Font Resize"I read in the New York Times that bartenders in San Francisco are making cocktails with fresh juices," he said. "So I'm going to make my Marys with fresh-squeezed tomato juice, and I'm going to infuse my own pepper vodka. What do you think?"
"How industrious," was the first thing to cross my mind.
My second thought was that it was an awful lot of work for a negligible gain.
Fresh juices are not a new idea. Better bars have been using them for as long as I can remember. But anyone who has used fresh fruits or vegetables for anything knows that their flavors improve or decline on whether or not they are actually in season. For instance fresh-squeezed orange juice is not very good in the middle of winter because the oranges available in winter aren't very good themselves. Interestingly though, the price of fresh-squeezed orange juice doesn't go down; it stays the same and in some cases increases even though the quality declines precipitously, a symptom of limited availability.
Fresh juices are also very unstable, meaning that if the juice is several hours old, it doesn't taste like it did right after it was squeezed. Storing it overnight will also tend to make many juices taste slightly off. There are also many pre-squeezed "fresh-squeezed" juices out there, meaning that the fresh-squeezed juice you are paying top dollar for might actually
As for juicing fresh tomatoes in the middle of winter, I don't recommend it. Most of the tomatoes this time of year are little more than gas ripened, hothouse- grown, flavorless red baseballs. Tomato season is late summer, and you really should make your fresh-squeezed tomato Bloody Marys then. Using winter tomatoes will give you a glass of slightly red, mildly flavored tomato water. A canned organic tomato juice is going to taste far better than anything you can make on your own. Even nonorganic canned juice is going to taste better. Plus, storing any kind of tomato juice overnight will really diminish its flavor.
As for house-made infusions, they are notoriously inconsistent, partly because the ingredients themselves are inconsistent throughout their season. If your house-made bitters uses 10 ingredients and each one varies by just 2 percent that means that each batch is going to be quite a bit different every time. If you recall cocktail history, people got tired of inconsistent products and that, in part, led to the rise of prepackaged items. It also led the U.S. government to establish standards of identity for liquors in the 1960s, in order to guarantee that customers are getting what they think they are getting.
Infusions are also a way of cutting costs. For instance, instead of buying a $40 bottle of Buddha's hand citron vodka, I can take a $10 bottle of plain vodka, add a $5 Buddha's hand fruit, wait two days and charge the same price. Capitalism at its finest. That is essentially what the vodka producer themselves are doing. So if you are into cutting costs - in this economy, who isn't? - infusions are certainly the way to go. That is, if you have all the equipment, access to the fruits or vegetables and two or three days.
Whether in a restaurant or at home, house-made infusions have a limited shelf life. The juice (or pulp) in the infusion - the part that it gives it its flavor - will separate from the alcohol; when it comes into contact with the air, it will begin to oxidize or in some cases rot. Some infusions will turn color after a few days. Alcohol might be a preservative but it needs certain ideal conditions in order to preserve organic substances, and many infusions don't provide those conditions. I recommend using infusions as soon as possible and refrigerating any unused portion, discarding anything more than a week old.
After my conversation with my industrious friend three things occurred to me:
- Why do some people let a New York newspaper tell them what is happening in their own hometown?
- Fresh juices and house-made infusions don't always benefit the guest; sometimes they have more to do with cutting costs than anything else.
- I wonder why I'm not invited to the party?
Jeff's non-house-Infused, non-fresh juice Bloody Mary
1 ounce Crop Harvest Earth Tomato Vodka
1Ú2 ounce Absolut Peppar vodka
1Ú2 ounce Absolut Citron vodka
1Ú2 ounce Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda
1 pickled white asparagus spear
Combine vodkas in a shaker with ice. Shake vigorously and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Splash with soda and garnish with asparagus stick.
Sip knowing that any benefits from the organically processed vodka are neutralized by the other ingredients. Savor the irony and ponder your friend's guest-list omissions.
Jeff Burkhart is an award-winning bartender at a Marin bar/restaurant and an author. His columns appear weekly in Here. Contact him at jeffb@thebarflyonline.com.
