The saffron robes of Buddhist monks hint at the metaphysical attributes of this flower. There is a little saffron hiding in Benedictine and many other monkish delights as well. It’s a key flavor in such things as Old Raj Gin. It has three sets of chromosomes, adding to the inherent strangeness of this magical spice. ![]() It can only propagate with human help, which has been given gladly for millenia in return for its flavor and color. ![]() Likely a mutant that was never meant to thrive, this delicate crocus is sterile and cannot reproduce by seed. Speaking of saffron, it has many strange properties. Strega’s yellow color and bitter-sweet flavor (as well as its witchy name) make it an intriguing choice for spell work. In The Drunken Botanist, herbalist and author Amy Stewart suspects that the mysterious liqueur Strega (“witch” in Italian), known for its saffron content, has a good deal of angelica in it. It is long-held to have digestive properties, but just don’t go hunting for it yourself in the woods or you might end up with more than a tummy ache. Its earthy-sweet flavor adds a bottom note to many gins, and also provides a major flavor of the medicinal-tasting bartender favorites such as Fernet Branca and Chartreuse. Let us begin with angelica, a member of the same family as both carrots and hemlock. Join Kevin Carlow and Reverend Erik on Friday, October 29th, at 6pm Pacific for a look at some spooky Halloween cocktails! So let’s ‘double, double toil and trouble’ ourselves with some booze alchemy. In a lot of ways, modern craft bartending is a continuation of what healers, alchemists, and other “wise people” have been doing for centuries. This time we had much more success! Although there was still a bit of blurring between the layers, our alchemical lemonade looked just as fantastic as we had hoped.When I was just a baby esoteric type, I would frequent herbal shops to make homemade remedies-sorry to anyone who partook of one of those back in the day I had no idea what I was doing, but at least I didn’t charge! Decades later, my study of cocktail and spirit history (the liquid kind, in this case) has me creating far more potent and delicious concoctions. With the limited amount of ingredients we had left, we decided to try again, this time pouring the most dense lawyer first and working our way to the lighter layer. After a bit of puzzling over our recipe, we realized that we had been pouring the more dense layers on top of the lighter layer, causing the colors to blend. Like a good alchemist, we persisted despite our first failure. However, we quickly realized something was wrong – our beautiful alchemical lemonade looked much more like a watered down coke. We poured each colorful layer over the back of a spoon into a cup of ice, which was supposed to slow the flow and encourage the lemonade to settle into neat layers. Once we had all the parts ready, we began mixing each layer separately for assembly. This allowed us to get the most juice possible out of our precious lemons. Before cutting and juicing the lemons, we applied gentle pressure to the fruit and rolled it back and forth on the counter. Our next step was getting the lemon juice. We had a box of food coloring, but there was only red, yellow, green, and blue – no orange! We experimented with different amounts of red and yellow food coloring until we found just the right amount: one drop of red per every three drops of yellow. Our first challenge was how to dye each of the five layers to get a rainbow. Just like the alchemists who were working with rare, expensive, precious metals, our supplies were limited and valuable. ![]() When we started, we knew we had to be careful because we only had two lemons and one cup of sugar. We gathered the supplies, headed over to the staff kitchen, and set out to make our very own alchemical lemonade! Whenever I saw this challenging recipe for rainbow lemonade, I knew I just had to test my alchemical skills. Recently, I visited Princeton University’s exhibit on alchemy and learned all about how alchemists each had their own way of documenting and encoding their processes. The Ye Olde Mysterious Rainbow Elixir of LYFE experiment was carried out by August Roberts, Princeton University freshman, budding alchemist, and intern extraordinaire. But honestly, that’s in keeping with the history of alchemy! Spoiler alert: we had a MAJOR fail the first time. ![]() You can stop reading here, or continue to see how the experiment went for us. Here’s the Ye Older Elixir of LYFE recipe (including a legend to held you decode it)! The original recipe can be found here, on Andrea Hawksley’s blog. We’re calling it “Ye Olde Mysterious Rainbow Elixir of LYFE.” We loved the concept of ingredients disguised as animals and secret recipes, so we put together a little alchemy experiment of our own. , 1624And now…how about an alchemy challenge of your very own?
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