said, the white and dark brown chocolate-colored liqueurs are not naturally that color. Pigments are added to achieve that look. Clear ones were probably also manufactured using a super processed cocoa extract which is then added to sweetened vodka. A naturally colored creme de cacaos is either a light pale brown color or looks like a typically aged spirit like cognac. This depends on if the base spirit is an un-aged distillers alcohol/vodka or an aged spirit. You can easily see this at home by making your own creme de cacao. Add cocoa nibs to high-proof grain alcohol, let it soak for a few days, filter it, and combine it with vanilla extract, sugar, and water until you get a desirable flavor. The color will be a nice light pale brown from the soaked cocoa nibs.
Again the color is artificial unless it’s one of the two mentioned above and is not a result of the flavor extracting process, so get one you like. Ultimately all creme de cacaos are the same product, and the look and color are purely visual. Do you want a dark brown Alexander or a white one? They will taste practically the same so find a brand you like and go with it.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
1
servings
Calories
300
kcal
Total time
3
minutes
How to make a Butterscotch Alexander
Ingredients
1ozButterscotch Liqueur
1ozCreme de Cacao
1ozBrandy
1ozHeavy Cream
Directions
Combine all ingredients in the shaker. Add ice to the shaker.
Vigorously shake till the shaker is ice cold and frosted.
Strain into a glass to remove ice shards.
Garnish with a dusting of nutmeg.
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The Corn and Oil (also known as corn ‘n oil, or Corning oil) is a rum cocktail from Barbados, with the earliest records I can find of it coming from the 1911 book “West Indian and Other Recipes” by Mrs. H Graham Yearwood. Mrs. Yearwood calls the Corning oil traditional Barbados cocktail consisting of either rum, sugar, and Angostura bitters or rum, falernum, and Angostura bitters. She states the actual name of the cocktail is Corning oil, but it is mainly known as the Corn ‘n Oil.
It appears the corn ‘n abbreviation is meant to replace the “corning” and not “corn and” and be more like the abbreviation in “I was walk’n and talk’n to my friends.” and not “I was walking ‘n talking to my friends” For those reading this not fully fluent in English this is a feature in the English language called elision and its when a final sound, often a vowel, is left out of speech to help speak faster. Other languages have it, too, but it is used heavily in English, especially in poetry, to maintain the meter or in literature to convey the local dialect.
Mrs. Yearwood does not give an exact recipe for the corn ‘n oil, just that it’s made of Rum, bitters, and either falernum or sugar. To that point, there most likely isn’t a single recipe. Most regional drinks like Corn’n Oil have countless variations, and every family has its recipe. Many recipes include lime juice, and the addition of lime juice is excellent, but since Mrs. Yearwood did not mention it in her recipe, I will not add it to mine.
Oddly enough, beyond Mrs. Yearwood’s 1911 mention of the cocktail and its recipe, I couldn’t find any other reference to the cocktail till the early 2000s. Trader Vic never mentions it. It’s not even in any published books by Beachbum Berry. Not even Cocktail books from the Caribbean mention it. At least that I could find.
What Does The Corn ‘n Oil Taste Like?
The corn ‘n oil reminds me of a Caribbean Manhattan. It’s got the standard angostura bitters, but instead of whiskey, it’s rum, and instead of sweet vermouth, it’s falernum. There are no definitive proportions to follow, so you can make it more or less sweet depending on your taste. Thinking of it as a Caribbean Manhattan, I choose to make it with the same volumes I would like a Manhattan. There is also no definitive way to mix the corn ‘n oil, so I decided to shake and dirty pour in a way that would be refreshing on a hot tropical day.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: Caribbean
Servings
1
servings
Calories
300
kcal
ABV
30%
Total time
3
minutes
How to make a classic Corn ’n Oil.
Ingredients
2ozBlack or Aged Rum
1ozFalernum
2DashesAngostura Bitters
Directions
Combine all ingredients into a shaker, and add a scoop of crushed ice.
Vigorously shake till the shaker is ice cold and frosted.
Pour the whole shaker into the serving glass. Ice and all
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The most common sugar to water syrup ratios are 1:1, 3:2, and 2:1. A equal part of sugar and water, 1:1 is a bit thin, doesn’t last as long from mold as the others, and offers less sweetening potential. I don’t care for 1:1, and it’s usually just made this way because it doesn’t need to be heated and is cheap. The next one is 3:2. so three parts sugar to 2 parts water. This is perhaps the best ratio as it offers a similar sweetening potential as 2:1 without any of the issues 2:1 has. This syrup ratio does need to be heated to dissolve the sugar fully, but once it is dissolved, it will not recrystallize. Most of the classic late 1800s and early 1900s syrups were 3:2. The last ratio is 2:1. This syrup ratio needs to be heated to dissolve the sugar too fully. Unfortunately, once it cools, the sugar crystals can reform and form hard clumps of sugar crystals in your syrup. 2:1 syrups’ best feature is their very long shelf life. There is a high enough concentration of sugar that most bacteria are killed, and mold won’t form for a few weeks.
