On Dec 4th, Dry Fly Distilling will be releasing their second release of washington wheat whiskey. Bellingham’s location to pick up a bottle is the new holiday location at Bellis Fair Mall. Store opens at 10:00am. See dryflydistilling/blog for more locations.

The Great American Beer Festival from Brewers Association on Vimeo.

Chuckanut Brewery & Kitchen, which opened in 2008, claimed the title as the 2009 Small Brewpub and Small Brewpub Brewer of the Year, winning 4 medals out of the 13 awarded to Washington breweries: two gold (Chuckanut Dunkel and Vienna Lager) and two silver (German Pilsner and Chuckanut Schwartzbier), at the 28th Annual Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colo. Chuckanut Brewery is the first brewery in the history of the Great American Beer Festival competition to win a Small Brewpub of the Year award with all Lager-style beers.

Breweries are awarded points based on medals won, and these points are tabulated for the results of the 2009 GABF Brewery of the Year Awards. The GABF judges awarded Chuckanut Brewery the 2009 Small Brewpub and Small Brewpub Brewer of the Year based upon the medals won.

Other Washington brewing medals went to: Pyramid Brewery (Haywire Hefeweizen and Mactarnahan’s Amber), Redhook Ales (ESB and Treblehook), Silver City Brewery (Old Scrooge ‘98, Ridgetop Red, and Gold Mountain Pilsner), Snipes Mountain Brewing Inc. (Coyote Moon), and Ram Restaurant & Brewery (Clearwater Kolsch).

The Great American Beer Festival is the largest and most prestigious competition for American craft beers. This year’s competition featured 3,308 beers from 495 breweries, a panel of 132 judges from 10 countries, 78 beer categories, and 51 first time breweries at the competition.

It’s time for another round of MxMo, and this month’s hosts are the peeps over at eGullet of whom Chris is the man with the topic: Dizzy Dairy. As he puts it:

Any drink using a dairy product is fair game: milk, cream, eggs, butter, cheese, yogurt, curds, you name it. Given the importance of dairy products in drinks dating back centuries, there are lots of opportunities for digging through vintage receipts for a taste of the past, and as always innovation is highly encouraged.
We hope that you’ll measure out your portions as best you’re able: better to indicate a tablespoon or ounce of egg white, for example, than to say “egg white.” In addition, be sure to share any tips and techniques that benefit your booze — “dry” shaking without ice for a good meringue, say, or stealing Society member Dale DeGroff’s whipped cream trick for Irish Coffee. Disasters as well as successes are heartily encouraged.

It rained today. I’m sure it is just the beginning of the dreary fall and winter that shall be mine, so I decided to recall the early days of spring one last time before bringing out the dark and heavy spirits in abundance.
This summer the Ramos Gin Fizz has been a favorite of mine, so I have decided to go on a variation of the gin fizz. As with the Ramos, this drink features both cream and egg. Since we all know how great all that fat in cream is for you, I thought I might as well whip something up that might burn a few of the calories that I would soon be consuming. So I present the Rubus Fizz.

The Rubus Fizz

2 oz Dry Fly Gin
.75 oz Lime Juice
1 oz Simple Syrup
8 Raspberries
8 Mint Leaves
1 oz Egg White
2 dashes Vanilla
2 oz Heavy Cream

Muddle Mint and Raspberries in mixing glass.
Add remaining ingredients and dry shake to emulsify.
Fill shaker with ice and shake for a minimum of 30 seconds.
Strain into wine glass or champagne flute and top with soda.
Garnish with mint or raspberries.

I chose to use the Dry Fly, as the elements of mint and vanilla in the gin really complement the drink. Depending on your raspberries and lime juice the simple syrup can be adjusted to balance the drink. I find that my raspberries can be quite tart, so I may add syrup or decrease the lime slightly.

