Anyone drinking tonight... or, today??

sleeves of blue buck ale are $4 till 6pm

 

Have you heard about reverse osmosis systems? You install it and never buy bottled water again. For the fraction of the price you spend on bottles per year.

 

Today is National Mezcal Day so I’m sipping on an Isidro Rodriguez Montoya produced inaequidens pechuga. 11 year old cultivated agaves were slow roasted for 15 days in an earthen pit oven and macerated by hand with wooden mallets. Spring fermentation lasted 10 days in underground rock pits with spring water. Then it was twice distilled in a wooden Filipino still with a copper pot. Iguana, shrimp, dried fruit, honey, cinnamon, and chocolate were added to the second distillation - similar to how gin is made. Only 100 liters were produced and it was bottled at 49.8%.

 

"Iguana, Shrimp"? Is that something the makers tell the Gringos to make it sound more exotic? So how is the taste?

 

Historically pechugas were produced in very small quantities for special occasions and they rarely left the villages in which they were made. They were for celebrating special occasions like weddings and births. The familys that do make them typically use a family recipie that has been handed down over the generations. It’s always very small batches and pechugas have never been mass produced.

But gringos do have a way of trying to make other cultures history about themselves and thinking that anything they can’t get from a strip mall drive thu is exotic.

 

I have an Hispanic buddy (which makes this a bit more embarrassing) that on a trip down the Baja he picked up some Tequila that whoever sold it convinced him it
was of high quality and worth what they squeezed out of him $$$ Stuff tasted like it was cut with water...

 

Weird. I know that everyone's tastes are different, so even high end spirits might not taste good to everyone. But, watered down taste definitely doesn't sound good.

I wonder if it's some sort of tourist scam, like fake Cuban cigars.

 

I know many of you probably never had the opportunity to drink unregulated beer. Meaning one may be 2% and the next may be 8%. In my travels to the Philippines, we drank a metric ass ton of this stuff.

 

It absolutely was. Coastal areas are known for it. Plus the majority of well made tequila gets exported. Unless it’s a specialty bar, restaurant, or liquor store they aren’t likely to have tequila worth drinking.

Also, almost all liquor is watered down. Vodka for example by law is a neutral spirit that must be distilled to 95% or 96% ABV (the rule varies slightly by region). It’s then diluted to the typical 40% ABV with water.

Denomination of origin rules for Tequila set the upper limit of bottlings to 55% abv. It's common for it to come off the still around 60-65% and then it's diluted. It is also worth noting that 40% is the legal lower limit for “alcohol” in the U.S., anything lower is considered a liqueur and taxed at a significantly higher rate, but in Mexico most of the commercially available tequila is bottled at 38%, which is always watered down. Nobody distills to 38% it always comes from dilution.

For our October event we held an educational blind tasting about the effect of different water sources on agave spirits.

Let's start with a simplified summary of making agave distillates: harvest agaves, cook them, extract the sugar, formulate and ferment the juice, distill, dilute, and bottle. There are two areas where the water source plays a significant role, formulation/fermentation and dilution.

-Formulation/fermentation - the extracted sugars are mixed with water, this formulation is what gets fermented. During fermentation yeast, a living organism, feeds on the sugars converting it to alcohol. The water source is hugely impactful because any compounds, minerals, or chemicals in the water will affect how comfortable the yeast is in its environment. Fermentation is so important because it's where all of the alcohol and flavors are created. The material used for the still will have an effect, but the actual distillation process only separates and removes. You distill to remove water and the undesirable flavors while concentrating alcohol and desirable flavors, but all of those things are present in the base spirit because of fermentation.

-Dilution - if your spirit is double distilled and bottled at 80 proof it's diluted (generally speaking, there are rare exceptions). But, diluted or not, if it's 40% abv it's 60% water.

The blind-tasting lineup we put together to explore this concept:

Pour 1 - Terralta Blanco
Pour 2 - Arte NOM Seleccion 1579
Pour 3 - Maguey Malate Heladio Lopez Luis Espadin Tierra Blanca
Pour 4 - Maguey Malate Heladio Lopez Luis Espadin Rio Chico

1 & 2 are both tequilas made at the same place, by the same person, in the same way. Water is used for both formulation and dilution.

1 uses deep well water
2 uses deep well water and captured rain water

3 and 4 are both mezcals made at the same place, by the same person, in the same way, with the same Oaxacan espadins.

Water is used for formulation only, these are not diluted.

3 uses Tierra Blanca mountain spring water
4 uses Rio Chico river water

 

Very informative, thanks for posting this.

 

Cheers, y'all!

I'm having some of this Komos Añejo Cristalino while I'm making beef short ribs in the pressure cooker. I'll probably switch to Palomas, or something cheaper after one or two.

I have liked most of the Cristalinos I've tried, so far. This particular one is probably my favorite.

 

finished off the jim beam cream

 

Picked up a new stash today, I have not tried any of these

 

What do you think of the Cimarron? I thought it was a pretty damn good tequila for the price but I'm not a big tequila guy in the first place.

 

I tried the Cimarron Reposado last night and i really liked it, and you can’t beat the price for a good Tequila. It will be one of my regulars now.