One of my very first aims in starting this blog was to chronicle where you could find information on Pegus around the web, and by linking to those sources, raise their Google profile, and thus the Pegu’s profile.
Of course, along the way I instead created this magnificent edifice of a website, which contains in its pages the definitive sum of all Pegu knowledge.

I bow to the Buddah nature of your soul,
oh illustrious one….

Better close your [snark] tag there, Guy. It’s dripping.
Anyway, in so doing, I have sadly neglected my original charge of late. I ran across a mention on Saveur’s website of an excellently written little piece from Esquire’s Cocktail Historian, David Wondrich. It tells the tale of the Pegu Club (the original, British one) whence sprang the greatest of all cocktails. Wondrich spins a good tale in a short space, so you should read it in its entirety, and when you are done, wander through the rest of Esquire’s drink database for a lot more wisdom in the same vein..

The Liquor Fairy has struck again, this time bringing to my door a bottle of a most interesting spirit, Square One Botanical, from Square One Organic Spirits. I’ve hit this bottle pretty hard since it arrived, finding lots of great ways to use it. Which is a shame, since it’s not available in Ohio as of this writing (though Square One’s vodka and cucumber-infused vodka are).
I’ll start off by saying Square One gets a win with the bottle, with its crisp square shape, sparse labeling, and nifty indented logo. That’s it below, accompanied by a bowl of the botanicals that make it what it is.

I call it an interesting spirit since Square One Botanical doesn’t really fall into any standard category of liquor. It is most like a gin, since gin is a botanically infused neutral spirit. But any real gin has to have juniper out in front, and Botanical has none. For this product to become as big as it otherwise might, I think that Square One will need to come up with a category name more evocative than that contained in its full and complete name: Square One Botanical Organic Specialty Spirit.
As for what’s in Botanical, it’s all pictured in the bottle shot. You botanists can skip ahead, but for the rest of us, let’s have a list: Pear, Rose, Chamomile, Lemon Verbena, Lavender, Rosemary, Coriander, and Citrus Peel. The resulting spirit has much of the wonderful fragrant complexity of a good gin, while omitting the evergreen punch in the face that puts off many casual drinkers about gin.
All of what I’ve written so far, I gleaned from the materials that Square One sent along with with the bottle, combined with a little sipping and smelling. Since this blog isn’t about rewriting press-releases, I began all that experimenting I alluded to at the start of this review. Since this is at least a gin-like spirit, I of course tried it out in a Pegu. Frankly, I had my doubts as to how it would taste, and I wasn’t disappointed. As in, I wasn’t disappointed by the taste. In fact, this is a seriously delicious cocktail! It is not quite so bracing as a standard Pegu, but it is lighter and more food friendly. In fact, I like it so much, I’ll use the excuse to retype the recipe, for the umpteenth time, here:

Frankly, a success like this with a Pegu-like cocktail could have been enough for me, and the temptation was strong just to set this bottle on the featured shelf and enjoy. But the differences between gin Pegu and Botanical Pegu tweaked something in the back of my mind about another project that had been lying dormant in my bar’s project folder.
I routinely make affectionate fun of Cosmopolitans. I like them, but as a card-carrying cocktailian, I feel obligated to find a way to make them with a spirit other than vodka. The obvious solution is the gin-based Metropolitan. But I’ve tried more of those than I can count, and I’ve yet to encounter or concoct for myself a recipe that isn’t, well, mediocre. Essentially, using gin in a Cosmo is like inviting the brassy broad with the hideous, loud laugh to your party: She takes over things, and not for the better.
But hey now… Here we have a spirit that provides interest and character to a cocktail, yet is minus the in-your-face quality that makes gin so beloved and reviled. That brassy broad is actually pretty funny, you know, if she just didn’t have that laugh….
It only took me two tries to get a very delicious Cosmo With Character. I heartily recommend you try one of these.