Posted from the Dry Fly Distilling blog:

A couple of days ago the Liquor Board was forced to increase the markup on distilled spirits from 39.2% to 51.9% making our state the highest priced state for spirits in the United States. This was a result of a move by our state government to capture $78 million from the liquor revolving fund ($ used to run the liquor system.) This capture skirted proposition 960 which does not allow for new taxes unless the measure is passed by a super majority or is put to a vote of the people. So in other words, this is a backhanded way to tax the public. Washington now has taxes/markup TWICE the average of all control states, and SIX times that of private three tier systems, giving a complete new meaning to the tax and spend term. Two other considerations – the Washington Restaurant Association estimates 1300 jobs will be lost as a result of this increase. Also, DISCUS estimates that decreases in volume due to consumer buy down, and purchases being moved across state lines will reduce the income from the increase to $50 million – some $30 million short of the objective. The result of this loss in revenue will result in . . . . . wait for it . . . . another price increase next year to make up for the shortcoming. This will force small distillers to make a choice – allow the price of their products to increase per the changes, or lower the sales price to the state, thus lowering income, to allow for the same shelf price. In short, sales revenue per bottle from Washington could become lower than all other states, in theory forcing Washington distillers to pursue business outside the state as it would become more profitable. Soon Washington will surpass the the 168% average markup in Canada, making us the highest priced spirits in north America. A lofty, but obtainable goal.

It looks as if my desire to visit Portland now has at least one more reason. 

Last week we finished work on our 4th Princess Cruise Ship, the Golden Princess.
Victoria Shipyards played host to the Golden from April 15-May 4th in the largest drydock refit that Princess Cruises has ever undertaken. Among some of the projects was the addition of the Movies Under the Stars big screen, a Swap of the Casino on deck 6 and 2 restaurants on deck 7, an addition of several suites on deck 16, a complete overhall of the atrium (spanning decks 5-7), and a general overhall of most of the ship.

Our work was focused on the Horizon Court buffet on deck 14, where we removed the corian and wood buffet counters and tray slides, and replaced them with Silestone in contrasting colors. While our job was comparatively small, it still took 14 days to complete our part of the project.

Since I am sick this week, and today is Cinco de Mayo, I will not be consuming Coronas, margaritas, or any tacos. However, I thought I would write up a post on Mexico’s most well known spirit, Tequila.

Tequila was first produced in the 16th century near the location of the city of Tequila, which was not officially established until 1656. The Aztec people had previously made a fermented beverage from the agave plant, which they called octli (later, and more popularly called pulque), long before the Spanish arrived in 1521. When the Spanish conquistadors ran out of their own brandy, they began to distill this agave drink to produce North America’s first indigenous distilled spirit.

Some 80 years later, around 1600, Don Pedro Sánchez de Tagle, the Marquis of Altamira, began mass-producing tequila at the first factory in the territory of modern-day Jalisco. By 1608, the colonial governor of Nueva Galicia had begun to tax his products, however the tequila that is popular today was not mass-produced until the early 1800s in Guadalaljara.

Don Cenobio Sauza, founder of Sauza Tequila and Municipal President of the Village of Tequila from 1884-1885, was the first to export tequila to the United States. Don Cenobio’s grandson Don Francisco Javier gained international attention for insisting that “there cannot be tequila where there are no agaves!” His efforts led to the practice that real tequila can only come from the State of Jalisco.

Since 2002, sales of high priced tequilas, called “ultra-premium” and “super-premium” by marketeers, have increased 28 percent. That is an average growth rate of 8.6 percent per year, as reported by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Sales exceeded expectations by reaching well over 10 million cases as shown in the 2007 report by IWSR based on Adams Liquor Handbook. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, increasing worldwide popularity of tequila drove corporate interest in the drink. Notable developments as a result included:

* The purchase of Herradura by Brown-Forman for $776 million in September 2006.[5]
* A new NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana) for tequila (NOM-006-SCFI-2005) was issued in 2006, and
among other changes, introduced a category of tequila called “extra añejo” or “ultra-aged” which
must be aged a minimum of 3 years.
* The purchase of the Sauza and El Tesoro brands by massive holding company Fortune Brands.

