A carnival of technology

February 1st was the feast day of St. Brigid, the first day of spring in Ireland. While here in America we mark the first day of the season by the solar event that defines it, in Ireland they more sensibly put their solstices and equinoxes in the middle of a season. The winter solstice marked the hump of winter, the moment when the days start to become longer and we make our slow way out of the frozen, barren miasma, and it’s now time to mark our ascent into new plantings and the first hints of new life. The passage of seasons is easy to mark with beer, whose production is controlled by the availability of the ingredients, but what of spirits? Springtime means a time for a more seasonally appropriate cocktail, perhaps something with a taste of the tropics and a reminder of hot, lazy days to come.

Rum has come a long way over the years. Its precursor of sugar wine was probably invented through that alcoholic ingenuity that infects so many of the cultures of the world.

WORKER: Hey boss, what are we going to do with all this extra sugar?
BOSS: Make some booze, you big dummy!

Old world settlers brought the magic of distillation to the new world, and eventually the Caribbean, those fertile tropical islands planted with sugar cane from across the sea, started to make rum. At first it kind of sucked. One traveler to Barbados in the 17th century described the island’s drink as “a hot hellish and terrible liquor.” From these humble beginnings as a cheap staple for islanders and seafaring vessels the hellish sugarcane spirit cleaned itself up to become the base of the finest Cuban, and later Polynesian, cocktails. Today rum can basically be divided into three categories by their colors: white rum, filtered and briefly aged; gold rum, aged in charred oak barrels much like bourbon (often using discarded bourbon barrels), and dark rum, aged in more heavily charred barrels to create a deep, strongly flavored, opaque libation. White rum, first made by Bacardi, is the one most often used in cocktails as it has little flavor. It’s basically a sweet vodka, adding alcohol to drinks without any heavy flavors to complement or disguise, but at the same time not quite as bland as a flavorless grain spirit.

The daiquiri is one of those rum cocktails. I’m not going to try to research an accurate history since cocktail drinkers aren’t known for taking good notes. It’s a Cuban cocktail, and in the interest of starting at least closer to the beginning, here’s the recipe as transcribed in The Old Waldorf-Astoria Bar Book in the “Cuban Concoctions” section, contributed by Will P. Taylor of the Hotel National in Havana:

One part Bacardi
Juice of half a Lime
One barspoon powdered sugar

Note: The order of adding ingredients is important. Personal preference
dictates serving the cocktail with finely shaved iced in the glass.

It’s a straightforward drink and was a favorite of Hemingway, though I think every drink was a favorite of Hemingway. Daiquiris have gotten an unfortunate reputation in more recent years as girly drinks, and the original form is rarely seen; fruity slushies are more often seen bearing the daiquiri name, and the original form of sweetened citrus and rum is all but forgotten. That’s really unfortunate, because it’s not a bad drink, and no man should feel his masculinity challenged by drinking one. Traveling back into modern times, here’s the International Bartenders Association recipe for a daiquiri:

4.5 cl White Rum
2.0 cl Fresh lemon or lime juice
0.5 cl Gomme syrup
Pour all ingredients into shaker with ice cubes. Shake well. Strain in chilled
cocktail glass

Translated to American, that’s a shot of rum, about half a lime’s worth of juice and a dash of gomme syrup. Gomme syrup? Also known as gum syrup or sirop de gomme for those who don’t like franglais, this is what this post is really all about.

The most basic and best remembered cocktail syrup is simple syrup, a mixture of sugar and water, and gomme syrup is a variation of this using sugar, water and gum arabic. Gum arabic is produced from the sap of the acacia tree found mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. It acts as an edible adhesive and emulsifier and is found in a wide range of products, things as diverse as Coca-Cola and ink and postage stamps. I finally got around to getting some. I bought it from some herb-selling hippies in Oregon at $16 for a pound, a much better deal than other sites selling an ounce or two for about $8. It’s certified organic, which I found funny. I don’t doubt that the average acacia tree farm has no need for pesticides or artificial fertilizers, but it’s amusing that someone had to visit Sudan for a week or so to confirm that. I hope I didn’t inadvertently fund a genocide.

I found a couple of gomme syrup recipes, and the basic method was to dissolve some powdered gum in water, let it maintain for a while to soak up the water and form a paste, and then dump that into some simple syrup. I ran into a snag with these in that the all of the ratios were expressed in weights, a simple thing to calculate for people that bought the eight dollar ounce, and I had no way to figure out weights from my pound of syrup. Time for some creative guessing.

The paste steps in both of the recipes involved boiling two ounces of water: one mixed it with an ounce of gum arabic, one with two ounces. How do you boil two ounces of water? There’s no way I could stir that. The answer is to use a double boiler, which I don’t have, and I didn’t realize this until about halfway through. I decided instead to try boiling some water in a kettle, something I conveniently do every morning already for my coffee, and dump that into a jar with some powdered gum. Not knowing the weight of the gum, I tried starting with a 1:2 ratio by volume: I filled a small jar with a tablespoon of gum and added an ounce of boiling water. That seemed to dissolve pretty well, so I added another tablespoon of gum. That didn’t dissolve so well. I ended up with a sticky white blob sitting in the hot water that refused any attempt to stir it or break it up. I tried just letting it sit in the water in the hopes that it would eventually dissolve, but it didn’t. Maybe the second tablespoon was a bit much.

One other thing I noticed at this step was that the hot gum, flavorless as a powder, had started to smell a little bit woodsy, kind of like pine or tea tree oil. I wonder if that little bit of taste will make it into the drink or even be strong enough to be noticed over the alcohol.

After the big white blob of gum made it clear that it wasn’t going anywhere, I decided to reheat the solution by dropping the jar into a pot of boiling water. That actually worked pretty well. The extra heat and stirring dissolved the gum good enough; I let that sit for a while and then started boiling a simple syrup. I usually make simple syrup at a 2:1 sugar to water ratio, and since the gum acts as an emulsifier I thought I’d make this syrup 3:1. I boiled half a cup of water with a cup and a half sugar, dumped in the gum paste, skimmed the foamy scum off the top and let it all cool. After filtering the syrup through some cheese cloth to get rid of whatever scummy bits I missed the first time, I was ready for a daiquiri.

A daiquiri made with simple syrup comes out kind of like a limeade with a kick, and I was expecting much the same here but with a silkier texture. I took a sip and…it wasn’t sweet at all. The syrup was too thick and didn’t dissolve, instead forming a gooey layer on the bottom of the shaker.. Maybe I shouldn’t have used so much sugar, and maybe I should have stopped at one tablespoon of gum. Oh well; maybe I’ll take another shot later.