THE METRO SQUARE

• 2 oz. Square One Botanical
• .75 oz. fresh squeezed lime juice
• .25 oz. Cointreau
• 1 oz. Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Cocktail

Combine in a shaker with plenty of ice and shake well. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a wheel of lime.

This is a more tart ratio than I use for a straight Cosmopolitan. You can shift the lime and Cointreau back to a half ounce each, but I don’t think it shows off the Square One Botanical’s contribution quite as well. Also, this recipe is balanced for Ocean Spray. If you use another brand, or straight cranberry juice, you’ll need to adjust that as well.
If you are interested in lots of other new ways to use Square One Botanical, I direct you first to the wrap-up of the October 8, TDN, which Square One sponsored. I could not make it myself, which is why you don’t see my Metro Square among the finalists, I’m sure. Square One’s website also has a wealth of recipes on offer. They also have lots of info on their other products, some nice pics, and a collection of Square Trivia(pdf), with stuff about Square Pegs, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Times Square.
I’ll leave you with my own Square trivia. My great, great uncle was a young American diplomat at the Moscow Consulate during the First World War. His bachelor pad overlooked a plaza in Moscow where a rather famous mass shooting took place, a plaza later to be known as Red Square. (He was forced to flee in the ensuing revolution, and was hidden by White Russian peasants for three months. They had nothing to feed him the entire time but brussels sprouts. Upon his eventual return home, his mother hosted a party in his honor at which she served what had always been his favorite food….)

The Liquor Fairy Was Here!
The following product, Square One Botanical, was recently provided to me as promotional consideration to encourage me to discuss it.
For a complete disclosure of my policies regarding promotional items and all other financial interests, please click this link, or follow the Liquor Fairy link in the header of this page.

Here’s a pretty old school post for me: Let’s talk about Pegus being talked about around the Internet! After all, that was kind of my original intent for this blog, when I started it more than two years ago.
I got a Google Alert recently that a search engine/ask and answer site called Mahalo had just done an article on How to Make a Pegu Club Cocktail. Their recipe and procedure for making a Pegu is pretty solid, though I prefer Cointreau, and a little less of it. Also, I find this instruction in Mix the Drink fairly amusing:

Pour the gin, orange liqueur, lime juice, and bitters ingredients into a cocktail shaker (or a jar with a tight top) filled with ice cubes, not crushed ice.

Really? When was the last time someone made a drink so unusual and exotic as a Pegu in a mason jar? I mean, besides me when on vacation in a rented condo….
Also, the page includes a small version of this video from SavoryTV.com of Audrey Saunders of the Pegu Club in Manhattan. It’s a nice little video in which she discusses the story of the club and the cocktail, throws in a bit about Prohibition, and makes three drinks (including a Pegu) all in 99 seconds.
I embed the full sized video here. Enjoy.

If you read any number of cocktail blogs regularly, you will note that I am one of the few such bloggers who is not currently pickling him or herself in New Orleans right now. Fear not, intrepid reader, I’ll just have to put up enough content to take up the slack until they sober up (Check back in October). I’ve been in a new drink funk for a while, so I’m touring Talesbloggers’ houses while they are out, and stealing their drinks. In the interests of sending you to their blogs, I’ll leave out one critical item from recipes I repost here….

Today, I tip the hat to Erik Flannestad, a man with perhaps the most fervently adhered to blog concept out there: Stomping Through the Savoy. Erik’s blog, Underhill-Lounge, is almost exclusively a series of posts detailing his exercise of making every cocktail, in alphabetical order, to be found in the seminal Savoy Cocktail Book.

On Thursday, July 9th, Erik reached the apex of cocktail civilization, right there in the heart of the Ps: The Pegu.
First off, he dutifully tipped the hat to this humble repository of wisdom, as he should. I will say he may have revealed he doesn’t read my stuff as much as all good men and true ought…

…I should point out that Doug, over at The Pegu Blog, writes pretty much about nothing other than Pegu Club Cocktails.

I guess I’ll just have to start emailing him directly all my posts about Space Bartenders and Bar Appliances…. (I kid, Erik)

No he doesn’t!