Although some tequilas have remained as family owned brands, most well-known tequila brands are owned by large multinational corporations. However, there are over 100 distilleries making over six hundred brands of tequila in Mexico and over 2,000 brand names have been registered. Due to this, each bottle of tequila contains a serial number depicting which distillery the tequila was brewed and bottled in. Because there are only so many distilleries, multiple brands of tequila come from the same place.

Harvesting the agave plant remains a manual effort, unchanged by modern farming technologies, and stretching back hundreds of years. The agave is planted, tended, and harvested by hand. The men who harvest it, the “jimadors”, contain generations of knowledge about the plants and the ways in which they need to be harvested. The Jimadors must be able to work swiftly in the tight rows, pull out the pups without damaging the mother plant, clear the piñas, and decide when and if each plant is ready to be harvested . Too soon and there are not enough sugars, too late and the plant will have used its sugars to grow a quiote (20-40 foot high stem), with seeds on the top that are then scattered by the wind . The piñas, weighing 40 to 70 pounds, are cut away with a special knife called a coa. They are then shredded, their juices pressed out and put into fermentation tanks and vats. Some tequila companies still use the traditional method (artesian tequila) in which the pinas are crushed with a stone wheel. The final process is to add a yeast to the vats to convert the sugars into alcohol. Each company keeps their own yeast a tight secret.

There is a clear difference in taste between tequila that is made from lowland or highland agave plants. Agave plants that are grown in the highlands often have more fruit tastes due to the growing process. The plants are grown on the western side of the hills, allowing the plants to receive the most amount of sunlight throughout the day. These plants are taller, wider, and juicier. Agave that are grown in the lowlands have more earth tastes, and are typically on the smaller side.

Types of Tequila

There are two basic categories of tequila: mixtos and 100% Agave. Mixtos use up to 49% of other sugars in the fermentation process, with Agave taking up the remainder. Mixtos use both glucose and fructose sugars. With 100% agave tequila, blanco or plata is harsher with the bold flavors of the distilled agave up front, while reposado and añejo are smoother, subtler, and more complex. As with other spirits that are aged in casks, tequila takes on the flavors of the wood, while the harshness of the alcohol mellows. The major flavor distinction with 100% agave tequila is the base ingredient, which is more vegetal than grain spirits and as a result more complex.

Tequila is usually bottled in one of five categories:

* Blanco (white or silver) – white spirit, un-aged and bottled or stored immediately after distillation, or
aged less than two months in oak barrels;
* Oro (gold) – un-aged blanco tequila, blended with caramel coloring, sugar-based syrup, glycerin,
and/or oak extract added so as to resemble aged tequila;
* Reposado (rested) – aged a minimum of two months, but less than a year in oak barrels;
* Añejo (aged) – aged a minimum of one year, but less than 3 years in oak barrels;
* Extra Añejo (extra aged) – aged a minimum of three years in oak barrels. This category was established
in March 2006.

Reposado may be rested in barrels or casks as large as 20,000 litres, allowing for richer and more complex flavors. The preferred oak comes from US, France or Canada, and while they are usually white oak, some companies choose to char the wood for a smokey flavor, or use barrels that were previously used to hold a different kind of alcohol ( i.e. whiskey, scotch, or wine in the case of Asombroso). Some reposados can also be aged in new wood barrels to achieve the same wood flavor and smoothness, but in less time.

Añejos are often rested in barrels that have been previously used to rest reposados. The barrels cannot be more than 600 liters, although most are stored in barrels of about 200 liters. Many of the barrels used are from whiskey or bourbon distilleries in America, France, or Canada, resulting in the dark color and more complex flavors of the añejo tequila.