Once you have picked the syrup ratio you want and made it, add the vanilla extract and stir till fully incorporated. It’s that simple. Be aware that the standard extract to syrup ratio is 1:30. So for every 30 oz of syrup, add 1 oz of extract. That ratio can be easily scaled for different volumes. For example, for 2 cups of syrup (16 oz/480 mLs), add around a half ounce (15 mLs) of extract.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
20
servings
Calories
90
kcal
Total time
10
minutes
The easiest way to make vanilla syrup.
Ingredients
16ozGranulated Sugar
11ozWater
1tbspVanilla Extract
1/4tspCream of TarTar (Tartaric Acid)
Directions
Combine sugar and water in a saucepan and under gentle heat stir till the sugar is fully dissolved.
While still warm add the cream of tartar and stir to combine.
Once the syrup has cooled add the vanilla extract and stir till it is fully combined. Bottle and refrigerate.
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Gum syrup is straightforward to make. It just takes a little time to reconstitute the dried gum arabic powder. To begin with, mix dried gum acacia powder with equal parts of water. Mix the two until there are only a few clumps left, then let it sit for a couple of hours. The lumps will dissolve after a couple of hours. Once the gum is fully dissolved you will have a good working liquid gum arabic. The typical amount of liquid gum arabic to add is 20% of the volume you are adding it to. So if you plan to make 2 cups (480 mLs) of syrup, then you would add 80 mLs of liquid gum arabic to 400 mLs of simple syrup, which will result in desired 480 mLs of syrup. Also, know that gum arabic and gum acacia are the same thing. Gum arabic is just the older name for it.
The next thing to prepare is your syrup. The most common sugar to water syrup ratios are 1:1, 3:2, and 2:1. 1:1 is equal part of sugar and water. It’s a bit thin, doesn’t last as long from mold as the others, and offers less sweetening potential. I don’t care for 1:1, and it’s usually just made this way because it’s fast, doesn’t need to be heated, and is cheap. The next one is 3:2. so 3 parts sugar to 2 parts water. This is perhaps the best ratio as it offers a similar sweetening potential as 2:1 without any of the issues 2:1 has. This syrup ratio does need to be heated to dissolve the sugar fully, but once it is dissolved, the sugar will not recrystallize. Most of the classic late 1800s and early 1900s syrups were 3:2. The last ratio is 2:1. This syrup ratio needs to be heated to dissolve the sugar fully. Unfortunately, it’s so concentrated that once it cools, the sugar crystals can reform into hard clumps of sugar crystals in your syrup. 2:1 syrups’ best feature is their very long shelf life. There is a high enough concentration of sugar that most bacteria are killed, and mold won’t form for a few weeks.
Once you have made the syrup ratio you want, combine the syrup and liquid gum arabic in a blender and blend for 1 minute. Transfer to a container, and that is it.
Gum Syrup vs. Simple Syrup.
The only difference between gum syrup and standard simple syrup is the addition of gum arabic. Gum arabic, or gum acacia, is the dried sap of the acacia tree and is a thick, insoluble fiber. It adds no significant flavor to the syrup but it adds a more viscous mouthfeel to cocktails. If you are downing the cocktail, the mouthfeel can be hard to notice, but it’s equatable to a red wine mouth feel vs. a white wine mouthfeel. When comparing wines, people usually talk about a thick or thin body. What they are really talking about malolactic acid vs. malic acid (gum syrup does not have malolactic or malic acid, I’m just using this as an example). Malic acid is more commonly associated with white wine, has a thin body, and feels like holding a sip of apple juice in your mouth. Malolactic acid is most associated with red wines, has a thicker body, and feels like holding a sip of milk in your mouth. So if you make a cocktail with gum syrup, that is the mouth feel to look for. Hold a sip in your mouth and notice if it feels like milk or apple juice. The mouth feel gum syrup adds is the same as red wines mouthfeel, and standard syrup without a gum is the same as white wines mouthfeel.
Gum Arabic has a high acidity (4-4.5), so it offers preservative properties I will mention below. Still, outside a small change to mouthfeel/body, it’s not that different from the standard simple syrup. The two can easily be substituted for the other with almost no noticeable difference.
Does Xanthan Gum Work For Making Gum Syrup?
Long story short. Not really. The idea is appealing, though. Xanthan gum is cheap, mixes very quickly, and you need much less xanthan gum to get similar results to gum in Arabic. Both xanthan gum and gum Arabic are stabilizers that prevent the merging of oil and water molecules. Still, they behave differently once diluted beyond their effective range and even do a few unexpected things. I’ll explain how this relates to making cocktails.
