Continuing education (a sticky situation)
Making maple syrup the low-tech way; tasting Third Wave chocolates with Cinchona; releasing orange stout beer ice cream; searching for good coffee at DIA; sampling N/A bevs + more food & drink news
I went to the woods because I wished to make maple syrup. That, and I was invited by good friends in Wisconsin who have sugar maples strewn across their riverside acreage. They offered to show me their down-and-dirty, small-batch, backyard methods for concentrating the tree sap/sugar water. Bonus: they have a tiny house for me to reside in for an overlapping personal writer’s retreat.
I learn that making maple by their method is mostly about tending to a fire all day, so there’s an equal part lumberjacking and wood gathering involved. That is in between long periods of waiting — until the fire needs more fuel, or the pot requires more maple water as it reduces. A lot of people will drink beer and chill with friends, and I do a little of that, too. But otherwise I squeeze in writing sessions on my laptop to keep an eye on everything.
Now you can get nerdy and pretty scientific when making maple syrup, studying informational sites like this one from respective agricultural extensions in states that grow the trees. Like you want to tap trees with the right diameter and such. I did none of this, because my friends had already studied up with library books and online resources and over the past few years tinkered and developed the ways that work for them and their schedules. So I got a free education by being their grunt over the course of 48 hours.
The overview: Sugar maple water requires around 40 gallons to make a single gallon of syrup. As it drips from the tree taps, it’s only around 2% sugar to 98% water. You can drink it like that for some antioxidants and electrolytes, though a boil is recommended first to kill bacteria. It tastes just faintly sweet, but refreshing. The freeze-thaw cycle (below freezing by night and above by day) is what makes sap run, so like cherry blossom season and many other seasonal transitions elsewhere, local weather conditions dictate good and bad sap days. Where I am in Wisconsin, outside Racine, March is maple time generally. On a good day, my friends will collect 3-4 gallons off a single tree.
Having kept bees for several years (many years ago now), I liken draining some sap off a tree to robbing some honey from the hive without putting the bees at risk of starvation during winter. Basically there’s enough for you to take and the tree without causing it harm. Think of giving blood. My friends say their finished syrup tends to grow darker as the month matures, starting rather light and thin (which I taste, detecting a bright cotton candy finish) and finishing rather dark and deep (which I’ll get to below).
Anyway, back to the process, we use a Solo Stove with a custom grill grate placed on top. We pour from food grade plastic buckets (which they get free from the bakery of a local grocery store by asking; they’re used icing buckets and such) into a wide hotel pan they bought for the purpose of maple syrup alone. We never let the water get too low in the pan for fear of scorching it and creating off flavors; so you can’t ignore the stove for too long. (I do sample one of their slightly burnt batches and I actually appreciate the flavor, which grows a little bitter. It would be good as a cocktail ingredient, coffee adjunct and possibly in a baking application I suspect.) We skim bubbly foam off the top as failing to do so reduces surface area for the boil. They don’t like to kill the boil by adding cold water, so we pre-heat the sap indoors on their wood burning stove (which partly heats their home) and transfer it out as needed.
When we finally have the 32 gallons we begin with down to under a gallon, nearing the finish line, we bring it inside to the stove to finish under more careful conditions. Their water boils at 212 degrees, and the rule of thumb for them is 7 degrees above that is when the syrup is done. So a thermometer is the one kitchen tool they do use to be precise. You also know because a froth forms and begins to rise, like when making pasta and the starchy water can boil over. Before this happens you pull the syrup. Also your nose will tell you it’s time, as your hard work morphs from water finally into the syrup you seek, smelling like hot pancakes drenched in the good stuff.
Leave the room and return and the whole house smells like a confectionery, with sugar-laced air. Less intense than when they’re making waffle cones at an ice cream shop, but pungent enough to mesmerize your senses and draw you to the stove and the pot of dark broth atop it. I take my first taste, blowing on the spoon so I don’t burn my mouth, then sipping loudly to cool the liquid with some air. Holy shit. It tastes woodsy, maybe from all the smoke passing by the pan for so long. But also wood-influenced like an aged whiskey. I get a little caramel (sugars caramelizing at the pan bottom I presume) and the pure maple flavor that distinguishes the good stuff from the fake stuff at the store made with corn syrup and whatnot. It tickles something primitive in my brain and feels primal if that makes sense. It’s just damn good syrup and because of all our labor it takes on a gigantic sense of importance and significance and surely tastes better because we imagine it does and we want it to. If it’s the best I’ve ever had I know that’s an emotional call, and I don’t care.
