Cooking with apple brandy - Chicken Chasseur

Hunter's Chicken might be a bit old fashioned for a lot of people, but I think its a delicious dish and ideal for the damp chilly times of year. Alcohol is used sparingly in this dish - normally some calvados and white wine.

Take your whole chicken and de-bone. I give the wings to the dogs. The carcass goes to stock. Plain flour the legs and breasts. Hot pan, olive oil, brown the chicken.

Meanwhile, finely chop a shallot and one red pepper. In a hot pan cook with a little olive oil until the shallot bits are transparent. Add two tbsps of apple brandy and reduce to a syrup, then add a finger of Dr J's Gin and reduce to a syrup. Take off the heat of your chicken bits aren't brown next.

When the chicken is browned add it to the shallots etc, mix through, had a handful of finely chopped tarragon, a chicken stock cub (crumbled) and 500ml of passata. Cook on a low heat for 10 minutes and serve with sauteed spuds and steam seasonal veg'. Lovely.

Apple Brandy is here!

Good morning!

We have just completed the first batch of this year's apple brandy. 

Last year's was a true delight and, I must say, I had more than a little trepidation that with year to year crop variations we might not fly so high. That said, this years crops - as I am sure you will know - have been quite incredible - with so many varieties we were able to refine even on last year's.

Distilled five times. The breadth of apple notes, with layers from caramelised apple tart through to fresh crisp skins punching through a golden rounded finish.  A true delight!

I was a little decadent yesterday with my sauce for my belly of pork: 500ml cider, reduced to syrup, 500ml cox apple juice, reduced to a syrup, 250ml double cream, thicken, 50ml of apple brandy, vapour off and finished with some pork juices.... well that puts me into a middle-distance trance!

If you fancy a super smooth treat its here.

Cheers!

J 

Christmas Spirit is here!

It is fast approaching that time of year again. Personally I love it. Seasonality is often forgotten and comes with so many delights - our Christmas Spirit is one of them!

It starts life as our Old Salt Rum, made from black-strap molasses, fermented for about 12 days and distilled twice in our 200L copper pot stills; discarding the heads and tails as we go.

Next we infuse with raisins, sultanas, freshly split Indian vanilla pods, freshly pared citrus zests, star anise, cardamom and pixie dust. Leave for a good old while and then bottle.

Its a superb sip, complex, layered and fun; tastes pretty much like a liquid Christmas Pud. I enjoy it on its own, but naturally goes well with pud or cheese course. No finer thing to crack open on the day!

More info is lurking here!

Apple brandy in a couple of days - yippee!

Old Salt Rum smoked Salmon

As the garden party season swings into high summer time for the essential hot smoked salmon.

Kicked off with 3kg of salmon fillet (serves 10) from the superb Colin at Fish in Newmarket.

My cure - 250ml Old Salt Rum, 1kg of Rock Salt and 300g of dark molasses. Smear the fillets in the mix and leave covered in the fridge for 24 hours.

Next on our cheap BBQ waited until the char' was white and flame less. Dipped a couple of good slabs of apple wood in water and placed on the cinders. Then cover loosely with foil to allow the smoke the circulate. I placed the salmon on a disposable aluminium tray I had pierced lots of holes in with a knife.

Smelt fantastic. The damp generates lots of smoke! So beware! Two hours did the job, with lots of checking to make sure there was lots of smoke, but no flames!

Looks superb and smells better. Avoided a sneaky pick for breakfast. Roll on this evening!

Cooking with Dr J's Gin

Cooking is one of my passions.

This is a quick-ish little number that is delish. Pan-seared chicken breast with a Dr J's Gin, leak, mushroom, blue cheese and tarragon sauce, served with new potatoes and whatever good veg you have to hand.

The sauce takes about 30 mins so kick off with that.

Sauce: hot pan add good butter - 2 tbsp - two thinly sliced field mushrooms and a thinly sliced stalk of a leak plus a good grind of fresh black pepper. Cook until the leak is nearly transparent and has unravelled. Next in goes a third to half a bottle of Dr J's Gin, reduce to a syrup. Add a pint of chicken stock, reduce to a third. Add a heap tsp of Dijon mustard, stir and add 50g of your favourite blue cheese. Cropwell is always good. Stir and add 200ml of double cream. Bring to a simmer. Take off the heat. Sprinkle on a tbsp of finely chopped tarragon and cover. Warm through again prior to serving.




Make a paste for the chicken breasts: in a m&p grind up 1 heap tsp of fennel and half a chicken stock cube. Empty into a bowl, add 1 tsp of honey, 1 tbsp of olive oil and a 1/2 tsp of finely chopped rosemary. Blend together and coat the chicken breasts with this.

In a hot pan sear skin side down for 90 seconds, flip over and place the pan in the medium oven for 12 minutes. Leave the chicken rest for 5 minutes before serving.

