TROUTMAN IN BLOOM
Finally some warm days are upon us & it’s time to enjoy a fresh glass of sake at the picnic tables. Troutman Open Streets have begun again, which means that every weekend, all Spring & Summer long, the road will be fully closed to cars and we’ll get spread out onto the streets. You can find all the fun events coming up at the Troutman Open Streets Instagram (think fairs, music, food, and more to look forward to).
Ps- Thank you so much to the Troutman Open Streets crew & friends for growing these gorgeous flowers in our planters and brightening up the streets <3
What is a milk punch?
To celebrate the beginning of Spring we have a new cocktail in the taproom! Troutman at Dawn is a clarified cocktail, and it’s clarified by using techniques invented in the 1700s to make British Milk Punch. The traditional way to make milk punch is to combine milk with a cocktail containing acid. The acid would then curdle the milk and those curds pull out pigment, cloudiness, as well as any harsh astringent flavors leaving a smooth, silky finish to the drink. Once the curds are filtered out, the milk punch is preserved from spoilage for months or even years if kept cool. It was a very common technique used to soften the taste of very strong alcohol. Nowadays, cocktail bars will clarify cocktails to create eccentric ingredient combinations. It also just looks really cool to drink a margarita that looks like water.
At Kato we take a more modern approach to the milk punch where we use coconut cream to achieve clarification. This keeps the drink vegan and plays well with the tropical notes highlighted in the cocktail. Troutman at Dawn also has a home-made banana oleo saccharum. Oleo saccharum is another cocktail making technique that uses sugar to extract oils from a fruit and its peel. I use the entire banana for this recipe, limiting waste of ingredients. The bananas sit in the sugar bath for an hour and then I dissolve the remaining sugar with Oicha green tea. The next step is to combine our Nama sake and banana green tea syrup with a “lime juice” solution made up of citric acid, malic acid, and water. I then pour everything into a container with coconut cream. After 45 minutes, I filter out the curds using paper towels and a collider.
Troutman at Dawn has a beautiful balance of banana and acidity. The drink is 10% ABV, so it’s the perfect afternoon refreshment. We can’t wait for you to stop in and enjoy our new Spring cocktail!
-Delaney Benstead
THANK YOU FOR CELEBRATING OUR BIRTHDAY WITH US!!
Thank you sooo much to everyone that came out in celebration of our 4th Birthday a few weeks back. Between the live music performances, food vendors, friends, and family members- we had so much fun all weekend long and are carrying the good vibes straight into year 5.
SAKE KASU’S DEBUT IN OUR LINEUP
James described it best on our instagram:
Introducing the newest take-away product at the KSW taproom! Sake Kasu is officially here!
Sake kasu, sometimes called sake lees, is the rice solids which are pressed out at the end of the brewing process. Thanks to the leftover yeast and enzymes, this dense fermented rice paste has a lightly fruity and funky flavor profile.
It’s often used in meals and marinades, but also has many more creative applications like home fermentation projects, skincare, baking, even cocktails. Longtime followers will remember Delaney's Orange Moon cocktail–an orange-creamsicle sake cocktail which incorporated kasu for a velvety and creamy mouthfeel–or James’ fermented hot sauce which used kasu as the fermentation starter. We’ll feature more recipes and projects coming soon, so stay tuned for that and in the meantime let us know what you’ll be making!
-James Ordway
PS- We’re down to the last bottles of our Anniversary 4 release, a floral sichuan-infused sake. Come by the taproom if you’d like one for yourself- they’re not sold anywhere else!