Shut up.
Anyway, Erik runs down the various recipes out there in print, especially those contemporary with or before the Savoy, then diddles with them a bit on his own. The chief problem I have with virtually all of them is the use of orange bitters, but Erik also seems to realize this historical truth doesn’t make for the best drinking experience, so on we go. The Cocktails by Jimmy version he relates is the closest to my favorite version, but as you’ll see should you click on the recipes tab atop this repository of knowledge, I like a lower ratio.
The version Erik gives that I’m pseudo-scraping here is his Gimlet-ized version, which I shall try as soon as I next buy Rose’s Lime Juice. Since the key ingredient is given away by the name, I’ll encourage you to read Erik’s post by omitting the amounts.

As I said, I’ve not tried this yet, but I will. My experience with what happens when any bartender serves me a Pegu made with Rose’s tells me to have some reservations. Nonetheless, Erik notes some toying with ratios that might save this. He notes that it ain’t bad, and I am compelled to recognize that he does kinds know what he’s talking about….

Today is the second anniversary of the my first post on The Pegu Blog. Therefore, I am required by the International Guild of Boozeblogging’s latest standards circular (Required Elements for Certified Liquor Blog Entries, ed. 2009, rev.3) to do some quick navel gazing about this undertaking.
This blog started two years ago as a lark. Maggi and I came up with the idea while sitting at a bar.

Shocking!

And while Maggi has had more than a few occasions to regret her snarky suggestion that a blog would be just the thing to help me spread the word about the Pegu, it has been a fun ride. I’ve met (online) a whole bunch of new friends, and learned a tremendous amount. The biggest thing I’ve learned, of course, is how little I know about cocktails and the cocktail life. That’s good, because that means I have a lot of material to keep this little enterprise going in the future.
In two years, I have written over 300 posts, a number which shocked me when I read it.

Well to be fair, I wrote five of them.
And Rumdood wrote two….

Yeah, but he….
I’m not talking to you right now. This is an important celebration of my body of work.

Body of work?
Come on. Half your posts are about stupid lists, bacon, ads, politics, and unlawful imprisonment of bloggers.

Hey, I write serious stuff too. How about Tiki Month? Or the Four Gospels of Cocktail? I write liquor reviews, some about bottles I bought, some about products that were sent to me by the makers….

Hey, mind your manners!
Don’t forget to thank them!

She’s right. I do want to thank all the companies and promoters who have sent me so many interesting bottles in recent months. I appreciate your desire to find out what I think of your product, and your desire for other people to find out what I think of your product. Do send more!
Also, I’m still a long way from finishing my whole series on Basement Bar Design. Stick around, I’ve got lots of stuff in the works there.
Now, it really isn’t surprising that I could write 300 posts. I am seldom at a loss for things to talk about, or the words to do the talking.

Or voices to say them with!

In fact, the only people who know me who think I’m remotely quiet are the guys I play poker with.

What about that one night?
Andy wanted to stuff a gag in your mouth.

An aberration. I will state that this was a cautionary tale about Pegus. Drink too many and you will. not. shut. up…..
What is genuinely surprising is how many of you people out there have decided to read what I write! Since installing Sitemeter on this website, I have gotten over 60,000 visitors. I had never really looked at the lifetime counter before, and that number floored me. Thank you, all of you, who stop by to see what I’m up to, who subscribe via RSS, or who simply stumble in from Google. Please stick around for the next two years. I do try to make it worth your while.

Well,
You do try….

Oh yeah, and I’ve put up with this guy almost from the very beginning, too. See what I do for you people out there?

Awwww.
But I’m your biggest fan!

You are probably right.
Sigh.