Damn delish.

Apple port

Well it has been full on. Never a bad thing to have to contend with. So a big excuse me, going to make a special effort to keep blogging!

One idea we have recently been working on is an apple port - probably cause all sorts of issues with EC naming, but it helps communicate what it is. To all you port aficionados out there the aim was to make something similar, but using the delish English apple in its many guises.

Port - wine fortified with brandy and some spices. So apple port - take a good still cider and fortify with our five times distilled apple brandy. The result: something superb, midway between a sherry and a port. A little more work and we hope to have it on sale in July. Ideal as either an aperitif or a digestif.

Take a leaf out of Marco Pierre Whites books I recently used it to make a spectacular sauce for belly of pork: 500ml of apple port, reduce to a syrup, not a caramel, 500ml of fresh apple juice, reduce to a syrup, double cream to thicken to taste, 50ml of apple brandy, juices from the pork belly, thicken slightly and serve over the sliced rested pork belly.... mmmm, wrong time of day to be recalling that!

Dr J's Gin

Now summer is here (ha ha), it is gin time again and what a lovely time that is. As you may know our Dr J's Gin begins life from our English Spirit and then we pack in varieties of coriander, juniper berries, macadamia nuts, fresh zests and some magic. Our copper pot stills work their wonders and out pops our Dr J's at about 80.5% ABV. We cut back to 45% to ensure in the glass experience of one to one with your chosen mixer is the perfect expression of our gin.

We are asked a lot what is the best mixer. Well, never been a big fan of mixers as they vary so much and when you have spent an immense amount of time and effort creating your spirit the last thing you want to do is contaminate it with something.... shall we say... sub-standard. With this in mind, we set out to produce a gin that was perfect when served very simply over crushed ice - one to one. If you want a twist then set aside all your rinds and zests and do this:

Two fingers crushed ice, two to three salted capers (not the brine but the salt crystal version) and two fingers of Dr J's Gin. Sip and enjoy. Repeat ad libidum.

Nano still

We have been wittering on for some time about the delights of our simple 1L copper pot "nano" still and the delights of knocking out your own drop of spirit whilst you preparing and eat your evening meal.

Nothing could be simpler than our little gem.

Easiest is to start with low quality wine - red or white it does not matter.

Cider makes Calvados or Apple Brandy, fruit wines make eau de vie and unhopped beer makes whisky.

Put a whole bottle (75cl - 750ml) in the pot. Place the pot on a hob and attached the head. Seal the rim of the head where it meets the pot with thick flour and water paste. Light/switch on the hob on a medium heat.

Plug the two holes of the cooler that are not connected to the coil. This is best done with candle wax.

Attach the curvy arm to the cooler. The cooler should not be on the hob.

Fill the cooler with cold water. Light the hob and bring the pot to the boil. Should take 10-20 mins. The first vapours off are called heads and you don't want them so discard the first 30ml (an egg cup full), next collect the following 125ml - this is called the heart. Add to this about an egg cup of water and you'll have about 150-160ml of ca 40% spirit - in this case a brandy. Sip and enjoy!

It is legal to own your own personal still in the UK, provided it is 4L or less in size and you register with the HMRC (start here)

You can buy one of these little gems from our online shop too.

Sambuca

By popular demand we have created a sambuca and as is typical for us, is probably the only one made in the UK!  Instead of taking a maceration approach we have gone ginning: redistilling or beautifully smooth English Spirit in the presence of star anise and then combining with English elderflower eau de vie and sugar. Simply overly drinkable!  On sale in our shop today.

Our flag arrives

With a lot of people saying we drove passed and missed you, we thought a could not be missed sign was needed. So we had a flag made and the next challenge is keeping it upright!

A day of two halves

A crisp drive in this morning in the returned minus three.  Next up a train ride to London and our tasting at Fortnum and Masons....

Snow again ah!!

J

Just when we thought we had seen the last of this... global warming.... anyway it takes forever for stills to come up to temperature when we have an ambient of about zero. Normally, we kick off at about 0630 with first product off at about 0930, but today it was closer to 11 before the heads made their appearance. Keep smiling!

Expedition Number 1 is here

Possibly the finest malt spirit.  Solely made with only English malt - no other grains.  We are so pleased with this sip.  On sale tomorrow. First batch 75 bottles.

Brentwood Centre Food & Craft Show

It is nippy outside today, but we'll worth a visit as we are tasting our English Grappa: crammed full of flavour!

New molasses pump bit arrives

I know it is rather mundane, but how can you not feel impressed by this bit of kit? May have to start taking down old Tonker toys on eBay!

Minus three is back!

