Santa Fe Spirits: Wheeler's Gin Martini

Today we will begin taking a look at Wheeler's Western Dry Gin.   Produced by Santa Fe Spirits, Wheeler's is a gin which fits into the center of the gin spectrum.  Now, people hear that and they thing "well if it's just in the middle then why bother and blah blah blah" but think about it... how often do you want the extremes of anything?  Hot sauce?  No, you like Sriracha and Cholula, not the extremes blandness of Frank's hot-sauce-flavored water or the insanity of weaponized pepper-spray.  Sushi?  Well, fresh is good but not a lot of you are going to starting fish that are still swimming around, and let's not even think about the other end of that equation.  Not even alcohol.  Fuck the 3% beer crap, but that doesn't mean you're gonna start downing the 96% Spirytus Staropolski any time soon (actually we did do that once and also started cooking with it.  After our hands caught fire we decided it wasn't really the best thing to have around). 

Needless to say, Wheeler's is not the gining-est gin that has ever gin-ed.  It is also not so delicate, that such as the landing of sakura petals upon your arm in spring, your first sensory perception of their presence is simply by their smell.   Nope, this is a gin, a real gin, that isn't afraid to know when to hold em and know when to fold em (right now the people at Santa Fe Spirits are probably cringing and saying "why did we let these city-people touch out awesome stuff?").  It's because we know a good thing when we drink it and Wheeler's is a great gin that delivers exactly what a gin should, without harsh tones, over-powerful menthol flavors, or hastily distilled base spirits.  People think that because gin is a clear spirit, it's simple, but in fact the opposite is true.  With no oak-smoke to hide behind, gin has to bring it's A game to the table right out of the gate, without the benefit of added time or a caramelized smoke screen.  Sante Fe Spirits knows this, and you dear imbiber get to enjoy the benefits of their wisdom. 

Wheeler's is also unique, in that along with juniper, it includes cascade hops, white sage, osha root, and Cholla (that's pronounced Choi-Ya) Cactus blossoms picked directly by the distillery.  The end result is a gin that can not only hold it's own in a martini, but can also mix into recipes which are extremely delicate.  And we're about to show you exactly that:

Santa Fe Spirits's Wheeler's Gin

in

The Martini.

You may remember in our original martini episode, we used a gin that was of the London Dry variety.   These are very good and they are popular, but they are not the same as other gins, as we are about to see.















The Martini is very cruel to gin.  If the gin isn't good, it will put those qualities straight out there and let you know about it.  Even gins that are ok to use in other drinks are slain at the hands of this very serious recipe.  









What we have here is a premium dry vermouth, but our "friend" who brought it happened to put it in an unmarked container, so we can't show you the actual label name.  Maybe they were afraid to carry it with them, or maybe they were afraid we'd end up drinking it all (a distinct possibility), but either way, you'll have to wait for a future post to find out about quality vermouth.  So thanks for that ya dork (you know who you are).   





Some martini purists out there are going to hem and haw about how the gin must be at least some ridiculously low temperature.  This is straight up wrong.  Gin is an aromatic.  An aromatic doesn't work, if it's something like minus a kergillion-billion degrees below zero, because you're not gonna smell anything!   Chilled, yes.  Freezing?  No, you're doing it wrong. 









While they don't drop that many olives into it, the martinis served at (now defunked) Cornelius Oyster Bar in Prospect Heights Brooklyn, were actually similar to this, in that they often had quite a few lose olives floating around in a class such as this.   One (or 2) of these and a plate of  raw bluepoints were the absolute best way to end a hard day at work, and still end up spending less than $20. 

In the end, Santa Fe Spirits Wheeler's Gin goes well in a martini or just on the rocks.  The gin itself has a unique background noise to it and we're assuming that it's the Cholla Cactus flowers, but since we've never had Cholla Cactus flowers, we can only assume that's the case.  It's no bottom shelf gin and seems to work best when it's between 45 and 35 degrees Fahrenheit.   Though for science sake we did taste 2 separate neat ounces at room temperature to see what was what.  While amplified, the searing that often happens with mass-produced gins was not there at all, while surprisingly the botanical strength was very pleasantly strong.  A great accompaniment to a hearty herbal focaccia in the shade on a summer afternoon.