Beefeater has a new product, called Beefeater 24, which is rolling out here in United States pretty much as I write this. It does not appear that the State of Ohio in its infinite wisdom has added 24 to its May 2009 price list, so I guess the good news is that there unaccountably remains room for improvement in my state’s available liquor offerings. However, the good folks at Beefeater had sufficient faith in their product to submit two bottles to the harsh and demanding standards of the Pegu Blog for review.
Let’s start with the bottle. The silhouette has the same square shape of the classic Beefeater bottle, and the color scheme is the same red and black and gold. But the 24 bottle is embossed all over with lovely designs that suggest the botanicals of gin. The label is smaller and missing the eponymous protector of the Tower of London. The square divot under the bottle is colored a brilliant red and practically seems to glow, even when not lit from underneath. It is a gorgeous bottle, and I stuck one up on my display pillar, rather than stowing it down in the cabinet.
The 24 in Beefeater 24 comes from an additional step in their distilling process. They first steep the aromatics to be used in the base spirits for 24 hours before redistilling them in the more traditional gin fashion. The blend of aromatics is also modified. Distiller Desmond Payne takes his foot off the juniper pedal a tad, while adding in a touch of tea. The idea, I believe, is to produce a fuller, more integrated set of flavors.
So, do they succeed?
Yes. On several levels.
Beefeater 24 is a rich, delicious gin that succeeds in having both big flavor and a mild edge in the same bottle. From the pricing, Beefeater seems to want 24 to compete heads up with Tank Ten and Sapphire as a premium, mainline gin. From the taste, I’d say they will succeed. Unlike a lot of other recently introduced premium gins, 24 is a gin first and foremost. Products like Hendrick’s and Whitley Neill, both of which I love and buy regularly, are oddball gins. Whether you call them infused (perhaps a redundancy) or exotics, they are special purpose liquors, and you can’t count on them working in just any general gin recipe you pull from a hat.
I could tell from the beginning that 24 would be the kind of gin that you can safely, indeed happily, apply to any recipe that just says gin. My experiments with it from the first try (and I have enjoyed those experiments) have borne out this assumption. While some with better palates than me can identify them, to me the teas in the 24 do not announce themselves as, Hey! We’ve got some tea in here! They seem to me to simply enhance the essential gin-ness of the liquor. But not the ginny-ness, if you understand me. If you don’t I can’t figure out a better way to say it.
Of course, for me the most important test of any gin is how it works in a Pegu, and how it compares to my baseline favorite in that cocktail, Bombay Sapphire. 24 is a great Pegu gin. The Pegu rubs a lot of the edges off any gin, of course, which gives you a better feel for the subtler flavors, if any, the gin you are using brings to the table. A Sapphire Pegu is the bigger, more floral of the two, while the 24 Pegu is crisper, more citrusy, and just plain fresh. It has been forever since I’ve posted the basic Pegu recipe here, so I’ll use the occasion of reviewing this super gin to correct that:

If Pegus aren’t your thing, consider getting treatment. But in the mean time, I can tell you that the 24 has been very successful for me in such varied cocktails as the absinthe heavy version of the Corpse Reviver #2, my own berry-rific Blue Beetle #2, and the classic Vesper. Also, while I don’t much drink the basic Martini myself, I can report that a guest of mine this weekend who has been a Tanqueray Ten fan since its introduction was very taken with the 24 Martini I served her.
The general conclusion is this: Beefeater 24 will absolutely replace basic Beefeater as my go to gin when I need a plain (in the best sense of that word) gin. It is a worthy competitor to Bombay Sapphire, and I would suggest that once 24 is available where you are, you should keep it on hand as part of your arsenal of essentials.