Stabilizers such as starches, gums, pectin, and gelatins work by separating smaller oil and water molecules and preventing them from reforming together. Which makes them looked mix. These large stabilizer molecules don’t change the surface tension of water or oil, they just stop the water and oil molecules from having any space to coalesce. This is also why they are used as thickeners for foods. Because they work by separating oil and water, they must constitute a certain percentage of the volume of the final mixture. Gum Arabic is an effective stabilizer between 10% and 20% of a mixture’s volume. So if you have 400 grams of water and oil you are trying to emulsify; you would need to add 40 – 80 grams of gum arabic. Xanthan gum is effective at 0.01% and 0.02%. Xanthan gum is used in tiny amounts. So using the above example, you would only need around half a gram to 1 gram of xanthan gum for 400 grams of water and oil. Again these stabilizers work great until they are under, or over, their effective range. Like how a cocktail mixed with 1 oz of 20% gum syrup, 2 oz gin, and 1 oz lemon juice will have a final percentage of gum arabic of 3%. Well below the 10% minimum. I did a few experiments on this with gum arabic, xanthan gum, and a control syrup with no gum, and here is what I found.
Even with the low gum arabic percentage, cocktails with particulate, like from the juice of a lemon, stayed in a decent suspension longer than my controlled standard simple syrup and gum syrup with xanthan gum. The xanthan gum syrup would sometimes clarify the cocktail. I couldn’t get it to do this consistently or even understand why this happened, but some drinks clarified. I made hot buttered rum to test the syrups in a warm fat rich drink, and soon after mixing, all the butter and spices bonded together and solidified at the top. This happened with other cocktails too, but not all the time, or in a way, I could find a pattern. There was also no mouthfeel with the xanthan gum the same way there was with gum acacia. All in all, xanthan gum syrup performed worse than my control simple syrup without gums. Every cocktail I made with gum arabic performed very well. The hot buttered rum’s oil stayed emulsified for a long time, with less fat settling at the top than the control simple syrup. Foams that formed on top from shaking lasted longer too with gum acerbic syrup. I also did an experiment where I mixed pure cinnamon oil in gum arabic and xanthan gum. I then added a large amount of water to see how each handled the mixing of oil and water. The gum arabic oil mixture stayed perfectly emulsified even after several hours while the xanthan gum oil mixture instantly separated, and the oil all floated to the top.
All in all, gum arabic simple syrup improved the emulsification and looked of every drink I used it in. I love xanthan gum for cooking and think it’s one of the best gums available. Still, specifically to cocktails, it is detrimental to the quality of the drink.
TLDR is gum arabic made every cocktail better while xanthan gum somehow made them worse. No gum was better than using xanthan gum in a mixed drink. When the xanthan gum was diluted to a level far lower than its effective percentage of 0.01 or 0.02, it behaved oddly and even clarified some drinks. Don’t use xanthan gum for gum syrup.
The Purpose Of Adding Gum Arabic to Simple Syrup.
People often talk about the mouthfeel gum syrup adds, but it also works as a preservative. Gum syrup isn’t as common as it was in the past, and refrigeration is the main reason for that. Commercial refrigeration was invented in the 1850s, but it didn’t become scaled-down and more common till much later. Preservation of food was more difficult, and syrups would spoil very quickly. one way to preserve a syrup while not changing the quality of it too much was to add gum arabic to it. Gum arabic has an acidic PH of around 4 to 4.5, enough to kill most germs. Another method to lengthen the life of syrups was to add tartaric acid (cream of tartar) and lower the PH even more. By combining gum syrup with tartaric acid, the syrup PH could be lowered to that ideal 4.5 PH range and it would keep for quite some time without refrigeration.
Gum arabic also modified the mouthfeel of cocktails and gave a desirable full-body texture similar to red wine. The easiest way to describe it is gum syrup gives a red wine mouthfeel, while standard simple syrup gives a white wine mouthfeel. The red wine’s full body mouthfeel is compared to the mouthfeel of milk, while the white wine’s thinner mouthfeel is compared to the mouthfeel of apple juice. So if you ever want to experience that texture, hold a sip of a cocktail in your mouth and notice if it feels like milk or apple juice.
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Course: DrinksCuisine: American
Servings
4
servings
Calories
300
kcal
Total time
10
minutes
The easiest way to make gum syrup.
Ingredients
16ozGranulated Sugar
11ozWater
2.5ozLiquid Gum Arabic
1/4tspCream of TarTar (tartaric acid)
Directions
Combine sugar and water in a saucepan and under gentle heat stir till the sugar is fully dissolved.
While still warm add the cream of tartar and stir to combine.
Once the syrup has cooled, pour it into a blender, add the liquid gum arabic, and blend for 1 minute. Bottle and refrigerate or freeze to store for an extended period of time.
To make liquid gum arabic combine equal parts by weight of powdered gum arabic and water. Stir, there will be clumps, but let it sit for several hours and it will fully dissolve.
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