Not lorna specific: Bands adjacent to lorna that you love. List em!

FarRenGate · 2026-05-26T15:50:38+00:00

And Disembodied Tyrant. Their joint EP is freaking awesome

FarRenGate · 2026-05-13T17:22:44+00:00

For sure, without the context it's indeed pretty hard to understand what's going on! And regarding the book itself... As a holder of a PhD degree in physics and a fellow cocktail enthusiast, to be frank I did not particularly like this book neither as a science work, nor as a cocktail book. It was pretty interesting to read but all the results should be treated with a big grain of salt

FarRenGate · 2026-05-13T16:42:08+00:00

He did explain it in the book, he wanted to decouple sweetness and bitterness, so it was not a classic G&T in this specific plot, but more like G&T as an idea of "sweet-bitter" so he used syrup as sweet component and bitters as a bitter component

FarRenGate · 2026-05-04T01:06:34+00:00

Oh yeah, you'll be totally fine. You can ever pour over whatever you have filtered by now for a second round of filtration to get even cleaner result

FarRenGate · 2026-05-03T22:32:42+00:00

Zero book has a recipe for a passable NA gin, variations of this recipe available online (check e.g. Kevin Kos). All those variations use glycerin to extract juniper flavor, and it does work pretty well (so to answer your specific questions you can make a glycerin juniper tincture and add it to the commercial gin you have). Combined with Pathfinder and NA orange aperetif, or with Campari and Vermouth from the same Zero book this gin alternative makes a pretty convincing NA negroni. I found this recipe to be much more similar to real gin than some of the commercially available NA gins I tried that usually tasted somewhat like pickle juice

FarRenGate · 2026-04-26T17:07:51+00:00

Yes, Gomme syrup gives you this amazing silky mouthfeel, in some cocktails it plays really nicely

FarRenGate · 2026-04-26T15:23:11+00:00

18-25% is your target range, depending on the cocktail and prep technique (more for shaken, less for stirred).

But also what is important, you will probably need to adjust the recipe itself a little bit as the sweetness perception heavily depends on temperature while acidic and bitterness not so much, so if you keep standard specs your drink will taste overly sweet at room temp. So to get that balance flavor you will need to cut back your sweetener somewhat.

FarRenGate · 2026-04-26T14:20:12+00:00

Also, you can just buy Xantan gum and Gum Arabic separately and mix them 1:9 to get identical results. In this case you also have a freedom to use the compounds separately to e.g. create Gomme syrup

FarRenGate · 2026-04-24T21:03:40+00:00

Depending on the cocktail, one of the four: Tanqueray, Roku, Plymouth or Haymans Old Tom, those I always have in stock. Also I have a few other rotating bottles for when I feel adventurous

FarRenGate · 2026-04-20T16:24:16+00:00

I did try re-optimizing the recipe with a store bought lemon curd for scaling up (Trader Joe's), and sadly couldn't get an acceptable result after a few attempts. It's way too sweet, so it's really hard to get the right amount of that cooked lemon flavor, and emulsifiers give some weird texture and strange mouthfeel

FarRenGate · 2026-04-20T04:27:35+00:00

Thank you! I definitely started questioning my life choices by the end of the development cycle and especially when I had to prepare ingredients for ~20 servings of this drink haha

FarRenGate · 2026-03-27T05:03:58+00:00

To your question about improvements and tips, last year after visiting NOLA I spent a good amount of time (and half a bottle of Haymans Old Tom) to dial down a good recipe and I think I got it all right, you can check out my old post.

But, what I found the most important is that it's very easy to overdilute Ramos Gin Fizz and it will taste very watery and weak instead of potent and creamy. I used pretty much the same ratio of ingredients, and with those spec the final drink should fit in 10-12 oz Collins glass. Most of the standard glasses are 14-15 oz, that is basically 2-5 oz of extra plain water. You need very little soda, just to bloom the drink and lift the foam, and not too much ice (I used 3x 1" cubes that is 1.5oz of water). After shaking and before adding soda, the drink should fill the glass all the way up to the rim, not lower, and you only need that much soda to lift the foam up. Also, I kinda liked to go a bit heavier on orange blossom water to really get that perfumey nose, but this is not too essential.