By far the most common (and most mismade) tequila cocktail is the Margarita. The origins of the drink have been claimed by several, and the drink has gone through many versions through the years.
The margarita cocktail was the “Drink of the Month” in Esquire magazine, December 1953,
1 ounce tequila
Dash of Triple Sec
Juice of 1/2 lime or lemon

I usually make my margaritas along the classic 3:2:1 formula.
1.5oz silver tequila
1 oz cointreau
.5 oz lime

Currently on iTunes you can download what I feel is one of the best cocktail apps for your iPhone or iPod touch. The app is only free until the 12th of April, so be sure to check it out pronto.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=284419213

Coctails+ was created by the minds over at cocktaildb.com. It is by far my favorite cocktail app, and features the contemporary masters collection, showcasing recipes by Jamie Boudreau, Dale DeGroff, and Gonçalo De Souza Monteiro.

Other features:

* No “noise”. All recipes were vetted by experts and nearly all have been published.
* Contemporary Masters program presents cutting-edge recipes from esteemed mixologists.
* Recipes of the same name are grouped for side-by-side comparison—a unique feature that enables the user to see how some drinks have changed over time.
* Imperial (ounces or gills) and metric (centiliters or milliliters) units.
* Mark favorites for future reference.
* Share recipes with friends through Facebook (New!), Twitter, and email.

Slash Commences Recording Solo Album | News @ Ultimate-Guitar.Com

Former Guns N’ Roses and current Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash has commenced recording his debut solo album with Josh Freese (A Perfect Circle, Nine Inch Nails) on drums, Chris Chaney (Jane’s Addiction) on bass, and Eric Valentine (Smash Mouth, Third Eye Blind, Good Charlotte) in the producer’s chair. Slash says, “I know you’re saying, ‘Didn’t Josh play with Axl’s Guns N’ Roses?!’ He did in the ’90s for a while but left after a couple years, so I don’t know if it counts much. Besides, that doesn’t undermine that he is an amazing drummer.”

Regarding which singers will guest on his upcoming CD, Slash said, “Unfortunately, I can’t divulge that info yet, but you’ll know soon enough. I will say, however, that they are fantastically talented songwriters who it’s been an honor to work and write with, to say the least.”

Slash’s wife Perla Hudson said in a video interview at Rockerrazzi.com that both Ozzy Osbourne and Fergie will make guest appearances on her husband’s upcoming solo album. Slash himself told The Pulse of Radio that he was still working out the guest list. “I’m using different singers for each song, so we’re figuring out which song goes with which person and I’m not sort of divulging the list of singers, but they’re all well-known singers and…sort of, you know, like I go and play on a lot of other people’s records, so I’m just making a record and gonna have people come play on this one, you know.”

Slash left Guns N’ Roses in the mid-’90s, forming Slash’s Snakepit before later assembling Velvet Revolver with several other ex-members of Guns N’ Roses and Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland.

Velvet Revolver is currently searching for a replacement for Weiland, who was dismissed last April.

Thanks for the report to Blabbermouth.net.

One of my favorite spirits companies has won two awards at the recent World Spirit Competition in San Francisco. Hats off to both Kent and Don for producing such excellent spirits.

San Francisco World Spirit Competition Awards Dry Fly Vodka

BEST OF SHOW VODKA

DOUBLE GOLD

Over 200 vodkas were entered in this years event, the premier spirit competition in the United States. Approximately 50% of the entrants won medals.

Chris Cornell ‘Expected Controversy’ With New Album | Interviews @ Ultimate-Guitar.Com

Chris Cornell ‘Expected Controversy’ With New Album

If you grew up listening to the groundbreaking grunge albums Louder Than Love or Badmotorfinger, you’re in for quite a shock. Chris Cornell, the vocalist who rose to fame with Soundgarden and experienced a similar success with Audioslave, has gone where few rockers dare: The world of electronic pop. Cornell’s 3rd solo album Scream has replaced the usual guitar-driven tunes of his past with tracks that are heavily based in dance beats and R&B grooves, a switch that undoubtedly was partially influenced by producer Timbaland (Justin Timberlake, M.I.A.).