One of the posts I always look for and read each morning in my RSS reader is Jacob Grier’s Morning Links. For those of you who don’t know of Jacob, he’s a genuine, free-range Libertarian, as in former Washington Think Tank-type Libertarian. In additions to writing about cocktails and coffee, he has political thoughts available to puzzle, challenge and generally irritate and piss off both Republicans and Democrats alike. He recently moved from D.C. to the Pacific Northwest (further demonstrating his intelligence), but then exposed his Beltway background by changing his blog’s name (but not the number of the website thankfully) to Liquidity Preference. Jacob, why on Earth did you rename your blog to sound like a white paper from the Rand Corporation?
Anyway, among his other virtues, Jacob posts a selection of political, culinary, and downright odd links. They are always interesting and occasionally (as in this morning) thought-provoking. Check his daily post out; it’s like Fark without the unsolicited fingers or Instapundit without the blender-blogging.
Anyway, biography done. Let’s talk about what he linked today that got me thinking: An article in Scientific American about taste in space. The article is about how astronauts find flavors quite bland in microgravity, making them crave hot sauce and shrimp cocktail. Now, given who I am and where I read about this, my thoughts immediately turned to how this will affect the offerings to be served at early versions of Ten-Forward.
Of course for now there is (officially) no drinking booze in space. Which is too bad, as any reader of this blog can tell you, since there will clearly be no real progress toward living in space until we get the details of cocktail hour ironed out. At least the Russians (of course) are making the right noises. It is a sad comment on our political environment, IMHO, that for all the effort and money being spent studying how to get a number of astronauts from here to Mars and back in a confined space without killing each other, there has been virtually no discussion of the simple expedient of a nice Manhattan. Mark my words, when NASA hires Gary Regan and starts sponsoring symposia at Tales of the Cocktail, you’ll know that we are getting serious about successfully going to Mars or colonizing the Moon, and not until.

Mission Specialist Gary Regan (Astro-Mixologist)

Oh, and by the way Gary. Quit kvetching about the metric system. The Administration does not have time for another massively unpopular imposition of change on our chosen lifestyle right now. And NASA in particular needs no more worries on that front. You don’t want to be splattered all over the Martian landscape before you stir up your first Mons Olympus Martini, do you?
Alright, what will we need to do for space drinking?
First off, space missions will go with cocktails, not beer and wine. Yay! But why? Because beer and wine are inefficient uses of space and mass. They also do not last as long or store as well. We will have to sacrifice freshly squeezed juice of course, leaving men like Gabriel Szaszko ineligible for space travel, but is that such a bad thing, really?

Inefficient spaceship design.

I’d hope that we won’t just go with those plastic foil baggies like I showed above. Let’s mix the drinks on board. Space cocktails will be solely for therapeutic purposes after all, and part of the simple, refreshing pleasure of a good cocktail is mixing it, or watching it being crafted for you. Also, one good bartender could replace a whole staff of astro-shrinks. More mass savings!
However, microgravity does present some obvious difficulties with standard drink serving. Getting the drink out of the shaker would be hard, and getting it to stay in a cocktail glass even harder. I think we can all agree that having astronauts floating around the cabin while snorking up globules of Sidecar might produce dangerous levels of silly. And I think we can all imagine the mayhem that would result should you help yourself to some of Buzz Aldrin’s G&T as it floated by….
Fortunately, NASA appears to have some people on staff who have their minds in the right place. Witness the shape of the new spacesuit water container:

But to return to the generally serious nature of this post, astronaut and obvious master mixologist Don Pettit really has invented an open drinking vessel that actually works in microgravity. The following video is seriously worth a look.

Just add a stem or some kind of lanyard to keep your hand from warming the drink, and we have the drinking vessel that will carry man and broad into space. (Note to NASA, dudes and chicks do not good astronauts make.)
And finally what will be the recipe for the Martian Martini? What will we put in our Moonhattans? And what will be the secret ingredient in the someday to be famous Tiki drink, the Tycho Bowl? Well, the article that Jacob linked to start all this wretched silliness suggests that our taste buds are dulled the longer we stay in space. We can expect therefore that more potent, bitter and sour, even spicy flavored cocktails will be the norm. Cross Cosmopolitans, Nutty Irishmen, and Vodka Gimlets off the list.
When the new space craze hits, expect ads with chicks in skintight spacesuits for Angostura Bitters to be as common as Grey Goose ads today.