My friends prep me a few glass jars that we measure out to 3.4 ounces each to get on my carry-on for my flights home. It’s not much, and neither is their few quarts. But we all will treasure it, ration it, share little tastes of it with friends, and tell our stories. Like many traditions of communion, making maple draws us around a fire, requires some sacrifice and commands reverent attention. I dig it. And I’ll value the precious substance forevermore when I drizzle it onto my plate, just like honey, giving gratitude for the high energy exchange it entails. A sweet tradeoff.
2nd Josh & John’s ice cream collab flavor releases Friday
Last week’s Blueberry Gooey Buttercake Collaboration Series Josh & John’s ice cream flavor in partnership with Red Gravy sold out in just a day. So again, don’t snooze if you want to catch this week’s release on Friday of our second (very) limited release flavor: Orange is the New Stout in partnership with Goat Patch Brewing.
Yes: a beer ice cream. I personally reduced a case of the brewery’s mandarin orange-infused, bourbon barrel-aged stout down into a thin syrup to add to Josh & John’s signature ice cream base. While the beer hits at 10% ABV, the alcohol has cooked out of the ice cream, but the wonderful stout flavor remains. And the ice cream mixologists at J&J’s enhanced the citrus and whiskey notes with tiny additions of orange and whiskey extracts as well. We’re pleased with the result, and we’re confident you will be, too. Cheers (and bon appétit)!
*Relatedly: Josh & John’s new Creekwalk location grand opens April 4 at 120 E. Cheyenne Road. (So when that line downtown grows too long this summer, just head south down the road.)
The bougiest hot chocolates
To date, one of Side Dish’s most widely read single newsletters kicked off with a feature on Third Wave Chocolate Co., the Springs’ sole bean to bar cacao company. (I mean yeah, because everyone loves chocolate, duh.) I mentioned in that writeup how Third Wave is based out of Provision Bread, where they’re partly collaborating with fellow maker (of superb coffee drinks) Cinchona Coffee.
What that looks like currently is Cinchona’s owner Shepherd Combs is buying Third Wave owner Joel Bogdanoff’s single-origin, fair trade, organic chocolates and utilizing them in rotating hot chocolate specials as well as Cinchona’s mocha. The drinks rate epic. So, of course, I wanted to dive in further and nerd out with Combs and Bogdanoff, who graciously offered to host Ryan and I for an experimental tasting for Tap&Table. Here’s the result, which features a walk through six wild sips featuring three different international chocolates treated two ways each; some of our signature blunders (hey, we wear them on our sleeves); and a spontaneous field trip in the end to further play and ultimately boozify some chocolate with our bartender pals. Enjoy!
C is for coffee (and airport gates)
I’m writing most of this newsletter from out of town this week. On my way out on Southwest Airlines, I had a short stopover at DIA around 7 a.m. Tuesday. I needed coffee and went searching with the limited time I had. I scanned DIA’s online list of options (easy to find with a single search, thanks), quickly ruling out McDonald’s, Peet’s, Starbucks and some illy machines I walk past in search of something local. Aviano, a fine, third-wave Denver/Boulder brand with a few chic locations, caught my eye. Unfortunately, it caught many other travelers’ eyes too, and I found a long line that wasn’t moving quickly at all, seemingly in need of another barista and/or cashier. I worried about time, so I scuttled the mission. Damn.
Next, I was close to the Barista Bot, so I headed that way, figuring the novelty factor would make it fun. But when I get there, operator Davion Brown (there is a human behind the bot!) is just getting set up and says he needs about 20 minutes to stock up the unit (which I’m told is six months old at DIA). I ask what coffee they use and he says Harmony medium roast, which I find online as a nice Coda Coffee product, locally roasted. Sounds great, but again I’m low on time to wait, so I file this one for the future (since we’re talking robots).
