Cachaçagora - Cachaça, Caipirinha, And Cocktails

Caipirinha Salmon

Just in time for July 4th, here's an incredible-sounding recipe for caipirinha salmon, courtesy of Bucky's Barbecue & Bread:

Grilling was the obvious choice, but I’ve fixed salmon the same way for the last couple of years.  Recently, I found a drink that I really like called a caipirinha, made with cachaça, a liquor made in Brazil similar to rum but made only with sugar cane. In other words, good! Add lime, sugar and ice, and you have a caipirinha, Brazil’s national drink. I thought those same flavors would go with the salmon.

I poured a bit of cachaça on the salmon, added cane sugar and lime juice, salt and pepper, and let it sit for a while as the Bubba Keg grill heated up. I also halved a couple more limes to grill to add some grilled lime at the end.

Cocktail Recipe: The Lemongrass Caipirinha

From the most excellent Ceramic Canvas blog, here's a batch recipe for Cachaçagora readers to check out: the lemongrass caipirinha.

The secret weapon here:

Instead of mashing the lemongrass to release its flavor into the drink I though it would be more flavorful to use a lemongrass simple syrup.

Here it is. Be sure to check out the post for the pictures:

Lemongrass Caipirinha

• 1 cup lemongrass, cut into 1″ dices
• 3 cups water
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups cachaça
• 9 limes, cut into eights

In a medium sized, heavy bottom sauce pan over medium-high heat, bring the lemongrass and 3 sups of water to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, uncovered for 10 minutes. Remove from heat, cover with a tight lid and let lemongrass steep for 30 minutes.

Strain liquid and discard the lemongrass. You should have about 2 cups of liquid. Pour lemongrass back into sauce pan and pour in sugar. Heat liquid enough to completely dissolve the sugar. Set syrup aside until it is room temperature. Transfer to a bowl and refrigerate.

Blend cold lemongrass syrup and cachaça in one pitcher.

To serve, place 4 pieces of a quartered lime in the bottom of the glass. Using a muddle or the back of a wooden spoon crush the limes to release their juice. Pour in about ½ cup of the syrup/cachaça mix. Add finely crushed ice. And top off drink with club soda (to taste, in order to adjust the sweetness of the drink).

Caipiroli: All You Need Is Sodium Alginate, Calcium Chloride, Unobtainium, Upsidaisium, The AllSpark...

Get out your lightning globe and your Jacob's Ladder. Using a "molecular mixology" style, Jaime Boudreau offers a recipe that brings out the mad scientist in all of us: caipirinha ravioli or, simply, "caipiroli".

Caipiroli

Ingredients

• 200 mL cachaça
• 100 mL lime juice
• 100 mL simple syrup
• 4 drops green food coloring
• 2 ¼ tsp sodium alginate

To Prepare

• Place all in a glass container
• Blend with an immersion blender
• Fill a deep spoon with the mixture
• Lower into a calcium chloride bath
• Leave for ~ 2 minutes or until a skin forms around the “ravioli”
• Rinse off with cold water and refrigerate until ready to serve

Oh, you mean you don't know how to make a calcium chloride bath? Well, here you go: It's just two tsp calcium chloride and 250 mL water

Thankfully, no flux capacitor is required.

UPDATE: Some photographic goodness via Flickr:

Cocktail Recipe: Lazy Lover

I'm a big fan of the ginger-and-honey combination. One of my favorite concoctions lately has been honey and ginger shaken with ice and a sprig of basil, double-strained. Christopher Ranch ginger has been great for this.

It appears that Felica of Felicia's Speakeasy is a like-minded soul. For Mixology Monday, she offered the Lazy Lover.

Lazy Lover

• 1 ½ ounce cachaça
• 1 ounce ginger-honey syrup (see below)
• 1 orange wheel

Muddle all ingredients in a glass. Add ice. Shake. Serve on the rocks.

Ginger-Honey Syrup

• ½ cup honey
• ½ cup water
• 2 Tablespoons fresh grated ginger

June 12 Is International Cachaça Day

Photo Credit: Mantelli

Think of it as just like the American Repeal Day, just with a longer and likely bloodier history.

The folks at Cabana described International Cachaça Day in their pitch as:

International Cachaça Day was started by Sociedade Brasileira da Cachaça, a Brasilian government organization. It was created to commemorate June 12th, 1744: the day when Portugal, then the colonial authority in Brasil, outlawed the production and selling of cachaça.

Cabana, Leblon, and Boca Loca are all over this.

First, three restaurants in Chicago (and presumably elsewhere) will be pouring specialty drinks featuring Cabana. The most interesting of these is the Tropical Caipirinha, served at The Signature Room (875 N. Michigan Ave.).

Tropical Caipirinha

• 1.5oz Cabana Cachaça
• ½ oz simple syrup (1/2 shot)
• 3 oz lychee puree
• Splash of soda water

There's also going to be a tasting event at UnCork It (393 E Illinois Street) from 5-8pm. Leticia and I will probably be there, then bounce across the street for dinner at Niu and then Terminator: Salvation at the AMC. 