Next time, Wheeler's Gin in:  The Yankee Rose.  

Product Review: Arctic Chill Ice Ball Makers

ARCTIC CHILL ICE BALL MAKER

Our friend Rizzi at Arctic Chill has once again sent us some goodies for the purposes of releasing our sage-like wisdom to the public. This time we're focusing on their Ice Ball molds, which ...make balls of ice when you fill them with water and put them in the freezer.  

Let this be a lesson unto all labels, manufactures, or distillers:  Send us stuff and we'll make a post about it here.

Unlike the Arctic Chill Muddler, these Ice Ball Makers are soft things that go in the freezer.  But like the Arctic Chill Muddler, the Arctic Chill Ice Ball Makers are available on Amazon.com and you can follow this link to the purchasing page.  Additionally, you can see them at the Arctic Chill’s own website here.

Let’s take a look at this invention shall we?






Again, these are from Arctic Chill, makers of bar-ware and other cocktail accessories. 





Behold the science:  The less surface area you have, the slower ice will melt in anything.  This means less of that water ends up turning your finely aged spirits into flat failures as you continue your libation.










Yes, these photo shoots take time and usually have hot lights, and so to keep ice from melting, which would prevent accurate measuring, we have gone outside in the Arctic Vortex to make sure that everything stays in a solid state.





As you can see we have added some food coloring to our ice.  This is just so that it photographs better and the difference will be as apparent and easy to spot as possible.

These measurements were made on a digital scale but rounded a bit just to make things easy.  While we will forever hate the metric system, its ease of use is not lost on us here on Pinky Mixology, and so we'll be including it here.









This glass holds 9 ounces when filled to the top.  No normal human being usually fills a martini glass until the only thing keeping in the liquid is surface tension, but we're doing science here.  No matter what the shape of your vessel, the Arctic Chill Ice Ball will always displace the same amount, so there's no reason to check it in other glasses, but what changes is the percentage of displacement.  When 4 ounces is 50% of what's in there, that's a big deal, but when it's 10%, not so much.







You may notice that our water/booze has turned the color of the dyed ice rather dramatically.  This is because the ice is put into the glass first and then has the liquid poured into it, in order to perform accurate measuring.  Also, this is how just about every drink out there is made (no one puts ice in a drink after it's all mixed), so it's a good way to gauge the early melt which happens when you pour stuff over ice.  The darker the water, the larger the amount of initial melt.







While the Arctic Chill Ice Ball doesn't share many flaws with things like Whiskey Stones or those metal drink chillers, in the standard bar tumbler/pint glass it will roll down and smack you in the teeth as you finish the end of your drink.  With normal ice cubes that's annoying enough, but let's remember that this thing starts off weighing about 4 to 5 times as much as a normal ice cube.






It is unfortunate that the Arctic Chill Ice Ball set doesn't come with a mold to make some relatively smaller spheres so as to be able to stack into a highball glass.  From The Gin & Tonic to the Bloody Mary, and every Long Island Iced Tea in between, highball glasses are almost always accompanied with ice in anything they contain.  Not being able to get this into one does take away an area of functionality which would have added considerable value to the over all product.





All comparisons between ice shapes are done by weight and are within less than 1/4 ounce of dead on.  Obviously we aren't going to be sawing an ice cube in half or something so we get as close as we can.





Now that really is ridiculous.  If you were at a bar and they shoved that much ice in a glass of anything you'd be calling shenanigans before they even put the coaster down.  The Arctic Chill Ice Ball does indeed give your drink the cooling power of all that ice, but without taking up so much space or releasing so much water into the mix.





Now for the melt time of the Arctic Chill Ice Ball.
We kept this glass inside a room at 70F (yes we had a thermometer going) and the internal temp stayed at 43F.









We're not going to plot this curve out (you math people can do that on your own if you feel like) but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that after the initial melting caused by the pouring of liquid over the Ice Ball, the rate of melt (aka the loss of mass) is extremely slow.  In the same environment with the same amount of water, our green cubes were close to toast.  Our red and blue cubes were still about 45-40% there but we had much less of our base beverage in there.  All temps were holding at 43-45F with the Arctic Chill Ice Ball being the coldest.