Just when we thought it was over. Oh well best keep warm making grappa, carrot eau de vie and vodka today

Grappa a success

Distilling the Wine Lees was not straight forward. Two goes needed. Stacked full of long penetrating heads and tails, but the good news was - like a tardis - absolutely rammed with flavour! Really looking forward to showing this at our tastings! Will be in our web shop from Monday. morn.

Wine Lees

Unusual for us to have a go at something different. Wine lees it is then! The bit left over at the bottom of the tank after wine fermentation. Stacked full of goodies and also not so goodies. First off, it was a nightmare to move off the van as it was knackered forklift day - hand-balling 1000L plus is a .... painstaking task. Next up filtering was glacial. Then an epiphany that we'll have to keep to ourselves!

The product flew of the still at 60%+ packed full of super grapey notes, honey, fennel and more. Something we'll certainly being doing more of! Should be in our shop from Monday morn!

At the same time we were running carrot ead de vie. May sound a little wacky, but delish! Fresh sweet carrot on the nose, creamy sweetness with more unravelled layers on the palate and a light sweet rounded brandy finish. Yum!

New challenge wine lees

A new challenge for us at the start of this coming week - the distillation of wine lees. These are the waste product of the fermentation of wine. The bit at the bottom of the vat that contains a lot of wine but also a lot of yeast debris.

The challenge actually began as soon as the lees arrived: our forklift immobiliser broke so we had to find a way of removing over a tonne of product without it. The ramp idea failed after several goes and eventually a drain pipe and hand-balling proved the solution!

Live and learn!

The thaw

Thankfully it looks like the current stint of minus this and more minus that is swapped for lots of warmish rain. Keeping ourselves warm with the activity of exposing most things to oak!

Icicles and two frozen coolers!

You know you are up against it when the first thing you see of a morning are icicles that are more like stalactites right out side your door!

The distillery was simmering at minus six with our condensers frozen solid! All that was missing was a snow angel, but not for long:

Oh so snowy

A drive in through Narnia this morning and now its a bit of a rum day (ha ha). Hopefully as the weather improves so will the "jokes".

The big freeze

Its so British to be overly occupied with the weather, but we do have a lot of it! (Not sure if that makes much sense or indeed is valid as a distinction from any other country!)

This week has had its challenges with temperatures as low as minus 12 pipes froze all over the place.

Water is very important to use. We use purified water in our products and standard water for cooling. With froze pipes cooling become an issue. Even when its about minus 4.5 for most of the day that big blanket of cold air is not enough to cool one of our condensing worms, which is having to strip out the ca 15kw of energy that's gone into one of our pot stills. It makes for a "constant" day having to scoop out hot water and rally round to find cold water the keep the condenser condensing!

That said, with the cyan blue skies and the crisp hoarse frost it was a beautiful day!

Winter has arrived

A nice minus 9 on the drive in this morning.

Thankfully its nearly tropical at the distillery at a balmy minus 8

Rum and vodka on and the place smells mouth watering!

Our barrels have arrived

Another snowy day and a bone-penetrating -1.5 C, but spirits (no pun intended) lifted high with the first delivery of our barrels. Non-stop whiskey production for here on in! Plus Old Salt Rum and of course 2013 Christmas Spirit to name just three!

That said tomorrow's a big day with the arrival of Concrete Cow Breweries wort for malt production!

The best use for heads and tails

Another crisp start to the day. As you know we don't use heads or tails in our products, but we do use them.....
... to heat our visitors centre.

Snowy start to the week

Up until a few days I go we were enjoying the near balmy January and now the snap has arrived.

A part from the odd frozen hose we are trucking on nicely with vodka and malt running today and rum set for tomorrow. The real focus is the childlike angst of waiting for our oak barrels to arrive. Hopefully this afternoon, but maybe the snow will slow things down. Up to 4 inches expected here before 9pm tonight. Wrap up warm and I strongly suggest a good glass of Old Salt Rum to warm the cockles and draw your mind to a brief spot of day dreaming in a warm westerly direction.

Year 2 ding ding

Our second year of production has commenced and boy it has been a busy one. Who ever said January was a slow time for spirits might have been looking at the wrong spirit!

The end of year festivities did not take their toll.

One of the beautiful by-products of our Old Salt Rum was it finding its way into some superb mince pies. That said the mere thought of a mince pie any time during the next ten months does make my tummy knot up.

It has been a malt and rum mad start to the year. Our first batch of malt spirit never made it into oak as everyone thought is was rather spot on with out modification. So this batch is to be smuggled past the cunning eyes of our patrons and casked-off next week.

So too Old Salt Rum will find its way to oak along with this year's Christmas Spirit (Easter Eggs in summer etc), which we are making this month with even more bells and whistles than version 1 - not a single bottle remains!

Our New Year's resolution is Newsletters! So you don't have to suffer struggling through the blog!

Happy New Years everyone.