Which leads me finally to a short line at Teatulia, a Denver-based organic tea importer most notably. They’re serving Four Leaf Roasters coffee, which is almost deceptively (read: quite wisely) packaged and branded to look like a boutique craft coffee shop product; but it’s actually a Shamrock Foods item. The humans here (no bots) aren’t pulling shots as much as punching buttons for espresso, but they’ve got giant carafes of batch brew ready-to-go for fast service. The coffee’s respectably good and well-priced for captive audience fare at $3.95 for a 20-ounce drip (or $5.35 for a proportionate Americano, which I usually go for). So now you know in case you go, and like me, tend to fly Southwest and regularly get routed through DIA via a Springs push-off. (If hungry, for example, Michelin-awarded Mister Oso operates a kiosk next to Aviano Coffee. I’ll be back.)
Bites & Bits
• A new Italian concept named Oro has been announced to replace what was most recently Springs Orleans at the Mining Exchange Hotel. On Oro’s website, it promotes steaks, hand-made pasta and locally-sourced ingredients (a factor I will want to know much more about if they stick to their word on it). I didn’t receive the press release that Springs Magazine quotes from in this writeup, where author Jeremy Jones notes restaurant conception by Portland-based Giant Squid Ink; menu development by James Beard Award nominated Chef Aaron Barnett; wine curation by another James Beard Award nominee (this time a semifinalist); and menu items like traditional pasta plates and Colorado lamb and bison (okay, there’s some local ingredients details).
• Curious Elixirs, a one-time Tap&Table sponsor and maker of booze-free cocktails with healthful ingredients like adaptogens and such, announced a new product named Curious Zero. It’s a Lion’s Mane Lager, brewed with Yakima hops and barley and boosted with apple, lime, sea salt, maca root and the shrooms, which are purported to improve cognitive function and have many other benefits in the body. In a press release, the company says, “this is the first zero-proof craft beer with adaptogens to boost body and brain.” The products aren’t cheap (at $79/12 pack), but compared to the price of both cocktails and mocktails when dining out, it’s comparable if not slightly more affordable drink-for-drink. Though the company has no local ties, I’ve just been a fan since I first tried their products, and they’re easily available online.
• In other N/A beverage news this week, I received a sample case of deadless sparkling adaptogenic elixirs, billed as “a healthier way to party.” First observation: It would seem based on the quick success of Liquid Death, that marketing around mortality is a killer idea. (See what I did there?) What to know about this line of drinks: they’re made with ashwagandha, lion’s mane mushrooms, L-Theanine and Rhodiola Rosea, each with a purported property of body and brain boosting. Per can, there’s only 2 grams of sugar and 15 calories from a touch of blue agave syrup and natural juices. The Citrus Sinner flavor is the only one to have caffeine, extracted from green tea and totally 50 mg, so about a cup of coffee. (They recommend you only have four cans inside of 24 hours or else your head might explode — not true! The head exploding part, that is. Just seeing if you’re still with me, here.) Anyway, similar to many energy drinks, I do find a bit of a sweet tart like finish with these, but less pronounced than others and not cloying. The sweet balance to the botanicals, juices and carbonated water is well in balance and each flavor tastes unique and easily approachable. My preference, in order: #1 Evil Island. (I dig the tropical notes.) #2 Bloody Berry. (Deep dark fruit flavor.) #3 Citrus Sinner. (Grapefruit bitterness; if you were gonna spike one of these methinks this one would be good with tequila for a Paloma-like drink.) To try them yourself, you can order online and find four and 12 packs.
• For those of you watching Severance (as you should be), the New York Times offered this writeup (around the season two finale) on the show’s food being “its own chilling character.” According to the prop master for the series, “food has the ability to define time and place and mood and overall emotional connection.”
• Solar Roast Coffee is aiming to reopen its Springs location on Tejon Street on April 7 owner Mike Hartkop tells Side Dish. “It has been a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG road to getting back open,” he messaged me in a recent correspondence. Pueblo-based and -launched Solar Roast was closed last October following the fire next door at Bingo Burger. For it’s part, Bingo isn’t yet ready to reopen says its owner Richard Warner in a recent Gazette article.
