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Chat Thread: The Place for Those with Lax Bosses

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Frozen Penicillin sounds great but there’s no way I’m doing all that shit.
 
tiltdeac said:
To make a Penichillin, the trick is to convert the original unfrozen Penicillin into a frozen format.

When I first started this newsletter, I warned you that I’d ask you to think a lot about ice. Honestly, we’ve probably talked about ice somewhat less than I initially anticipated.

But the thing about frozen drinks is that because they are blended with ice, they are much, much more diluted than a standard stirred or shaken cocktail.

Think about how you’d make a standard shaken cocktail like a Daiquiri or a Margarita: You can successfully chill and dilute one by shaking the drink with three to five one-ish inch ice cubes. (I typically use 1.25” Tovolo silicone mold cubes.) The shake will, of course, transfer some of the ice to the drink as cold water.

But even if you shake hard and long, you’re still going to have a fair bit of ice left in the shaker after you strain out the cocktail. Most of the ice stays in the shaker — not in the drink.

A frozen blended drink, in contrast, incorporates all of the ice into the drink. And a common amount of ice to use is something like six to eight one-ish inch cubes, all of which end up incorporated into the drink.

That delivers a nice icy chill and that delightful frozen-drink slushy texture. But because it’s all blended together for slushy-like consumption, you’re also effectively giving the drink a lot more dilution.

And what that means is that you’re going to have to change the sweet/sour balance of the cocktail to stand up to the incorporation of all that ice. In particular, you’re going to have to increase the amount of sweetener relative to what you’d ordinarily use.

We saw this effect with last week’s Frozen Banana Daiquiri, which included a full ounce of banana liqueur, which is sweetened enough that it nearly functions as a banana syrup, as well as some rich simple syrup. We also saw this effect with the Frozen Margaritas we looked at last year: The basic version calls on a 1 ½ ounce portion of agave syrup, as well as 1 ½ ounce of Cointreau.

So for a Penichillin, we’re going to need to amp up the volume of sweetener, relative to a shaken Penicillin, in order to account for the increase in ice and dilution.

In a typical unfrozen Penicillin, the sweet portion is a combined ¾ ounce volume, split equally between honey syrup and ginger syrup.

For the frozen version, after multiple experiments, I ended up increasing that to a total of 1 ¼ ounces — with ¾ ounce 3:1 honey syrup and ½ ounce ginger syrup.

With the added dilution from blending, it retains basically the same taste profile and balance, which is what I was going for.

Getting to the (Ginger) Root of the Issue ​

​

The other thing I wanted from the frozen Penichillin was to get a strong kick of ginger into this cocktail from homemade ginger syrup.

Like I said earlier, much of the magic of the original drink comes from the use of fresh ginger juice, pressed straight from the root and sweetened into a syrup.

Several of the recipes you can find online call for a combined honey-ginger syrup, which is basically an infusion of ginger root into honey syrup. This doesn’t taste bad, and admittedly, it’s easier to make. But the ginger comes across as somewhat milder than with fresh ginger juice. Another method was to incorporate a sort of chopped/blended ginger paste into the drink — but at that point, why not just make sweetened ginger juice, like the original Penicillin?

I published a detailed recipe and guide to making ginger syrup back in November 2021. For a step-by-step breakdown with photos, you should refer to that.

But the basic idea is this: Put a bunch of ginger root in a blender and blend it on high until it’s almost a paste. Then scrape out the ginger paste and press it through a fine mesh strainer, releasing the juice. Then combine the juice with sugar to sweeten it.

This does require a decent blender and a strainer of some sort. For the strainer I typically use a chinois strainer — a large conical fine mesh strainer on a stand — with a pestle for pressing the ginger paste.

But last week, as I was making this drink, I found myself working in an unfamiliar kitchen, with unfamiliar tools.

There was a serviceable blender, though it didn’t attack the ginger root with quite the same gusto as the blender I use at home. And there was no chinois and no pestle.

However, I did manage to find a mesh strainer and a wooden spoon. So I took the not-quite-as-well-blended ginger root and just pressed it though the metal mesh — and it worked.



Yes, it was a little less effective than the tools I use at home — I suspect I managed to extract less juice overall than I would have from the same amount of ginger root.

But the process still only took about 10 minutes from beginning to end, and since I wasn’t trying to make drinks for a large group, there was no real issue with the smaller volume.

The lesson here is that with a bit of effort and creativity, you can make this with fairly basic kitchen equipment. And if you find yourself in an unfamiliar kitchen, don’t give up!

In the end, you’ll have delicious ginger syrup that you can use to make both an original Penicillin and a frozen Penichillin.

Salt and Spice and Everything Nice​

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I did add one final ingredient to the frozen version of this drink — salt or saline solution. It’s not strictly necessary, but it helps pull out the flavors, giving the drink a bit more pop and ensuring that the ingredients don’t get lost in the blend. As home, as I have noted before, I typically use a 20 percent saline solution from an eye dropper bottle for precision — but while away, I just used a pinch of salt.