Yup, that's a huge 130 minutes that the Arctic Chill Ice Ball held out in a 70F room before melting away.  The temp of the drink remained 43F throughout that time.  Even our big GE ice cubes were toast just after one hour.  2 hours and 10 minutes is much longer than a drink should sit before being finished, and so any issues you may have of the entire ball melting and adding all that water to your drink should not be a concern unless you have an advanced nursing degree.





They are nifty, but they're not perfect.  Here are some of the issues we encountered.





By far, expansion is the biggest issue we faced.  When filled to the top, the ice will expand, pushing out quite a bit and even seperating the 2 halves, causing an unsightly ring round the center of the Ice Ball (Imagine a reverse Death Star with a ridge, not a trench, across the middle and a lumpy nipple where the indent for the laser should be). 

Like with the Arctic Chill Muddler, addressing the biggest problem with the Ice Balls is very easy.  Being flexible silicone, you can just squeeze out a few drops of water after filling it all the way up and this kind of thing won't happen.  We filled these all the way up just to show you that this is a possible thing that can happen if you don't take appropriate measures.




The Mpemba effect (yes that's a thing), is the phenomenon of hot water freezing faster than chilled water.  Science still can't figure out exactly what that happens, but when it does happen, it means that the ice from hot water freezes more clearly and transparently, while cold water tends to produce that opaque white we are all familiar with.  Being silicone, these Ice Ball makers do insulate their interiors enough to mitigate this, so you will A) wait longer than standard ice cubes for these to be ready to go, and B) you will most likely get opaque ice balls out of this.  


One non-issue was that, just out of the box, these have a strong plastic / new-product smell to them.  After a quick initial wash in soap and water removed the smell, our ice never picked up that smell at all.








Ok we just wanted to see what would happen if we put jello in there.  Maybe something like Flan or frozen yogurt would be nice in there too.  Oddly enough, when we froze one of the jello filled balls, it turned into an amazing soft ice fruit treat.  Although it wouldn't come out of the mold in once piece, we chomped it down and it was really good.  If you've ever had Kakigori or Grattachecca before, it's almost the same thing.  Perfect for hot days.








To recap, the Arctic Chill Ice Balls do exactly what they say they do.  They kept our drinks colder, much longer, all the while taking up less space and allowing for more hooch.  They look cool, and they are not hard to keep clean.  Although there are only 4 in the box, you can create an army of these Ice Balls just by making them before you need them and stashing them away in a container or zip-top bag in your freezer. 

If you only have straight spirits on the rocks at airport lounges (or straight from a plastic bottle in the park), then these might not be the one thing you're really needing, but these are a great must-have/should-have if you do any of the following: 

Entertain; How cool is it gonna be when you bring out that Pimm's Cup or pour the Sangria with  round ice balls in there, and all your friends think you're so amazing.

Smoke Cigars;  Enjoying a cigar is a slow process and so your Scotch needs to keep an accompanying pace, which is where that very slow melting process becomes valuable.
 
Play Cards;  If you play poker, you have certainly been in the situation where you got really into one long or intense hand, and then you look back at your Walker Green or Makers 46 and realize that you drowned the thing.  That won't happen with this.  

Finally, we should mention that The Arctic Chill Ice Ball is perfect for (metal, not glass) cocktail shakers.  It gets things hella cold, but is big enough so that it's super-easy to prevent it slipping out when pouring from the split (try that with those little ice-machine ice cubes).

One thing we would like to see, is for one of the Ice Ball molds to look the same on the outside, but have the inside divided into smaller chambers so that 2-3 smaller ice balls can be made for use in highball glasses. Or maybe offer an insert that makes variable sizes.

The Arctic Chill Ice Ball Maker is available from Amazon.com. You know you want it.

To find out about other Arctic Chill products, check out our review of the AC Muddler.
 
Arctic Chill's own website is here.

BLACK DIRT APPLEJACK: Final Thoughts

PINKY MIXOLOGY APPLEJACK-OFF 2014

BLACK DIRT APPLEJACK

Final Thoughts.

Black Dirt Applejack from The Black Dirt Distillery is one of the most complex and intense distilled spirit we have ever encountered, let alone an intense applejack.  The only one we've covered that is bottled in bond, it is something special and is a fun experience either neat or in various cocktail creations.