Astronauts will also be wanting drinks with enhanced sour components. So expect drinks that use lemons and limes to outstrip those with OJ or pineapple juice or sodas. And we should see scientific advances is storing and preserving fresh citrus. But the once exotic Screwdriver will fade further from the public consciousness.
And I’d expect that more flavorful spirits will also surge again to the fore. Sorry, vodka folks. Look to whiskeys and rums, and especially gin to be the choice of the extraterrestrial generation.
So what will be the really popular cocktails in space? Lets see….
(I swear on my father’s grave that I was not going here when I started this post!)
A gin cocktail, with potent sour elements like lime, and front stage featuring of Angustora Bitters…
You know it, baby!

This one is for you, Reese.

Part of the original charter I set for myself when I started the Pegu Blog was to be the searcher and central depository of all Pegu knowledge and discussion on the Web. Boy, am I falling down on the job when my good buddy, Weblog Award Nominee™ Jay at Oh Gosh!, managed to put up a post about not one, but two Pegu variants back in October, and I missed it until now.

Image stolen from Oh Gosh!

The variants are the Juniper Club and the Pendennis Club. The Pendennis Club is a variant of a variant, and hardly close enough to still look much like a Pegu. It also uses apricot brandy, which I’m not much for, so I skipped playing with it. It does have an awesome name, though.
Last year, when I got my hands on my first bottle of Peychaud’s Bitters, I tried using it as a substitute for the standard Angustora. Little did I know that there was already such a variant out there, the Juniper Club. I simply used four or five dashes of Peychaud’s in a standard Pegu recipe. The results were a pink drink that was just, um, dull. Once I read the Juniper Club at Jay’s, I elected to give it another run at it. Here’s the recipe:

I mixed this up and it smells wonderful. I tasted it and it is much better than my own, independent experiment.
But it still is not to my taste. The problem begins and ends with the Peychaud’s. It has a unique, whole-mouth taste experience that I find really interesting, but which I don’t find I like. I know some folks love Peychaud’s and it’s flavor, but I’m not that guy. It has a time-traveling aftertaste. By that I mean you can taste the aftertaste before you taste the best flavors the bitters provides, as well as after you taste them. There is something there that fights to really bring out the Gin-Cointreau-Lime Trinity, but I just don’t see it winning. That said, if you are a Sazerac guy, this might be the Pegu descendant for you.

This month’s MxMo is being hosted by the Scribe, over at A Mixed Dram. His theme this month is Broaden Your Horizons. The idea is that we must write about something new to us in the cocktail world. Something we haven’t tried before. He specifically calls out Morganthaler, daring him to find some way to participate. My money’s on Jeff, but keep an eye out to see if he can find anything in the cocktail world he hasn’t done. Maybe he’ll drink a Budweiser….
As for me, well let’s see… I have to do something new… I know!
I’ll mix up a Pegu!
Seriously. For months, I have wanted to try out a Molecular Pegu. Specifically, I want to try the neat trick of spherification, wherein your liquid (played here by the mighty Pegu) is transformed into a mound of tiny spheres, solid on the outside and liquid in the center. You end up with the look and texture of large caliber caviar.
I had hoped to present a clean, concise layout of how to do this. I failed. Oh, I got Pegu Caviar, but the process is difficult, complicated, and not simple. In short, it is some serious chemistry, and Doug never took any chemistry at all. It is still fun, and I will keep working at it. The upshot is, this post will only be an outline, with most of the recommendations being things to avoid.
Here is the basic process for this kind of spherification: You take your liquid, which can be lots of things from pure water to fruit purée, and add sodium alginate and perhaps some sodium citrate (This perhaps is one of those things that straight answers for are difficult to ascertain). You spoon or drip this solution into a bowl of a calcium chloride solution. The outer surface of the drop will almost instantly gel. The longer you leave it in the calcium solution, the thicker the gel skin will become. When it reaches the strength you are looking for, you remove it from the bath and rinse in fresh water to halt the process. The drops are tough enough, usually, to handle, but burst in the mouth when you bite them. The result is outstandingly cool.
The process is outstandingly a pain in the butt. The devil is in the details.
To form the drops, you have a number of options. You can simply spoon them into the bath, carefully, with a small spoon. The results are irregular blobs that are cool to play with and eink (dreat?), but hardly visions of aesthetic prowess. Alternately, you can use a syringe to gently drip tiny drops into the bath. The smaller the drops, the more spherical they will appear. This can take forever, so there is a third, slightly more expensive option. When I first saw this done (with a cantaloupe puree), chef Rosendale used this device, from a company called Chef Rubber. You set it up over your bowl of solution, with a strainer positioned to catch the drops and make removal from the bath easier. Here’s what the setup looks like:

You force solution into the tube with a syringe, and it slowly drips through the nozzles into the bath. You let the drops sit for about a minute, and remove.
At least, that’s the theory.
I, of course, dove straight in. I mixed up a Pegu, added an ounce of water to simulate the amount of ice melt that would come from a normal shaking, and added about 1.5% alginate, and 0.5% citrate. Why these numbers? Because that was the upper end of the suggested range. Did I know what was supposed to happen, and what the result should look like? No. Oops. I first off wanted to test some drops before deploying the caviar maker. The drops simply vanished into the bowl, dissipating like any other liquid would.
What the hell?
I tried ten different ways of putting them in, and nothing worked. After some unhealthy suppression of profanity (I was trying to show off this process to my children). I decided my ingredients had to be the problem. I decided to try this with plain water to start, then add ingredients. I took a fresh 200 ml of water, and added 2g of the alginate. I walked away to secure some toys, and when I returned, found the water had gelled significantly. This had not happened with the Pegu. A spoonful into the calcium bath and bingo. I had a cool little bean of water that I could toss in my hands, but that exploded into tasteless water in my mouth.
I was reinvigorated. Apparently, I needed more water. My Pegu caviar would taste less strong than I had hoped, but this was going to work. I settled on putting in water equal to the Pegu ingredients this time, and blooming the alginate in that water before adding the flavorants and intoxicants. It took a stick blender to combine the ingredients, but I had a Pegu-colored bowl of goop.
Into the syringe it went, through the caviar dripper, and thence into the bath. The solution I had was probably too thick, but it eventually dripped into the water. And it formed little perfect caviar pellets. I strained them, rinsed them, and put them in a cocktail glass. Voila!

Maggi and I ate them with a spoon, and it was really quite cool. It tasted like just like a slightly diluted Pegu.
I intended to have video of the whole process, but my older daughter stole the video camera the moment I took it out, and now I have 42 minutes of my younger daughter making faces into the lens.
Here are the problems with this whole process:

• Speed. At this viscosity, it takes ten minutes to make an ounce.
• Wetness. The caviar remains very wet, which reduces the stuff I can do with it. I had intended to serve it on crackers, with a squirt of whipped lime for garnish.
• Color. The excess water makes the beads too pale.

Fortunately, I have lots of the chemicals. I will try this again, but there will be some changes next time. I will be alone in the house. I need this so I will be patient. Patience is a major key. and when I am not patient, I will be able to swear in proper, therapeutic fashion.
I will be prepared to try several concentrations to get one that is fluid enough to produce caviar at an acceptable rate, and will give the strongest possible, least diluted, flavor. I will set up a draining rig to go with the forming rig. Then one batch can be dripping fully dry, while I’m dripping in the next batch. And I will be patient.
I have further ideas, if I can get this process going in a reasonable fashion. I intend to try spherifying each ingredient of the drink separately. I’ll make up a batch of gin and bitters pearls, Cointreau pearls, and lime pearls. Then put 3 measures of the first, and one each of the second and third into a glass and swirl to combine. How cool would that be, with virtually any cocktail? All the flavors there, in the right proportions, but bursting and combining in your mouth.
It will either be a train wreck, or totally amazing. I suspect it will depend on the recipe.
Well, there you have it. My project worked, sort of. It certainly broadened my horizons. And it was fun… in places. Now, I’m sure someone else did this much better than I did for this Mixology Monday, so go read them and see how to do this correctly.