Root Beer

Do you know that feeling when you have a creative project you want to get done, you have some energy, motivation, and time… yet all that you can seem to do is one of two things: either pace around the room daydreaming, or find house chores that you justify as important and thus acceptable to do rather than the creative project? Yep, writer’s block and ‘rational’ procrastination have been weighing me down these past few weeks. I have attempted to write this post five times. A few times I was stuck with a blank page and a lack of persuasion to get my hands typing. A few times I started, then got sidetracked and found something else to do.

I eventually managed to get some thoughts into writing, but I just hadn’t been satisfied with it. June and early July have been really rough on me, and I want to talk about that. My problem is that the writing just sounds too whiny in my head. To compromise, I’ve elected to recap briefly. Here we go: I messed up my back somehow, not sure what I did. The result was severe pain in my tailbone, the inability to sit or bend for about two weeks, and continued soreness for the following two weeks (still ongoing, but much less severe). I’m trying to provide help with a new restaurant that opened near where I live, but I already work full-time elsewhere, so I’ve hardly been helpful. I studied and successfully obtained my CBS (Certified Beer Server, the first step in the Cicerone certification program). Yay! My little brother came to visit us for a week. Lastly, we have been picking up extra shifts left and right to bolster our income. Okay, one more thing. As I type this, Angie is awkwardly kneeling on an old ottoman we have from college, staring at bug traps as they capture some ants. We have been finding roly-polies, little gross centipede things, ants, spiders, and other little intruders this season despite our clean and well-kept house. It’s driving us both insane, but perhaps Angie more so.

With that off my chest, let’s get to the fun stuff. Angie and I have a huge project on our roster for an upcoming post, but it isn’t quite coming together fast enough, so we’ve had to collect the ingredients for a few other drinks first. Peering through our Big, Beautiful Book, I found a few items that didn’t require too much searching and spending to put together. We decided to start with my favorite from the list. Enter: Root Beer.

I have been craving to get creative in the kitchen lately. This cocktail excited me because I was going to have to make caramel for the first time. To test the waters, I watched a few Youtube videos, browsed a few articles and recipes, and attempted a basic caramel. I ended up going for the simplest of my internet searches and followed Ramsy’s video here.

To my satisfaction, my first batch was delicious. The difference was that it was a hard caramel, not a soft liquid sauce that the ACB called for. After talking it over, Angie and I decided the next best thing to do would be to follow the Aviary recipe–minus the fresh vanilla beans; those suckers are expensive, so we substituted vanilla extract instead. We popped all of the spices into a spice grinder, then we mixed the sugar and spices in a medium pot. This attempt smelled incredible. The sassafras is very fragrant, and rich. I used a candy thermometer and kept running into problems with it while stirring. The end result was an acceptable but burnt caramel. It tasted okay, but not satisfactory.

Third time’s the charm, right? I hoped so because Angie and I opted to go for the actual recipe with the fresh vanilla bean. The caramel from my previous attempt seemed like great consistency, and it wasn’t too dark. That said, we just couldn’t get over the subtle, burnt flavor. Our suspicion was that the spices we added to it were somewhat burned, and the spices were much too finely ground. This time, we ground the spices a little more coarsely using a mortar and pestle. Just to add an extra curveball, I decided not to use the candy thermometer. I fought with it too much last time, so I resolved to follow my gut for round three.

This third batch of caramel went much better than the second. The candy thermometer just got in the way last time, I don’t recommend using one for this project. The coarser spices definitely gave a wonderful amount of flavor without being overbearing. The caramel was sweet and smooth, and perfect for ice cream or cocktails.

For my first time making caramel, I felt pretty damn good about my results.

Moving onto the bitters foam, Angie took a hold of the wheel. I attempted to hold the gelatin sheet for her to take a picture, but it melted so quickly in my hand, we ended up having to scrap it and start over with a new sheet. Angie got the ingredients stirred together and transferred to the whipping canister, then we chilled it and prepared our final steps.

The night of assembly fell on our pastry chef’s birthday, so we invited him over for a drink. It was also Negroni week, so there was a lot of reason to celebrate. I carbonated and completed the root of the cocktail. Then, we topped it with our bitters foam and got some nice shots. The foam was magical. It fills your mouth with this marshmallow-y, creamy flavor and mouthfeel, yet soft, bitter, and aromatic tang. Besides the experience of making the caramel, I’d say the foam was a big highlight of the experience. I want to make some more bitters foams in the near future–I have an idea for a riff I want to try.

It is more difficult to pull off high carbonation due to the egg, but I think another factor was the vanilla bean. Despite my best efforts, the vanilla bean pieces were visible in the final product of the caramel. When there is floating debris in liquids that you try to carbonate, it makes things more difficult to hold together, and you often lose carbonation due to this. I still believe we pulled off a nice, crisp carbonation, which was very pleasing.

In the end, the flavor was great. There was a subtle fizz to the drink and a delicious, robust root beer flavor from the sassafras. I’m happy with how it turned out, and I hope to dive right back in on more soon.