The result is a delicious, lightly briny, spicy-sweet, icy cold, sophisticated and delicious scotch cocktail that very much does not scream Vegas pool bar — but does, in fact, taste better when consumed by a large body of water.

Penichillin​

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INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Combine all ingredients except peaty scotch in a blender.
  2. Blend on high until smooth.
  3. Pour blended contents into a rocks glass or small tumbler.
  4. Drizzle peated scotch on top.
  5. Drink through a straw.
One final note for those who want to further mod this cocktail: At times I’ve suggested that peaty scotch and smoky mezcal are often (not always) substitutable.

That’s true with this drink: If you don’t have a big peaty scotch to drizzle on top of the cocktail, you can produce a similar effect with a moderately smoky mezcal, like Del Maguey Vida.

*20 Percent Saline Solution: Combine four parts water and one part salt, by volume, in a small saucepan. Heat on medium to medium low. Do not let boil. Stir to integrate until there is no salt sludge left on the bottom of the pan. Bottle in an eye dropper, store on the counter. Keeps for many months.

**3:1 Honey Syrup: Combine three parts honey with one part water, by volume. Whisk to integrate for about 30 seconds to a minute, until fully combined. Bottle and store in the refrigerator.
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resize recipe you ass
 
tigerswood said:
We have very different tastes:

1) Kendall
2) Ally
3) Olivia (if I want to die)
4) Tunde (she's also terrifying)
5) Hannah F

Kendall and Olivia are also crazy hot and fun to look at even if they are destroying me.
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Lol yeah I tend to prefer instructors who emphasize good playlists/music, ride to the beat, and have a lot more "chill" rides. Kendall is great though, I just am rarely in the right mindset to attack rides like she does.

I used to like Ally a lot and have even ridden with her live in NYC but I found she's up there in terms of repeating the same catch phrases over and over which really annoys me (I don't mind a sign-off being the same, but if you're repeating the same stuff over and over in class it gets annoying). Robin I stopped taking for similar reasons.

I've only taken like one Olivia class, and the 5 or 6 I've taken w/Tunde have all been Low Impact so not very terrifying lol.
 
Kory said:
how much does peloton cost
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It's expensive for sure.

If you don't want to commit to buying a bike, you can get all-in-one rental ($150 setup/delivery fee up front) for $89/mo.

Otherwise you're looking at $1500-2k for the bike + accessories and then $44/mo after that for peloton membership
 
WRS said:
They’ll probably be available for free pretty soon.
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They overexpanded too fast and have had problems finding other product lines as successful as the bikes, but I'd be surprised if this is true. Currently the bikes still hold their value pretty well (seems comparable to my concept rowing machine in that regard) and are pretty nice pieces of equipment.
 
Unless that wasn't a prediction that they would be bankrupt/worthless and instead would be offering some kind of new free product line....
 
@cookoutdeac why is it when you post a pic from your phone it looks normal in proportion with the rest of the screen but when then looking at the same pic on desktop it's all #resizethepicyouass
 
Before we got a Peloton my wife was taking 4-8 rides a month at Cyclebar Winston-Salem which cost $69 for 4 rides, $119 for 8, or $169 for unlimited/mo... and I was interested in also getting more cycling cardio in (knees can't handle running, rowing got too boring), so that made the math a lot easier.
 
BarcaDeac said:
@cookoutdeac why is it when you post a pic from your phone it looks normal in proportion with the rest of the screen but when then looking at the same pic on desktop it's all #resizethepicyouass
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probably because mobile view/browser doing some work to auto-resize the high res photo you've uploaded, vs desktop displays as-is
 
I really only rotate 4 instructors.
Hannah Corbin- does most of the country stuff
Jess King- When she says push it Papi, I could climb Everest
Kendall Toole- Pop punk and hard stuff
LeAnne Hainsby- Love the accent
 
Our regulars were:

1. Jess Sims
2. Robin
3. Ally
4. Tunde
5. Olivia

But we've been back in the gym for a while now. Honestly, the $12.99/month just for the app with access to the content still seems like a really good deal.
 
TimmyClutch said:
I really only rotate 4 instructors.
Hannah Corbin- does most of the country stuff
Jess King- When she says push it Papi, I could climb Everest
Kendall Toole- Pop punk and hard stuff
LeAnne Hainsby- Love the accent
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This is a solid list. Hainsby has a lot of fervent followers on TikTok from what I can tell.

Jess King's Sweat Steady rides are my favorite kind of intense workout (vs. HIIT/Tabata type stuff).

Denis Morton does some good country rides too.
 
Deacfan2009 said:
This is a solid list. Hainsby has a lot of fervent followers on TikTok from what I can tell.

Jess King's Sweat Steady rides are my favorite kind of intense workout (vs. HIIT/Tabata type stuff).

Denis Morton does some good country rides too.
Click to expand...
Oh I forgot Jen Sherman. Wow my list is so different than other peoples.
 
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