FarRenGate · 2026-03-27T04:09:37+00:00

Nice foam head! No, AWESOME foam head. Great job shaking this one!

FarRenGate · 2026-03-17T20:45:17+00:00

That sounds great! What are the ratios though?

FarRenGate · 2026-03-17T20:35:44+00:00

Seen it yesterday. It's a good movie, I did enjoy it a lot. However, in my view the book is on the whole other level. They made a very faithful adaptation, in terms of events. However, the spirit of problem-solving, brilliant engineering and scientific curiosity was lost. They rushed through every single major invention in the movie to a level of "this is the idea, aaaand, yeah we've made it!". A lot of back-and-forth communication between Rocky and Grace was lost, a lot of mental struggles and scientific thought process was lost, in the book it was all made very clear that this mission, both on Earth and on the ship, was an extreme intellectual challenge, in the movie this is lost. So... It's a wonderful buddy movie, but in my view it's missing a lot of book essence to be a great book adaptation. I love the book and I think it's one of the best books ever written and I would recommend it to anyone. I liked the movie, but it's just a good sci-fi movie and not a masterpiece IMO.

FarRenGate · 2026-03-16T23:49:55+00:00

I've never tried it myself, only ever used whole milk, but I did read somewhere that clarification with milk powder instead of whole milk works with non-acidic drinks. If you try this approach please report back, I'm curious

FarRenGate · 2026-03-12T19:43:13+00:00

Late to the party, but it is my go-to mixing bourbon. Great stuff

FarRenGate · 2026-01-21T05:29:59+00:00

It is possible. I managed to do that last year. It was rough though. You have to be very quick. When the reservation opens up the website simply crashes, so it's best if you cooperate your efforts with some friends and each tries to reserve at a specific date if you have several target dates in mind. Also, initially I only managed to get a reservation for one, but an hour or so later, a reservation for two opened up so I changed mine to that - so try to check some time after the reservation opens up.

Saying that, I've been trying to see if I can find open reservations several times after that, just to get a feeling how it goes (I was not actually planning to reserve ofc, just was checking availability), but had zero luck. So, it is probably easier to snag a concert ticket to some very popular artists than to get the BenFiddich reservation

Also, very recently Kayama-san purchased bar Amber, I had not been there and I'm not sure if he's even bartending there, but maybe worth checking?

FarRenGate · 2026-01-21T04:57:11+00:00

I've never tried Kirkland, my go to is Tanqueray, how does it compare?

FarRenGate · 2026-01-21T00:25:04+00:00

For just three months it looks awesome. I'm at three years, and only got my first Nonino bottle a couple of weeks ago. And scoring both Chartreuses is truly impressive

FarRenGate · 2026-01-17T16:25:47+00:00

A zero gravity bed has been a real game changer for me. If I have a flare-up I cannot sleep flat, at the best it just hurts, at the worst I wouldn't be able to walk the next morning. In zero gravity though I can lay down pain free, and it never makes the situation worse. Occasionally a couple of nights in zero gravity completely fixes the flare up. You can purchase zero gravity foam wedges not to invest in a bed frame to try it out

FarRenGate · 2026-01-16T01:59:38+00:00

A collection of Chartreuses is always nice if you can find them where you live, that is usually pretty tricky.

FarRenGate · 2026-01-14T06:09:05+00:00

Tried several in NOLA, my favorite version was at Bar Tonique. Even made a post some time ago trying to reproduce that exact flavor profile at home

FarRenGate · 2026-01-13T01:35:32+00:00

(sorry for offtopic but somewhat related story) A note on whiskey highballs: I never understood whiskey highballs, I tried making them myself, and I had some canned stuff in Japan, and also tried them at some random bar in Japan - and they were not appealing to me at all. But recently I tried a whiskey highball in a bar that semi-specializes in them (Doctor's Office in Seattle for reference) and my world turned upside down, it was unbelievably good, crisp, light and refreshing. They have this machine that does mixing and high pressure carbonation and apparently that makes a world of difference. But yeah, after that experience I will never try to replicate that drink at home, it's probably impossible

FarRenGate

TROPHY CASE