Since Scream was released on March 10, critics and fans have expressed passionate views, and often times, drastically opposing opinions. You only need to take a peek at a few publications’ reviews to see just how divided the public is when it comes to Scream. While the Los Angeles Times explained that the album is a “fascinating but heartbreaking document of how many wrong decisions one can make in writing,” Entertainment Weekly wrote that Cornell almost succeeded in creating “his very own Thriller.”

It was evident during a recent interview with Cornell, however, that this is one musician who cannot be flustered easily. Rather than taking offense at the negative reviews, he has been looking at each comment analytically and sociologically. This is not an entertainer who is about to second-guess himself, particularly when he explained that his current live set (which includes a good batch of his old and new material) has made him the “happiest” he’s been in a good while. When Cornell talked with UG writer Amy Kelly, the singer’s time was quite limited, but he didn’t hesitate to provide our questions with candid, thorough responses – some of which might just have you thinking differently about Scream.

UG: Your new album Scream hit stores on March 10 and has already been evoking quite a bit commentary from critics and fans alike. When you pursued this project, were you prepared for the controversy that might develop by working with Timbaland?

“It’s not a simple album in terms of understanding what’s going on musically.”
Chris: Yeah. I definitely did that math pretty quickly in my head when I made the decision to do it. I didn’t know that the album was going to sound like it does. None of us knew. It was different than I even expected because the combination of influences kind of came from a lot of different directions. It’s not a simple album in terms of understanding what’s going on musically. It’s not as simple as rock-world-meets-hip-hop-world or any other sort of set or combination of components. It doesn’t really work like that.

Having said that, I sort of expected controversy, and Timbaland expected it. He’s been through it obviously before. I think he really felt that it was going to come more so from my album than other people he worked with. When you’re rooted pretty much entirely in rock and you make a dramatic move – or what seems like a dramatic move like that – it’s going to ruffle some feathers. I’m really glad that it has, though. I would actually have been disappointed if it didn’t. It kind of came out and everybody was all smiles about it. It wouldn’t have been as interesting.

Now it’s like this sociological experiment. You get to look at the different statistics, as opposed to just what people are saying. It’s like, “Okay, this is what they’re saying, but who are they? Where are they from? How old are they? What country is it? What period of my career were they a fan of first?” There were a lot of different periods, and all those different periods had different kinds of music. All of that is really interesting. Even though I’m a guy who comes from what someone could easily say is the rock world, the music that is in that is very different. I’ve released and written a lot of songs that are very non-hard rock inside that world. So then it starts to come down to, “Oh, so it’s really more about guitars versus not guitars, or guitars versus lots of synths or dance beats.” It’s really interesting to look at it from all these different angles, and then try and come up with my understanding of why people are responding in some ways.

The really obvious ones are the most negativity and the most positivity. In other words, the most polarization is definitely in the U.S. Outside of the U.S., people are used to hearing remixes from every rock band. I mean there are Metallica remixes if you go to Ireland. They’re used to it. So it hasn’t been as polarized.

In the U.S., there is also that we’re a country that loves the underdog. There are people who will hear negative stuff, and they’ll come back with, “This is the best thing he’s ever done.” Even that is sort of tough in that I have to gauge, “Well, is this person saying that because they want to be encouraging or it’s because they really believe that?” Some of the comments that I hear from people I really believe. Other ones I feel like they may love the record or it may not be their favorite record, but they don’t like it when somebody gets picked on. So it’s all been pretty interesting.

I recall in past interviews that you’ve mentioned many of your songs start out in a rather traditional rock way – with a few chords from your guitar. So many of the tracks on Scream are beat-driven, which probably changed the entire songwriting process. How did you form the groundwork for most of the album? Did you concentrate on the percussion or vocal elements first?