Black Dirt Applejack has dark apple notes and a smokey tone that really comes in at about the middle.  Like we said before, this is the one you want to put up against the most brutal of ingredients that you can find out there.  Coffee, spice, and sweet stuff, nothing out there can overpower this stuff.




Black Dirt Applejack is made in Warwick NY, and they are the sister/cousin/crazy uncle-company of Warwick Valley Winery, makers of Doc's Draft Cider and other good things.  Warwick Valley has a facility open to the public and gives tours.  You can see their schedule here.

BLACK DIRT DISTILLING: A First Look

PINKY MIXOLOGY PRESENTS APPLEJACK-OFF 2014:

BLACK DIRT APPLEJACK:
A First Look 

Black Dirt Applejack is made in Warwick New York, and the Black Dirt Distillery is actually a spin-off of the Warwick Valley Winery and Distillery (according to their website) and that Warwick Valley Winery is, yes, the Doc’s Draft Cider People.  We hope they’re not on their way down here to kill us for not liking their Raspberry Cider (we love their Apple and Pear though), and we do buy a few 22oz bottles every week so hopefully they won’t want to lose the business.  Seriously, we’re well on our way to 200 bottles, the empties we save and give to our home-brewer friends (rather than just toss in the recycle bin). 

But, cider time is over and we’re here to look at Black Dirt Applejack.





Black Dirt Applejack is Bottled in Bond.  That means that there is a specific benchmark and inspection that goes along with the production and aging of this applejack.  Also, this is Batch #2, which means that this has been barrel-aged for six years at 100 proof.  That is much longer and stronger (lol porn joke) than anything else that we have seen.   Finally, it is also made from only one type of apple; Jonagold Apples grown in New York.





 



Don't get us wrong, we'd probably drink this neat for the entire review if we could.  The American Oak char aging, New York Apples, and that Rubik's Cube of distillation which Black Dirt has perfected ...which keeps the apple notes intact while still coming out at 100 proof is done so right.  This is the kind of thing that you simply can't find mundane no matter how much time goes by.  But, this Applejack served neat isn't for the uninitiated.  If you haven't had spirits neat before, then you might want to start with something a bit more tame, because this is more or less expert level.

Seriously, there we were almost done with these Applejack labels, and we pulled the top off thinking “yeah, yeah, here’s another one...”  Then shazam, it pounded us in the face with a shoe shine box while screaming at us to respect it like mutherfuckin Black Caesar!  It has paid its dues and will take shit from exactly no clowns out there. 

Black Dirt Applejack is made by Apple People, who (by the taste of things) know exactly what they're doing.  Black Dirt also makes a Bourbon style Whiskey that is aged for 3 years in charred barrels.  So look for that as well.  
 


We've decided that there will be no punches pulled with this one.  We’re gonna enlist some serious challenges that only the most tested of aged spirits could possibly go up against, and see how the Applejack stacks up.  Spoiler alert:  Black Dirt kicks ass.

Stay tuned you little salamanders.

APPLEJACK-OFF 2014: Aspall Cider

APPLEJACK-OFF 2014 
Supplemental Cider:
ASPALL ENGLISH DRY DRAFT CIDER

(Our Final Cider Entry)

The Supplemental Cider content of our APPLEJACK-OFF 2014  series concludes with a look at another cider from England (it's that country where that thing happened that time).  While recently poking around a local purveyor of fine beverages, we came across Aspall Cider.  Made in Suffolk England, Aspall has apparently been produced in one form or another since 1728.  It was priced at just about $7.00 for this half-liter here in New York.  This is annoying, because apparently in England on Aspall's own website, their stuff goes for GBP £1.69 which would come out to USD $2.85.  So  ...fuck.  But we bought it anyway, and we’re glad we did. 





Readers from the UK might know this brand rather well, and some will notice that this label is (most likely) the export version using the “CIDER” rather than “CYDER” spelling, which seems to be used in Aspall’s domestic market.  Other than that, and the fact that this is 6.8% ABV but in England it's 7% ABV (we don't know why...) we’re assuming that we’re getting more or less the same thing that would roll off the lines in England. 





Since this is just supplemental content for our APPLEJACK-OFF 2014, we won’t be going into any insane detail, but our final thoughts on this are good. 