(For those of you about to jump all over me for taking my pregnant wife to a spirits tasting followed by sushi... Drop dead. She doesn't drink and we don't touch the raw fish.) 

Boca Loca, true to form, is working with leading mixologists to help us all get out of the caipirinha rut. Here's one from longtime Boca Loca collaborator Jeffrey Morgenthaler (interviewed last year) who, in addition to his masterful mixology skills, probably comes up with the best names for drinks:

Border Agitation

• 1.5 oz Boca Loca Cachaça
• 0.75 oz fresh lemon juice
• 0.5 oz simple syrup
• 0.5 oz egg white
• 2 tsp pepper jelly
• Bitter lemon soda 

Shake ingredients with ice until well chilled. Double-strain into a
Collins glass over ice. Top with 2 oz bitter lemon soda.

Leblon makes the argument that, in some ways, cachaça is still held captive. This time, the antagonists are not Portuguese colonists but American regulators, who insist that the third-most-distilled spirit in the world be labeled "Brazilian Rum" here in the states. 

Oh, how my devout Libertarian soul shudders at the Nanny State reality of it all...

Finally, here are some related posts from around the Web, most with recipes:

• A Muddled Thought: "Okay so what does this mean? Well first of all it’s an excuse to make cocktails using cachaça."
• Republic of Rum: "The Brazilian Association of Spirits (ABRABE) reports that Brazil produces some 4,000 brands of cachaça, totaling a billion liters each year."
• Nightclub & Bar: "Operators looking for an edge are increasing their cachaça and Caipirinha load — not easy, as few of the new brands are available nationally. The Sunset Lounge at the Mondrian Hotel in Miami Beach offers nearly 50 cachaças and a selection of Caipirinhas infused with flavors such as lychee-elderflower and peach-lemongrass." 
• SFGate: "[The Cantina in San Francisco] already carries at least 27 versions of Brazil's national spirit, which is made from distilled cane juice and used in the caipirinha. On Thursday, it will offer a menu of harder-to-find cachaças such as Weber Haus, which won the Best White Spirit award at the recent San Francisco World Spirits Competition, and Armazem Vieira. Owner Duggan McDonnell is creating a menu of creative cachaça cocktails, and of course there will be caipirinhas and a Brazil-themed DJ." 
• Metromix New York: "And so, bars and restaurants around the [NYC] have put together their finest cachaça-based drinks for your enjoyment, all day." 

Tech Venture Firm Takes Stake In Beija

How rare it is that I get to combine two of my favorite things: high-tech and cachaça. Hell... All I need is for Type O Negative to sing a song about it and I'll have a Phil Gomes hobby hat-trick.

Blue Caterpillar LLC, an tech investment and advisory firm, has invested in Beija. Their assessment of the opportunity certainly echoes the opinions stated here on Cachacagora, namely, that very little cachaça makes it out of Brazil and folks up in this hemisphere are eager to try something new.

More from Blue Caterpillar:

Beija doesn’t have to be the worlds [sic] leading brand to offer attractive investment returns.  The global liquor market is dominated by a number of large conglomerates like Brown-Forman (NYSE: BF.A, $49, $7B Cap), Fortune Brands (NYSE: FO, $36, $5.5B Cap), Diageo (NYSE: DEO, $54, $33B Cap), LVMH, and Bacardi among others.  They will all end up having their own brands of cachaça as the market develops.  Many will also have multiple positions with “super premium,” “premium” and “superior” labels to address the market opportunity.

Our assessment is that Beija has the right ingredients to make it in the market.  The valuation parameters are in line with the stage of company development and potential valuations in this market are easy to calculate since they are largely driven by case volume.

While I can't find evidence that Bacardi acquired Leblon, as the post says in another paragraph, I do know that it took a minority stake in the company. When Blue Caterpillar says that Bacardi "acquired a small local producer," they might be referring to Leblon's purchase of the distillery that became Maison Leblon in Minas Gerais.

Beija, rated 3.5 barrels here, took third in the post-New-Year's blind tasting that my buddy Richard and I undertook. This, of course, should not be taken to mean that Beija is at all inferior; the competition in that particular tasting was unusually fierce. I also linked to an early profile of the young founders, which ran on WestonForum.Com.

Tony Abou-Ganim On Cachaça

The Authentic Bartender points us to Nightclub & Bar's interview with mixology legend Tony Abou-Ganim, whom Leblon was kind enough to introduce me to last year.

A highlight from the NCB interview:

NCB: What are some of the dos and don’ts of working with cachaça?

Abou-Ganim: My biggest do is to keep it simple. Choose ingredients that complement the flavor of the particular cachaça. To me, with that floral, earthy element, cachaça can be both rugged and refined, masculine but gentlemanly. It lends itself to fresh, tropical fruits and an array of citrus.

You don’t want to mask it with artificial flavors, mixes and syrups. When I think of cachaça and modifiers, I think of things like Cointreau, with its bitter and orange peels, or Domaine de Canton, which will complement the earthiness, or floral liqueurs like St-Germain that complement that floral-citrus element. Parfait Amour, with its violet and vanilla, is another nice one. It’s important to think of liqueurs that will complement without overpowering.