• I stop by the The Bakery Depot last week in the Middle Shooks Run Neighborhood because I happen to be walking by (on the way back from nearby Switchback Coffee Roasters) during their very limited weekly hours: 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturdays currently. Owner Susan Schenk tells me she usually sells out of whatever she makes for the day, which tends to be cakes, cookies, biscotti, granola and her Sweet Heat Berry Crumb bars, which is what I grab to-go. She makes those with a blend of raspberry and blueberry-habenero jams, spiked with rum and layered with almond slivers on a shortbread crust. (Sometimes she’ll do an orange-chile-marmalade-fig variant she tells me.) They’re great with coffee at home when I’m ready for a second cup; she also serves simple homestyle coffee on site if you care to linger. Schenk went to PPCC a decade ago to study culinary, and bakes for Temple Shalom. Around Jewish holidays, The Bakery Depot makes specialty products (such as Passover breads, cookies and a flourless chocolate cake she says is awesome), and sometimes you’ll also find Mediterranean-inspired desserts, such as tahini cookies. Stop in and be surprised, but don’t go expecting an expansive bakery; this is a humble, tiny neighborhood spot that’s more grandma’s kitchen than bougie bakehouse with frills.
Side Dish Dozen happenings
Edelweiss: Very limited seats remain for our April 3 Hoch Deutcsh wine dinner, April 3; snag one here. And book your Easter reservations now online, as we’re already starting to fill up. We’ll have specials like lammbraten and glazed ham, plus a special limited dinner menu.
Goat Patch Brewing: Our Northgate location is now open! Bleating Heart Night: Help Autism Center, April 1, 5-9 p.m. at our Lincoln location. Trivia Night at Pikes Peak Brewing, April 1, 6:30-9 p.m. D&D Night with Randy, April 3, 6:30-9 p.m.
Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar: We’re wrapping up our March Oyster Month specials and celebrating National Oyster on the Half Shell Day on March 31 at 4 p.m. Score 50-cent oysters during happy hour. *Offer limited to the first 1,000 oysters sold or until 6 p.m. Reservations encouraged.
Nacho Matrix: Catch daily Happy Hours, 3-6 p.m., Monday-Friday; 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday-Sunday. Our new cocktail menu goes live April 4 at Odyssey Gastropub.
Allusion Speakeasy: Our Powers location is now hosting theme brunches weekly. Resos suggested; walk-ins welcome. Keep an eye on our socials for brunches starting downtown soon. The current Harry Potter theme runs through April. Wobbly Olive: Happy Hours, 4-6 p.m., Monday-Friday at both locations. Our patios are open.
Stellina Pizza Cafe: Come for Happy Hours, 3-5 p.m., Tuesdays-Fridays. BOGO appetizers & house-made gelato; $2 off cocktails & wine. Enjoy a fresh slice of coconut custard pie by sister shop Gold Star Bakery at Stellina thru the end of March!
Kangaroo Coffee: Spring has sprung and we're hopping into action. Events (too long a list), Promos (check our social media pages) and plans underway for celebrating the opening of our new offices at Hillside Plaza. Stay tuned!
Upcoming events
[Schnip’s Pick]: March 30: 2nd annual Rooftop Invitational cocktail competition at Lumen8 Rooftop Social. Eight teams, seven rounds, one winner takes all. Comp starts at 6 p.m., with an industry-themed special menu. Competitors this year: Chiba Bar, The Archives, Cork & Cask, 503W, Eleven18, Shame & Regret, Cocktails After Dusk and Lumen8.
April 10: Wine Walk in Manitou Springs. Small pours at Manitou Winery, Swirl Wine Bar and The Mona Lisa. 5-9 p.m.; $55/$100 for two.
April 12: Greek Orthodox Philoptochos Bake Sale at Archangel Micheal Greek Orthodox Church. 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
April 12: Sip and Support Rotary Wine Fundraiser at the Manitou Art Center. 5-7 p.m.; $40/$75 for two.
April 19: Collaboration Fest in Westminster. Featuring 180-plus breweries and 130-plus unique beers made just for the fest.
Early ticket notices: SoCo Collab Frost Fest at Bear Creek Regional Park (May 10); Tacos and Tequila Festival at UCHealth Park (May 31); 719 Battle of the Food Trucks (June 1); Taste of Pikes Peak (July 17).
Parting shot(s)
While on my mini writers retreat/DIY making maple syrup with friends informal seminar this week, I stayed in this tiny house; was watched by goats, chickens, ducks and turkeys; drank the requisite Wisconsin beer (which famously, you can only get there); and punched away at the laptop while manning a fire all damn day. I loved every minute of it.