Yep, Aspall is dry with a clean finish and has those fine tiny bubbles.  This cider is perfect for anyone who is put off by the candy-sweet tastes of things like Woodchuck or even the less-sweet but still not very dry Original Sin, which we must admit we aren't crazy about (the dryer the better as far as we care).  So like a dry Prosecco, we really like Aspall English Dry Draft Cider and think it might even be something that would unseat the Miller-Coors owned Crispin English cider from our favorites list.  Apparently Aspall has done pretty well with the proper cider authorities as well.

We'll see you soon when we take an in-depth look into our final Applejack in the Pinky Mixology Applejack-Off 2014. 

APPLEJACK-OFF 2014: The Good, the Bad, and the Fruity of cider.

PINKY MIXOLOGY APPLEJACK-OFF 2014:

Supplemental Cider
The Good The Bad and The Ugly.

Hard Apple Cider has been around for a few thousand years, but only recently has it returned to a once prominent place of glory in the USA since it was forced into hiding by that oh so mistake of mistakes, prohibition. 

Today, even in most mega-marts in flyover country you can find a well made cider that quenches the thirst of ...thirsty-ness.  The problem is, that too many chuckle-heads are jumping on the band wagon and making some weird crap.  Worse yet, is now the mass-producers are not only buying up the good local cider brands, but they are straight up trying to steal market share with deceptively labeled products which are just crappy beers with apple flavoring and coloring added. 

We’re here to show you some examples of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the cider-scape of today.  Do keep in mind that this list is by no means exhaustive, because we don't really feel like going down to the bottle distributor and blowing like, $200 to get one of everything out there from Hornsby's to New Mexico Hard Cider.  So here's just a few to check out.


THE GOOD:


















You may notice that Doc's Draft isn't here, but that's because we love it so much that Doc's actually has its own post which you can see here.   That doesn't mean that Doc's is going to escape our wrath for what it did to its own cider though.



THE BAD:

These things are just bad.  This is because they aren't cider at all, but deceptively marketed piss-beers that have been flavored by mega-breweries.   Here in New York, we have the stupid 5 cent deposit shit on all bottles, except hard cider.  We don't know why, but a true cider in NY will never ever have a 5 cent deposit.  So if what you're buying has that, you're being taken for a ride. 





There really are few words to describe how terrible we think Redd's Apple Ale is.  Resorting to added flavors and caramel coloring to trick consumers into thinking that this is a well crafted cider  In reality this is more like just some rejected Miller High Life which has been given the Apple Zima treatment.  We can simply call it nothing short of disgusting to our tastes. 








While Shock Top is from a mass-producer, it sometimes hits the spot when it's $4 at happy hour and you can down 4 for $20 while the game is on and still be able to leave a decent tip.  That being said, only the regular kind should exist, and adding apple to it is like shoving a square peg into a round hole; Yes something got through, but nobody really wins.   


THE UGLY:

This is really just tragic.   These are otherwise good labels producing crap by mixing their cider with flavors that just mess them up and take away from makes them great.   The biggest tragedy is Doc's Draft, which seems to be under the impression that their actual hard cider can be improved by messing with it.   Spoiler alert; it can't. 







We LOVE Doc's Draft.  It is one of our favorites and we constantly lobby our local stores to carry it.  But, the reason why we love it is also the reason we can't stand when they go an try to fix what isn't broken by creating berry versions, pumpkin versions, or a dry-hopped cider (who dry-hops a cider? why would you want to do that?).  The apple and the pear are glorious, but their other concoctions fall short.  We just don't like them.





Wen it comes down to it, cider is cider and shoving berries or pumpkin up its ass is just gonna be a mess.  You can do that kind of stuff with beer, because beer is more or less plain toasted bread.  So you could put canned pumpkin or raspberry jam on toast, but would you really put it on apple slices?  Yeah, think about that.


It should go without saying that some people might like these berry ciders, because they aren't poorly made.  We just happen to not really be into that kind of flavoring, but that's just us.  You like what you like, so don't go limiting yourself on our account (except for Redd's ...never ever have that). 


The Pinky Mixology Applejack-off of 2014 continues with our in-depth look at Black Dirt Applejack.