Basically everything was beat-based. So Timbaland would kind of work from home on beat ideas one at a time. As he was doing that, he would bring them in. Sometimes he would do it in the studio and sometimes he would do it at his home studio. He would bring them into where I was, in the studio where I was working, and play them. Generally, it was like a 2-track, stereo file with his percussion and maybe like one other part already kind of mixed in there. I would write and sing all my parts over that. Some of them, like on the song “Ground Zero,” were actually nothing except drums and this one little keytar note that would sometimes not be there. So as you’ve just said, the vocal harmonies and the vocal melody dictated the key changes to the song. It was like writing a song entirely with just vocals, and other parts were added later.

In a song like “Never Far Away” or “Scream,” there would be much more lush music that we’d write, and it would have much more of an already-arranged-song feel. Working in the computer environment to this degree was different for me because a lot of the song arrangements kind of happened as we’d go. I would write down lyrics for what I felt was a song and sing the parts. When we were kind of figuring out what is the bridge, how many times should the chorus be, when it should come in, what should the length of the verse be, and all of it had been more or less arranged, Jeff would be in cyberspace versus a band standing there trying all the different ways to see how it sounds.

“Basically everything was beat-based.”
Another difference, too, was that none of this album was ever performed by a group of people in a room and then recorded and rehearsed – which I’d never done ever. The only thing that I’ve ever done that’s like this is when I would demo at home. I will write songs, using a recording device for the process of writing. I’ll write out lyrics and be singing, but I’ll still kind of have to read lyrics off the sheet since I just wrote it and didn’t remember it yet. Whatever is going down on the tape is what I put as my first impression of the song. I actually have a knack for that.

I’ve had a hard time sometimes with demos as a vocalist because I want to sort of feel like I know how to sing the song and know what I’m doing. Sometimes there’s something sort of missing and in trying to find it, there’s something in there that’s more exciting. I’ve had producers over the years tell me that some of my demo performances were better. I used some of that on the album. There’s certainly a freshness to every vocal on it that’s not like something rehearsed or over-rehearsed.

I actually had to rehearse quite a bit once the album was finished. I just wanted to get used to performing the songs. I did the whole album at several shows on the tour, so I had to rehearse that. The main difference is that you were writing the song and recording the song at the same time.

In listening to Scream, I did have to wonder how you were planning to translate the album into a stage show. Are you going to add quite a few additional bandmates to your usual lineup?

I’ve done it where I had just keyboard players – 2 and then where I had 1. Basically what it is now is using some of the synth tracks and backing tracks and playing to those, and then having guitars sort of mimic synth parts and just replay those parts. Then the drums are just live and we’ll have sort of a reproduction of what’s recorded. That’s been the best way. There’s something about it, too, that it translates really well. The feeling of the song and the feeling of the album come through, but it’s also about a band playing. Therefore I can go in and out of new and old material pretty much effortlessly, and it’s not weird at all.

That was my only concern in this whole process. How am I going to bring this live and mix it up with my old material? Being able to do what I like to do, which is like a 2-and-a-half-hour set, how am I going to get in and out of it? I came up with a lot of ideas before I tried it. One was that I could do an acoustic set where I could just play lots of new music and mix it up. You can get in and out of anything with that. But when we started playing, not only was it not a problem, it’s actually become this huge bonus to the live show. It’s really dynamic and it’s a new level sonically and rhythmically. To me, it’s just kind of broadened my live set to where I’m the happiest that I’ve ever been.

You’re probably not looking too far ahead with the new album just being released, but have you reflected on your next possible move? Is it possible that you might even push the envelope further by exploring more new musical genres?

Yeah, I’ve already had a couple of ideas of what I would do next. At the time I’m focused on the album, so I can’t make any predictions – but I will take this experience me wherever I go.

Interview by Amy Kelly
Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2009