Here's one of Tony's cachaca-based recipes

Desert Rose

• 1 ½ ounce Leblon cachaça
• 1 ounce fresh lemon juice
• 1 ounce fresh tangerine juice
• 1 ounce homemade hibiscus syrup
• Chilled soda water

Shake Leblon, hibiscus syrup, fresh lemon and tangerine juices; strain into an ice-filled Collins glass. Spritz with chilled soda water. Stir and garnish with an edible flower.

For hibiscus syrup: Bring 2 parts water to boil, add 2 parts sugar; dissolve and add 1 part dried hibiscus flowers. Simmer for 15 minutes. Take off heat and let cool.

Recipe: Fresh Coconut & Cachaça Sorbet

Spent the past few days enjoying a relatively mellow Memorial Day weekend, basking in a fair share of parental adulation.

Many caipirinhas were served Sunday. Well... Gringorinhas, I call them. No limes at the ready. Only lime juice in those fruit-shaped squeezy bottles. Hey... Shaddup. "You go to war with the army you have." They were a hit nevertheless.

In any event, plenty of kin-wraught destruction all around us the following morning.

Checking in on the cachaçasphere, I offer another dessert recipe, this time brought to us by the Ceramic Canvas.

I’d never written a sorbet recipe before. But after a few tweaks (and trials), I think the resulting recipe strikes a good balance. The sorbet is light, refreshing and not too sweet. No one will be able to name the hit of cachaça - they’ll just notice something different that they can’t quite put their finger on.

The recipe looks quite involved, but the photos yield high confidence that the effort is oh-so-worth it.

Here it is, again, courtesy of the Ceramic Canvas:

This sorbet contains fresh shredded coconuts. Biting into the coconuts releases an extra hit of the natural, milky coconut flavor into the sorbet. If you prefer a more tradition sorbet without fruit just strain the shredded coconut out of the base after the steeping process. If you strain out the coconut, I recommend using a cheesecloth to squeeze out as much of the coconut juice as possible into the base before adding the cachaça and lime juice.

• 2 coconuts (apprx. 2 lbs each - see yield notes below)
• 1 cup water
• 1 gelatin pack
• ¾ cup sugar
• ¼ cup syrup
• 1.5 oz cachaça
• ½ tsp lime juice

Using nail and hammer punch three holes in each coconut to drain them of their juice (should yield about 1 cup per coconut). After ‘juicing’ the coconuts split one open to expose the inner flesh. Carefully carve out the flesh in chunks. Using a coarse grater, shred the flesh of one coconut (should yield about 2 cups in shredded coconut).  Set juice and shredded coconut aside. 

Mix milk, water, gelatin in med saucepan and let stand until gelatin has dissolved (about 5 minutes). Add sugar, syrup and ¾ cup of the shredded coconut. Bring mixture to a boil just to dissolve the sugar. Stir, take off heat and let coconut steep, covered, for 25 minutes.

Stir in Cachaça and lime juice. After the mixture has completely cooled, freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instruction.

Meanwhile, dry toast the remaining cup of shredded coconut in a nonstick pan over medium heat, stirring periodically until the flakes are golden brown (about 7 minutes).

Yield Notes: One 2 lb coconut yields about 1cup liquid & 2 cups shredded coconut

Cocktail Recipe: The Barbary Flip

I love it here in Chicago, but this recipe here looks like yet another reason to sorely miss the Bay Area (even though I was always more of an East Bay kid than the San Francisco type).

This recipe is the official cocktail of the third annual San Francisco Cocktail Week, created by Duggan McDonnell. Duggan is one of the event's organizers and helms the Esquire lauded Cantina on Sutter Street.

Tip o' the hat to SFist.com:

The Barbary Flip

• 1 ounce Sagatiba Velha Cachaça
• 3/4 ounce Skyy Infusions Pineapple vodka
• 1/2 ounce Benedictine
• 1 ounce fresh lime juice
• 1 fresh egg white
• Driscoll Farms strawberry slice and Angostura bitters, for garnish.

Combine cachaça, vodka, Benedictine, lime juice, and egg white in an ice-filled shaker and shake for 20 to 30 seconds, or until well chilled. Strain through a fine strainer into a chilled Champagne coupe glass, and garnish with a thinly sliced Driscoll Farms strawberry that has been doused with Angostura bitters.

Cocktail Recipe: Sangrento

Personally, I'm not sure what came first: bad electronic club music or energy-drink-plus-booze concoctions. Did the former arise from too much consumption of the latter? Or is the latter necessary to be able to listen to the former?

So I'm doubly unsure what to think about something that combines the four-barrel-rated Leblon with an energy drink I hadn't heard of before tonight, Transphusion.

Tonight, then, we place our faith in the mixology skills of Mr. John Pomeroy of Brooklyn's Hideout Speakeasy, who created a number of Transphusion-based cocktails.

I report, you decide.

Sangrento

• 2 oz Leblon Cachaça
• 1 oz Transphusion
• 0.5 oz Lemon Juice
• 2 Black Cherries

Muddle cherries with lemon juice, add cachaça and ice and shake. Double strain into cocktail glass, top with pre-chilled Transphusion and garnish with a skewered black cherry.