Batching and Prep, Bitters and Tinctures, Syrups and Sweeteners
Most of the drinks in Arnd Heißen's book rest on a handful of preparations you can make in a kitchen: spirit infusions, flavoured syrups, an orange liqueur and your own bitter.
At a glance
Most of the drinks in Arnd Heißen's book rest on a handful of preparations you can make in a kitchen: spirit infusions, flavoured syrups, an orange liqueur and your own bitter. The article gives the quantities and times for each.
A preserving jar and a sieve are enough for the spirit infusions. For the syrups, a pot, a bottle and patience while the sugar crystals dissolve. The book’s last chapter, Finally, collects the recipes under the heading everything yourself, with advice on stock and storage.
Seven infusions are written out for one litre of spirit each. Rum aged at least five years takes four teaspoons of Szechuan pepper for about a day, or 2 g of saffron for about a day. White rum takes eight teaspoons of dried chamomile flowers for ten minutes. Blanco tequila takes eight teaspoons of verbena tea for seven minutes, gin takes five teaspoons of Earl Grey tea for ten minutes, and shochu takes five teaspoons of jasmine tea for fifteen minutes or 100 g of rose petals with 50 ml of rose water for twelve hours. The method is always the same: shake now and then, pass the liquid through a sieve when it is slightly coloured, and bottle it. They should not be stored for long, or they turn bitter.
A simple syrup is 500 ml of water to 1 kg of sugar. The vanilla and tonka bean syrup simmers five crumbled tonka beans and two vanilla pods in 750 ml of water for a quarter of an hour before 1.5 kg of sugar goes in. Lavender syrup simmers 100 g of lavender flowers in water until the flowers lose their colour, then adds sugar. The mandarin and lemongrass syrup simmers lemongrass with a litre of mandarin puree, the honey syrup is honey and water brought briefly to the boil, the sugar, rose and honey syrup uses rose water instead of water, the eucalyptus syrup uses eucalyptus drops from the pharmacy and Moroccan mint, and the fig syrup uses fig puree and port.
The author steeps the peel of ten untreated oranges, nine crushed star anise and 150 g of ginger in 1.3 litres of tequila for four days, shaking daily, then strains it and adds an equal amount of sugar syrup. The tequila should have a light orange note or go well with one; he suggests Sierra Milenario Añejo for a smokier liqueur and Herradura Blanco for a lighter one.
Bitters are concentrates that unfold wonderfully in a drink, and almost undrinkable on their own. The base should suit the drink: rum for a Jerry Thomas bitter, bourbon for dark drinks, a single malt for a smokier taste. The author’s house bitter uses his favourite spices, from anise, allspice and cardamom to cloves, cassia, ginger, tonka bean and vanilla, rests for a week and is sweetened with brown cane sugar syrup. It tastes woody, extremely bitter and numbs the throat. Because tonka bean and nutmeg are toxic, he says to use it only in small quantities and never in drinks such as Magic Water or Angostura Sour.
The seventeen preparations are collected on this site as drafts until we have permission to publish them.
In the author's words
Bitters sind Konzentrate, die sich in einem Drink wunderbar entfalten. (in English: Bitters are concentrates that unfold wonderfully in a drink.)
Page 82
Where this comes from
Written for this guide from the chapter Finally of Trend Drinks by Arnd Heißen (Edition Styria, 2011), pages 75 to 83; the recipes and advice are the author's, the wording and the English are ours, and the quotation is given in the original German with a translation. The book gives the spice list of the house bitter and the resting time, and no spirit or method.
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